Grand Theft Wall Street

What You Should Know About the FHA Bailout

by MIKE WHITNEY

 

The Federal Housing Administration (FHA) needs a bailout, but don’t expect the media to tell you why. Instead, they’ll give you some baloney about how the agency was used to “stabilize the housing market” following the government takeover of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in September of ’08. While there’s some truth to this, it misses the larger point, which is that FHA was used to generate as many toxic mortgages as possible to keep the money flowing into the big Wall Street banks and to prevent housing prices from plunging even further leaving bank balance sheets deeper in the red. That’s what really happened; the FHA was looted to save the banks. It’s another example of grand theft Wall Street. Now take a look at this from Bussinessweek:

“The agency’s financial report last year projected that loans issued before 2009 would result in $26 billion in losses, $14 billion of that from a subset of loans in which sellers were allowed to cover the down payment on behalf of the buyer, often by inflating the price of the house. Congress banned seller-funded down payment loans beginning in 2009.

Still, the risk of many of those mortgages has been transferred to the agency’s more recent books of business because they have been refinanced under FHA’s streamline program, which waives many underwriting requirements to enable borrowers to take advantage of low interest rates. More than 17 percent of all FHA loans were delinquent in September.” (“FHA Said to Set Stage for Treasury Draw as Losses Mount”, Businessweek)

$26 billion here, $26 billion there; pretty soon you’re talking real money.

Explain to me why would anyone in their right mind would allow the seller to pay the down payment? A down payment is intended to prove that the loan applicant is capable of saving money which is a traditional way of determining creditworthiness. Letting the seller put up the down-payment turns the entire process on its head. It’s completely self defeating. It just shows the extent to which the FHA was bending the rules to prop up housing prices to accommodate their Wall Street overlords.

And did you catch that bit about “More than 17 percent of all FHA loans being delinquent in September?” That’s just more proof of fraud, isn’t it? Typically, banks only see delinquency rates of about 1 or 2 percent. The only way you get 17 percent delinquency rate is you’re grabbing people off the streets and signing them up for 30-year loans without checking their credit history. It’s such an obvious scam, it’s laughable. I assure you, even a cursory investigation of loan applications during this period would expose widespread fraud in the mortgage origination process. But, of course, we don’t do criminal investigations anymore because –as Mr Obama says, “I want to look forward, not backward.”

Of course no one in the media would dare to suggest that the FHA was involved in a vast criminal conspiracy to rip off taxpayers. Heaven forbid! But that’s what it amounts to when you issue mortgages to people who YOU KNOW will never be able to repay the debt. It’s premeditated robbery. The FHA was allowing the banks to report record profits and take hefty bonuses on loans that they knew would eventually blow up and be charged to taxpayers. The media calls that “stabilizing the housing market”. I call it raping the public.

Is that too harsh? Maybe there are some skeptics reading this who think that the folks who were in charge at the time (Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Fed chairman Ben Bernanke) were doing the best they could under very difficult circumstances? Maybe they think that using FHA to guarantee junk mortgages was the only way to keep the ailing housing market on life support, after all, the country was in the throes of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, wasn’t it?

Sure, it was, but that’s what makes the FHA swindle so grotesque, because even in the middle of an economic meltdown, the people in charge only pursued the policies that further enriched their thieving friends. In order to prove that point, we only need to browse the archive at Bussinessweek, where a 2008 article titled “FHA-Backed Loans: The New Subprime”, lays out the basic facts in black and white. Here’s an excerpt:

“The same people whose reckless practices triggered the global financial crisis are onto a similar scheme that could cost taxpayers tons more.

As if they haven’t done enough damage. Thousands of subprime mortgage lenders and brokers—many of them the very sorts of firms that helped create the current financial crisis—are going strong. Their new strategy: taking advantage of a long-standing federal program designed to encourage homeownership by insuring mortgages for buyers of modest means.

You read that correctly. Some of the same people who propelled us toward the housing market calamity are now seeking to profit by exploiting billions in federally insured mortgages. Washington, meanwhile, has vastly expanded the availability of such taxpayer-backed loans as part of the emergency campaign to rescue the country’s swooning economy.

For generations, these loans, backed by the Federal Housing Administration, have offered working-class families a legitimate means to purchase their own homes. But now there’s a severe danger that aggressive lenders and brokers schooled in the rash ways of the subprime industry will overwhelm the FHA with loans for people unlikely to make their payments. Exacerbating matters, FHA officials seem oblivious to what’s happening—or incapable of stopping it. They’re giving mortgage firms licenses to dole out 100%-insured loans despite lender records blotted by state sanctions, bankruptcy filings, civil lawsuits, and even criminal convictions.

