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John Maudlin
The Big Picture
Yves here. I hope you’ll take the time to read this important post. There has been a great deal of discussion of the many deficiencies of the mortgage settlement, but its biggest has gone pretty much unnoticed. It isn’t just that the settlement gives the banks a close to free pass for past predatory, illegal conduct, but it also has such lax servicing standards and weak enforcement provisions so as to give the banks license to carry on with servicing abuses. By Abigail Caplovitz Field, a freelance writer and attorney who blogs at Reality Check The mortgage settlement signed by 49 states and every Federal law enforcer allows the rampant foreclosure fraud currently choking our courts to continue unabated.
naked capitalism
…but now faculty members, school administrators and corporate recruiters are questioning the value of a business degree at the undergraduate level. The biggest complaint: The undergraduate degrees focus too much on the nuts and bolts of finance and accounting and don’t develop enough critical thinking and problem-solving skills through long essays, in-class debates and other hallmarks of liberal-arts courses. Companies say they need flexible thinkers with innovative ideas and a broad knowledge base derived from exposure to multiple disciplines. And while most recruiters don’t outright avoid business majors, companies in consulting, technology and even finance say they’re looking for candidates with a broader academic background…Such changes should appease recruiters, who have been seeking well-rounded candidates from other disciplines, such as English, economics and engineering.
Dealbreaker: A Wall Street Tabloid – Business News Headlines and Financial Gossip
FATAL RISK: A Cautionary Tale of AIG’s Corporate Suicide | The Big Picture
The latest book for your shelf of credit crisis reads is FATAL RISK: A Cautionary Tale of AIG’s Corporate Suicide by Roddy Boyd. It tells the tale of how Goldman Sachs and AIG entered a pas a deux — an intertwined dance that became a ballet of death for one of them, and a source of great riches for the other. Most people’s understanding of the 2007-2009 subprime crisis includes only as passing knowledge of the AIG saga.
pkedrosky Conclusive proof that bits roll downhill: Outbound b/w from Mammoth (el. 8000 ft) is 6x inbound. And both suck. twitpic.com/971b5s 11 hours ago · reply · retweet · favorite
Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed
Calculated Risk
On a nationwide basis, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac own or guarantee 60 percent of the mortgages outstanding, but they account for only 29 percent of seriously delinquent loans, obviously a much lower proportion than their share of the market. Even though the Enterprises have a smaller share of seriously delinquent loans than other market participants, they account for just over half of all Home Affordable Modification Program, or HAMP modifications. Between HAMP modifications and their own proprietary loan modifications, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have completed more than 1.1 million loan modifications since the fourth quarter of 2008. It has been well-publicized that there is one form of loan modification that FHFA has not embraced, that being principal forgiveness . To be clear, the disagreement is not about helping borrowers.