Tuesday, August 6, 2013
Mortgage Fraud: Former Bear Stearns Mortgage Executives Have Plum Jobs on Wall Street
The four “deny that the offering documents referenced contained
material misstatements of fact or omissions of material
facts,” according to the answer jointly filed by the Bear Stearns
companies and the individual defendants from Bear.
Two other mortgage division leaders, Mary Haggerty and Baron Silverstein, were not named defendants in the lawsuit.
AMBAC Assurance Corp., a company that guaranteed some of Bear’s mortgage bonds and went bankrupt in 2010, accused Bear of fraud in a separate lawsuit that described actions by the six mortgage division leaders. AMBAC emerged from bankruptcy in May.
Yet all six continue to work at the top levels of their field, earning salaries and bonuses that have allowed them to live in luxury while the mortgages that made up the bonds they sold have defaulted at alarming rates.
“How is it that we could say that we learned something from the last crisis when we still have the same people running our companies for the future?” asked Jordan Thomas, a former attorney for the Securities and Exchange Commission who now runs the whistleblower practice at Labaton Sucharow in New York.
Four years, $29 million
Thomas Marano, who led Bear’s mortgage finance division, is perhaps the most telling example.
In the past four years he earned more than $29 million as head of Residential Capital, LLC, the mortgage subsidiary of the former General Motors Acceptance Corp. (GMAC), which was bailed out by the government during the financial crisis. ResCap filed for bankruptcy last year.
As global head of mortgages, asset-backed securities and commercial mortgage-backed securities at Bear Stearns, he oversaw the underwriting and securitization of subprime loans from Bear’s mortgage subsidiary EMC Mortgage Corp.
His division oversaw the mortgage operation from start to finish. EMC would make or purchase mortgage loans, then pool thousands of them into mortgage backed securities, register them with the SEC and then sell them to investors.
The FHFA, along with the State of New York, mortgage insurers, and other federal agencies and investors, said in lawsuits that Bear falsely assured investors and insurers in customer disclosures and SEC filings that the loans were subjected to rigorous underwriting standards.
The lawsuits said Marano’s unit was so hungry for new loans to securitize that they let the standards slide and knowingly included bad loans in mortgage pools.
Marano personally signed the SEC filings on at least $8.7 billion worth of residential mortgage-backed securities sold to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, according to documents included in the FHFA lawsuit.
“Defendants falsely represented that the underlying mortgage loans complied with certain underwriting guidelines and standards, including representations that significantly overstated the ability of the borrowers to repay their mortgage loans,” the lawsuit states.
Marano, the company and all the other defendants “deny there was an abandonment of reasonable due diligence procedures,” according to court documents.
“Individual defendants deny that the securitizations … contained material misstatements of fact or omissions of fact,” the defendants’ response to the FHFA complaint filed in court reads.
Marano also directed executives to withhold “every fee” from credit rating agencies that had lowered the ratings on the firm’s mortgages bonds, according to the AMBAC complaint.
In the majority of the securities signed by Marano, more than half the loans were delinquent, in default or foreclosed by July 2011, according to figures the FHFA included in its lawsuit.
Marano, who has a 4,700-square-foot home in New Jersey and a vacation home in Park City, Utah, declined to comment for this story. He sold the New Jersey house to Old Pike Associates LLC, a limited liability corporation, for $99 in 2002 and the LLC also owns the Utah house. Old Pike’s address is Marano’s home address and the company lists Marano as CEO.
Marano is managing member of another LLC, Old Pike Associates II, LLC, which was formed in March 2012. The company bought a $4.2 million dollar home in Tenafly, N.J., in December 2012, according to public records.
When Bear went under, “everybody and their brother descended on the place,” looking to hire the best talent, said Chad Dean, managing partner of Integrated Management Resources and a banking recruiter for 11 years.
“Nobody should be surprised that Bear Stearns people are still all over the Street in high-level positions at other firms,” Dean said. “It’s very competitive. There’s resumés flying all over the place.”
Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., who as chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations led some of the most thorough inquiries into the causes of the financial crisis, echoed that.
“Just because Bear Stearns went out of business doesn’t mean everybody who worked for Bear Stearns was incompetent,” he said. He declined to discuss Marano and his colleagues specifically.
Warren Spector, who was co-president of Bear Stearns until he was fired in August 2007, said Marano was seen in the industry as a “rock star.”
“He knew the business inside and out, and he could do every job, up and down the line,” Spector said. “He was one of the best managers Bear Stearns ever had.” Spector said he has no knowledge of the specific accusations against Marano in any lawsuits.
Republished from: Global Research
Two other mortgage division leaders, Mary Haggerty and Baron Silverstein, were not named defendants in the lawsuit.
AMBAC Assurance Corp., a company that guaranteed some of Bear’s mortgage bonds and went bankrupt in 2010, accused Bear of fraud in a separate lawsuit that described actions by the six mortgage division leaders. AMBAC emerged from bankruptcy in May.
Yet all six continue to work at the top levels of their field, earning salaries and bonuses that have allowed them to live in luxury while the mortgages that made up the bonds they sold have defaulted at alarming rates.
“How is it that we could say that we learned something from the last crisis when we still have the same people running our companies for the future?” asked Jordan Thomas, a former attorney for the Securities and Exchange Commission who now runs the whistleblower practice at Labaton Sucharow in New York.
Thomas Marano, who led Bear’s mortgage finance division, is perhaps the most telling example.
In the past four years he earned more than $29 million as head of Residential Capital, LLC, the mortgage subsidiary of the former General Motors Acceptance Corp. (GMAC), which was bailed out by the government during the financial crisis. ResCap filed for bankruptcy last year.
As global head of mortgages, asset-backed securities and commercial mortgage-backed securities at Bear Stearns, he oversaw the underwriting and securitization of subprime loans from Bear’s mortgage subsidiary EMC Mortgage Corp.
His division oversaw the mortgage operation from start to finish. EMC would make or purchase mortgage loans, then pool thousands of them into mortgage backed securities, register them with the SEC and then sell them to investors.
The FHFA, along with the State of New York, mortgage insurers, and other federal agencies and investors, said in lawsuits that Bear falsely assured investors and insurers in customer disclosures and SEC filings that the loans were subjected to rigorous underwriting standards.
The lawsuits said Marano’s unit was so hungry for new loans to securitize that they let the standards slide and knowingly included bad loans in mortgage pools.
Marano personally signed the SEC filings on at least $8.7 billion worth of residential mortgage-backed securities sold to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, according to documents included in the FHFA lawsuit.
“Defendants falsely represented that the underlying mortgage loans complied with certain underwriting guidelines and standards, including representations that significantly overstated the ability of the borrowers to repay their mortgage loans,” the lawsuit states.
Marano, the company and all the other defendants “deny there was an abandonment of reasonable due diligence procedures,” according to court documents.
“Individual defendants deny that the securitizations … contained material misstatements of fact or omissions of fact,” the defendants’ response to the FHFA complaint filed in court reads.
Marano also directed executives to withhold “every fee” from credit rating agencies that had lowered the ratings on the firm’s mortgages bonds, according to the AMBAC complaint.
In the majority of the securities signed by Marano, more than half the loans were delinquent, in default or foreclosed by July 2011, according to figures the FHFA included in its lawsuit.
Marano, who has a 4,700-square-foot home in New Jersey and a vacation home in Park City, Utah, declined to comment for this story. He sold the New Jersey house to Old Pike Associates LLC, a limited liability corporation, for $99 in 2002 and the LLC also owns the Utah house. Old Pike’s address is Marano’s home address and the company lists Marano as CEO.
Marano is managing member of another LLC, Old Pike Associates II, LLC, which was formed in March 2012. The company bought a $4.2 million dollar home in Tenafly, N.J., in December 2012, according to public records.
When Bear went under, “everybody and their brother descended on the place,” looking to hire the best talent, said Chad Dean, managing partner of Integrated Management Resources and a banking recruiter for 11 years.
“Nobody should be surprised that Bear Stearns people are still all over the Street in high-level positions at other firms,” Dean said. “It’s very competitive. There’s resumés flying all over the place.”
Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., who as chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations led some of the most thorough inquiries into the causes of the financial crisis, echoed that.
“Just because Bear Stearns went out of business doesn’t mean everybody who worked for Bear Stearns was incompetent,” he said. He declined to discuss Marano and his colleagues specifically.
Warren Spector, who was co-president of Bear Stearns until he was fired in August 2007, said Marano was seen in the industry as a “rock star.”
“He knew the business inside and out, and he could do every job, up and down the line,” Spector said. “He was one of the best managers Bear Stearns ever had.” Spector said he has no knowledge of the specific accusations against Marano in any lawsuits.
Republished from: Global Research
Obama, the economy and the movement
The latest figures on the economy make it all too clear that we are
stuck in a feeble recovery that could go on for several years to come.
Growth was only 1.4 percent in the first half of 2013, and the economy
is still creating too few jobs to increase worker earnings, which
actually declined in July.
So what’s the cure, and what might be done, given Republican obstructionism?
Start with interest rates. They need to stay very low. It’s clear that the Federal Reserve jumped the gun, with Chairman Bernanke saying in June that our central bank might reduce bond purchases soon — and then having to walk it back.
The economy is still far too weak to tolerate higher interest rates. The Fed needs to keep the monetary spigots wide open for the foreseeable future.
It’s also clear that the Sequester is fiscal madness. The Congressional Budget Office last year warned that the increase in payroll taxes coupled with the $85 billion Sequester would cut the growth rate for 2013 in half. That’s happening. Instead of furloughing public employees, the government should be adding new public jobs.
Obama’s tour to promote a recovery from the “middle out” is a good
start, but there is nothing in his agenda that would fundamentally
change the pitifully slow recovery. His proposed grand bargain on taxes
would cut the corporate tax rate in exchange for closing loopholes,
yielding net new revenues in the short run but no new revenue over time.
Instead, we need corporations to start paying their fair share. The claim that corporate America is over-taxed is nonsense. For Obama to embrace this idea plays once again to right-wing ideology.
So, what to do to end the blockage? There are some things that Obama could do, and other things that we need to do.
The Republicans will obstruct any legislative initiative to restore an economy of broad prosperity. So it’s necessary both to make their obstructionism bad politics and to use the power of the presidency until the legislative equation changes.
For starters, the president has a great deal of executive power that he hasn’t used. One example is the power to set the terms of government contracts.
During World War II, President Roosevelt denied war production contracts to any employer who tried to bust unions. In the 1960s, before there were the votes to pass civil rights legislation, Presidents Kennedy and Johnson issued executive orders requiring government contractors to end racial discrimination in hiring and promotion.
President Obama could issue orders requiring government contractors to pay decent wages and not to interfere with workers’ legal right to unionize. And now that the Senate has finally confirmed his appointees to the National Labor Relations Board, the NLRB could take a much tougher stance against illegal union busting.
The president could stop proposing trade deals that make it easier for industry to outsource and to evade labor and environmental regulations by moving offshore. Social standards should be part of all trade deals.
Obama, who tends to dislike partisanship, needs to become a better partisan in order to be a more effective president. He should make it even clearer what stands between us and a strong recovery — Republican obstruction on the budget. He should send up legislation for much more substantial public investment, and then lead the attack on the obstructionist Republican House, Harry Truman style.
Obama famously declared in his 2004 keynote address to the Democratic National Convention that there is no red state America, or blue state America, but only the United States of America. He should admit that he was wrong. Thanks to gerrymandering and the fact that Republicans have at least 190 safe House seats, nothing that Obama can say or do will move those Republicans members of Congress to stop obstructing the recovery. But even so, that leaves 245 other House seats. And there are enough swing seats currently held by Republicans that a compelling stance by the president could split the right and take back the House for the Democrats.
And if we are to reclaim a politics of broad prosperity, what we do on the ground is at least as important as what the president does. In that respect, the most hopeful development in years is the spate of one-day strikes by minimum-wage fast food workers demanding a living wage.
This movement is spreading. It’s telling that corporate America doesn’t have the nerve to fire these workers.