As a result, the nation could soon suffer a fresh wave of defaults and foreclosures, with Washington obliged to respond with yet another gargantuan bailout. Inside Mortgage Finance, a research and newsletter firm in Bethesda, Md., estimates that over the next five years fresh loans backed by the FHA that go sour will cost taxpayers $100 billion or more. That’s on top of the $700 billion financial-system rescue Congress has already approved. Gary E. Lacefield, a former federal mortgage investigator who now runs Risk Mitigation Group, a consultancy in Arlington, Tex., predicts: “Within the next 12 to 18 months, there is going to be FHA-insurance Armageddon.” (“FHA-Backed Loans: The New Subprime”, Businessweek)

How do you like that? And that was written back in November 2008, so a lot of people knew what was going on even then. Our point is that the FHA was NOT used to “stabilize the housing market”, that’s complete industry-fabricated PR hogwash. It was used to turbo-charge asset prices and to shovel more money to crooked bankers. Here’s more on the story from CNBC’s Realty Check:

“The FHA losses stem from business it did between 2007 and 2009, when the rest of the mortgage market retreated dramatically. $70 billion in claims are attributable to just those three years when seller-funded downpayment assistance was still allowed. That was prohibited in 2009.

The FHA, which requires just 3.5 percent down payment on a loan and which had lower relative credit score requirements, went from just 2 percent of the market during the height of the housing boom to nearly 40 percent at the height of the crash, insuring $330 billion worth of mortgages in 2009 alone.” (“To Stem Losses, FHA Mortgages Get More Expensive”, CNBC)

Same old, same old, right? The FHA rubber stamped hundreds of billions in mortgages even though they knew the underwriting was shoddy and that the losses would eventually be dumped on Uncle Sam. And who was the primary regulator when all this hanky panky was going on?

Why, none other than Ben Bernanke. The very same Ben Bernanke who just last week said we need to loosen lending standards so the banks can issue more bad loans. It’s true. Check out this clip from a speech that the Fed chairman gave last week in Atlanta:

“It seems likely at this point that the pendulum has swung too far the other way, and that overly tight lending standards may now be preventing creditworthy borrowers from buying homes, thereby slowing the revival in housing and impeding the economic recovery…” (“Challenges in Housing and Mortgage Markets”, Federal Reserve)

Sure, let’s return the Golden Era of Crappy Lending circa 2006. Let’s get those subprime boiler rooms up-and-running again so we can blow the system to Kingdom Come one more time. Can you believe this man is still Fed chairman?

Congress should ignore Bernanke’s blabbering and standardize mortgage applications requiring 10 percent down, proof of employment, and minimum 620 credit scores. These should be the ironclad rules of lending from which the banks may not veer one iota from or face criminal penalties and a revoking of their license. Enough of the bubbles, already!

According to a recent audit, the FHA has a $16.3 billion deficit, which doesn’t sound too bad considering that agency has grown by 30 percent since 2009 and presently insures $1.1 trillion in mortgages. But then if you read the fine-print, you discover that–just this year–the agency “introduced the claim-type prediction model to separate REO claims and pre-foreclosure claims”.

What does that mean? It means they’re fudging the numbers to make things look rosier than they really are. The fact is, this is just Phase 1 of multi-phase bailout that could run into hundreds of billions of dollars, mainly because the FHA is STILL slapping its seal of approval on high-risk loans. Just get a load of this clip from The Atlantic:

“Today, the agency is still targeting low-income borrowers, pushing them into mortgages with ruinous consequences. For example, in the first quarter of FY 2012, an estimated 40 percent of FHA’s business consists of loans with either one or two subprime attributes — a FICO score below 660 or a debt ratio greater than or equal to 50 percent. These subprime loans are overwhelmingly risk layered with a loan to value ratio (excluding financed mortgage insurance premium) of equal to or greater than 95 percent and a loan term of 30 years.

As these delinquencies from 2008-2010 turn into foreclosures — a kind of post-bubble second wave — they’ll put downward price pressure on already-battered neighborhoods, and the nascent housing recovery could quickly reverse course, dragging the economy.” (“The Next Housing Bailout? Big Trouble Brewing at the FHA”, The Atlantic)

Can you see what’s going on here? The banks can’t make money by lending because too many people are still broke from the housing bubble and aren’t interested in borrowing more money. So they’ve focused on weasaling the government instead, using their agents inside the system to pull the right levers so more public money is diverted to Wall Street. And it’s all done via bad loans, that’s the strategy in a nutshell. Once they get the government to underwrite their garbage mortgages, they crank out as much funny money (credit) as possible and dump the bill on John Q. Public. So far, the plan has worked like a charm, and it will probably continue to work for some time to come. After all, who’s going to stop them? Obama?

Don’t make me laugh.

Whistleblower says BofA defrauded HAMP

By Jessica Dye - NEW YORK, March 7 | Wed Mar 7, 2012

(Reuters) - Bank of America NA prevented homeowners from receiving mortgage-loan modifications under a federal program in order to avoid millions of dollars in losses while benefitting from financial incentives for participating in the program, according to a complaint unsealed in federal court Wednesday.

