Of course if that were true, half the world's population would be blind dwarfs with acne and hairy palms because surveys suggest that over 80 percent of women and 99 percent of men masturbate or have masturbated at some time in their lives.

National Masturbation Month is still a necessary reminder that self-satisfaction is a healthy, accessible form of pleasure engaged in by almost everyone, of every gender and relationship status, at some time of (or throughout) their lives: It's relaxing, allows people to learn more about their own sexual response, is a basic recommendation of sex therapists that can help people with many different sexual concerns, relieves menstrual cramps, and helps keep the genitals fully functional.

I think that it is something that's part of human sexuality and it's part of something that perhaps should be taught. But we've not even taught our children the very basics. And I feel that we have tried ignorance for a very long time and it's time we try education.

People have been masturbating since the beginning of time; in recent years there has been a movement to make masturbation a more visible and acceptable form of sexual expression.

People have this impression that you're supposed to know everything about each other and be able to make each other feel good. We all know what feels good, we need to get better about telling each other. You wouldn't try to put up a bookshelf without talking, right?

Imagine living in a large metropolitan area where lawful firearms ownership is heavily regulated and discouraged. Imagine waking up to a phone call from the police, warning that a terrorist event is occurring outside and ordering you to stay inside your home.

I wonder how many Boston liberals spent the night cowering in their homes wishing they had an AR-15 with a hi-capacity magazine?

There is a HUGE buffer zone between Arkansas and Boston that affords Rep. Bell the convenience to allow those utterances to escape his apparently well-exercised pie hole. I can't help but wonder if he'd make it out of Faneuil Hall w/o being significantly bloodied if he made that statement there. If it was made in Southie, he wouldn't be able to get his hand up to hail a cab let alone run for the T.

Here's what this means: If lenders and home buyers work together, and the lender agrees to offer rates that the borrower can afford, then we'll make up part of the gap between what the old payments were and what the new payments will be. Under this plan, lenders who participate will be required to reduce those payments to no more than 31 percent of a borrower's income. And this will enable as many as 3 to 4 million homeowners to modify the terms of their mortgages to avoid foreclosure.

Additionally, SIGTARP is concerned that homeowners are redefaulting on HAMP permanent mortgage modifications at an alarming rate: 46.1% and 39.1% of HAMP modifications from Q3 and Q4 2009 redefaulted, 28.9% to 37.6% from 2010 redefaulted. SIGTARP recommended that Treasury research and analyze the causes of redefaults, develop an early warning system to try and prevent redefaults, and better help homeowners who have redefaulted.

Because redefaults are so harmful to all, Treasury should develop a better understanding of why homeowners redefault, and the characteristics of loans that are more likely to redefault. Better knowledge of the characteristics of the loan, the homeowners, the servicer, or the modification, more prone to redefault will increase Treasury's understanding of the underlying problems that cause redefaults and provide Treasury an opportunity to address these issues proactively.

We had a loan modification in place with Chase, then they sold it to Ocwen and several months later, the amount went up by $400. We are attempting to be remodified and everything we send to them is not legible or they never get it. They set up appointments and when you hang up, they say everything is fine, we got all the info. Then one week later, you get a letter saying everything is NOT fine, and you have a week to get the info (and in some cases additional info) that you just sent to them via email to them or else you jeopardize the re-modification. HAMP, this is disgraceful. If they are working in cooperation with you, you need to know that people are being given the runaround.

This is obviously a tremendous mistake, whether intentional or not, on behalf of one of the largest banking institutions in our country. The mistake has been realized given Chase's display of eagerness in ridding the property of current residents to get it on the market and into the hands of a bona fide third party purchaser. Chase's actions -- selling a property in 2008 and not realizing it until 2013; processing close to $20,000 of payments and applying them to a loan that had already been wiped out in a foreclosure sale; and illegally changing locks without the proper eviction proceedings have been outlined in a complaint filed in state court and will be strongly litigated according to the letter of the law to make Rosa Carrillo whole.

The agreement settles state and federal investigations finding that the country's five largest mortgage servicers routinely signed foreclosure related documents outside the presence of a notary public and without really knowing whether the facts they contained were correct. Both of these practices violate the law.

Not only do I think that people fear that the banks are acting illegally, I also fear that our elected enforcement leaders like District Attorneys, state Attorneys General and the national oversight agencies and courts are going to just let this continue. Well, our report and our taking it to all these elected officials will give them a chance to do the right thing - let's see what they do!

