US ‘robs’ $13B from venerable bank / By Mark DeCambre, Oct 19, 2013
JPMorgan Chase has tentatively agreed to pay (Holder's) Dept of Justice a record $13 billion settlement to resolve several civil probes — a costly deal that still doesn’t protect the bank against additional criminal prosecutions.
“This is a basic and fundamental attack on capitalism,” declared Dick Bove, an influential bank analyst at Rafferty Capital. “It is possible that the government is taking away the property of the JPMorgan shareholders without the shareholders having committed any crime or having any say in the expropriation of these funds.” The deal also includes an undisclosed sum to settle a civil suit brought by NY state AG.
Under the settlement, JPMorgan must continue to cooperate with federal investigators probing the banking giant’s issuance of mortgage-backed securities from 2005 to 2007, according to sources.
Still to be ironed out are how to resolve that criminal investigation, along with the wording of any admissions of culpability the feds might require.
The general terms of the settlement deal were forged Friday in a phone conversation between Attorney General Eric Holder and JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, The WSJ reported.
Analysts called the settlement a raw deal given that, by JPMorgan’s own estimate, some 80 percent of its mortgage-backed securities had been acquired at the request of the Obama-led government, when it bought Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual in 2008. “Ultimately, the earnings power of banks is being force-regulated out the (SEC), by the Department of Justice,” Kass added.
The settlement sum includes $4 billion that JPMorgan agreed this month to pay the Federal Housing Finance Agency to resolve allegations that the bank misled mortgage-finance companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac about the quality of loans it sold them prior to the 2008 financial crisis, the Journal reported.
SOURCE http://nypost.com/2013/10/19/jpmorgan-in-tentative-13b-deal-with-us-justice-dept/
More below.
Where are Dimon's lawyers? Why aren't they looking into mtges falsified from the getgo.
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OBO/HOLDER COVER-UP for massive mtge fraud perpetrated by the Congressional Hispanic Caucus (O's gotta show "he cares" ---b/c he's paranoid about getting latino votes) to stay in power.
SUB-PRIME MORTGAGE SCAMS--MASSIVE LATINO MORTGAGE FRAUD ON CAPITOL HILL:
The Congressional Hispanic Institute, Inc, is an entity organized by Cong Joe Baca (D-Cali) in his capacity as head of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.
Cong Baca created "HOGAR" (Spanish for home) in 2003 to work with the mortgage industry, F/M, lenders, banks and latino community groups to increase mortgage lending to what savvy observers consider to be unqualified Latinos.
"HOGAR" colluded w/ Cong Baca in what was to become a massive bilking of taxpayers. Cong Baca calculatedly hyped the fact that the national Latino homeownership rate was 47%, compared with 68% for the overall population.
HOGAR was coached to call the figure "alarming," and to say "a concerted effort was required to ensure that by the end of the decade Latinos will share equally in the American Dream of home ownership."
HOGAR and Cong Baca conned the public, failing to note that most of the "dreamers" were illegals, citizens of Third World countries who had violated US borders.
Predictably, HOGAR colluded w/ co-conspirators which included:
(a) shaky mortgage companies that ran into big trouble;
(b) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, both now under federal control after billions in taxpayer bailouts;
(c) Countrywide Financial Corp., sold to Bank of America Corp;
(d) Washington Mutual Inc., taken over by the US government and sold to J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.; and,
(e) New Century Financial Corp. and Ameriquest Mortgage Corp, both now defunct, killed by defaulted subprime Latino mortgages.
HOGAR's ties to the subprime mortgage industry were substantial. Bribery and self-dealing were rampant:
<><> Companies that donated $150,000 to Cong Baca got the right to have their own research fellow who would conduct fraudulent studies, which were cunningly used by industry lobbyists to pump lending.
<><> Bribery and extortion in the form of $100,000 annual donations to Cong Baca, for which HOGAR provided phony news releases from Cong Baca's Hispanic Caucus promoting a lender's commercial products to the Latino market,
<><> The most shocking example of bribery well- substantitated by Hogar's literature..... HOGAR announced it worked with Freddie Mac on a self-serving two-year examination of Latino homeownership in 63 congressional districts.
The "study" found Hispanic ownership on the rise thanks to "new flexible mortgage loan products" that the industry was adopting at the urging of Cong Baca's collusive coterie.
<><> HOGAR conned lenders into even more lenient down-payment and underwriting standards.
<><> As the subprime debacle unfolded, HOGAR declined repeated requests for comment despite the economic havoc their activities precipitated.
The mortgage schemes demonstrated the criminal activities of border violators with multiple identities---perhaps violent, terrorist-connected foreigners---colluding and conspiring to defraud private companies and public entities. And mortgage racketeering enterprises which employed sub rosa finance and business practices to carry out deceptions and frauds.
The alleged ring of swindlers---a Congresman, individuals with multiple identities, banks, insurance companies, mortgage brokers--might be charged with cheating the US govt, taxpayers and bank share holders out of hundreds of millions of dollars via an elaborate web of mortgage and bank frauds.
The mortgage Dreamers used multiple phony identities, fraudulent Social Security numbers, purchased from identity forgers in order to obtain govt-subsidized benefits.
L/E will find that individuals with multiple identities obtained fraudulent mortgages then flipped the houses at ever-higher prices to family member who then absconded to foreign countries, sticking banks (and taxpayers) with hundreds of millions in fraudulent mortgages.
BACKGROUND A Wall Street Journal investigative report related that, according to the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council examination of the borrowing spree, uncovered financial schemes by low-income housing groups, Hispanic lawmakers, a congressional Hispanic housing initiative, mortgage lenders and brokers, all colluding in fraduent schemes to increase homeownership among Latinos with forged documents which enabled massive fraud.
This was not simply the mortgage market at work. It was fueled by avarice, greed, and Congressional enabling fraudulent /practices. In 2005 alone, mortgages to Hispanics jumped by 29%; Latinos with multiple fraudulent identities in low-paying jobs obtained subprime mortgages for prime properties---soaring to 169%.
(Research provided by Wall Street Journal. Some material excerpted from the NY Times).