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Click here to visit the new home of Politics Daily!ALEXANDRIA, Va. -- A jury on Tuesday convicted the majority owner of what had been one of the nation's largest mortgage companies on all 14 counts in a $3 billion fraud trial that officials have said is one of the most significant prosecutions to arise from the nation's financial crisis. Prosecutors said Lee Farkas led a fraud scheme of staggering proportions as chairman of Florida-based Taylor Bean & Whitaker. The fraud not only caused the company's 2009 collapse and the loss of jobs for its 2,000 workers, but also contributed to the collapse of Alabama-based Colonial Bank, the sixth-largest ...
If it's difficult to pay the bills on your house, try turning your house into a billboard. An advertising start-up in Orange, Calif., is offering to help 100 Americans pay their mortgages -- if the homeowners convert their houses into massive painted ads for the business. "It's a really good marriage for us to be able to help homeowners and for homeowners to be able to help us and bring attention to our business," said Romeo Mendoza, CEO of Adzookie, a mobile marketing firm promoting a local ad network. ...
WASHINGTON -- House Republicans pushed through legislation Tuesday to terminate an underachieving Obama administration program designed to reduce mortgage payments for homeowners in danger of losing their homes to foreclosure. Most Democrats, while acknowledging that the Home Affordable Modification Program has fallen short of original goals, protested the vote to kill it. The White House, in a statement, said that if the bill ever reaches President Barack Obama's desk, his senior advisers would recommend he veto it. The vote was 252-170. The GOP-led House this month has voted to kill three ...
As it was for many people, the 2008 recession was a bad time for filmmaker Steve Moramarco. "My life was literally in the toilet for about a year, personally and professionally," he told AOL News. "Everything was dead. As an actor, I had no auditions and there was basically no work. I was so underwater on my mortgage, I might as well have been a scuba diver, and my girlfriend left." In better days, Moramarco had worked with Jack Black on films like "School of Rock" and was an associate producer on "Tenacious D: The Pick of Destiny." He also had the honor of appearing on the flip side of ...
The highest court in Massachusetts ruled against U.S. Bancorp and Wells Fargo & Co. Friday in a pivotal mortgage foreclosure case that could spark more turmoil and uncertainty in a housing market already mired in depression. The Supreme Judicial Court affirmed a lower court judge's ruling invalidating two mortgage foreclosure sales because the banks, in their capacity as trustees for mortgage securities, did not prove that they actually owned the mortgages at the time of foreclosure. The decision, which highlights the failure of financial firms to adhere to the rules that govern ...
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(Dec. 13) -- Oregon will play mortgage superhero to 5,000 state residents in 2011, paying one year of each person's mortgage. Via the Oregon Homeownership Stabilization Initiative's Mortgage Payment Assistance Program, struggling homeowners who earn approximately $74,000 a year for a family of four and are unemployed or have lost 25 percent of their income can enter a lottery. The state expects 20,000 to 30,000 homeowners to apply online. The state will pay 12 months of the winners' mortgages, up to $20,000. Winners must pay back the money, though the state will forgive 20 percent of the ...
WASHINGTON (Nov. 18) -- More than half of the 1.4 million homeowners who enrolled in the Obama administration's flagship foreclosure-prevention program have fallen out. The program is intended to help those at risk of foreclosure by lowering their monthly mortgage payments. But the latest report from the Treasury Department shows that the effort is still plagued by high failure rates. Approximately 755,000 borrowers, or 54 percent of those who tried to get their payments lowered through the program, have been cut loose through October. That compared to a 53 percent disqualification rate ...
(Nov. 16) -- The "robo-signing" scandal at the heart of the current foreclosure crisis may be just the tip of a legal iceberg that threatens to destabilize the American financial system just as the government is least equipped to support it. That's the judgment of the Congressional Oversight Panel, the watchdog agency created to keep an eye on the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP. And it's the first official warning from anyone in the government that banks' problematic servicing of foreclosures could obscure and possibly evolve into troubles on a global scale. "At this point the ...
"Tribute to Her," uploaded to the Internet on Nov. 7, 2008, is a slideshow of Election Day photographs. YouTube member SailorBrownie described her post as a "dedication to all those Black Americans who went out on Tuesday and voted. We made history." While it's not altogether clear who is the "Her" in the title of the video, it might as well be the woman collapsed on the floor in tears. A girl nearby touches her cheek with a little confusion and a lot tenderness for the woman who is, most likely, her mother. The pictures are set to the Beatles song, "Blackbird" -- a good choice, considering ...
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