Goldman Sachs does not act with ethics or conscience when it comes to making a deal for money. Paying a fine is small potatoes when the firm sets aside $3.4 billion as its cost of doing business. The $53 million principal reduction on Litton mortgages is just as small. How was such an amount arrived at? Were all the mortgages evaluated?
The "illegal" practice of robo-signing is a fraud and should be treated as a criminal charge. HAMP appears to lessen Goldman Sachs's culpability. Shouldn't GS strive for the "highest" standard rather than just a "new higher standard." It's all hogwash.
The best sentence of all in the article, the one that made me spew my coffee all over my keyboard was the utterance by Lawsky:
“Goldman Sachs, Ocwen and Litton have now all agreed to put the rights of homeowners ahead of their profit margins by implementing these changes.”
When Pigs Fly!
The Federal Reserve Board (where was IT during the 2006-2008 years?) comes forth mouthing platitudes too. GS has "requirements" to live up to also. Where are the words "FRAUD" and "CRIMINAL BEHAVIOR?" When GS didn't behave ethically (and they didn't), they should be charged and judged by the Justice department.
Banks shouldn't just "consent to enforcement requirements." They should be compelled and ordered to follow the rules laid down in the regulations and pay penalties including jail time when these are not adhered to.
How cozy are banks to regulators and the Federal Reserve! Just follow the Goldman Sachs guys who are now in government and in regulatory positions. It is no wonder that Goldman Sachs has no credibility.
NY Approves Goldman Sachs' Sale of Litton with Stipulations
By Krista Franks - DSNewsThe New York Department of Financial Services and Banking Department is including several stipulations with its approval of Goldman Sachs’ sale of its Litton Loan Servicing, LP, to special servicer Ocwen Financial Corp.
The acquisition – approved Thursday with the signing of the agreement – makes Florida-based Ocwen the 12th largest servicer in the country.
Goldman Sachs has agreed to principal reductions of $53 million on Litton mortgages.
In addition, the agreement forged between Goldman Sachs and New York’s banking superintendent Benjamin M. Lawsky addresses the illegal practice of robo-signing and requires enhanced rules to ensure only the note-holder take any foreclosure actions on homeowners.
The agreement also requires servicers to provide a single point of contact to borrowers in foreclosure or those seeking modification.
The single point of contact is a common practice among special servicers and is already a requirement for all
modifications performed through the Home Affordable Modification Program.
“This agreement provides important consumer protections for homeowners who have found themselves in dire straits due to the financial crisis,” Superintendent Lawsky said.
“Our agreement sets a new higher standard for the residential mortgage servicing industry, whose troubling foreclosure and servicing practices we have been investigating along with other regulators across the country,” Lawsky continued.
“Goldman Sachs, Ocwen and Litton have now all agreed to put the rights of homeowners ahead of their profit margins by implementing these changes,” Lawsky concluded.
On the same day as Lawsky’s announcement of his agreement with Goldman Sachs, the Federal Reserve Board announced its own set of requirements for the investment bank.
Responding to past iniquities in its mortgage servicing, the Fed is requiring Goldman Sachs to employ an independent party to review Litton’s foreclosure actions between 2009 and 2010.
“The foreclosure review will be conducted consistent with the reviews currently underway at the 14 large mortgage servicers that consented to enforcement actions brought by the banking agencies on April 13, 2011,” the Fed said in its announcement.
In addition, if Goldman Sachs chooses to service mortgages at any time while the enforcement actions are still in effect, it must adopt the same rules as the other servicers in question.
Goldman Sachs will also be required to pay monetary penalties.
Read the article here
3 COMMENTS:
"Fraud As a Business Model"
Tavakoli Structured Finance
To illustrate just one type of malicious mischief, Senator Carl Levin (D. Mich.), Chairman of a senate investigative panel, issued a memo stating that Goldman "magnified the impact of toxic mortgages." The Wall Street Journal reviewed data showing that a $38 million subprime-mortgage bond created in June 2006 was referenced in more than 30 debt pool causing around$280 million in losses to investors by 2008. In other words, Goldman kept repackaging, reselling or protecting (buying credit default protection on) losers. It took the wrong kind of nerve for Goldman's CEO to say he was doing "God's work."
Money is being put in taxpayers' pockets in the form of "recoveries" while being extracted again in the form of subsidies and cheap funding to shaky banks that continue to award record pay and record bonuses as they gouge consumers. We can expect more of the same if we continue to let banks off with a slap on the wrist for malfeasance--along with a taxpayer subsidized fine--while banks neither admit nor deny wrongdoing.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/janet-tavakoli/fraud-as-a-business-model_b_950806.html
SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. (MarketWatch) – The start of WWIV? Too strong?
Maybe just the “Second American Revolution?” Too dramatic? Either way,
this is a new D-Day, the invasion of Wall Street. And a global
game-changer.
On Sept. 17, the Arab Spring becomes the new American Fall, with 20,000
revolutionaries in a tent city. Plus “solidarity” occupations in major
financial centers worldwide, all ready for a long siege, vowing not to
leave till they get their “one simple demand.”
The new ones are also united in the spirit of the Tahrir Square
revolutionaries: “One thing we all have in common is that we are the 99%
that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%,”
according to posts on the
Occupy Wall Street website
.
Leaderless, yes. But now their real power comes in a new strategy: “one
big swarm of people” challenging authority. They want their democracy
back: “One citizen. One dollar. One vote.” Get the corrupting influence
of money out of elections.
Bottom line: They want to eliminate “the greatest corrupter of our democracy: Wall Street, the financial Gomorrah of America.”
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/occupy-wall-street-will-lay-siege-to-us-greed-2011-09-06?
I hope there will be a non-violent demonstration and long sit-in that will spur actions, somehow!
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