The suit is the second whistleblower complaint unsealed so far with apparent ties to the $1 billion False Claims Act settlement announced by Bank of America and the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York on February 9.

The Bank of America settlement is also part of the sweeping $25 billion agreement reached between state and federal authorities.

Final settlement documents have yet to be filed in the BoA settlement, which the U.S. Attorney's Office said was the largest ever False Claims Act payout related to mortgage fraud.

The settlement resolved claims that Bank of America's Countywide Financial subsidiaries defrauded the Federal Housing Administration by inflating appraisals used for government-insured home loans, as well as claims involving the Home Affordable Modification Program, a federal program to help American homeowners facing foreclosure.

The complaint unsealed Wednesday was filed by whistleblower Gregory Mackler, a Colorado resident who said he worked alongside Bank of America executives while an employee at Urban Lending Solutions, a company to which Bank of America contracted some of its HAMP work.

While working at Urban Lending, Mackler said he saw BofA and its loan servicing subsidiary, BAC Homes Loans Servicing LP, implement "business practices designed to intentionally prevent scores of eligible homeowners from becoming eligible or staying eligible for permanent HAMP modification."

The bank and its agents routinely pretended to have lost homeowners' documents, failed to credit payments during trial modifications and intentionally misled homeowners about their eligibility for the program, the complaint alleged.

BoA let through just enough HAMP modifications to avert suspicion and allay congressional critics, while not enough to incur any substantial losses to its own bottom line, according to the complaint.

"In other words, BoA has had it both ways. BoA has continued to maximize the value of its mortgage portfolio with anti-HAMP modification practices and managed to make money by committing fraud on homeowner," the lawsuit said.

A lawyer for Mackler could neither confirm nor deny that the complaint was tied to the settlement. A spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office and a representative for Bank of America declined to comment.

In February, a whistleblower complaint was unsealed from Kyle Lagow, a former employee in a Countrywide appraisal unit which detailed allegations of Countrywide's "corrupt underwriting and appraisal process." Bank of America purchased Countywide in June 2008.

Under the False Claims Act, successful whistleblower complaints can earn that whistleblower up to 25 percent of the settlement amount.

According to the docket, the U.S. Department of Justice has until March 16 to decide whether to intervene in both the Mackler and Lagow case. The case is United States of America v. Bank of America NA et al., in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, no. 11-3270.

Obama’s Refinancing Swindle

This is the kind of thing I wish diehard Obama-maniacs would pay attention to when they start up on how great he is. The fact is he's just another politician catering to his financial supporters. Otherwise, anyone: feel free to explain why this ISN'T a horrible idea.--jef

The Banks Want to Dump Millions of Risky Mortgages Onto FHA
by MIKE WHITNEY

Barack Obama’s new housing refinance plan has nothing to do with “lowering monthly mortgage payments so responsible borrowers can stay in their homes”. That’s all public relations bunkum. The truth is the banks want to offload their garbage mortgages onto Uncle Sam to avoid hundreds of billions of dollars in losses. That’s what this refi-ruse is really all about.

The administration estimates that 3.5 million people with private label mortgages will be eligible to refinance into loans backed by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) Many of these are high risk mortgages that will eventually go into foreclosure which is why the banks want to get them off their books. Regrettably, Obama is only too happy to help them achieve that goal. Here’s a little background from the Christian Science Monitor:

“The nation now has about 30 million mortgages backed by government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs), mainly Fannie or Freddie…. About 3 million of those are “under water,” meaning the loan is now bigger than home value. Another 20 million or more have been underwritten entirely by private lenders. Some 35 percent of those, 7 million or more, are under water.” (“Obama plan to lower mortgage payments could help, but how much?”, Christian Science Monitor)

Why are so many more “private label” mortgages underwater than loans that were issued by
Fannie or Freddie?

Because the banks were lending money to every Tom, Dick and Harry who could fog a mirror. It was all a big joke. The banks didn’t really give a hoot if the borrowers were creditworthy or not because they were bundling the mortgages together into mortgage backed securities (MBS) and selling them off to investors around the world, so documentation and loan standards didn’t really matter to them. They got their pound of flesh whether the loans blew up or not. Here’s a little refresher from the Washington Post on how we got to where we are today:

“The biggest culprits in the housing fiasco came from the private sector, and more specifically from a mortgage industry that was out of control. These included lenders who originated home
loans, investment bankers who packaged them into securities, rating agencies that misjudged these securities, and global investors who bought them without much, if any, study…. 

Between 2004 and 2007, private lenders originated three quarters of all subprime and alt-A mortgage loans. These were loans to financially fragile homeowners with credit scores under 660, well below the U.S. average, which is closer to 700. But only a fourth of such loans were originated by government agencies, including Fannie, Freddie and the Federal Housing Administration. 

