Pre-announcements are coming up negative so far.
Comments »Yearly Archives: 2011
Initial Claims: Prior 366k, Market Expects 380k, Actual 364k ….3rd Q GDP Estimates: 1.8% down a couple on tenths
Initial estimates for GDP was 2.0%….consumption dropped significantly
Comments »Wal-Mart Pulls Baby Formula After Baby Dies in Missouri
Federal Prosecutors Fail to Do Their Jobs Even After Judges Point to Evidence and Wrong Doing
WTF is going on in this country ? Citizens get pulled over for speeding and minor infractions of the law while real criminals enjoy time in the sun.
Comments »Does Oracle Spell the Future for Technology Spending ?
Oracle missed earnings Tuesday night. First time in 9 years. some are asking if this spells further downside for tech cap ex.
Comments »The Euro Pares Gains as Worries Mount Over Credit Risk Downgrades
Facebook’s Zuckerberg Want His Company to be a Blue Chip
Forecasters Still Gloomy Despite Better Than Expected Economic Data
Bank to Bank Lending Rates Fall in Europe Letting Bank Stocks Lead a Rally in Thin Trade
Chevron Executives Will Face Criminal Indictments for Brazilian Oil Spill
Chevron has already faced some minor fines and the spill or leaks do not seem as bad as many other oil production problems…none the less they may face criminal charges.
Comments »The Dollar is Back Near 11 Month Highs Against the Euro
S&P Takes Hungary Down to Junk Status
Toyota Expects Sales to Rise 20% As They Recover From the Quake
Chinese Bankers Expecting Dovish Policy Doubles to 23%
Asian Markets Remain in the Red Overnight While Euope and U.S. Futures Move Higher
Countrywide to Pay $335M Over Discrimination Case
Bank of America’s (BAC: 5.23, +0.06, +1.16%) Countrywide Financial unit agreed on Wednesday to pay $335 million to settle allegations it discriminated against minority homebuyers by steering them toward dangerous subprime mortgages.
According to the Department of Justice, it marks the largest residential fair lending settlement in history. Covering actions between 2004 and 2008, the settlement offers financial compensation to more than 200,000 qualified borrowers who were charged higher fees or given subprime loans because of their race, not because of their creditworthiness, the government said.
“The department’s action against Countrywide makes clear that we will not hesitate to hold financial institutions accountable, including one of the nation’s largest, for lending discrimination,” Attorney General Eric Holder said in a statement. “These institutions should make judgments based on applicants’ creditworthiness, not on the color of their skin.”
After tumbling below the $5 threshold earlier this week for the first time since March 2009, BofA’s shares were recently up 0.68% at $5.21.
BofA said it is committed to fair and equal treatment of all customers and it will continue resolving remaining Countrywide issues, Dow Jones Newswires reported.
The DOJ said Countrywide’s business practices permitted its loan officers and mortgage brokers to differ a loan’s interest rates and other fees, opening the door to unfair pricing discretion based on race. The government accuses Countrywide of being aware of this discrimination, but failing to impose meaningful limits or guidelines to stop it.
Subprime loans are considered more dangerous because they often include prepayment penalties and exploding adjustable interest rates. These mortgages are believed to have helped cause the mortgage crisis and ensuing recession.
“Countrywide’s actions contributed to the housing crisis, hurt entire communities, and denied families access to the American dream,” said Thomas Perez, assistant Attorney General for the DOJ’s civil rights division. “We are using every tool in our law enforcement arsenal, including some that were dormant for years, to go after institutions of all sizes that discriminated against families solely because of their race or national origin.”
The DOJ said this is the first time it has alleged and obtained relief for borrowers who were steered into loans based on the color of their skin.
As part of the settlement, Countrywide, which doesn’t currently originate new loans, is being required to implement policies and practices to prevent discrimination if it returns to the lending business during the next four years.
The Countrywide settlement is subject to court approval, something that is not a given considering a recent rejection of a Securities and Exchange Commission settlement with Citigroup (C: 26.10, +0.15, +0.58%).
Underscoring how terrible of an acquisition Countrywide was, BofA has shelled out billions in legal settlements, including $8.5 billion to investors who lost money on mortgage-backed securities, $8.4 billion for loan modifications and at least $13 billion in mortgage-security repurchases.
Read more: http://trade.cc/tlyixzz1hENnLv2w
Comments »Where There is Smoke There is Fire
Today Bank of America paid $335 million to settle mortgage fraud for Countrywide.