There are now tens of millions of Americans earning too little to live in minimal decency. The society, on average, is richer than ever, but too much of the national wealth and income is going to the top.
Obama said as much in his July 24 address at Knox College.
What’s needed is not just presidential rhetoric but a mass social movement to press for decent wages. The Occupy movement was a start, but it was a protest without a program. The movement for a $15 minimum wage is a protest connected to a politics. As it grows, this movement can create a tailwind for presidential leadership and isolate the Republicans as the party of privilege.
For three decades, this society has been dividing into haves and have-nots. Yet the struggles of ordinary people have been weirdly disconnected from our politics. Democrats express an economic populism when their backs are to the wall, but our Democratic presidents tend to get captured by economic elites.
Rebuilding the economy from the middle out is a start. Even better would be rebuilding it from the bottom up.
AN/ARA
Republished from: Press TV
So what’s the cure, and what might be done, given Republican obstructionism?
Start with interest rates. They need to stay very low. It’s clear that the Federal Reserve jumped the gun, with Chairman Bernanke saying in June that our central bank might reduce bond purchases soon — and then having to walk it back.
The economy is still far too weak to tolerate higher interest rates. The Fed needs to keep the monetary spigots wide open for the foreseeable future.
It’s also clear that the Sequester is fiscal madness. The Congressional Budget Office last year warned that the increase in payroll taxes coupled with the $85 billion Sequester would cut the growth rate for 2013 in half. That’s happening. Instead of furloughing public employees, the government should be adding new public jobs.
Instead, we need corporations to start paying their fair share. The claim that corporate America is over-taxed is nonsense. For Obama to embrace this idea plays once again to right-wing ideology.
So, what to do to end the blockage? There are some things that Obama could do, and other things that we need to do.
The Republicans will obstruct any legislative initiative to restore an economy of broad prosperity. So it’s necessary both to make their obstructionism bad politics and to use the power of the presidency until the legislative equation changes.
For starters, the president has a great deal of executive power that he hasn’t used. One example is the power to set the terms of government contracts.
During World War II, President Roosevelt denied war production contracts to any employer who tried to bust unions. In the 1960s, before there were the votes to pass civil rights legislation, Presidents Kennedy and Johnson issued executive orders requiring government contractors to end racial discrimination in hiring and promotion.
President Obama could issue orders requiring government contractors to pay decent wages and not to interfere with workers’ legal right to unionize. And now that the Senate has finally confirmed his appointees to the National Labor Relations Board, the NLRB could take a much tougher stance against illegal union busting.
The president could stop proposing trade deals that make it easier for industry to outsource and to evade labor and environmental regulations by moving offshore. Social standards should be part of all trade deals.
Obama, who tends to dislike partisanship, needs to become a better partisan in order to be a more effective president. He should make it even clearer what stands between us and a strong recovery — Republican obstruction on the budget. He should send up legislation for much more substantial public investment, and then lead the attack on the obstructionist Republican House, Harry Truman style.
Obama famously declared in his 2004 keynote address to the Democratic National Convention that there is no red state America, or blue state America, but only the United States of America. He should admit that he was wrong. Thanks to gerrymandering and the fact that Republicans have at least 190 safe House seats, nothing that Obama can say or do will move those Republicans members of Congress to stop obstructing the recovery. But even so, that leaves 245 other House seats. And there are enough swing seats currently held by Republicans that a compelling stance by the president could split the right and take back the House for the Democrats.
And if we are to reclaim a politics of broad prosperity, what we do on the ground is at least as important as what the president does. In that respect, the most hopeful development in years is the spate of one-day strikes by minimum-wage fast food workers demanding a living wage.
This movement is spreading. It’s telling that corporate America doesn’t have the nerve to fire these workers.
There are now tens of millions of Americans earning too little to live in minimal decency. The society, on average, is richer than ever, but too much of the national wealth and income is going to the top.
Obama said as much in his July 24 address at Knox College.
