No-fault settlement fuels never-ending bailout

Two striking details reveal the true nature of the highly touted national foreclosure settlement.

The first is that the banks admit no wrongdoing.

Here’s a sample of the illegality and the misconduct with which the federal authorities and the 49 state attorneys general charged the banks. It goes way beyond robo-signing, the banks’ widespread practice of using forged or unverified documents in the foreclosure process:

▪                Providing false or misleading information to borrowers,

▪                Overcharging borrowers and investors for services of dubious value,

▪                Denying relief to eligible borrowers,

▪                Foreclosing on borrowers who were pursuing loan modifications,

▪                Submitting forged or fraudulent documents and making false statements in foreclosure and bankruptcy proceedings

▪                Losing or destroying promissory notes and deeds of trust,

▪                Lying to borrowers about the reasons for denying their loan modifications,

▪                Signing affidavits without personal knowledge and under false identities,

▪                Improperly charging excessive fees related to foreclosures

▪                Foreclosing on service members on active duty

▪                Making false claims to the government for insurance coverage

But the feds and the state attorneys general want to let the banks off the hook without having to admit to any of it.

This is the kind of no-fault settlement for which the Securities and Exchange Commission has increasingly come under fire, [but which companies agree to as a cost of doing business. For example, the national foreclosure settlement only costs the banks about $5 billion in real money, a drop in the bucket compared to their profits. It’s not enough to actually deter the banks from future bad conduct.

The rest of its estimated $25 billion value is supposed to be determined by a complex series of credits that the bankers get for what they should be doing anyway – modifying mortgage loans and offering principal reductions to underwater homeowners.

The authorities still have to get a judge in Washington, D.C. to sign off on it.

Too bad the settlement wasn’t presented to U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff in New York, who’s been adamant in questioning no-fault settlements and refusing to rubber stamp them.

His comments, though directed at the SEC, are relevant to the national foreclosure settlement.

Rejecting an SEC no-fault settlement with Citigroup last November, Judge Rakoff said that such settlements are “hallowed by history, but not by reason” and create the potential for abuse because they ask “the court to employ its power and assert its authority when it does not know the facts.”

Rakoff questioned what government officials would get from the settlement “other than a quick headline.”

Though he was talking about an SEC settlement with Citigroup, he could have been describing the national foreclosure settlement, which exacts too little a price from banks for their wrongdoing and offers too little to homeowners.

The settlement provides that banks will spend $17 billion on principal reductions and another $3 billion on refinancings. But according to an analysis by the Brooking Institute’s Ted Gayer, less than 5 percent of the nation’s 11.1 million homeowners will qualify for help under the settlement.

It also presents the general laundry list of wrongdoing without any specificity – it names no names or specific facts. One of the big criticisms of the foreclosure settlement is that the authorities didn’t do a real law-enforcement style investigation to assemble a case before sitting down to “negotiate” the settlement, weakening their hand with the banks.

The second aspect of the foreclosure settlement that reveals its weakness is how the authorities are suggesting they’re going to monitor whether the banks will comply. Just exactly how are we going to make sure that the big banks deliver even the relatively small number of loan modifications and principal reductions they’ve promised?

According to the settlement, the banks themselves are going to self-report on their progress.

Then an “independent” monitoring committee is going to check these reports, and then levy fines if the banks aren’t hitting certain targets. But the monitors consist of the same regulators who have already facilitated the banks’ earlier failed foreclosure mitigation efforts, and have touted this current settlement as a “landmark.” Having already proved their reluctance to get tough on the banks so far, how much incentive do they have to get tough with banks later on?

It sounds flaky to me.

The whole robo-signing scandal stems from banks use of forged, false or unverified documents, poor recordkeeping and the inability of anybody in the courts or government to get the banks to follow the law or hold them accountable.

On top of that, when it comes to keeping their previous commitments to deliver loan modifications in earlier attempts to address the foreclosure crisis, the banks have failed miserably.  The investigative journalism outfit Pro Publica has assembled reams of data about the shortcomings of previous government-sponsored loan modification efforts.

So now we think it’s a good idea for them to police themselves?

The entire settlement looks more like the government’s latest efforts to prop up the nation’s floundering too big to fail banks than a real attempt at either law enforcement or robust help for homeowners and the housing market.

Where is Judge Rakoff when we really need him?

