Wajahat Ali, a solo practitioner from California, takes on Wells Fargo in an attempt to get his clients' home loan modified. Lots of ball dropping and passing of the buck ensues. He
describes the Kafka-esque nature of the experience.
posted by reenum
on Jun 20, 2010 -
41 comments
Betting Against the American Dream. In 2005, just as Wall Street started to get cold feet about the housing market, the
Magnetar hedge fund helped create a new wave of billion-dollar mortgage-backed securities, pushed bankers to include riskier sub-prime mortgages, and then shorted the securities, making millions when the bubble finally burst. Traders on both sides of the deals pocketed enormous fees even if their banks went under when the securities failed.
Pulitzer Prize-winning ProPublica,
This American Life, and NPR's
Planet Money track down some of the big winners in the housing/financial crisis. No time to read or listen? It seemed so much like a scheme from
The Producers, they even recorded
a show tune to explain it all. (
Previously,
2,
3)
posted by straight
on Apr 15, 2010 -
30 comments
A lot of people figure things out, but it takes a special talent or maybe personality to figure it our and do something about it.
Previously, we heard about the man who wrote the software that blew up the economy.
Now we find out whom that software was written.
[more inside]
posted by JohnnyGunn
on Mar 15, 2010 -
40 comments
Bank Accused of Pushing Mortgage Deals on Blacks: "They referred to subprime loans made in minority communities as ghetto loans and minority customers as 'those people have bad credit', 'those people don't pay their bills' and 'mud people,' " [a Wells Fargo subprime loan officer] said in his affidavit, filed in the NAACP's
lawsuit (pdf) against 13 mortgage lenders. "The company put 'bounties' on minority borrowers. By this I mean that loan officers received cash incentives to aggressively market subprime loans in minority communities."
posted by hayvac
on Jun 8, 2009 -
40 comments
