Fannie Mae Asleep as Reports of Mortgage Crisis Mounted (For 2/5/12)

Nye Lavalle was a successful sports advertising executive who had a family home foreclosed on in 1995 and started investigating the home mortgage industry. He went all over the nation and discovered forged documents. He unsuccessfully showed his findings Washington Mutual, Countrywide Financial, JP Morgan, other Big Banks, and mortgage lenders. By 2003, when the housing market was hot, he had documented an extensive pattern of corruption at mortgage giant Fannie Mae. Taxpayers have lost $150 billion to the bailouts of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, both of which drove this industry's culture of outsourcing its work to other firms. Fannie Mae helped create an electronic registry firm for mortgages that it did not diligently oversee to ensure that it complied with state laws. These failures contributed heavily to hundreds of thousands of fraudulent foreclosures. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/05/business/mortgage-tornado-warning-unheeded.html?_r=1&hp

Countrywide Settlement Lets Bank of America Off the Hook (for 12/29/11)

Bank of America's punishment of a $335 million fine to the Federal Government for overcharging more than 200,000 black or Hispanic borrowers is not an adequate reparation for this bank's actions. This fine does not match the massive profits Countrywide made in the boom before the housing market crashed. The bank pushed these otherwise creditworthy individuals into subprime mortgages. These practices expose racism in this company's lending practices. Banks foreclose on the homes of these minorities more frequently than whites. http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505123_162-57347259/why-the-feds-countrywide-settlement-settles-nothing/?tag=cbsnewsMainColumnArea