 

Foreclosure / Martin Column / Outrage / Too Big To Fail - 03/14/2012

A "landmark" we still can't see

For the most part, the big media and housing nonprofits have bought the government’s hype on the recent foreclosure fraud settlement, lauding it with great fanfare as a historic landmark.

It’s a good thing that not all our national landmarks are as phony as that settlement has turned out to be.

If they were, none of them would still be standing.

If big media had taken a more objective view, rather than just copying the authorities’ press releases, they might have chosen another, much less dramatic description, such as “yet to be released.”

The best description might take a few more words: “designed to make the Obama administration and state attorneys general look like they’re doing something while letting banks off the hook and leaving homeowners out in the cold and taxpayers and investors holding the bag.”

The settlement continues to raise more questions than it answers. For example, California’s attorney general Kamala Harris announced that the state would get $18 billion in foreclosure relief from the national settlement.

But then a couple of days later, Jeff Collins of the Orange County Register reported that Harris hadn’t offered a complete explanation.

As it turns out, the state might get only $12 billion.

The amount, Harris’ people explained to Collins, depends on which of two methods you used to calculate it.

“There are two sets of numbers,” said Linda Gledhill, a Harris spokeswoman told Collins.

Hah! Who knew?

One method calculates the cost of the settlement to banks, which as explained in the settlement’s “executive summary” are required to provide $25.2 billion in a variety of forms of assistance to borrowers. But providing that assistance doesn’t actually cost them $25 billion.

Apparently the settlement only requires the banks to pay out $5 billion in cash, with the balance consisting of a yet to be released complex system of credits that the the government will give the banks credit for offering the assistance, with details yet to be announced.

Meanwhile, the Financial Times (registration required) has been parsing the sparse publicly available details about the settlement. Their prognosis: The settlement shifts the costs of modifying mortgages from the banks to the taxpayers and to investors who bought securitized mortgages. As a result, it resembles another bailout more than it does a settlement.

Neil Barofsky, the former Inspector-General of the Troubled Asset Relief Program told the FT:

“If the banks are doing something under this settlement, and cash flows from taxpayers to the banks, that is fundamentally an upside-down result.”

And keep in mind that the actual settlement agreement still hasn’t been released yet, more than ten days after it was announced. What exactly is the hangup?

Do the authorities really expect us to take their word for it? How gullible do they think we are?

Remember how the 2008 bank bailout started: a three-page document submitted by the treasury secretary.

As my colleague Harvey Rosenfield warned when the President first announced the settlement, we’ll be in for a lot of surprises when the actual settlement is actually released, whenever that will be.

And something tells me they won’t be the good kind of surprises.

California Attorney General Kamala Harris / Foreclosure / Martin Column / President Barack Obama / SIGTARP - 02/22/2012

The Truth About the AG Mortgage Settlement...."Coming Soon"

The "settlement agreement" between state attorneys-general, the Obama Administration and five large banks over unlawful home foreclosures was front-page news everywhere this morning. Only one problem: you can't get a copy of the agreement itself.  All we have is a few hand picked details promising "relief" to defrauded borrowers, and pledges by the banks that they'll obey the law from now on.

Check out the special web site, which proudly trumpets the "landmark settlement," the "historic"agreement and the "landmark relief," but offers only a factsheet entitled "Servicing Standards Highlights" that purports to summarize the deal, and a bunch of phone numbers for the banks and the AGs.

Everything else is "coming soon."

This is an outrage, and frankly, the news media and all the rest of the pundits out there ought to have demanded the full and complete document before heralding the settlement as a major event. To my astonishment, most of the reports I read today failed to note that the actual settlement agreement has not been released to the public.

Ever heard of the lawyer's favorite maxim, "the devil's in the details"? The banks here were accused of failing to comply with legal technicalities like proving that they actually held the mortgage to the homes they foreclosed on.  When it comes to themselves, the bankers know those details matter: You can be sure that their lawyers have negotiated and reviewed every single comma. Shouldn't American taxpayers and homeowners, who have borne the terrible brunt of these banks' gross irresponsibility and greed for the last three years, had a chance to review the proposal before our elected officials signed on the dotted line?

