Hold Fast

Rolling Stone: Exclusive: Homeland Security Kept Tabs on Occupy Wall Street Naked Capitalism: Yet Another Mortgage Scam: Homeowners Not Getting Cancelled Notes After Foreclosures, Hit by Later Claims Allison Frankel: Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the MBS sleeper defense David Dayen: Donovan Pressed on Foreclosure Fraud Settlement in Senate Banking Committee Huffington Post: Q&A With [...]

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Originally posted at AMERICAblog Elections: The Right’s Field Jonathan Karl, ABC News, February 17, 2012: A prominent Republican senator just told me that if Romney can’t win in Michigan, the Republican Party needs to go back to the drawing board and convince somebody new to get into the race. “If Romney cannot win Michigan, we [...]

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Clay Johnson: Change Dot Biz Wall Street Journal: For the Costliest Homes, Foreclosure Comes Slowly Bloomberg: Buffett: Banks Victimized by Excesses of Ousted Homeowners (This is b.s.) Washington Business Journal: D.C. owed $30.6M in condo conversion fees, audit says Politico: Cuomo shuns media, gets attention Dean Baker: Is Joe Nocera right when he says that [...]

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Think Progress: University of Virginia Football Player Goes On Hunger Strike To Get Living Wage For University Employees Think Progress: STUDY: Ron Paul Never Attacked Romney Once During 20 Debates, But Attacked Romney’s Rivals 39 Times Barry Ritholtz: Foreclosure settlement a failure of law, a triumph for bank attorney Naked Capitalism: Abigail Field: Insider Says [...]

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To close out a very strong piece on the lack of honesty in public discourse around housing and the economy, Matt Stoller writes: There is no honesty among our political elites, and by that statement, I don’t mean that they are liars. There are liars everywhere, and truthtellers as well. Most of us are concurrently [...]

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Washington Post: Maryland Senate passes same-sex marriage bill Baltimore Sun: Gay marriage law will likely be up to voters Reuters: FDIC Lawsuits Yielded Big Penalties, But Bankers Haven’t Paid Up Naked Capitalism: Fannie Putting More Dubious New Loans Back to BofA, So BofA Will Stick Them to Freddie Instead Felix Salmon: Matter’s vision for long-form [...]

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I’m going to try doing a periodic (daily?) roundup of what I’m reading. NPR: With Banks As Landlords, Some Tenants Neglected (h/t Lynn Syzmoniak) Dealbook: Responding to Critics, S.E.C. Defends ‘No Wrongdoing’ Settlements Bloomberg: Bank Lobby Widened Volcker Rule Before Inciting Foreign Outrage (via Neil Barofsky on Twitter) NY Times: Mutated Trout Raise Concerns Near [...]

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It’s being reported that the SEC and the mortgage fraud task force co-chaired by Eric Schneiderman that “[f]urther legal action is likely before the end of the year against firms involved in the origins of the housing bubble.” Obviously seeing criminal prosecutions of banksters would be a good outcome, as would much larger civil suits [...]

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Here’s a hint: it isn’t you or me.

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It’s debate day – today the remaining major candidates will debate in Arizona, days before the Arizona and Michigan primaries. There hasn’t been a debate in a while, something that one could rarely write before this month, and the landscape has shifted dramatically since Santorum swept Colorado, Missouri, and Minnesota. He is now the front-runner [...]

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