Our Counties are being robbed of billions of dollars in recordation fees through unrecorded MERS assignments and we the people demand that they be paid. From the first MERS loan to the very last one. These are fees that pay for our policemen, our firemen and our roads and schools and you let the banks plunder it through slight of hand. We demand that these recordation fees NOT be paid with 1 dollar out of the US treasury but rather by the banks who premeditated and perpetrated this illegal MERS sponsored tax evasion and fraudulent foreclosure scheme.

For those of you wondering why so many localities are broke, here's one small factor in the revenue drain. Counties typically charge a small fee for mortgage registration, roughly $30. But with MERS, ... you don't need to pay the fee every time there's an ownership transfer. Multiply that by 67 million mortgages and you're talking about billions in lost fees for local governments (some estimates place the total at about $200 billion).

My registry is a crime scene as evidenced by this forensic examination. This evidence has made it clear to me that the only way we can ever determine the total economic loss and the amount damage done to the taxpayers is by conducting a full forensic audit of all registry of deeds in Massachusetts. I suspect that at the end of the day we are going to find that the taxpayers have been bilked in this state alone of over 400 million dollars not including the accrued interest plus costs and penalties.

I offer my full support to this effort and will continue to expose fraud in my registry of deeds and will continue working with people like Jeff Greenberg and Richard Zombeck. Our country was founded on protecting its citizens' property rights.

The Big National Banks are taking this away with the help of settlements for pennies on the dollar by leaders we entrust to protect all of us.

Mr. President you have the authority to do the right thing and protect the integrity of the land recordation system and stand up for homeowners all across the country and to hold these people accountable. If you do not lead on this crisis then MERS and its shareholder banks will continue to break the law and will do so with impunity.

Register of Deeds offices are foundational to our democracy and the rule of law.   For hundreds of years these local institutions have helped us establish who owns what and that people are who they say they are. When those two simple concepts are established we gain clarity, transparency, certainty in land transactions. But most importantly, we give lifeblood to commerce and continually secure our common interests in public notice in a free and open society. We must not compromise those values and work together to restore our public land records.

In an unprecedented move that can only be described as stunning ignorance, the California State Bar recently released a legal opinion that will effectively deny legal representation to millions of homeowners faced with foreclosure. The controversy is around SB-94, a law put into effect in 2009 that was meant to protect homeowners from predatory loan modification companies.

The term "advance fee" as used in this part is a fee, regardless of the form, claimed, demanded, charged, received, or collected by a licensee from a principal before fully completing each and every service the licensee contracted to perform, or represented would be performed.

Neither an advance fee nor the services to be performed shall be separated or divided into components for the purpose of avoiding the application of this section.

The plain language of Section 2944.7(a) does not prevent Plaintiff or any homeowner from consulting with an attorney with regard to mortgage issues; rather, the statute merely limits the timing of payments for negotiating, arranging or performing a loan modification or other loan forbearance ... the statute does not prohibit consulting with an attorney.

Again, a plain reading of section 2944.7(a) does not bar an attorney from consulting with a homeowner about anything, including whether the homeowner should breach his mortgage with his lender. It merely limits the timing of compensation for certain services; namely, negotiating, arranging or performing a loan modification.

The mortgage modification quagmire that has been created by the banks is extremely discouraging to the average consumer. Banks require that stacks of paperwork be faxed to them which include pay stubs, bank statements, tax returns, utility bills and various other documents. After all of this is sent to the banks, more often than not, the banks claim they never received the documents, or have lost them. Then the cycle begins all over again... Then to add further insult to injury, the banks require constant updating of these documents, which they frequently lose or misplace again. Meanwhile, all of this is being played out while the homeowner is very often under the tremendous financial and emotional strain of potentially losing the roof over their heads. As it can easily be seen, the consumer is at an incredible disadvantage in dealing with banks that are mega institutions with thousands of employees which among them include an army of lawyers, both in-house and outside counsel.

I can't speak for anyone else, but all of that sounds to me like I could very definitely benefit from being represented by a lawyer when trying to get my loan modified in order to save my home from foreclosure. Getting a loan modified is not a simple or intuitive process. The formulas and financial analyses involved are far beyond the capabilities of most homeowners, and because of the necessity to be precise or risk a denial by the servicer, many recognize that without a lawyer experienced in the loan modification process handling the submission of their application and negotiations with their servicer, their chances of approval are greatly diminished.

