During this year’s State of the Union speech in January, President Obama announced the creation of a special unit of prosecutors and state attorney generals which would investigate abusive lending and packaging of risky mortgages. President Obama stated: ”This new unit will hold accountable those who broke the law, speed assistance to homeowners, and help turn the page on an era of recklessness that hurt so many Americans.” Yet no significant results have been announced by the task force and no criminal charges have been filed against any top financial institution executive.

Two of Americans’ most important banks, Wells Fargo and Bank of America, have already agreed to pay large amounts of money to compensate for their discriminatory practices, but these damages do not seem to be enough to convince them to discontinue these practices.

In a speech in September 2008, when Barack Obama was only a presidential candidate, he declared: “The era of greed and irresponsibility on Wall Street and in Washington has led us to a financial crisis as serious as any since the Great Depression. The lack of oversight in Washington and on Wall Street is exactly what got us into this mess in the first place.” Some thought this meant the government could enforce a more aggressive policy against Wall Street.

Bank of America acquired Countrywide Financial in 2008, but this  acquisition had a negative impact. The New York Times explains that, “In December 2011, the Justice Department announced that Bank of America had agreed to pay $335 million to settle allegations that Countrywide discriminated against black and Hispanic borrowers during the housing boom. This was the largest residential fair-lending settlement in history.” But no criminal charges were filed against any executive of the company.

US Attorney General Eric Holder stated: “The settlement provides $335 million in compensation to victims of Countrywide’s discrimination during a period when Countrywide served as one of the nation’s largest single-family mortgage lenders and originated more than 4 million residential mortgage loans.”

Bank of America denied their responsibility in this issue, one of their spokesman’s Dan Frahm said that “we reached this settlement to resolve issues about Countrywide’s alleged historic practices that occurred before Bank of America acquired the company.  Bank of America’s practices are not at issue.”

Angelo Mozilo, Former Chief executive of Countrywide Financial, had been investigated in Los Angeles by federal prosecutors, who, after two years of investigation, dropped the case after concluding that Mr. Mozilo did not engage in criminal conduct while directing Country Wide Financial.

Just a few weeks ago the Department of Justice announced that Wells Fargo had agreed to pay $175 million to settle allegations that it discriminated against minority borrowers (Hispanic and African-Americans). The economic compensation the bank has agreed to give does not seem like a lot of money compared to their second quarter profits which are $4.6 billion.

The Department of Justice accused Wells Fargo for charging higher mortgage rates and fees against African-American and Latino customers, and the bank agreed to pay $175 million to settle allegations. But like Bank of America, Wells Fargo denied any wrongdoing and no executive from the company was taken to Court.

Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division Thomas Perez declared that “this is a case about real people – African American and Latino – who suffered real harm as a result of Wells Fargo’s discriminatory lending practices.” The Assistant Attorney General explained that “”if you were African-American or Latino, you were more likely to be placed in a subprime loan or pay more for your mortgage loan, even though you were qualified and deserved better treatment.”

Mike Heid, president of Wells Fargo Home Mortgage, said in a statement that “Wells Fargo is settling this matter because we believe it is in the best interest of our team members, customers, communities and investors to avoid a long and costly legal fight, and to instead devote our resources to continuing to contribute to the country’s housing recovery.”

So would seem hope is fading for those who believed that President Obama would be the one to finally end discriminatory practices in the banking industry. None of the banks accused have accepted any wrongdoing and they only accepted the economic compensation to avoid contested litigation, but no criminal charges have been filed.

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Washington, U.S.A. — Congressman Chaka Fattah (D-PA), the senior Democratic appropriator for the U.S. Department of Justice, issued the following statement:

“Attorney General Eric Holder and the Department of Justice have achieved a major victory today in the on-going effort to hold predatory home mortgage lenders accountable. And the battle to right the wrongs of this national disgrace will continue.

“The $175 million settlement with Wells Fargo, one of the nation’s largest lenders, is an indication that aggressive investigation can result in justice for those victimized by patterns of discrimination on the basis of race or national origin.

“While instances of severe racial profiling and discrimination in home mortgage lending, predatory practices, misleading paperwork and hard-sell for sub-prime mortgages extend back at least to 2004, serious investigation of these allegations didn’t begin until after the Obama Administration took office in 2009.

“The Department of Justice under General Holder has confronted the mortgage foreclosure atrocity with every resource available – negotiating settlements with banks, investigating deceptive practices, and more.

“I have been urging the Department of Justice since 2009 to step up the pace of investigations, and led the fight in the House Appropriations Committee for the extra resources that have helped fund these probes.

“In addition, as a legislator who has won enactment for programs to assist distressed homeowners on the state and national level going back to the 1980s in Pennsylvania, I’m gratified that today’s beneficiaries include about 1,030 African-American homebuyers in the Philadelphia area who may have been victims of illegal predatory lending.

