Massachusetts judge stops foreclosures on H&R Block unit's loans
By Jerry Kronenberg, Boston Herald

A Massachusetts judge is blocking H&R Block from automatically foreclosing on up to 9,700 Bay State homeowners, ruling that the firm apparently wrote mortgages with "reckless disregard (for) the risk of foreclosure."

"Any lender with even a modicum of business morality should recognize that it is immoral, unethical and unscrupulous to issue a home loan with reckless disregard (for) the risk of foreclosure," Suffolk Superior Court Judge Ralph Gants wrote in a preliminary injunction against H&R Block.

Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley has sued Block over Bay State subprime mortgages issued by the firm's Option One subsidiary.

The Housing Bubble and Its Crash Were Engineered from the Highest Levels of the U.S. Government, the Federal Reserve, and the Financial Industry
By Richard C. Cook

During the Clinton administration, the government required the financial industry to start expanding the frequency of mortgage loans to consumers who might not have qualified in the past.

When George W. Bush was named president by the Supreme Court in December 2000, the stock market had begun to decline with the bursting of the dot.com bubble.

In 2001 the frequency of White House visits by Alan Greenspan increased.

Greenspan endorsed President Bush’s March 2001 tax cuts for the rich. More such cuts took place in May 2003.

Signs of recession had begun to show in early 2001. The stock market crashed after 9/11. The U.S. invaded Afghanistan in October 2001 and Iraq in March 2003.

Mortgage firm arranged stealth campaign
by Pete Yost | Yahoo!News

Freddie Mac secretly paid a Republican consulting firm $2 million to kill legislation that would have regulated and trimmed the mortgage finance giant and its sister company, Fannie Mae, three years before the government took control to prevent their collapse.

In the cross hairs of the campaign carried out by DCI of Washington were Republican senators and a regulatory overhaul bill sponsored by Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb. DCI's chief executive is Doug Goodyear, whom John McCain's campaign later hired to manage the GOP convention in September.

Mortgage Industry Bankrupts Black America
By Kai Wright | The Nation

Research support was provided by the Investigative Fund of The Nation Institute.

George Mitchell's wife, Lillian, took her last breath in the house she loved, on New Year's Day 2006. "Right there in that spot," says George, 77, nodding to the far end of his worn, floral-print couch. "I think the last words she spoke was my name."

"Yup," confirms his youngest daughter, Chandra Chavis. "I was trying to perform mouth-to-mouth resuscitation at the time." She points out the living room window to the small, sloping front yard and drive. "There was no address on the house, so I had to stop doing that to get the ambulance to come in." But Lillian's heart had seized, and Chandra knows there's not much she could have done anyway. She figures if even the trauma team at Atlanta's century-old public hospital couldn't revive her mom, she must have been long gone. "Nobody can bring you back if the Lord calls you," concludes an older daughter, Gwen Russell.

It was Lillian's tenacity that led the Mitchell family to Atlanta's Westwood neighborhood, in 1968. "She was determined," Chandra explains, "not to have her children in an apartment--I know the story; I've heard it a million times--so she found somebody, a real estate agent, and they came out and they looked in this neighborhood. I don't know what brought them to this part of town, 'cause at the time they were living in Dixon Hills"--then an up-and-coming black neighborhood--"but she decided she wanted a house, and this is where she found it."

"All I did was sign the paper," says George with a shrug.

Tim Griffin is well-known to those who followed the investigation of Karl Rove's corruption of the Justice Department, as Glenn Greenwald recaps:

In 2005, Griffin became Karl Rove’s top aide in the White House, and then found himself in the middle of the U.S. Attorney scandal when Rove engineered the forced resignation of Arkansas U.S. Attorney Bud Cummins, to be replaced by … Tim Griffin, who then oversaw all federal investigations and prosecutions for the entire state of Arkansas. 

By Judith Bell, President of PolicyLink, www.policylink.org

Judith BellWe started noticing the trend last week. Traffic on our website was spiking dramatically, with nearly half of all our hits landing on one specific page, entitled: “What is the Community Reinvestment Act?”

Could it be that in these increasingly dire economic times, Americans are looking for examples of successful, pragmatic solutions to encourage responsible homeownership and promote equality and justice? Sadly, not quite.

It turns out our Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) page was linked in a scathing video blaming the CRA for the housing crisis – the basic argument being that the CRA forced banks to loan to all people and, therefore, precipitated the subprime crisis and irresponsible people getting loans they couldn’t afford.

Eliot's Mess
The $200 billion bail-out for predator banks and Spitzer charges are intimately linked
By Greg Palast

"...the unthinkable happened. Carlyle Capital went bankrupt. Who? That’s Carlyle as in Carlyle Group. James Baker, Senior Counsel. Notable partners, former and past: George Bush, the Bin Laden family and more dictators, potentates, pirates and presidents than you can count.

While New York Governor Eliot Spitzer was paying an ‘escort’ $4,300 in a hotel room in Washington, just down the road, George Bush’s new Federal Reserve Board Chairman, Ben Bernanke, was secretly handing over $200 billion in a tryst with mortgage bank industry speculators.

Both acts were wanton, wicked and lewd. But there’s a BIG difference. The Governor was using his own checkbook. Bush’s man Bernanke was using ours.

This week, Bernanke’s Fed, for the first time in its history, loaned a selected coterie of banks one-fifth of a trillion dollars to guarantee these banks’ mortgage-backed junk bonds. The deluge of public loot was an eye-popping windfall to the very banking predators who have brought two million families to the brink of foreclosure.

Up until Wednesday, there was one single, lonely politician who stood in the way of this creepy little assignation at the bankers’ bordello: Eliot Spitzer.

Who are they kidding? Spitzer’s lynching and the bankers’ enriching are intimately tied.

By David Swanson

From 2000 to 2003 I was the communications coordinator for ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. I don't know whether to be sorry or relieved that I don't have my old job now.

ACORN has been through some scandals of its own making, but it is currently all over the news because of a pair of absolutely fraudulent and nationally coordinated attacks.

One of these attacks involves accusations of voter fraud. But, of course, "voter fraud" almost doesn't exist, and federal prosecutors have lost their jobs because they couldn't find evidence of its existence to satisfy the Bush White House. In fact, the accusations against ACORN are not about voting, but about voter registration.

Lehman Brothers Boss Defends $484 Million in Salary, Bonus
Fuld Becomes Poster Boy for Wall Street Greed at Heated Congressional Hearing
By Brian Ross and Alice Gomstyn | ABCNews.com

In the first Congressional hearing into the financial crisis, the former CEO of the bankrupt Lehman Brothers, Richard Fuld, became the poster boy for Wall Street greed today as he defended the $484 million he received in salary, bonuses and stock options he received since 2000.

"Is that fair?" asked committee chairman Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) who pointed out Fuld owns a mansion in Greenwich, Connecticut, an ocean front estate on Jupiter Island, Florida, a ski chalet in Idaho and a Manhattan apartment.

"If you haven't discovered your role, you're the villain today," said Rep. John Mica (R-FL).

FBI, SEC, Federal Reserve 'Failed to Connect the Dots' to Wall Street
Like 9/11 Attacks, Federal Agencies Missed Clear Warning Signs of Financial Crisis
By Brian Ross, Rhonda Schwartz, and Joseph Rhee | ABCNews.com

As Congress opens hearings this morning on who is to blame for the financial crisis, an ABC News investigation has found that the FBI and other federal agencies failed to spot the warning signs of massive fraud in the home mortgage business that led directly to Wall Street.

"The failure to connect the dots," Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal told ABC News, "is completely reprehensible and should now lead to strong and effective indictments and prosecutions for fraud."