The rules governing loan modifications vary depending on the program and on the investor who owns the loan, and in the case of government and programs developed internally by servicers, the rules change. There is no chance that the average homeowner can know what's involved, and certainly not at the level that an attorney specializing in the area would.

The State Bar is far from protecting financially distressed homeowners. It will prevent them from obtaining desperately needed help, since its tortured construction of 2944.7(a) would prevent most ethical lawyers from providing loan modification representation.

1. There was no court ordered stay in place on the property in question at the time of the lockout. The former homeowner, Ms. Black, had previously obtained a stay, which expired after 30 days (on June 21, 2012). The expiration of the stay was in accordance with the bankruptcy code. The lockout took place on October 21, 2012, well after the expiration of the stay.

2. Wells Fargo did not evict Ms. Black. All foreclosure and eviction decisions were made and managed by the servicer (Carrington Mortgage Services). Wells Fargo is the Trustee for a trust containing the loan on this property. As Trustee, we manage certain administrative matters and court documents are filed in our name as trustee. However, all foreclosure decisions are made by the servicer.

It is understandable that Wells Fargo wants to at this time to disavow all participation in the foreclosure and eviction proceedings.

It is undisputed that Wells Fargo was the Plaintiff evicting Miss Black in the Unlawful Detainer proceedings. Furthermore, legal counsel for Wells Fargo, Jason Burris, was at the home of Miss Black and advised the Orange County Deputy Sheriffs at her home that she had no right to possession despite her Bankruptcy.

Secondly, Carrington Mortgage Servicers, as the loan servicer, is acting on behalf of Wells Fargo undoubtedly pursuant to a loan servicing agreement between these two entities. As trustee for the trust where Miss Black's loan was deposited, Wells Fargo is the purported legal holder of that loan. All actions on behalf of the trust regarding foreclosure on such loan would be the actions of Wells Fargo assuming any rights to do so in the first place.

The law office is also aware that both Wells Fargo and Carrington Loan Servicing have contacted the media in an attempt to mitigate negative public opinion. While our law office will let the facts of the case speak for themselves in Federal Court, we are making public statements from Stephen R. Golden and Senior Attorney Thomas Freidman.

Our office has received a vast amount of requests from the media for information regarding Miss Black, we will begin to post non confidential information on our website beginning tomorrow.

Because I have a very aggressive form of cancer, every appointment, every day is crucial," she says. "I'm a person with a lower immune system. That's why all my nursing care, my physical therapy, my medical equipment, everything is set up for home care. This violates the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Sergeant Bob Sima puts a gun to my face, finger on the trigger, no safety and walks around me. There's no reason, except for to threaten my life, for an intimidation factor, to put a gun to my head.

Miss Black was evicted and locked out of her Garden Grove home by the Orange County Sheriff's office in violation of a federal court order.


Niko is struggling with cancer and was granted the court order due to medical reasons by a federal judge. The Orange County Sheriff and Wells Fargo Bank chose to ignore the order and evict Miss Black anyway. The order issued by a federal bankruptcy judge was very clear in its language and was clearly ignored by the Sheriff and Wells Fargo Bank. Stephen R. Golden was retained "Pro Bono" and has set to work with an eight-person legal team to right the wrong.

We have no information at this time about any claimed 'standard operating procedure' within the Orange County Sherriff's Department. Second, we are currently more concerned with the clear, ongoing violation of Ms. Black's right to remain in her home, in accordance with the Bankruptcy Court's Order forbidding her removal, than we are in an unnecessary debate about applying standard procedure when dealing with severely disabled citizens. Isn't the answer to that clear? Finally, we have no objection where a police officer employs a reasonable standard operating procedure when the situation is 'standard.' But, if a police officer enters a home with his or her weapon drawn, and is faced with a disabled, ill, one-hundred pound female, in a wheelchair, holding an order that precludes the very act the police officer is engaged in, then, I would ask, should we be discussing standard operating procedure, or using good judgment?

We don't give out our endorsements easily," Schaitberg said. "And we don't need her opponent, who may look good in his jacket and his blue jeans and his truck, and who wants to be a regular Joe, but who votes against working-class people.