What’s needed is not just presidential rhetoric but a mass social movement to press for decent wages. The Occupy movement was a start, but it was a protest without a program. The movement for a $15 minimum wage is a protest connected to a politics. As it grows, this movement can create a tailwind for presidential leadership and isolate the Republicans as the party of privilege.
For three decades, this society has been dividing into haves and have-nots. Yet the struggles of ordinary people have been weirdly disconnected from our politics. Democrats express an economic populism when their backs are to the wall, but our Democratic presidents tend to get captured by economic elites.
Rebuilding the economy from the middle out is a start. Even better would be rebuilding it from the bottom up.
AN/ARA
Republished from: Press TV
March Against the Banksters July 6th in South Africa
Wow! The UBUNTU Party’s got it goin’ on!
Press Release: March Against the Banksters 6 July 2013 – Sandton
PRESS RELEASE 2 July 2013
MARCH AGAINST THE BANKSTERS
Saturday 6 July 2013 – Sandton, South Africa.
“FREEDOM FROM FINANCIAL SLAVERY”
I am pleased to announce that on the 1st of July 2013, the UBUNTU Party was issued with a permit for the Public Gathering and “March against the BANKSTERS” by the Johannesburg Metropolitan Police Department, under section 205 of 1993. The permit number is 0232/06/2013.
Everyone is invited to join in the march – because everyone is severely affected by the criminal activity of the banksters. This is not about politics or personal agendas – it is about our human rights and liberties that will bring about our freedom from financial slavery.
Join the event HERE: https://www.facebook.com/events/136840266518030/
The march will start at 11 am on Saturday, 6th July – on the corner of Rivonia Rd & Grayston Dr, Sandton in front of INVESTEC Bank. We will deliver memorandums to INVESTEC, NEDBANK, FNB, STD BANK, ABSA and also NORTON ROSE, one of the key law firms that continues to defend and represent the banksters, being fully aware of their unlawful activity. The memorandum will be distributed to the media – and contains simple questions that the bankers and their many law firms have refused to answer after repeated requests by thousands of people.
We will also deliver a memorandum to the 3 major media companies: PRIMEDIA, e-TV and SABC, urging them to stand with the people, and to perform their task as investigative journalist responsibly and report truthfully on their findings. We call on the editors and the journalists to become human beings first – and then play their role as journalists to bring justice into an unjust system filled with lies and deceptions often perpetuated by reckless and ignorant reporting.
We will also deliver memorandum to the OMBUDSMAN FOR BANKING SERVICES and most importantly to the RESERVE BANK OF SOUTH AFRICA in Pretoria – a private corporation that has been allowed to take control of our economic policy, by issuing privately printed money, in the form of a “FIAT” currency without any value whatsoever, by which they enslave all the people of South Africa. Our objective is to follow in the footsteps of brave leaders of the past, like JFK, and to return the right to print money, to the people, where it belongs. We propose the implementation of a PEOPLE’S BANK owned by the people, that pints money for the people by the people – interest free.
Our objectives are:
1) To mobilise those who have been enlightened regarding the gross unlawful conduct and criminal activity of the banks in South Africa – including the RESERVE BANK.
2) To bring this to the attention of the greater public and the media who are still in the dark regarding such activity of the banksters.
3) To highlight the method by which the gross fraud and criminal activity is conducted by the banksters.
4) To ensure that everyone understands their malicious intent and fraud committed through a process called SECURITISATION, by which our signatures, promissory notes and contracts of loans are sold to third party companies and traded on international stock markets for unimaginable profits, while repossessing people’s properties unlawfully, without the right to do so, destroying millions of lives in the process.
5) To expose the seemingly infinite influence and control over the Judiciary by the banks and their corrupt lawyers to the point where they influence certain Judges and the circumstances surrounding judgements against ordinary people who stand their ground.
6) To expose the corrupt lawyers and advocates who are complicit in this criminal activity by defending the criminal actions of the banks while being fully aware of the banks’ actions.
7) To urge the media to inform themselves and to report responsibly on the criminal activities of the banks that affect every human being alive, in the interest of justice for the people.
8) To make the banksters aware that the people will not stop until their criminal actions have been fully exposed.
