Free Republic

Tuesday, Oct. 19, 2004 1:09 p.m. EDT Billionaires Secretly Met in Aspen to Defeat Bush In the days following the Democratic National Convention in Boston this past August, several billionaire Democratic activists secretly met at the famed Aspen Institute in Colorado. The purpose of their clandestine meeting was "to use their fortunes to engineer the defeat of President George W. Bush," The New Yorker magazine reports in its most recent edition. Details of the meeting remain sketchy, but the magazine described the Aspen conference this way: "Five billionaires joined half a dozen liberal leaders in a lengthy conversation about the...

Angelo Mozilo can finally get on with his life. This month the Justice Department told Mr. Mozilo, the former chief executive of Countrywide Financial, once the nation’s largest subprime mortgage lender, that he was no longer under investigation in connection with civil mortgage fraud. The government’s criminal inquiry into Mr. Mozilo’s role in the financial crisis was dropped previously, so he is now in the clear. At least that’s the view from Washington. On Main Street, where the pain of Countrywide’s reckless lending and abusive foreclosure practices still throbs, it’s safe to say that Mr. Mozilo is still identified as...

U.S. prosecutors have abandoned their case against Angelo Mozilo, the over-tanned character at the center of the risky subprime mortgages that fueled the financial crisis, after a two-year quest to bring a civil suit against him. As Bloomberg reports, The Justice Department has decided not to sue Mozilo, according to people familiar with the matter, ending a decade-long hunt for someone, anyone to jail over what happened.

Bank of America Corp. (NYSE: BAC) on Monday notched a major legal win when a U.S. appeals court overturned a $1.27 billion penalty handed down in a high-profile fraud case tied to mortgages sold by its Countrywide unit prior to the financial crisis of 2008.

Before he died May 4 from complications stemming from pancreatic cancer and a stroke, former GOP Sen. Bob Bennett of Utah asked his wife, Joyce, and son, Jim, if there were any Muslims in his hospital. If so, he wanted to "go up to every single one of them to thank them for being in this country, and apologize to them on behalf of the Republican Party for Donald Trump." Joyce and Jim Bennett shared this story with The Daily Beast, as well as other tales involving his disgust with "Donald Trump's xenophobia" and proposal to ban Muslims from...

Democrats are telling voters that they had better head to the polls — or else. The New York State Democratic Committee is bullying people into voting next week with intimidating letters warning that it can easily find out which slackers fail to cast a ballot next Tuesday. “Who you vote for is your secret. But whether or not you vote is public record,” the letter says. “We will be reviewing voting records to determine whether you joined your neighbors who voted in 2014.” It ends with a line better suited to a mob movie than a major political party: “If...

Bank of America has agreed to pay Freddie Mac $404 million in a mortgage settlement over 716,000 loans, many purchased from Countrywide. This is one of many lawsuits by the Federal government over Countrywide and related mortgages. One wonders when the litigation will end. Here is the thing. These suits are largely about representations and warranties between the loan seller and the loan purchaser concerning underwriting standards. The reps and warranties provide relief to the loan purchaser if the underwriting of the loans by the loan seller proves to be misleading or false. But there is another issue called causality....

Bartiromo Takes Frank to Task Over Lack of ’08 Financial Crisis Prosecutions • Frank: 'Individuals' should be prosecuted on Wall Street, will not say who Former Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank (D., Mass.) advocated criminal prosecutions against “individuals” involved in the 2008 financial crisis and the subsequent collapse on Wall Street Friday on CNBC. Maria Bartiromo reacted incredulously to Frank’s refusal to name specific individuals who may have perpetrated criminal wrongdoing, accusing the former Congressman of playing populist politics by making specious allegations against the financial industry. Frank attempted to deflect the criticism by stating as Chair of House Financial Services...

The House Ethics Committee has decided to close its investigation into preferential mortgages doled out under a controversial VIP program without taking any action. The panel said it was not taking any action on members who received more affordable mortgages under the program, instituted by the now-defunct Countrywide Financial because while allegations surrounding the program and lawmakers involved "serious matters," they largely fell outside its jurisdiction. For example, many of the allegations pertain to actions outside the Ethics Committee's statute of limitations — greater than three Congresses ago — and many of those accused are no longer working in Congress...

A Democratic committee chairman overrode his own subpoena three years ago in an investigation of former subprime mortgage lender Countrywide Financial Corp. to exclude records showing that he, other House members and congressional aides got VIP discounted loans from the company, documents show. The procedure to keep the names secret was devised by Rep. Edolphus Towns, D-N.Y. In 2003, the 15-term congressman had two loans processed by Countrywide’s VIP section, which was established to give discounts to favored borrowers. Issa exposed Towns’ coverup by issuing a second subpoena, which disgorged all of the records: The effort at secrecy was reversed...

The former Countrywide Financial Corp., whose subprime loans helped start the nation's foreclosure crisis, made hundreds of discount loans to buy influence with members of Congress, congressional staff, top government officials and executives of troubled mortgage giant Fannie Mae, according to a House report.

As reported yesterday, the cost of terminal abrogation of contractual rights in the US is, drumroll, $26 billion. Bloomberg notes: -$26 BILLION FORECLOSURE SETTLEMENT ANNOUNCED IN WASHINGTON -FORECLOSURE ACCORD RESOLVES 16-MONTH ROBO-SIGNING INVESTIGATION -FORECLOSURE ACCORD IS SUBJECT TO APPROVAL BY FEDERAL JUDGE -FORECLOSURE DEAL PRESERVES U.S., STATE RIGHTS TO OTHER CLAIMS -FORECLOSURE ACCORD COULD CLIMB TO $40 BLN IF 14 SERVICERS JOIN And a whole lot of corner offices for America's Attorneys General. As for what the market thinks of this "severe" settlement: BAC +1.2%, WFC +0.6%, JPM +0.4%, C -0.1%. For those who don't understand what just happened, US...

The untold story of the Obama Administration’s widely reported, $335 million discrimination settlement with Countrywide Financial Corporation is that, under a secret Justice Department program, a chunk of the money won’t go to the “victims” but rather leftist groups not connected to the lawsuit. The Department of Justice (DOJ) will determine which “qualified organizations” get leftover settlement cash and Democrat-tied groups like the scandal-plagued Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) and the open-borders National Council of La Raza (NCLR) stand to get large sums based on the

It appears that four current members of the United States House of Representatives received loans via the VIP program of Countrywide Financial Corporation. Once again the motives of the former giant mortgage institution have been brought into question. Where they trying to peddle influence with these loans? