Tag Archives: occ
- OCC Issues Cease and Desist Letter Against Citibank
The OCC announced it has sent a cease and desist letter to Citibank regarding “identified deficiencies in the Bank’s overall program for Bank Secrecy Act/anti-money laundering (“BSA/AML”) compliance” As we all know, banks make mistakes. It just seems that typically it is the consumers that wind up paying for them. The OCC found that the [...]
- Reader Feels Shafted by OCC and CitiMortgage on HAMP
Rudy, a reader of the site forwarded me this information to share with you regarding their recent attempts to get their mortgage modified through HAMP. Rudy Says Dear Steve: Who will bail us out while our government can bail out hundreds of billion dollars to big banks and other financial institutions because they are just [...]
- Your Local Bank May Become Your New Payday Lender
National Consumer Law Center has uncovered a spreading Main Street bank trend in the payday lending world. Back in 2008 I had written an article about Kinceta Federal Credit Union in California that felt being in the payday loan business was good for their customers. At the time, the thought that a bank or credit [...]
- Banks Still Foreclosing on Wrong People
by Paul Kiel, ProPublica Four years into the foreclosure crisis, banks say they’ve made major improvements in how they handle struggling homeowners. They’ve promised, for example, not to foreclose on homeowners who are being considered for mortgage modifications. But that’s still happening. Consider the cases of Laurie Pinkerton and Lisa Peterson. The two women, both [...]
- Financial Reform Headed Down Wrong Track. Is the OCC That Inept?
by Jesse Eisinger and Jake Bernstein, ProPublica Early last year, as they weighed whether to bar banks from speculative trading with their own money, congressional staffers turned to a key regulator for advice. The response from Julie Williams, the chief counsel of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, was startling, according to people [...]
- Modified Mortgages Still Not Honored By Lenders
by Paul Kiel ProPublica Chanel Rosario was supposed to be one of the lucky ones. After years of sending and re-sending documents, waiting on hold and attending court hearings to avoid foreclosure on her Staten Island home, she’d finally received a much-needed reduction on her mortgage. Eagerly, she and her husband signed it and mailed [...]
- Major Foreclosure Contractor Underplayed the Extent of Document Flaws
Marian Wang, ProPublica In our primer on the players in the foreclosure scandal, we noted that the biggest foreclosure contractor to which banks outsourced servicing tasks, Lender Processing Services (LPS), has been accused of flaws in the processing of key mortgage documents. The company has said that it is “not aware of any defects in [...]
- Regulators Totally Missed Foreclosure Problems
Marian Wang, ProPublica While they may be conducting their own investigations, federal prosecutors and national bank regulators for the most part aren’t the ones leading the investigation into the foreclosure mess. At least that’s the perception–one that’s reinforced when Elizabeth Warren, Obama’s head of consumer financial protection, says her money is on a 50-state investigation [...]
- Office of the Comptroller of the Currency News Alerts
- I Hate American Express.
“Dear Steve, Currently paying off about $75,000 in credit card debt taken on during the economic slowdown last year when my consulting business tanked; current income of about $150,000. Not sure that debt relief is a viable option for me without severe negative credit rating consequences, so I’m paying down debt on most cards with [...]
- Government Help With Credit Card Debt
A question I am getting asked more and more is about what programs the government offers to help you get out of debt or to eliminate credit card debt. These questions usually involve inquiries about government grants and loans that people hear whispers about that they believe will dispose of problem debt as well. Up [...]