I've seen this kind of stunt many times before - for example,  a settlement of a lawsuit that was described by the parties in a press release as returning $500 million in overcharges to insurance customers. Months later, the settlement agreement itself is quietly filed with the court, and surprise! You had to fill out a ten page claim form to get your money, and the insurance company got to keep whatever's left. (As a lawyer for one of the policyholders, I joined with Consumer Watchdog in an objection to the settlement.)

It is no little irony that many people lost their homes because they didn't read the fine print of the loans, or couldn't understand what it meant. But when it comes to the settlement of the fiasco, no one can read it even if they want to. We have nothing in print, fine or otherwise, beyond the press materials.

Remember you heard it first here: there'll be lots of surprises when we finally get to look at the details of this deal.

 

 

Foreclosure / Foreclosures / Harvey Column - 02/10/2012

For foreclosure relief, occupy the Legislature

Two years ago, California legislators bowed to bankers when they failed to pass legislation that would require mediation between a bank and borrower before banks could foreclose on the borrower’s home.

But a recent report by the U.S. Justice Department should cause the Legislature to take another crack at making a critical choice: Do they want to provide tools to reduce foreclosures, or do they want to keep kowtowing to bankers?

California remains among the hardest hit by foreclosures: third worst in the country.

While foreclosure rates are going down nationally, that’s more a reflection of the continuing mess in the foreclosure process itself rather than any fundamental restoration of health in the housing market.

So the problem hasn’t gone away by itself.

Federal efforts to help homeowners have been ineffective because they’re voluntary for the banks, with inadequate government oversight. For the feds, foreclosure reduction efforts have consisted mainly of offering banks modest incentives for loan modifications, incentives that are less than the profit the bank, in its role as loan servicer, makes from foreclosing on homes.

As demonstrated by the California legislators’ previous refusal to embrace mediation, government officials at all levels have so far lacked the political will to force banks to take the action needed to stem foreclosures. Two years ago, Assemblyman Pedro Nava spearheaded the foreclosure mediation effort,  AB 1639,  which passed the Assembly but died in the Senate under fierce banking opposition. Consultant on the bill was Los Angeles mediator Laurel Kaufer, chair of the State Bar's ADR committee.

Around the country, there  have been a host of mediation programs around the country, with mixed results. ¶

Programs in Connecticut and Philadelphia successfully settled about three of every four cases, avoiding foreclosures. In Nevada, officials reported that about 42 percent of the cases in mediation settled without foreclosure. Nevada also reported another significant finding – the banks dropped many of the foreclosure attempts during the mediation process because there paperwork wasn’t in order.

But in late December, the Florida Supreme Court closed down its foreclosure mediation program after state officials determined it wasn’t working because so few cases eligible for mediation ended in settlement.

Then, just a couple of weeks later, the U.S. Justice Department issued a promising report calling for wider federal use of mediation in foreclosure and more research into how well it works.

The details of foreclosure mediation programs vary widely. The most successful programs, the Justice Department explained, are those that begin early in the foreclosure process, require mandatory participation, include some form of financial counseling for homeowners, are well publicized and require a high degree of transparency by the banks  – meaning that banks have to disclose how their foreclosure process works, including the secretive, often confusing criteria by which they grant loan modifications.

Will the feds blow this opportunity to attack the foreclosure crisis, as they bungled their earlier efforts? Or will finally get a clue and start taking effective action?

In California, we shouldn’t wait to find out.

This Justice Department report should give a boost to a renewed effort to require mediation in California foreclosures, and offers some guidance to California in how to create a successful mediation program.

But it will only happen if people mobilize against the banking lobby, which is sure to oppose any attempt to weaken bankers’ complete control over the foreclosure process.

We keep hearing how the Occupy movement has changed the debate, how issues that couldn’t gain traction six months ago can now get a fuller hearing. We should seize the opportunity to give legislators the opportunity to get the bankers off our backs.


Foreclosures / Martin Column - 01/18/2012

News Flash: Giving Banks Billions Won't Create Jobs

Last year, President Obama signed into law the $30 billion Small Business Lending Fund as a way to stimulate job creation.

"It's going to speed relief to small businesses across the country right away," Obama said at the time.

It was supposed to help create 500,000 jobs.

Well, not so much.

Not only has the program been a dismal failure, with few banks applying to participate, but it turned into another giant taxpayer handout to bankers.

Only $4 billion was handed over to banks under the lending scheme. The bankers didn’t use it to boost small businesses, and it turned out they weren’t even required to. Instead the bankers used more than $2 billion to pay off their bailout debt to the Troubled Asset  Relief Program, according to a story in the October 12 Wall Street Journal (no link).

“It was basically a bailout for a 100-plus banks,” Giovanni Coratolo, vice-president of small-business policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, told the Journal.

None of this should come as a surprise. Bankers said at the time that the problem was not that they didn’t have enough money to lend, but that demand for loans was weak because of the continuing bad economy.

“Until you start to see the economy improve and job growth you won’t see lots of loan demand,” Thomas Dorr, chief financial officer of Bank of Birmingham in Michigan, which received $4.6 million from the program, told Bloomberg. “You can’t force banks to lend.”

The lending program was either just another veiled handout to the banks or another lame attempt at trickle-down stimulus. Either way it contributes to the strong impression that our political leaders aren’t actually working on solutions, they’re getting in our way.

Congress / D.C. Disconnect / Martin Column / President Barack Obama / TARP - 10/13/2011

Happy Talk

Treasury officials and many politicians are busy patting themselves on the back because the Troubled Asset Relief Program will end up costing taxpayers less then expected.

The way these folks describe it the TARP and other aspects of the federal bailout were just supposed to function as a loan program for the banks while they were having some trouble.

TARP is also winning praise for having “restored trust” in our financial system.

Beyond the scary rhetoric that gave birth to the bailout and self-congratulatory sermons it’s being buried with, the bailout consisted of a set of rules and a way of picking winners and losers in the economic crisis that did anything but build trust.

Remember when the Fed chair, Ben Bernanke, insisted that he was a Main Street guy, that he was interested in the financial system only inasmuch as it helped out Main Street?

But the bailout institutionalized a system where the government could only afford to bail out the biggest bankers and corporate officials while abandoning smaller banks and business owners along with millions of troubled homeowners and vulnerable employees.

As Fortune’s Alan Sloane wrote, “the more bailout rocks you turn over, the more well-connected players you find who aren't being forced to pay the full price of their mistakes.”

Oh well, the apologists say, nothing’s perfect. It could have been so much worse.

One official who hasn’t joined in the festivities is Neil Barofsky, the former special inspector for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, who bid the bailout a scathing farewell in the New York Times, which you can read here.

The Obama administration and bailout apologists would like to have us believe that it was just a necessary first stage of the recovery to ensure that the bankers stayed rich and the wealthiest Americans’ increasing share of the nation’s wealth kept on growing.

But in Barofsky’s view, there was nothing inevitable about the no-strings attached bailout that filled the bankers’ pockets while offering little to Main Street. It had nothing to do with the operation of the free market either. It was very carefully crafted by public officials working hand in hand with Wall Street to maintain its power while gnawing away at the increasingly fragile livelihoods of ordinary Americans.

As Barofsky notes, “Treasury officials refuse to address these shortfalls. Instead they continue to 
stubbornly maintain that the program is a success and needs no 
material change, effectively assuring that Treasury's most specific 
Main Street promise will not be honored.”

And while recent employment gains are welcome news, Dean Baker points out the losers – African-Americans among whom unemployment remains distressing high and wage earners in general, whose pay is not keeping up with inflation.

The bailout celebration is just part of the happy talk designed to buoy the notion that the recovery is well underway. But this bailout-fueled recovery continues to pick highly predictable winners – with the powerful, wealthy and politically connected doing swimmingly while everybody else just limps along.

 

 

Around the Web / Martin Column / SIGTARP / TARP - 04/04/2011

Around the Web: Now, They Won't

I remember when the Obama administration burst into office leading the nation in its campaign mantra: Yes we can. Later they adapted a new mantra to acknowledge how bad the economy was but how hard they were trying to fix it: It could have been worse. After the Democrats got walloped in the midterms, the president adjusted with his latest mantra: this was the best I could do.

Now his treasury secretary has offered the administration’s latest spin: No, you can’t.

Tim Geithner, the architect of so much of the administration’s no questions asked bailout of corporate America, is refusing homeowners facing foreclosure access to legal assistance to fight to save their homes, Zach Carter reports at Huffington Post.

Democrats from foreclosure-ravaged states are working on legislation that would overrule Geithner’s edict but the leadership isn’t interested.

This in spite of the massive failure of the administration’s foreclosure relief program, even when mortgage servicers are wrongfully attempting to throw people out of their homes.