“And knowing General Holder as a man of character and action, I take heart that today’s settlement is simply the latest step by the professionals of the Department of Justice to protect and deliver redress for millions of preyed-upon, discriminated-against homeowners.”

Congressman Fattah is author of the Pennsylvania Homeowners Emergency Mortgage Assistance Program which has helped save over 44,000 homes from foreclosure by providing loans to homeowners who lost their jobs or income through no fault of their own.

He delivered programs including the $1 billion national Emergency Homeowners’ Loan Program which has saved homes for laid-off homeowners coast to coast. Fattah is the senior Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee’s Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science and related agencies.

Image Courtesy of   USDAgov

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NewsGator on February 21, 2012 announced a new way for organizations to bring enterprise video delivered by Kontiki into Microsoft SharePoint, consolidating all of their enterprise content onto a single collaboration platform.

Kontiki’s Enterprise Video Platform (EVP) helps organizations deliver high-quality live video webcasting, video on-demand and community video portals over their existing networking infrastructure. Companies such as General Motors, Nestle, Wells Fargo, Ernst & Young, Starwood, Sephora and Equinix have used Kontiki’s solution to foster an engaging video culture.

Bringing Kontiki’s patented video delivery technology to Microsoft SharePoint establishes the collaboration platform as the single, central go-to resource for enterprise content. This new capability results directly from the deep integration of Kontiki’s EVP and the NewsGator Social Sites 2010 social computing suite, which delivers a wide range of social and mobile computing capabilities for Microsoft SharePoint.

The integration enhances productivity and business performance by significantly streamlining employee information access. Organizations no longer need to spend time and effort navigating to a separate environment to find, share and manage videos.

“Microsoft SharePoint offers opportunities for organizations to increase productivity, and those opportunities are magnified by Microsoft partners, such as NewsGator, that create solutions to further collaboration,” said Richard Riley, SharePoint product management director at Microsoft Corporation.

Socializing video
In addition to consolidating content on Microsoft SharePoint, the integration makes Kontiki-delivered video more social, enabling users, through Social Sites, to post, share, “like” and comment on Kontiki-delivered video in Social Sites activity streams, communities, video repositories and internal TV channels. The result is an enterprise-grade video experience that is secure, internal, and business-oriented, maintaining a video experience akin to the public YouTube.

“Many global organizations are demanding high-quality enterprise video for a growing number of use cases and need to include this important content within their SharePoint environments,” said Kevin Crayton, Kontiki’s Vice President of Products.

“NewsGator Social Sites is their fastest path to social video integration with SharePoint and lets companies leverage all the power, efficiency, security, manageability and analytics of our proven video platform. It’s a winning combination which our customers have been looking forward to with huge interest.”

“High-quality enterprise video that can be delivered to every employee across a global company is one of the most personal, engaging and effective ways for a workforce to communicate,” said NewsGator Brian Kellner, VP of Development and Product Management. “To obtain the most value, great content should be easily accessible and in the mainstream of the social business flow. That’s what we’re doing with this integration, and the business results will speak for themselves.”

Kontiki support is part of the Social Sites Video Stream module for Microsoft SharePoint 2010.

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On Friday, February 9, administration officials stood alongside state attorneys general to announce a $25 billion mortgage settlement. It was reminiscent of a big announcement by administration officials three Februarys ago involving an even bigger number: $50 billion. That money was supposed to go to the administration’s signature mortgage modification program, which eventually became HAMP.

Three years later, HAMP (the Home Affordable Modification Program) is widely considered a failure. That failure provides key context to  Friday’s announcement.

According to the state attorneys general and the administration, a major selling point of the new settlement is that it won’t repeat HAMP’s mistakes. This deal, they say, is different.

“If people are eligible for a loan modification, the banks won’t screw up those decisions anymore,” said Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller.

North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper made a rather pointed reference to HAMP: “I think strong, court-ordered enforcement with teeth distinguish this deal from those earlier efforts to help homeowners.”

As we’ve reported extensively over the past several years, homeowners seeking to avoid foreclosure by gaining a loan modification have often been frustrated by banks’ errors and delays. In the worst cases, the banks’ shoddy mortgage servicing has led to wrongful foreclosures. The errors have sometimes continued even after homeowners got an elusive modification.

When HAMP was launched, it came with the promise that mortgage servicers would have to abide by clear rules. The handbook laying out these rules now approaches 200 pages. But as we’ve detailed, enforcement of those rules has been lacking.

According to the state attorneys general, the settlement directly addresses that. The five big servicers 2014 Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citigroup and Ally Financial (formerly GMAC) 2014  that will sign on to the not-quite-finalized deal have agreed to follow a raft of new rules. Some of these rules, like how quickly a bank must respond to a homeowner’s completed modification application, come straight from HAMP.

What’s different this time, they say, is that there are clear consequences for rule-breaking. But plenty of questions remain, and only time will tell if the latest promises of mortgage-servicer accountability will be kept.