The Justice Department found that Countrywide brokers were given higher incentives to steer as many borrowers as possible into sub-prime loans.
Furthermore, they found that Blacks and Latinos were racially discriminated against as they received loans that were more costlier and riskier than their white counter parts. On the News Hour a spokesperson investigating the case said a Black man making $100k per year received a loan that was higher in interest and not prime while a white person making $35k got the prime fixed rate loan.
IS THIS AMERICA ?
IS A SETTLEMENT JUSTICE ?
WHY IS NOBODY IN JAIL ?
It is simple. A CEO, CFO, and various lower branches of management must meet and discuss the bottom line.
It is impossible for nobody in management from dick head floor manger to the CEO and in some cases board members, to not know about incentives which affect the bottom line.
Collating information to analyze the business; figuring out how to make more money drop to the bottom line means all levels of management can clearly see where the profits are the best and with what type of clients produce the best income for the company.
So culpability has to lie with all levels of the organization. It means their was a structure to create, sell, package the loan for Fannie and Freddie, and do it all over again.
THIS IS FRAUD….. THIS IS VIOLATION OF THE RICO ACT.
Lastly, it is said that where there is smoke there is fire.
If Countrywide was the only company doing this then my aunt had balls and was really my uncle who was spawned by Mickey Mouse.
Crony Capitalism has ruined this great nation. Rome is truly burning.
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Asia Opens to the Downside
Ron Paul’s Investment Portfolio: ‘A cellar-full of canned goods and nine-millimeter rounds’
It appears Ron Paul has been reading Jake Gint’s blog.
By Jason Zweig
Republican presidential candidate Rep. Ron Paul marches to his own drummer in politics – and in his investment portfolio, too.
Here at Total Return, we’ve looked at hundreds of the annual financial-disclosure forms in which the members of Congress reveal their assets and trades – and we’ve never seen a more unorthodox portfolio than Ron Paul’s. (In fact, The Wall Street Journal revealed problematic trading in Congress more than a year and a half before the “60 Minutes” episode that recently raised a ruckus over the same topic, but that’s another matter.)
According to data available through his 2010 “Form A” financial disclosure statement, filed last May, Rep. Paul’s portfolio is valued between $2.44 million and $5.46 million. (Congressional disclosures are given in ranges, not precise amounts.)
Most members of Congress, like many Americans, hold some real estate, a few bonds or bond mutual funds, some individual stocks and a bundle of stock funds. Give or take a few percentage points, a typical Congressional portfolio might have 10% in cash, 10% in bonds or bond funds, 20% in real estate, and 60% in stocks or stock funds.
But Ron Paul’s portfolio isn’t merely different. It’s shockingly different.
Yes, about 21% of Rep. Paul’s holdings are in real estate and roughly 14% in cash. But he owns no bonds or bond funds and has only 0.1% in stock funds. Furthermore, the stock funds that Rep. Paul does own are all “short,” or make bets against, U.S. stocks. One is a “double inverse” fund that, on a daily basis, goes up twice as much as its stock benchmark goes down.
The remainder of Rep. Paul’s portfolio – fully 64% of his assets – is entirely in gold and silver mining stocks. He owns no Apple, no ExxonMobil, no Procter & Gamble, no General Electric, no Johnson & Johnson, not even a diversified mutual fund that holds a broad basket of stocks. Rep. Paul doesn’t own stock in any major companies at all except big precious-metals stocks like Barrick Gold, Goldcorp and Newmont Mining.
Rep. Paul also owns 23 other miners – many of them smaller, Canadian-based “juniors” whose stocks are highly risky. Ten of these stocks have total market valuations of less than $500 million, a common definition of a “microcap” stock. Mr. Paul has between $100,010 and $326,000 (roughly 5% of his assets) invested in these tiny, extremely volatile stocks.
Rep. Paul appears to be a strict buy-and-hold investor who rarely trades; he has held many of his mining stocks since at least 2002. But, as gold and silver prices have fallen sharply since September, precious-metals equities have also taken a pounding, with many dropping 20% or more. That exposes the risk in making a big bet on one narrow sector.
At our request, William Bernstein, an investment manager at Efficient Portfolio Advisors in Eastford, Conn., reviewed Rep. Paul’s portfolio as set out in the annual disclosure statement. Mr. Bernstein says he has never seen such an extreme bet on economic catastrophe. ”This portfolio is a half-step away from a cellar-full of canned goods and nine-millimeter rounds,” he says.
Read the rest here.
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