Its destructive fallout* will continue to DEFINE YOUR LIFE -- for its
duration!






* Of course, the catastrophic effects of Bush's fumbled 9/11
disaster will never disappear, either.

Make you happy?

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/tom...c_10102010.gif

------------------

"Momentum builds for nationwide freeze on foreclosures"

By Ariana Eunjung Cha, Steven Mufson and Jia Lynn Yang
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, October 9, 2010; 10:23 AM




SENIOR OBAMA administration officials said Friday that a nationwide
moratorium on foreclosure sales may be inevitable, despite their grave
reservations about the impact a broad freeze would have on the
nation's housing market and economic recovery.

Their remarks were made as pressure for a nationwide moratorium
mounted Friday when Bank of America, the nation's largest bank, halted
foreclosure sales in all 50 states. Senate Majority Leader Harry M.
Reid (D-Nev.), who is locked in a tight reelection campaign, called on
other major lenders to follow suit.

The White House has so far resisted joining the election-season calls
for action but convened two interagency meetings this week to discuss
reports that banks filed fraudulent documents to evict delinquent
borrowers and to deal with questions about whether banks are seizing
properties without having clear ownership of the mortgages.

One meeting was made up mostly of groups that regulate the housing
industry, including the Department of Housing and Urban Development,
the Treasury Department and the White House. The other, which involved
the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the Internal Revenue
Service and U.S. attorneys from across the country, was focused on the
question of whether financial fraud was committed.

With foreclosed properties comprising one in every four homes sold in
the United States, the spreading moratorium could disrupt real estate
deals in progress, slow down the process of clearing the backlog of
troubled home loans and prolong the economic recovery, analysts said.

A freeze would also strike at the financial sector, just two years
after it suffered one of the worst crises in its history. One
government official who has been in discussions with several big
financial firms said the banks are bracing themselves for a wave of
lawsuits from homeowners who are fighting to keep their homes and from
investors who had bought mortgage loans on Wall Street. On Friday,
while the Dow Jones industrial average crossed 11,000, most major bank
stocks fell.

Bank of America is the first bank to put a moratorium on foreclosures
in all states, extending its suspension to states such as California
and Nevada, which have been hit hardest by the housing bust.
Previously, Bank of America, J.P. Morgan Chase and others had
announced that they were stopping foreclosures only in the 23 states
where a court order is needed for an eviction.

Industry sources said J.P. Morgan Chase, the nation's second largest
bank, will expand its freeze to a handful of other states. PNC
Financial Services has stopped some foreclosure proceedings, according
to an industry lobbyist and a title insurance company. A PNC
spokesman, Frederick Solomon, declined to comment on whether the
lender was halting foreclosures. He said the bank was reviewing its
procedures.

Speaking at the National Press Club, Bank of America chief executive
Brian Moynihan played down the gravity of its moratorium and the
impact of the paperwork flap. "We haven't found any foreclosure
problems," he said. "What we're trying to do is clear the air and say
we'll go back and check our work one more time."

A White House official said the administration is "very closely"
monitoring the foreclosure issues and expects "lenders and servicers
to follow the law and to fix any problems in their processes related
to foreclosures."

Also Friday, the Federal Housing Administration said it had asked
agency-approved mortgage servicers - which includes the nation's
largest banks - to immediately audit their foreclosure operations. The
FHA can impose financial penalties on companies that do not follow
rules set by housing regulators.

Questions over the legal standing of banks in foreclosure proceedings
as well as reports that these firms cut corners as they pushed
foreclosures through the legal system fueled calls in Congress for a
nationwide freeze and federal investigations.

Reid, who had earlier sent a letter to major banks asking them to
suspend foreclosures in Nevada, expanded that call Friday after Bank
of America's announcement.

"I thank Bank of America for doing the right thing by suspending
actions on foreclosures while this investigation runs its course," he
said.

The Senate banking committee's chairman, Christopher J. Dodd (D-
Conn.), said Friday that his panel will hold hearings Nov. 16 to
investigate the morass.

Rep. Edolphus Towns (D-N.Y.), chairman of the House Committee on
Oversight and Government Reform, said the top 10 mortgage lenders
should immediately suspend foreclosure proceedings in all states.

"The implications of ignoring the foreclosure problems are far too
great to be ignored," he said Friday.

In addition to a national moratorium, some lawmakers are discussing
reviving a bill that would give bankruptcy judges the power to modify
loans and reduce principal to market value. The bill passed in the
House but did not make it through the Senate.

As the House Financial Services Committee convened a foreclosure-fraud
working group to begin discussing ideas for other legislative
remedies, the banking industry began to fight back against the notion
that the paperwork problem was more than a technicality.

The Mortgage Bankers of America and the Financial Services Roundtable
circulated a letter Friday on Capitol Hill to "set the record
straight." It said that banks are reviewing their foreclosure
paperwork but that in nearly all cases, the foreclosures are
justified.

Wells Fargo scheduled a briefing for key staffers on Wednesday to talk
about issues.

"Calls for a blanket national moratorium on all foreclosures are a bad
idea and would cause significant harm to communities at risk, the
unstable housing market and the fragile economy," the industry letter
said.

Suspending foreclosures could end up forcing banks, which act as
service companies for the loans, to spend billions of dollars to
compensate investors who own the pools of mortgages they manage. And
it could add to the losses at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two
government-owned mortgage financiers.

Pension funds and other investors in the pools of mortgage securities
are worried that the big banks will get special treatment from
Washington.

"What's happened is a gross mishandling of paperwork and often times a
misrepresentation of the transaction," said Chris Katopis, a spokesman
for the Association of Mortgage Investors. "The banks have to have
some responsibility and accountability for this."

]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...100804213.html


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...100806954.html

You know, I've never really thought about my bush.

Anyway, I'm not going to touch that ...