According to a recent survey, banks started foreclosure proceedings against 2,500 homeowners while they were in the process of getting their mortgages modified.

When it comes to fixing the inadequate programs they’ve offered to fix the foreclosure mess, the Obama administration has offered a consistent mantra: No, we won’t.

Meanwhile, the state attorney general leading the 50-state investigation into the foreclosure scandal, Tom Miller, has some pretty tough talk.

Unlike the Obama administration, Miller comes right out and says that the mortgage principal should be reduced as part of any settlement with mortgage servicers. “One of the main tools needs to be principal reductions, just like in the farm crisis in the 1980s,” Miller said. “There should be some kind of compensation system for people who have been harmed. And the foreclosure process should stop while loan modifications begin. To have a race between foreclosures and modifications to see which happens first is insane.”

And yes he will, Miller insists, put financial criminals in jail.

Around the Web / Foreclosures / Martin Column - 12/16/2010

Fear Factor, Financial Crisis Edition

The administration has been touting what a good deal the Troubled Asset Relief program turned out to be for taxpayers – most of the $700 billion has been repaid; the banks after all, did not collapse, and it only ended up costing us around $50 billion after repayments.

“TARP undoubtedly helped to stem the financial panic in the fall of 2008 and contributed to the stabilization of the financial system,” Tim Geithner, the treasury secretary, said in a statement today.

But now we’ve got a whole new threat to the financial system, according to the bankers. They contend that if the public ever finds out the facts surrounding the rest of the bailout, it will cause them “irreparable harm.”

This is the part of the bailout the administration doesn’t talk about, with costs that dwarf the piddling billions spent on the TARP program. These are the trillions in secret loans the Federal Reserve provided financial institutions.

If it wasn’t for a dogged reporter at Bloomberg News, it would all still remain a big secret.

But the reporter, Mark Pittman, convinced his employer that the public had a right to know who the Fed was loaning the taxpayer’s money to, and under what terms. Bloomberg filed suit in November 2008.

The Fed and the banks fought the lawsuit for nearly two years. But in August a federal appeals court rejected the Fed and the banker’s arguments. Fed president Ben Bernanke announced in late September that the agency would finally make the information public by December 1.

Anybody care to bet on the chances that the big banks will fold when the information comes out? Any bets on revelations that will graphically show just how cozy both Bush and Obama administrations were with the big banks?

The banks’ response to the lawsuit reminds me of the atmosphere of fear and crisis the previous administration and the banks created, with the major media’s assistance, at the time of the original bailout. No time for questions, no time for debate. Hand over the blank check now or the whole economic system will blow up, they screamed.

Pittman died last year at 52. He remains one of the few heroes that emerged from the financial collapse, who raised tough questions in the months and years leading to the meltdown and was not intimidated by the banks’ fear mongering, continuing to demand answers.

Meanwhile, at some point, the bureaucrats will get around to the audit of the Federal Reserve’s activity since 2007. Congress passed that audit with broad bipartisan support in the face of fierce opposition from the administration, as part of financial reform. No doubt we will hear another round of predictions of disastrous consequences as the results of that audit are readied for release. It’s supposed to be conducted by the General Accounting Office.

From the beginning of the crisis to today, fear has been the most potent weapon used by the bankers and the bureaucrats to get their way, along with the complexity of the system the banks are always ready to clobber the public with. The spirit of reporter Mark Pittman remains one of the strongest antidotes we’ve got.

Around the Web / Federal Reserve / Martin Column - 10/06/2010

Roll Back Interest Rates Now!

Washington has spent trillions of taxpayer dollars to bail out the Money Industry – not just the $700 billion cash life preserver, but also loans at near zero percent interest. Then the banks and credit card companies turned around and loaned us our own money at ten times the interest rate they paid, forcing us to pay through the nose coming and going.

And there’s no sign of relief. The New York Times reports that interest rates on mortgages, car loans and credit cards are reaching historical records. Credit card rates could climb another three points by the fall, according to one expert.

And that doesn’t include the endless creation of other techniques to fleece beleaguered consumers – ATM charges, minimum balance requirements, and my personal favorite, “billing fees.” That’s a fee you pay the company for the privilege of receiving a bill. To catch a glimpse of where this is all headed, just look at how the airlines are unbundling their services. Last week, Spirit Airlines announced that flyers will be required to pay up to $45 for carry on baggage.