9) To launch criminal charges against the CEOs, CFOs and DIRECTORS of the relevant banks, together with their lawyers and advocates that have relentlessly defended them while lying under oath, making them complicit in the fraud.
10) Ensure the swift prosecution and incarceration of the senior bank management, their directors, and their lawyers for their inhumane actions and crimes against the people of South Africa.
11) To facilitate the closure of the privately owned RESERVE BANK OF SOUTH AFRICA and replacing it with a PEOPLE’S BANK, that issues interest-free money BY THE PEOPLE, FOR THE PEOPLE.
12) To allow this interest-free money to bring freedom from financial slavery and prosperity to all. THE PEOPLE SHALL GOVERN – NOT PRIVATE BANKING CORPORATIONS
JOIN THE MARCH – TELL EVERYONE – OUR UNITY IS OUR STRENGTH
“Justice is indivisible. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” Martin Luther King.
In pure truth
Michael of the family Tellinger
Founder of the UBUNTU PARTY
For information email: contact@ubuntuparty.org.za join the UBUNTU movement at www.ubuntuparty.org.za
I am pleased to announce that on the 1st of July 2013, the UBUNTU Party was issued with a permit for the Public Gathering and “March against the BANKSTERS” by the Johannesburg Metropolitan Police Department, under section 205 of 1993. The permit number is 0232/06/2013.
Everyone is invited to join in the march – because everyone is severely affected by the criminal activity of the banksters. This is not about politics or personal agendas – it is about our human rights and liberties that will bring about our freedom from financial slavery.
Join the event HERE: https://www.facebook.com/events/136840266518030/
The march will start at 11 am on Saturday, 6th July – on the corner of Rivonia Rd & Grayston Dr, Sandton in front of INVESTEC Bank. We will deliver memorandums to INVESTEC, NEDBANK, FNB, STD BANK, ABSA and also NORTON ROSE, one of the key law firms that continues to defend and represent the banksters, being fully aware of their unlawful activity. The memorandum will be distributed to the media – and contains simple questions that the bankers and their many law firms have refused to answer after repeated requests by thousands of people.
We will also deliver a memorandum to the 3 major media companies: PRIMEDIA, e-TV and SABC, urging them to stand with the people, and to perform their task as investigative journalist responsibly and report truthfully on their findings. We call on the editors and the journalists to become human beings first – and then play their role as journalists to bring justice into an unjust system filled with lies and deceptions often perpetuated by reckless and ignorant reporting.
We will also deliver memorandum to the OMBUDSMAN FOR BANKING SERVICES and most importantly to the RESERVE BANK OF SOUTH AFRICA in Pretoria – a private corporation that has been allowed to take control of our economic policy, by issuing privately printed money, in the form of a “FIAT” currency without any value whatsoever, by which they enslave all the people of South Africa. Our objective is to follow in the footsteps of brave leaders of the past, like JFK, and to return the right to print money, to the people, where it belongs. We propose the implementation of a PEOPLE’S BANK owned by the people, that pints money for the people by the people – interest free.
Our objectives are:
1) To mobilise those who have been enlightened regarding the gross unlawful conduct and criminal activity of the banks in South Africa – including the RESERVE BANK.
2) To bring this to the attention of the greater public and the media who are still in the dark regarding such activity of the banksters.
3) To highlight the method by which the gross fraud and criminal activity is conducted by the banksters.
4) To ensure that everyone understands their malicious intent and fraud committed through a process called SECURITISATION, by which our signatures, promissory notes and contracts of loans are sold to third party companies and traded on international stock markets for unimaginable profits, while repossessing people’s properties unlawfully, without the right to do so, destroying millions of lives in the process.
5) To expose the seemingly infinite influence and control over the Judiciary by the banks and their corrupt lawyers to the point where they influence certain Judges and the circumstances surrounding judgements against ordinary people who stand their ground.
6) To expose the corrupt lawyers and advocates who are complicit in this criminal activity by defending the criminal actions of the banks while being fully aware of the banks’ actions.
7) To urge the media to inform themselves and to report responsibly on the criminal activities of the banks that affect every human being alive, in the interest of justice for the people.
