January 19, 2012
To get the full background on the mortgage fraud front, I recommend Naked Capitalism. For now I highlight a post there today on a class action suit against JP Morgan. It begins:
To our knowledge, the suit filed by Ernest Michael Bakenie against JP Morgan is the first to accuse a major bank of widespread, systematic residential mortgage documentation and fraud…
We’ve reported repeatedly of widespread evidence of grotesque procedural abuses as servicers and foreclosure mill lawyers try to cover up for the fact that in many cases, mortgage notes were not transferred properly to securitization trusts, and the rigid way these deals were structured makes it impossible to remedy those failures at this juncture. Absent creating a time machine, the only fix is to fabricate documents that make it appear than things were done correctly. We’ve seen (as in in person) obvious forgeries submitted to the court (signatures obviously Photoshop shrunk to fit) and servicer personnel caught perjuring themselves, yet judges are remarkably unwilling to issue a ruling that hinges on finding that the plaintiff filed phony documents.
If this case moves forward, that reticence may change. Note that this case, which covers only the Central District of California, alleges that Chase engaged in over 7000 filings of motions of relief of stay in bankruptcy court using fabricated documents.
A faint hint of silver glimpsed through the clouds…
Posted in Corruption, Plutocracy |
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May 13, 2011
What is a corrupted institution? How do institutions get corrupted? For a perspective to think about these questions I offer the videos below. Both are by Lawrence Lessig. The first he describes as “Ten minutes to explain corruption…” from a talk at the Harvard Thinks Big Forum. It’s dense in the way that haiku can be dense — much illuminated in a few words or, here, in a few minutes. The second video is the latest version of his expanded talk on this, “In Plain Sight Corruption,” given at a class at UC Berkeley. Useful, if not necessary, for understanding how government and other instutions actually operate. Includes recommendations for taking action to remedy this ruinous state of affairs.
The shorter course:
The longer course:
[Can't see the video in your RSS reader or email? Click here.]
Posted in Corruption, Plutocracy, Politics |
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May 8, 2011
For some time I’ve hewed to Cszlew Milosz’s characterization of America as “a moderately corrupt republic.” Now I would argue for a shorter tag, plutocracy. One of the consequences of governance by the rich (via their agents, Congress) is spelled out in “How the McEconomy Bombed the American Worker: The Hollowing Out of the Middle Class” by Andy Kroll in Tomdispatch.com. The attention grabbing opening paragraph:
Think of it as a parable for these grim economic times. On April 19th, McDonald’s launched its first-ever national hiring day, signing up 62,000 new workers at stores throughout the country. For some context, that’s more jobs created by one company in a single day than the net job creation of the entire U.S. economy in 2009. And if that boggles the mind, consider how many workers applied to local McDonald’s franchises that day and left empty-handed: 938,000 of them. With a 6.2% acceptance rate in its spring hiring blitz, McDonald’s was more selective than the Princeton, Stanford, or Yale University admission offices.
The article gives an account of rise of the McEconomy. Read it here.
Posted in Plutocracy, Signs of the times |
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