Compliance & Regulation

Evidence of insufficient or misleading disclosures during RMBS sales will be a focus of the new Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities Working Group under President Obama's Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force, according Robert Khuzami, director of the SEC's division of enforcement.

One of the co-chairs of the new federal/state Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities Working Group is preparing to file cases in the next few weeks against Wall Street firms involved in the packaging and selling of MBS.

JPMorgan Chase late last week told a federal court in Wichita that NCUA's negligence suit against top executives of WesCorp Federal Credit Union proves it was the shortcomings of those executives - and not any misrepresentations by the Wall Street bank's sales force in the sale of MBS - that caused the failure of WesCorp and three other corporate credit unions.

In this election year, there certainly is no shortage of political rhetoric and drama in every debate and speech we encounter, including the recent State of the Union address by President Obama. In the address, President Obama addressed the latest of this administration’s efforts to thwart the woes of the housing market.

Facebook is about to go public. Whoopee! Here's how an IPO works: all the private equity firms that have been funding a startup's operations get to cash out, recovering their seed money and then some. I'm not a Facebook user, but I get the model, though my doubts about the company stem from this basic belief: what's to prevent a bunch of low-cost competitors from offering the same service?

Identity theft continues to be a major problem across the country as scammers are creating schemes to steal the identifications and Social Security numbers of individuals in order to collect money for their own needs. Luckily, these fraudsters are being caught by the Department of Justice before prolonging their scams.

The New York Times ran an editorial on Sunday, Jan. 15 on mortgage fraud. Now correct me if I am wrong, but I thought newspapers were supposed to print the news. There is nothing new about this piece, which once again points out that some banks are to blame for the current crisis.

The new collaboration between the federal government and certain states to investigate pre-crisis mortgage fraud will have 55 dedicated attorneys, investigators, analysts and support staff, officials said Friday.

The National Credit Union Administration is proposing new rules for troubled debt restructurings that will cover how all federally insured credit unions account for delinquencies, charge-offs, and income related to troubled home mortgages.

Both criminal prosecution and civil sanctions will be used to go after those responsible for securitization abuses, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said Friday as government officials involved in the Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities Working Group under President Obama's Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force formally met for the first time.