WASHINGTON -- New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman on Tuesday was kicked off the committee leading the 50-state task force charged with probing foreclosure abuses and negotiating a possible settlement agreement with the nation's five largest mortgage firms, according to an email reviewed by The Huffington Post.

Schneiderman was one...

NEW YORK -- Investors will likely view the Federal Reserve's recent decision to keep short-term lending rates near zero for the next two years as part of a strategy to protect traders from stock market losses, a top central bank official warned on Wednesday.

"[T]he Federal Reserve should never enact...

WASHINGTON -- Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden signaled his intent Friday to intervene in a proposed $8.5 billion settlement over troubled mortgage securities between Bank of America and a group of investors, uniting with his New York counterpart Eric Schneiderman, who argued a day earlier that the deal is unfair...

WASHINGTON -- New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman asked a state judge to reject a proposed $8.5 billion settlement agreement over soured loans between Bank of America and a group of investors, claiming in court documents that a separate bank representing the investors committed fraud for failing to ensure that...

WASHINGTON -- Richard Faison didn't mind that a neighbor's home was seized and boarded up until the rats from the vacant house killed one of his dogs.

"That's when it hit me," said Faison, a Baltimore retiree. "That home is hurting mine."

Baltimore's continuing foreclosure epidemic is a particularly poignant...

WASHINGTON -- Federal and state prosecutors are in advanced negotiations with Bank of America in pursuit of a settlement that would forgive the bank for a broad range of past mortgage abuses in exchange for fines that would finance a significantly expanded relief program for struggling homeowners, according to three...

WASHINGTON -- Elizabeth Warren, rebuffed by the White House, today leaves the consumer agency she conceived of and created to return to academic life at Harvard Law School.

Her unit, the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection, is charged with protecting borrowers from abusive lenders. Created in the wake of the...

WASHINGTON -- The Department of Justice is preparing a lawsuit against Wells Fargo, the nation's largest home mortgage lender, for allegedly preying upon African American borrowers during the housing bubble and steering them into high-cost subprime loans, according to three people with direct knowledge of the probe.

The company, the...

WASHINGTON -- A year after Congress passed a landmark law intended to tame the excesses that produced the financial crisis, some experts contend that a crucial vulnerability remains: The largest financial institutions are still so enormous that their failure could again bring the financial system to the brink of disaster.

WASHINGTON -- Perhaps more than 10,000 Wells Fargo borrowers were inappropriately steered into more expensive subprime mortgages or had their loan documents falsified by bank personnel, the Federal Reserve said Wednesday.

The bank, the largest U.S. mortgage lender, agreed to pay $85 million to settle civil charges. On...

WASHINGTON -- Thanks to united Republican opposition to Elizabeth Warren as the permanent head of the consumer protection agency she dreamed up and shepherded through Congress, the administration is largely able to avoid the uncomfortable discussion about just how much support she had within the White House.

Obama, while...

WASHINGTON -- A top Obama administration official on Thursday questioned the scope of the state and federal investigations into alleged mortgage abuses and "illegal" foreclosures perpetrated by the nation's largest mortgage companies, marking the first time a senior White House official publicly broke ranks with the administration over the issue...

NEW YORK -- JPMorgan Chase, the second-largest U.S. bank by assets, reported a 13 percent jump in profits, to $5.4 billion, as lending continued to slide, fewer borrowers fell behind on their payments and problems with its mortgage practices again dampened earnings.

The lender's overall revenues were up 7 percent...

Republican commissioners on the panel created by Congress to probe the roots of the financial crisis leaked documents to partisan allies and shared confidential information with influence peddlers, according to a Wednesday report by Democrats on a Congressional oversight committee.

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, led...

WASHINGTON -- State and federal prosecutors are pressing to complete a proposed settlement with the nation's five largest home loan companies over alleged mortgage abuses, even though they've only initiated a limited investigation that hasn't examined the full extent of the alleged wrongdoing, according to interviews with more than two...

WASHINGTON -- Federal bank regulators are scrutinizing more than 150 home loan-related lawsuits directed at lenders and mortgage companies, a top official at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation plans to say Thursday, underscoring the threat the largest U.S. banks face from faulty and improper mortgage and foreclosure practices.

The revelation...

WASHINGTON -- British proposals to force large banks to separate their riskier trading operations from their retail units go further than what U.S. policymakers ordered when revamping their financial system, yet still fall far short of truly ending the perception that megabanks are too big to fail, experts say.

The...

WASHINGTON -- Reforms instituted after the financial crisis to prevent future taxpayer-funded bailouts are bound to fail and will likely be weakened within the next few years, the Federal Reserve's longest-serving policy maker predicted Monday.

The stark warning, offered by Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City President Thomas Hoenig, who's...

NEW YORK -- Bank of America, the largest U.S. bank by assets, "significantly hindered" a federal investigation into the firm's faulty foreclosure practices on potentially billions of dollars worth of taxpayer-backed loans, a federal auditor told an Arizona court.

The bank withheld key documents and data, prevented investigators from interviewing...

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has targeted Bank of America, the biggest U.S. bank by assets, in a new probe that questions the validity of potentially thousands of mortgage securities and their associated foreclosures, two people familiar with the matter said.

The investigation, which began quietly in recent weeks,...