I am a real estate attorney. I have a very small practice," Sen. Brown, (R-Mass.) told reporters Thursday afternoon. "The last seven or eight, nine years, it was run out of my home, and the clients that I represent are small banks, cooperative banks and a couple mortgage companies, focusing as one of their attorneys on real estate. I go to people's houses, I do real estate closings, and as a title agent: Fidelity National and First American. So those banks are Wrentham Cooperative Bank, Hyde Park Cooperative Bank, Middlesex Savings Bank, and a couple of smaller mortgage companies -- some of them are no longer in business.

It's not clear exactly what Brown was doing for these clients--title work sounds innocent and boring enough, and Brown certainly isn't responsible for all of his clients' misdeeds. But at the very least, Brown's association raises a host of questions. Who were those "mortgage companies" that he worked for? It's nice that Brown named a bunch of local banks, but I wonder what lies under the "mortgage company" label? What did Scott Brown understand about the mortgage market he was facilitating? Did he recognize that there was a bubble? (He was a town property assessor at one point, so one would think he'd notice this sort of thing.) If not, what does that say? And if so, what does that say? How many predatory loans did Scott Brown facilitate? How many of the loans where he handled the closing resulted in foreclosure? What would he say to those families that lost their homes to predatory loans?

If you like your debater to be condescending, snide, repetitive, off topic, rote, eager to get personal, willing to toss out extraneous comments and charges, and full of phony manners (thanking the host for every question), then Sen. Scott Brown is your man.

Sen. Scott Brown is a very important man, and at Thursday night's debate with Elizabeth Warren, he added another resume item you might not have known about. Not only does Brown meet secretly with kings and queens, not only does Secretary of State Hillary Clinton call him all the time, but he's also "one of the ranking members on the Armed Services Committee."

Also, at one point, Brown, who has not met with kings and queens, and who did not see the secret Osama bin Laden death photos, claimed that he was "one of the ranking members" of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Yes, he is. He is ranked sixth. In the event that John McCain, Jim Inhofe, Jeff Sessions, Saxby Chambliss, and Roger Wicker all move to Guam to launch new careers as a pick-up basketball team, Scott Brown would be chairman. This may seem like a minor thing, but if Brown is going to make a meal out of Warren's alleged "character" issue regarding her ancestry, then his tendency to aggrandize his place in history ought also to be somewhere on the table.

Madam President, I'm so sorry. We have no more votes today. No more votes today. It's obvious to me what's going on. I've been to a few of these rodeos. It is obvious there is a big stall taking place. One of the Senators who doesn't want to debate tonight won't be in debate. Well, he can't use the Senate as an excuse, there will be no more votes today.

There's only one reason to pound the issue about Elizabeth Warren's ancestry and that is to race-bait, to gin up the lizard-brained anger at "quotas" and "affirmative action." Brown already tippy-toed down that line last week in the debate, when he explained that he can tell an Injun jes' by lookin' at one. You talk about her like she gamed the system and you're not merely casting aspersions on her career, but you're giving a nudge-nudge, wink-wink to all the usual suspects out there who know somebody who knew somebody who was related to somebody who knew somebody who didn't get the job they should have had. This is also what they do. This is also what they've always done. This is also why you hired people because this is what they do.

The banks broke the law by railroading homeowners through the foreclosure process. Today's settlement provides compensation for foreclosure victims without requiring individuals to waive their legal claims. While banks must be made to pay more to help homeowners, the settlement includes needed principal write-downs so homeowners can stay in their homes.

This monumental settlement is a strong step towards assisting the millions of current and former homeowners that were exploited, discriminated against and taken advantage of by major mortgage servicing banks. The principal reductions, refinancing and other relief will provide desperately needed relief.

That is small comfort, perhaps, but it was hard won. So we should honor the hard work of New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, California Attorney General Kamala Harris and others, including many grassroots progressive organizations like New Bottom Line. They fought courageously to prevent a total sweetheart deal for the banks. This outcome is the result of determined activism, and without this heroic effort, the deal would have been drastically worse.

Unfortunately for homeowners, most mortgages are handled by banks that haven't been properly staffed and thus have modified far fewer loans. If these worse-performing banks had simply modified loans at the same pace as their better performing peers, then HAMP would have produced about 800,000 more modifications. Instead of about 1.2 million modifications by the end of this year, HAMP would have resulted in about 2 million.

The report showed that Bank of America Corp. faltered in one key area of the settlement, completing no modifications of first mortgages from March 1 to June 30, the period covered in the first status report released by the Office of Mortgage Settlement Oversight.