8) To make the banksters aware that the people will not stop until their criminal actions have been fully exposed.
9) To launch criminal charges against the CEOs, CFOs and DIRECTORS of the relevant banks, together with their lawyers and advocates that have relentlessly defended them while lying under oath, making them complicit in the fraud.
10) Ensure the swift prosecution and incarceration of the senior bank management, their directors, and their lawyers for their inhumane actions and crimes against the people of South Africa.
11) To facilitate the closure of the privately owned RESERVE BANK OF SOUTH AFRICA and replacing it with a PEOPLE’S BANK, that issues interest-free money BY THE PEOPLE, FOR THE PEOPLE.
12) To allow this interest-free money to bring freedom from financial slavery and prosperity to all. THE PEOPLE SHALL GOVERN – NOT PRIVATE BANKING CORPORATIONS
JOIN THE MARCH – TELL EVERYONE – OUR UNITY IS OUR STRENGTH
“Justice is indivisible. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” Martin Luther King.
In pure truth
Michael of the family Tellinger
Founder of the UBUNTU PARTY
For information email: contact@ubuntuparty.org.za join the UBUNTU movement at www.ubuntuparty.org.za
They Will Bring The Dollar Down! And The US Economy!
Bernanke Wants 2% Inflation in a Deflationary World; Who Pays the Price?
PEW Social Trends research shows a Record 21.6 Million Young Adults Live in Their Parents’ Home
Here are some clips from the fascinating PEW study.
In 2012, 36% of the nation’s young adults ages 18 to 31 the so-called Millennial generation—were living in their parents’ home, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data. This is the highest share in at least four decades and represents a slow but steady increase over the 32% of their same-aged counterparts who were living at home prior to the Great Recession in 2007 and the 34% doing so when it officially ended in 2009.
A record total of 21.6 million Millennials lived in their parents’ home in 2012, up from 18.5 million of their same aged counterparts in 2007. Of these, at least a third and perhaps as many as half are college students.
The steady rise in the share of young adults who live in their parents’ home appears to be driven by a combination of economic, educational and cultural factors. Among them:
- Declining employment: In 2012, 63% of 18- to 31-year-olds had jobs, down from the 70% of their same-aged counterparts who had jobs in 2007. In 2012, unemployed Millennials were much more likely than employed Millennials to be living with their parents (45% versus 29%).
- Rising college enrollment: In March 2012, 39% of 18- to 24-year-olds were enrolled in college, up from 35% in March 2007. Among 18 to 24 year olds, those enrolled in college were much more likely than those not in college to be living at home – 66% versus 50%.
- Declining marriage: In 2012 just 25% of Millennials were married, down from the 30% of 18- to 31-year-olds who were married in 2007.
How Citi is hedging against the foreclosure settlements
Source: Fortune
Four hundred thousand checks mailed out as part of the government's foreclosure settlement with 13 banks have been returned to Rust Consulting, the firm that mailed them. Bryan Hubbard, an OCC spokesperson, says efforts are underway to track down better addresses for the recipients of these checks, some of which are worth up to $125,000.
Who's paying Rust to do this work? The 13 banks that agreed to the government settlement pay Rust, Hubbard told me. These banks include Bank of America (BAC), Citigroup (C), J.P. Morgan (JPM), Goldman Sachs (GS), Morgan Stanley (MS), and Wells Fargo (WFC), among others. Rust would not provide information for this article on how the contracts with the banks were negotiated or information on the terms of those contracts.
Rust's parent company is SourceHOV. Up until March, Apollo Global Management owned SourceHOV. Now, Citigroup, one of the 13 banks involved in the settlement, has that privilege. Citi Venture Capital International Private Equity (CVCI) "has an established track record of successful investments in the business services/outsourcing space; Source HOV fit nicely into our parameters," Citi spokesperson Danielle Romero-Apsilos wrote me in an email.
For Citigroup, the stake in SourceHOV is a hedge of sorts, though perhaps an unintentional one. When Rust gets bank settlement business, including settlements like the one involving Citi, it generates revenues for SourceHOV, the company Citigroup owns.
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