The dollar amount of subprime and alt-A loans made during this period by the private sector was jaw-dropping, reaching nearly $600 billion at the height of the lending frenzy in 2006. …. By contrast, government lenders made just over $100 billion in subprime and alt-A loans in 2006. Even in 2007, when the housing market was beginning its free fall, private lenders still handed out more than $300 billion via these very shaky mortgage loans…(“Fannie and Freddie don’t deserve blame for bubble,” Mark Zandi, Washington Post)

The vast amount of bad mortgages were generated by privately-owned banks, not government-sponsored entities. Keep that in mind the next time your loudmouth brother-in-law starts spouting off about how the GSE’s or the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) caused the financial meltdown. The banks were 100 percent responsible. And now they’re back for a double-dip because they still have tons of these wilting loans in their vaults and they need to get rid of them pronto. And that’s where Obama comes in. The banks are counting on the dissembler in chief to make it look like this refi-claptrap is really an effort to “provide a bit of relief for an ailing economy” or “to help working folks make their mortgage payment”. It’s all hogwash.

The reason the banks have waited this long (for another bailout) is because the 50-state robosigning case has dragged on longer than they’d anticipated. They figured the 50 state Attorneys General would roll over and play dead like the other politicians they deal with. But that hasn’t happened. The legal fight continues with no end in sight. What the banks are hoping for is a ruling “that prevents states from effectively challenging future foreclosure actions that are based on faulty prior assignments.” In other words, they want to be able to boot you out of your home whether they have proper documentation or not.

Meanwhile, the backlog of homes (that’s in some stage of foreclosure) continues to grow to record levels. When the sluice-gates finally open, an ocean of distressed homes will surge onto the market sending prices plunging and leaving bank balance sheets deep in the red. Here’s more from CNBC’s Diana Olick:

“To give you an idea of just how much the “robo” scandal is toying with the numbers, LPS compared states that require foreclosures to go through the courts versus states that don’t (judicial versus non-judicial) and found the following: 

- 50 percent of loans in foreclosure in judicial states have not made a payment in two years, as opposed to 28 percent in non-judicial states. 

Foreclosure sale rates in non-judicial states are about four times those in judicial states.” (“Robo-Reality: Final Foreclosures Fall as Pipeline Swells” Realty Check, CNBC)

The backlog of distressed homes is much greater than the data would indicate. Neither the official nor the shadow inventory accurately accounts for the bulging number of homes (10 million) currently in the pipeline.

That’s why the administration is looking for creative ways to whittle down the supply. One idea is to sell foreclosures in bulk to deep-pocket investors with the proviso that they convert them into rentals. But why give Wall Street fatcats the privilege of buying foreclosures at a discount when mom and pop investors are already scarfing them up like hotcakes? How fair is that?

The driving force behind the foreclosures-to-rental scam is that the banks want to remove the GSE’s stock of distressed homes from the competition so they can fetch a better price when their REO’s hit the market. Once again, the policy is being tailored to meet the needs of the banks not the people. Here’s more from Olick about the risks this poses to FHA:

“Critics will also argue that the FHA, which now has an inordinately, historically large share of the mortgage market, is in no position to take on any more risk. The FHA could be considered “underwater” itself, guaranteeing about $1 trillion in mortgages but sitting on just a $1.2 billion dollar cushion to cover losses. 

To that end, officials say they could create a separate fund for these loans, not the regular mutual mortgage insurance fund (MMI). This would be a special risk fund, designed to handle high losses.” (“Obama’s Mortgage Refi Plan to Go Through FHA”, CNBC)

How do you like that? The FHA is already leveraged at 100-to-1 and the banks want to add even more debt. And they want to do it in the most deceptive way possible, by creating an off-balance sheet investment vehicle where the red ink can be hidden from public view.

To be eligible for Obama’s refi-program, borrowers will need a credit score (FICO) above 580,(which is extremely low), they’ll have to be employed, and they’ll have to be current on their mortgage payments. (for the last 6 months) In other words, lending standards are being eased so the banks can dump as many high-risk mortgages on the FHA as possible. Obama breezily refers to these abysmal lending standards as “cutting through the red tape.”

Applicants will also be able to refinance under the Obama’s program with loan balances up to (get this) 140 percent of the value of their home. So, even if you owe $560,000 on a home that is currently worth $400,000–and you don’t have a dime’s worth of equity in the house–have no fear–you can still get money from Uncle Sugar. This isn’t a good way to keep people in their homes. It just turns them into debt slaves.

One last thing, all the talk about a “bank tax” is pure blather. The banks will be more than happy to cough-up $5 billion or so if it means they’ll be able to jettison the hundreds of billions in crappy loans on their books. As far as they’re concerned, that’s money “well spent”.