Warren asks DOJ to explain 'timid' FHA settlement

[MannyGoldstein]

Source: The Hill

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is pressing the Justice Department to explain what she sees as an insufficient deal to settle housing problems caused by some of the nation's largest banks.

In a letter sent to Attorney General Eric Holder Wednesday, Warren wondered if a portion of a broad government settlement with mortgage servicers amounted to a drop in the bucket, and a sign of the government's "timid enforcement strategy" when it comes to chasing bad actors in the financial sector.

...

The federal government and 49 state attorneys general struck a $25 billion settlement against some of the nation's largest banks in March, following widespread abuses in the housing market and foreclosure process. A portion of that settlement was set aside to address potentially false insurance claims filed with the FHA. But in Warren's eyes, that $225 million payment does not seem to be sufficient, noting that banks submitted over 92,000 claims to the FHA over the covered period, totaling over $12 billion. The maximum liability banks would face under laws pertaining to false claims, if all those claims were fraudulent, would total $37 billion. The settlement amount is 0.6 percent of that figure, Warren said.

She asked the Justice Department to explain how it reached the $225 million figure.

Read more: http://thehill.com/blogs/on-the-money/1091-housing/318005-warren-asks-doj-to-explain-timid-fha-settlement

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And the kid gloves treatment of financial crime continues...

Cross posted at Elizabeth Warren Group

[Jackpine Radical]

1. Dat wummin is nuttinbudda

gordam trubblemaker.

[Arctic Dave]

6. And I love her for it.

Troublemakers unite!

[Scuba]

2. Thank you Elizabeth for being the only Democrat in Congress to ask these questions!!!

[forestpath]

3. K&R

[cascadiance]

4. Holder will just tell her that they are trying to focus on going after Manning and Snowden...

... as the real enemies of THEIR state that they think should be running our country!

[mindwalker_i]

5. You know, this really illustrates and important point

What the fuck is our government doing? The banks get this ridiculus settlement thing while the people who got screwed are still out on their asses, there are the cases where banks "got the wrong house" or pretty much stole houses outright. There's the effort to shield Bush from prosecution for the Iraq war and from torture.

Then the government/NSA is snooping into phone calls and internet traffic. And asking to be allowed to track cell phone calls without a warrent.

Yet, Manning gets tortured then 35 years, Snowden is chased across the world, family of reporters are detained, and that seems like a step away from disappeared.

Warren's "questions" show a very start contrast between what a representative/senator should be doing and asking, and what the rest seem to be doing. Why aren't questions like this raised all the time or at least a lot louder? And Republicans are asking stuff about Benghazi, purely as a diversionary tactic. But Obama seems very much to be just perpetuating a system that is abysmally corrupt. Yes, having a Repub president would make it a lot worse, but just because something would suck more, doesn't mean somethings else doesn't suck a lot.

Seriously, the sense of unreality at how badly corrupt this shit is, is just amazing.

[Jackpine Radical]

8. I think people are starting to wake up.

Certainly you can see it having happened over the months on DU, with posters refining or sometimes abandoning their positions as evidence about ALL OF IT mounts.

People criticized OWS because it had no leaders. Well, leaderless organizations are much harder to kill. OWS had no specific causes ("Save the Skeet!&quot Of course not. their specific cause was a sort of meta-cause. The object of this cause was to effect changes in ALL OF IT.

This is species-survival territory we're treading on. Tinkering around the edges is not going to work. We have to very quickly and very massively prepare to change ALL OF IT.

Bloody revolutions do not work. They are not only more prone to fail than nonviolent campaigns, but in those cases where they succeed, the militarily supported leader ends up becoming dictator.
{{See the following Amazon link for documentation}}
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=erika%20chenoweth

OWS in its many mutations is maybe the key tool for effecting peaceful social transformations. I see the key to the power of OWS as deriving from its capacity to evolve rapidly as situations demand. To do this, they need to keep in strong contact with reality, which in the Internet age means being able to extract new meanings from the sea of information. The new meanings uniformly point to one thing: The one thing that most needs to change is ALL OF IT.

[ctsnowman]

7. K & R

[d_legendary1]

9. We need more people like her!

And have her kick ass for the people.

[PSPS]

10. It was Reagan that started this "sue and settle" strategy.

The immaterial "fine" is a direct result of the crooks having captured the government -- another milestone of the Reagan era.