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JPMorgan Chase has reached a tentative $13 billion settlement with the Justice Department over a number of investigations related to to the bank's residential mortgage-backed securities business, according to The Wall Street Journal.Tweets from The Wall Street Journal and CNBC broke the news Saturday.
Read more @: JPMorgan Reaches Tentative $13 Billion Settlement With Justice Department: WSJ
$13 billion dollar agreement with the Justice Department. How bout we also throw them all in the brink like other countries did... [/FONT][/COLOR]
Read more @: JPMorgan Reaches Tentative $13 Billion Settlement With Justice Department: WSJ
$13 billion dollar agreement with the Justice Department. How bout we also throw them all in the brink like other countries did... [/FONT][/COLOR]
Read more @: JPMorgan Reaches Tentative $13 Billion Settlement With Justice Department: WSJ
$13 billion dollar agreement with the Justice Department. How bout we also throw them all in the brink like other countries did... [/FONT][/COLOR]
I am still confused on this settlement.
J.P. Morgan Chase purchased banks with the government support because they were one of the more solid banks during the meltdown. They purchased Washington Mutual, Bear Stearns, Bank One Corporation.
Of the $13 billion settlement, $9 billion is for the alleged wrongdoing stems from 2008 acquisitions of Bear Sterns and Washington Mutual. The remaining $4 billion is for customer relief.
If JP Morgan purchased those banks with the governments support, why are they being held responsible for what those banks did before JP Morgan purchased them?
That doesnt make sense to me.
It's not what they did, it's how they did it. They went in to these acquisitions with the intent of breaking the stop loss limits, essentially using bailout money to purchase the troubled banks and then foreclosing everything they could get their hands on. The agreement was that losses would be limited and the government would cover the rest. JPMC took full advantage of this without even trying to help homeowners keep their homes. At the time we had finished a forbearance program with WaMu and were awaiting paperwork for the refi. Chase moved in, claimed to have no knowledge of the program, told us we would have to start over with them, and then refused to even accept application. Our house was on the courthouse steps in 3 weeks. This is of course a dog and pony show, as FM ended up with all those foreclosed homes, and the government now has controlling interest in the housing market. What this means is that the banks and federal government skimmed trillions of dollars in equity off of the housing market. It was the single biggest theft in history, and the result is that they can do it again. Last year we got a settlement check for $1300 for "improper filing" by Chase, doesn't change that we lost $30,000 in the deal. They shouldn't be fined, they should be shot.
So it was a government / JP Morgan deal...that they were basically scamming the equity out of homes and keeping the profits...then the government turns around and fines them for it? Even tho they were making money together off doing this?
Yes. That's how they keep bankers from being shot in the streets. And it wasn't just JP, other big banks were involved as well. Think of it as hush money to the public.
So these days I am disgusted to hear commercials on the radio for refis, the HARP program (new and improved!) where even if you are upside down in your home you can still pull more equity! And ads for adjustable rate mortgages! Is our collective memory really that short? Well, apparently it is. These are the kinds of practices that got us in to the mess to begin with, and evidently people just don't learn.
But see, after the meltdown there is an added clause in new mortgages and refis, it is a personal indemnity clause. See, back when the real estate market was relatively safe, the agreement went like this: You make the house payments, and you get to live there. If you stopped making the payments, the bank took it back. There was even Private Mortgage Insurance if you owed more than 80% of the home value. This insurance was not for YOU, it was for the bank. It was there so if the bank took your house back and was not able to recover the amount owed the insurance company would cover the difference. An interesting aside on that, when you paid your home down to 80% of value you could request the PMI removal. By law the lender was not required to release it until you got below 78%.
But what happened when the bubble burst is that even with the PMI banks were losing money, except in the case of massive foreclosures. Once the lenders lost a predetermined aggregate amount the federal government covered them dollar for dollar. You see what JPMorgan (and others) did? They took federal money to buy bad loans (acquiring other smaller banks with lots of bad paper, which in effect they bought at a huge discount) and then foreclosed anything they could (using the lax rules provided by the federal government which turned it's back on things like robosigning until there was enough public outcry, in which case they ordered some of the money be given back. My cut was 4 1/3% of my actual loss) until they reached that threshold and then started cashing in on the loaned amounts at the value of the homes before the crash. So the banks didn't have to ride it to the ground, WE did. The tax payers. And the government got their money back because after the foreclosures, they held the titles via FM, which they then resold. Slick, huh?
So now the government hold a controlling interest of home titles and mortgages. The fed is holding the interest rates artificially low. The lenders are offering the same bad deals for refis (with the exception of that personal indemnity clause). government spending is up, and the fed is still buying bonds with newly "printed" money, which means they are flooding the market with money that has no backing. Eventually the fed will not be able to hold down the pressure anymore, and interest rates will jump up leading to another round of foreclosures. Here we go again. Except this time, whatever the difference in what you owe and what the bank dumps the house for will still be your responsibility. See, the risk used to be shared between the bank and the homeowner (not quite fairly, since the homeowner was paying to insure the top 20% for the bank anyway), but now there is basically no risk to the lender. So long do you think it will be (given the "recovery" in housing) before they do it all again? I'm thinking just long enough that the average plebe forgets how this went down the last time and accepts it again. Cogs in a wheel people. We're not Citizens anymore, we are Consumers. And we will be allowed to have our toys as long as we are willing to accept our roles as money mills for the government and the banks which of course are To Big To Fail.
It still gets me tho...the government in bed with the big banks to make money then fines the big banks for their part in making the money while the government walks away with an even larger portion of that same money. And the low information voter looks at this situation and praises government "for doing something" about out of control banks and their obscene profits...its nothing more than a friggin joke.
Tech, you have an excellent grasp of exactly what and how it all went down, AND, how the game is still being played. I have been beating this drum for years, even before the housing crisis, just like the drum that the total GDP of the entire world is something to the tune of $47T annually, yet the total estimated world debt is 787T. Money is perceived value, NOT actual value, and anyone with a smidgen of common sense can see how it will all go down eventually. There's nowhere near that amount of Gold and rare or precious items to cover the amount of money in world GDP. I ask, how much value does your dollar really have? The game was reset with the appropriate level of government blame on Wall St., but it wasn't all WS to blame, and they're all in on it again, right under our very noses, and laughing over brandy, and Cubans.
Tim-
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