The other four banks covered by the settlement -- JPMorgan Chase & Co., Wells Fargo & Co., Citigroup Inc. and Ally Financial Inc. -- reported that they had completed 7,093 modifications of first-lien mortgages worth a total of $749 million. JPMorgan Chase completed the most such modifications with $367 million.

That raises the question: Would the banks have forgiven that debt even without the settlement? Have banks found a nifty way to reduce the amount $25 billion they agreed to pay to settle the suit over their foreclosure practices?

The figures are similar across the nation. At least 60 percent of the money is supposed to go to homeowner relief. But the bulk of that is going for short sales.

As they work through a glut of bad loans, companies like American Express, Citigroup and Discover Financial are going to court to recoup their money. But many of the lawsuits rely on erroneous documents, incomplete records and generic testimony from witnesses, according to judges who oversee the cases.

Lenders, the judges said, are churning out lawsuits without regard for accuracy, and improperly collecting debts from consumers. The concerns echo a recent abuse in the foreclosure system, a practice known as robo-signing in which banks produced similar documents for different homeowners and did not review them.

You know that look a dog gives you when you show it something confusing, like an electric razor or a lawn sprinkler? That's the look federal prosecutors give when companies like Goldman wave their attorneys' sanctifying opinions at them. They scratch their heads and say: "Oh, wow, well since this was signed in Australia by three millionaire lawyers wearing magic invisibility cloaks, it really isn't fraud! They're right!"

As one high-profile attorney currently working on a closely-watched case involving a Wall Street bank put it to me yesterday: "With these Justice guys, everything the Wall Street lawyers say makes perfect sense to them, no matter how dumb it is.

A former employee and whistle-blower at JPMorgan Chase said that after she discovered and reported to managers that inaccurate balances were found in nearly 23,000 delinquent accounts, she was fired from her assistant vice president job. The U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency is investigating the claim. In a review of lawsuits filed by credit card and other companies, the Federal Trade Commission's division of financial practices found some of the industry's lawsuits were based on incomplete or false paperwork.

One of Chase's most prolific affidavit signers was Ruben Alcaraz, one of three San Antonio liaisons with the in-house collections attorneys, court filings indicate. By law, collection affidavits require the signer to be familiar with the bank's pertinent records. "Based upon my review of the Plaintiff's books and records of Defendant's account(s), I have personal knowledge of the facts set forth in the attached pleading," states one Pennsylvania card-debt affidavit signed by Alcaraz. "This verification is made subject to the penalties of [Pennsylvania law] relating to unsworn falsification to authorities."

Numerous former employees say that Alcaraz and his colleagues rarely if ever reviewed such files. They routinely signed stacks of affidavits on flights and in meetings, which in some cases were attended by Helaire, Lazinbat and Chase compliance staffers. Nobody objected, Almonte and others say. Alcaraz also describes himself in the court documents as an "officer of the bank" and an "Assistant Treasurer." High-level Chase management had instructed the staff to stop signing documents using such titles around the middle of the last decade, four Chase sources say. But Lazinbat ordered them to do it anyway. An operator for Chase's internal switchboard identified Alcaraz as a "business analyst."

As the originators of credit card loans, banks are at the headwaters of the rivers of bad debt that flow into the collections industry. Over the last two years, Bank of America has charged off $20 billion in delinquent card debt. The bank settles or collects a portion of that itself and retires other accounts when borrowers go bankrupt or die. An undisclosed portion of the delinquent debt gets passed along to collectors. Once sold, rights to such accounts are often resold within the industry multiple times over several years.

During the course of the litigation, the class action lawyers discovered that Providian intentionally had embedded the wrong zip code into the bar codes for the return bill payment envelopes to ensure that customer payments would be delayed and thereby increase the late fee revenues Providian could charge and collect.

In 2010, Discover sued Taryn Gregory for more than $7,000 in credit card debt. Ms. Gregory, of Commerce, Ga., had fallen behind on her bills, but said she had accumulated only $4,000 in debt.

After the suit was filed, Ms. Gregory, a 41-year-old child care assistant, asked Discover for proof of the balance. The resulting documents, which were reviewed by The New York Times, have inconsistencies. One statement, for example, says it was produced in 2004, but advertisements on the bottom of the document bear a 2010 date.

Many judges said that their hands are tied. Unless a consumer shows up to contest a lawsuit, the judges cannot question the banks or comb through the lawsuits to root out suspicious documents. Instead, they are generally required to issue a summary judgment, in essence an automatic win for the bank.