Having abetted the financial collapse with decades of deregulatory coddling of Wall Street (PDF), Washington spared no expense to rescue its patrons. But regular Americans never got any relief.

In fact, now that Washington has declared “mission accomplished” on the economy, it's shutting down programs that were designed to benefit Wall Street but indirectly affected the rest of us. For example, last month the Federal Reserve stopped buying risky mortgage-based securities from banks – a two-year, $1.25 trillion bailout that relieved the banks of the risks of these speculation-driven investments. It was intended to encourage the firms to expand their lending. The end of this federal subsidy is one reason why experts are saying mortgage rates are going to go up.

On the very day in 2008 that the Bush Administration first proposed the $700 billion bailout, I urged that Congress slap a cap on the interest rates that recipients of any bailout would turn around and charge American consumers. And I’ve repeated that call since. But there was no quid pro quo for the public in the deal. Even in the so-called Credit Card Reform Act of 2009, Congress not only placed no cap on credit card rates, it gave the industry months in which to raise interest rates through the roof before the new rules kicked in.

Congress has gone back to work on “financial reform.” The purpose, supposedly, is to pass new laws that would prevent another financial collapse. There’s no reason why Congress can’t include some relief for Americans who are still suffering from the last debacle. My proposal: a rollback of credit card interest rates. Although there’s no reason to do it, lets be generous and let the banks and credit card companies earn three percentage points more from us than they have to pay when they borrow our money from the Federal Reserve. That would knock interest rates down to around 4%. Citibank, which is alive today only because it got $45 billion of taxpayer support, is charging upwards of 15% for its best credit card customers. Most of the other big card companies are doing the same.

Lowering interest rates would provide needed relief for tens of millions of American families, and would jumpstart the economy by stimulating more spending. No doubt some would say that we should not return to the era of “cheap money” when everybody was encouraged to spend more than they had by putting lifestyle improvements on plastic. I’m not advocating fiscal irresponsibility, but right now that argument sounds more than a little patronizing. True, some Americans got in over their heads, but the financial collapse itself was the fault of greed-driven Money Industry speculators, many of whom walked away with millions of dollars in pay and bonuses. So they’re all set; they got theirs – in fact, are still raking it in – but now average Americans are told they need to scale back at a time when many are struggling to put food on the table and might need to use a credit card to pay for a doctor’s visit? Why should Americans pay exorbitant rates to fatten the coffers of the firms that got us into this mess?

I say, roll ‘em back!

Harvey Column / Outrage / Uncategorized - 04/14/2010

Around the Web: How a Big Bank Shows Its Gratitude

While the mainstream press has focused on the dubious notion that the Citibank bailout will turn out to be a good deal for taxpayers, the Center for Media and Democracy tallies up the real cost of the entire bailout so far: $4.6 trillion, with $2 trillion outstanding.

Most of that money comes from the Federal Reserve, not the Troubled Asset Relief Program, which amounts to a measly $700 million. The Fed bank dole is handled in complete secrecy, which is why Bloomberg News is suing to get the Fed to open its books, which got the WheresOurMoney treatment here.

As for Citibank and the supposed bonanza for taxpayers, Dean Baker takes it apart in this Beat the Press column. In any case, Citibank is eternally gratefully to taxpayers. Here’s how they’re showing it.

Get out the popcorn. Phil Angelides’ Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission is gearing up for another round of hearings April 7 through 9, this one on subprime loans and scheduled to feature former Fed chair Alan Greenspan, who before the bubble burst, used to take pride in being able to obfuscate any economic issue. If Angelides thought Goldman’s CEO was like a salesman peddling faulty cars, I wonder what he makes of Greenspan, who worshipped the financial deregulation that made the wreck not only possible, but probable.

Angelides meanwhile, appears to be playing down expectations for the FCIC, kvetching to the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board about the small size of the panel’s budget ($8 million) and short time frame (final report due in December).

While everybody was bowing down to Greenspan, they should have been listening to Harry Markopolos, the man who was tried to blow the whistle on Bernie Madoff but was repeatedly ignored by the SEC. Now he’s written a book. He doesn’t think the SEC has improved much.  Russell Mokhiber has a good interview with Markopolos in his Corporate Crime Reporter.

Around the Web / Federal Reserve / Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission / Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) - 04/01/2010