“The big picture is that these new rules are only good if servicers follow them,” said Alys Cohen of the National Consumer Law Center. “Enforcement will really matter.”

As critics like Firedoglake blogger David Dayen have pointed out, the new system relies to some extent on “self-assessments” by the banks to identify violations of the new rules. But Miller, the Iowa attorney general, notes that consumers will be able to complain to their state’s attorney general, who will make sure their complaints are heard.

The settlement does create a “monitor” who will have the power to impose penalties. The administration says a bank could be fined up to $1 million per violation and up to $5 million for repeat violations. But the details released so far don’t show how violations will be applied or counted. (If thousands of homeowners, for instance, have been wrongly denied modifications, will that be counted as one violation or thousands?)

HAMP came with no penalties for participating mortgage servicers that broke the rules. It was only in the past several months that the Treasury Department decided to address servicer noncompliance 2014 by temporarily withholding the program’s subsidy payments. (As for the millions of dollars in incentives that Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and the other servicers were paid over the previous years, they get to keep that.)

The settlement is not only supposed to have more sticks than HAMP, it’s also a chance for the administration to breathe life back into the old program. Treasury recently made major revisions to HAMP to allow more homeowners to qualify for modifications.

“The extension and expansion of HAMP are designed to be complementary to the settlement,” said Treasury spokeswoman Andrea Risotto.

For instance, the program was set to end at the end of 2012 but now will accept new homeowners until the end of 2013. (The banks will operate under the umbrella of the settlement through 2014 or so.) In addition, Treasury has broadened some of the criteria to make it easier to qualify.

Some of the millions of homeowners who were rejected might be eligible for a second shot. Hundreds of thousands of homeowners were originally granted “trial modifications” through the program in 2009 and early 2010, only to be denied permanent modifications many months (and sometimes more than a year) later.

Most of those homeowners started those trials by just giving their income information over the phone. They’ll be eligible to reapply, according to the proposed rules. One of the recent changes to HAMP could reduce the cost of the settlement for banks 2014 and leave taxpayers footing a chunk of the bill.

As part of Friday”s deal, the five banks agreed to reduce billions in mortgage debt for homeowners in danger of foreclosure. Most of those principal reductions 2014 about 85 percent according to Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan 2014 will likely be for loans that the banks hold on their own books.

HAMP also has long offered investors incentives to encourage principal reductions. For loans owned by banks, the money goes right to them. In January, Treasury tripled those incentives. In cases in which a loan qualifies for HAMP, the government will now pay investors, often the banks themselves, up to roughly two-thirds the cost of a principal reduction.

The banks have agreed to perform at least $10 billion worth of principal reductions as part of the settlement. Because it’s unclear how many of the principal reduction modifications will be done through HAMP, it’s impossible to say how much of that will be covered by the government subsidies.

So far, about 40,000 HAMP modifications have been done through HAMP’s principal reduction program at a median reduction of $67,196, meaning that roughly $2.7 billion in principal has been reduced. If the banks find HAMP more attractive because of the increased incentives, that amount might increase sharply, and HAMP could experience something of a renaissance.

by Paul Kiel, ProPublica, Feb. 10, 2012, 10:55 a.m.

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The Elton John AIDS Foundation (EJAF) is very pleased to announce that Steven Tyler, a generous Foundation supporter and an Event Chair for EJAF’s 20th annual Academy Awards Viewing Party, is working with EJAF to help make its 20th Oscar-night event especially successful. Through an auction on Charitybuzz Steven is inviting the highest bidder to be a guest at his table for the Party.

The winner of the auction will be a guest of Steven Tyler and Erin Brady, dining at their table for the February 26, 2012 event, which will be held at the newly redesigned West Hollywood Park in West Hollywood, CA.

The Foundation’s 20th annual event will feature a cocktail reception, an incredible dinner prepared by celebrity chef Cat Cora and served during the Oscar telecast, an exciting live auction, and an after-show performance by Foster the People. Chopard, Neuro, and Wells Fargo are the Presenting Sponsors for the event, and American Airlines is the official airline partner for the Foundation.

“How would you have to dress if you were sitting next to me at a table at Elton John’s Oscar Party, “Steven Tyler joked.”Sounds like a loaded question, eh? Put your money where your mouth is and arrive as you will and come as you are to help me support the Elton John AIDS Foundation!”

“All of us at EJAF are deeply grateful to Steven for his tremendous generosity over the past several years,” stated EJAF Executive Director Scott Campbell. ”We are particularly thrilled to welcome him as an Event Chair this year for our 20th Annual Academy Awards Viewing Party and so very thankful for his leadership and enthusiasm in helping to raise additional dollars for our urgent cause.”

Visit Charitybuzz to bid on this incredible opportunity to enjoy the Oscar telecast with Steven Tyler, Erin Brady, and their guests and to support the urgent work of the Elton John AIDS Foundation.

Mazzzur / Shutterstock.com

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