Wednesday, July 15, 2015

He Who Has the Gold Makes the Rules

Isn't that the "Golden Rule"?
“Too Big to Fail” has morphed into “Too Big to Jail” — and then again, into “Bank Lives Matter.”

[...]

Three top Democrats are accusing the Department of Housing and Urban Development of quietly removing a key clause in its requirements for taxpayer-guaranteed mortgage insurance in order to spare two banks recently convicted of federal crimes from being frozen out of the lucrative market..

[...]

Sens. Sherrod Brown and Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Maxine Waters fired off a letter to HUD on Tuesday, saying they believe that the timing of the change was designed to clear the way for two banks recently convicted of federal crimes — JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup — to continue to make Federal Housing Administration-insured loans.

[...]

On May 20 of this year, JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup both entered a guilty plea on one felony count of conspiring to rig foreign currency exchange trades, the largest market on the globe.

Five days earlier, on May 15, HUD slipped a notice into the Federal Register, seeking to alter its standard loan-level certification form, known as HUD-92900-A. This form must be filled out for lenders to receive FHA insurance, which reimburses them if the homeowner falls into foreclosure.

[...]

The notice in the Federal Register did not even mention the removal, making it impossible to discover without comparing the old form and the proposed form side by side. The Wall Street Journal ran a story about the certification changes in May, but failed to notice that the new language would let law-breaking banks off scot-free.

  The Intercept
I wonder who actually discovered this little trick. I am highly doubtful any congress person was paying attention. I could be jaded.

I also wonder who works at HUD that used to work for a big corporate financial operation.  Or which of Obama's appointees who previously worked (and plan to return to work) for big corporate financial operations suggested the change to HUD.

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