"I do suspect flaws," said Harry Walsh, a superior court judge in Ventura, Calif. "But there is little I can do."

So now we have to wonder: did Wells Fargo pull strings with COMCAST to "punish" ML-Implode by blacking us out to the major US broadband provider? Or -- even more disturbing -- are Wells and COMCAST both mere instruments of a concerted action being directed from even higher levels -- i.e. a harassment and subversion campaign by the government itself (and/or the masters of the all-powerful "banking cabal" -- who make the US federal government jump when they say "jump")?

Since COMCAST is by far the largest ISP, if "someone" wanted to send a signal to our plucky truth-to-power-speaking site by making it "disappear" as viewed from a single internet service provider, COMCAST would be the one to pick to send the clearest message -- horse-head-like.

He's acting as if he was head of two private companies called Fannie and Freddie and not taking into account the impact this has on the economy, and I think he should be more cooperative with efforts to reduce foreclosures.

By refusing to implement a principal reduction program, FHFA is turning it's back on hundreds of thousands of underwater homeowners and costing taxpayers billions of dollars. Principal reduction would not only help struggling families stay in their homes, it would also stabilize housing markets and bring much needed relief to communities that have been hit the hardest by the housing crisis. I introduced the Preserving American Homeownership Act to force FHFA to give thousands of underwater homeowners the option of principal reduction and I'm going to keep fighting to get it done.

If DeMarco were fire chief and your house became engulfed in flames, you could forget about calling 911. By his reasoning, the taxpayer would be best served by keeping the fire engines in the station, lest they get damaged in the line of duty. It would not matter whether the flames licking your windows were the result of your recklessness or the product of an explosion at, say, the methamphetamine lab down the street. He would not run up the municipal water bill by saving your block.

Hubbard is an advocate for using Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to set off a nationwide wave of mortgage refinancing. In a paper co-authored with Columbia economist Christopher Mayer, Hubbard estimates that more than 75 percent of the homeowners with 30-year mortgages backed by Fannie or Freddie are paying interest rates higher than 5 percent. But for the past two years, interest rates have been closer to 4 percent. That means tens of millions of Americans are paying more than they need to every single month.

I do not believe it is the best decision for the country because, as we have discussed many times, the use of targeted principal reduction by the GSEs would provide much needed help to a significant number of troubled homeowners, help repair the nation's housing market, and result in a net benefit to taxpayers.

Five years into the housing crisis, millions of homeowners are still struggling to stay in their homes, and the legacy of the crisis continues to weigh on the market. You have the power to help more struggling homeowners and help heal the remaining damage from the housing crisis. I hope you will move to address these problems with a sense of urgency and force commensurate with the scale of the remaining challenges.

Fitch views strategic defaults as an ongoing concern. That said, there does not appear to be any sign yet of a material change in the behavior of underwater borrowers attempting to strategically default to qualify for a reduction.

To maximize returns to Fannie and Freddie, we propose a pilot program that reduces principal--often by as little as 5 percent or 10 percent--without creating skewed incentives for borrowers. Through so-called "shared appreciation" modifications, Fannie or Freddie agrees to write down a portion of the principal on deeply underwater loans in exchange for a portion of the future appreciation on the home. The borrower has a reason to keep paying, while the lender benefits when home prices eventually stabilize and rebound.

Since the borrower has to give up a meaningful share of future home price appreciation, basically establishing a cost for program participation, the shared appreciation modification is not particularly attractive to borrowers that don't need it. And by phasing in the principal reduction--say, over the course of three years contingent on meeting every monthly payment--the borrower has additional incentive to stay current on their mortgage. Both of these program rules deter borrowers from defaulting on their loan just to get a reduction in principal, what some critics call the "moral hazard" problem.

The Preserving American Homeownership Act directs the FHFA and FHA to create a principal reduction pilot program. Where principal reduction would result in a net present value gain for taxpayers, the homeowner would be eligible for an immediate reduction in principal to a loan to value (LTV) ratio of 115%. If the homeowner continues to make payments for three years additional reductions would be phased in resulting in a LTV ratio of 95%. In order to be eligible for a principal reduction, the homeowner would have to be in danger of foreclosure and so deeply underwater that other remedies, such as principal forbearance, interest rate reduction, or term adjustment will not be enough to give the homeowner an affordable monthly payment.

Losses to taxpayers are further reduced by requiring homeowners to share in any future appreciation. If the borrower sells their home or refinances their mortgage he or she is required to share up to 50% of any appreciation in value to offset the cost of the principal reduction.

Even if you're not an underwater homeowner, this pertains to you because American taxpayers -- through the government's conservatorship of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- own or guarantee roughly 60% of the outstanding mortgages in America. So if proponents of principal reduction are correct, implementing such a plan through Fannie and Freddie would save taxpayers money, help out struggling homeowners, and stimulate the broader economy.

That's a very arguable point even on its own terms, because the paper he cited (pdf) in support of his stance took no account of the positive effects on the economy of debt relief -- even though those effects are the main reason for offering such relief. Since a reduction in debt burdens would strengthen the economy, this would mean greater revenue -- and this might well offset any losses from the debt forgiveness itself. Furthermore, even if there's a small net cost to taxpayers, debt relief is still worth doing if it yields large economic benefits.

In any case, however, deciding whether debt relief is a good policy for the nation as a whole is not DeMarco's job. His job -- as long as he keeps it, which I hope is a very short period of time -- is to run his agency. If the Secretary of the Treasury, acting on behalf of the president, believes that it is in the national interest to spend some taxpayer funds on debt relief, in a way that actually improves the FHFA's budget position, the agency's director has no business deciding on his own that he prefers not to act.

The most effective way to restrict democracy is to transfer decision-making from the public arena to unaccountable institutions: kings and princes, priestly castes, military juntas, party dictatorships, or modern corporations.

In the first, we allow Wall Street to carry on its merry way, as the foreclosure crisis continues and Wall Street steals all homes, packaging them into bundles to be sold for pennies on the dollar to hedge funds. All wealth will be redistributed to the top 1% who will become modern day feudal lords with the other 99% living at their pleasure on huge feudal estates.

The Libor rate was used to manipulate, not just tens of trillions of consumer loans, but hundreds of trillions in interest rate contracts (swaps) with municipalities across America and around the globe. (Milan prosecutors have charged JPMorgan, Deutsche Bank, UBS and Depfa Bank with derivatives fraud and earning $128 million in hidden fees.)

Rigging Libor also inflated the value of the trash that Wall Street was parking in 2008 and 2009 at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to extract trillions in cash at near zero interest-rate loans from the public purse. When rates rise, bond prices decline. When rates decline, bond prices rise. The Federal Reserve made loans to Wall Street based on a percentage of the face value of their bonds and mortgage backed securities that they presented for collateral. By pushing down interest rates, the banks were getting a lift out of their collateral, allowing them to borrow more.

"We know that we're not posting um, an honest LIBOR," a Barclays employee tells a New York Fed analyst in an April 11, 2008, call, "and yet we are doing it, because, um, if we didn't do it, It draws, um, unwanted attention on ourselves."

The New York Fed representative expresses sympathy and understanding:

"You have to accept it," she says. "I understand. Despite it's against what you would like to do. I understand completely."

We don't know who else was fixing bets. Other big banks, including some of the largest in the United States, are under investigation. Barclays doesn't appear to have acted alone, and it is clear that its fixes weren't secret deals by rogue traders. Traders put requests to manipulate the rates in writing and even joked about delivering champagne to those who helped them. It is also clear that many of those who didn't have a fixer -- including consumers, community banks and credit unions -- lost money. Barclays padded its bottom line by taking money from everyone else. It won when it shouldn't have won -- and others lost when they shouldn't have lost. The amount of money involved is staggering.

... they took over the whole economy and the political system lock, stock, and barrel. They didn't just blow up finance, they oversaw the swiftest transfer of wealth to the very top the world has ever seen. They screwed workers out of their jobs, they screwed homeowners out of their houses, they screwed retirees out of their pensions, and they screwed municipalities out of their revenues and assets.

Financiers are forcing schools, parks, pools, fire departments, senior citizen centers, and libraries to shut down. They are forcing national governments to auction off their cultural heritage to the highest bidder. Everything must go in firesales at prices rigged by twenty-something traders at the biggest and most corrupt institutions the world has ever known.

Just because you are good at something and make money from it, EVEN AT THE EXPENSE OF OTHERS WHO DIDN'T WORK AS HARD OR STUDY, does not make you a thief or any sort of a criminal.

You want to know THE REAL REASON your silly example of schools, fire departments etc.... have lost????? THEIR OWN GREED!!!

A team of investigators went to Boston to look into the complaints in person and were shocked by what they found. "Typically when you're looking for fraud you've got to really look because one of the primary components of a fraud is concealment," Foster said. "These people weren't concealing it. They were concealing it from corporate, but every person who walked into those branches every day was a participant."

"One process was to cut a signature off one document, paste it and make a photocopy so it looks like an original signature," she continued. "A part and parcel of everyday business was to do anything it took to fund a loan."

They had templates for fabricating documents, cases of Wite-Out for changing names and a method for gaming the automated underwriting system--plugging in income values until they got one that worked and allowed them to underwrite the loan. They'd keep a template bank statement from each bank, then plug in different borrowers' names and an asset amount to prove that the borrower could make the payments on the loan.

Today, I was informed that Wells Fargo Bank is unilaterally closing the business checking accounts of companies simply because they are offering loan modification services. Yes, you read that right. Business checking accounts. Because you offer to help people obtain loan modifications from banks... like Wells Fargo.

Please be advised that Wells Fargo has made a decision to exit the relationship with you and close the above referenced account (s). Your account (s) will be closed within thirty (30) days from the date of this letter.

...
Should you have any questions, you may contact your local Store Manager or your Relationship Manager, if applicable.

Aaron Krowne, ML-Implode.com's founder and publisher is one of the more respected and well known bloggers in the financial activist community. It's surprising that Wells Fargo would willingly poke that potential hornet's nest and risk the backlash from his supporters.

I can tell you that on the wholesale lending side we were also enticed with "special perks" by lenders. Both Wells Fargo and Countrywide aggressively enticed us to write large volumes of sub-prime loans. Where Wells Fargo offered their retail loan officers trips to family friendly 5-Star Caribbean resorts, the perks we received on the wholesale lending side more resembled a Hunter S. Thompson novel filled with naked women, booze and drugs.

As to paranoid, well, consider Wells's vindictive closure of checking accounts to punish a blogger for highlighting how Wells's actions contributed to a borrower's suicide. A banking behemoth fears a little ol' blogger so much it feels the need to retaliate by closing a bank account of a vaguely though not financially affiliated websites? Has CEO John Stumpf lost his mind?


As to Wells's viciousness, well there is that suicide story. Or this one. Or this latest needless infliction of misery.

What sort of a company engineers this sort of strategic core competency anyway? Remember Ford's infamous Pinto strategy... rather than fix the problem, just settle them as they exploded? Well, this Wells Fargo stuff makes that look as benevolent as Girl Scouts selling cookies after church.


Wells Fargo actually engineered a strategy and built a system to rampantly abuse the individuals in our society least able to defend their interests. This is a bank that deserves to have a statue erected in its likeliness and even its own Lazarus-styled sonnet.

Archbishop King suspects the bank could be engaging in a form of "dual tracking" where one department makes a promise to work with the homeowner while another sends auctioneers to points of sale like San Francisco City Hall and, unknown to the owner, auctions off the home.

As Wells Fargo has grown over the years, using its bailout funds to gobble up rival Wachovia and expand to the East Coast, so has the U.S. prison population. By 2008, one in 100 American adults were either in jail or in prison - and one in nine black men between the ages of 20 and 34, many simply for non-violent offenses, justice not so much blind as bigoted. Overall, more than 2.3 million people are currently behind bars, up 50 percent in the last 15 years, the land of the free now accounting for a full quarter of the world's prisoners.


These developments are not unrelated.

A driving force behind the push for ever-tougher sentences is the for-profit prison industry, in which Wells Fargo is a major investor. Flush with billions in bailout money and an economic system designed to siphon wealth from the working class to the idle rich, Wells Fargo has been busy expanding its stake in the GEO Group, the second largest private jailer in America. At the end of 2011, Wells Fargo was the company's second-largest investor, holding 4.3 million shares valued at more than $72 million. By March 2012, its stake had grown to more than 4.4 million shares worth $86.7 million.

How did they rig the auctions? Simple: By bribing the auctioneers, those middlemen brokers hired to ensure the town got the best possible interest rate the market could offer. Instead of holding honest auctions in which none of the parties knew the size of one another's bids, the broker would tell the pre­arranged "winner" what the other two bids were, allowing the bank to lower its offer and come in with an interest rate just high enough to "beat" its supposed competitors. This simple but effective cheat - telling the winner what its rivals had bid - was called giving them a "last look." The winning bank would then reward the broker by providing it with kickbacks disguised as "fees" for swap deals that the brokers weren't even involved in.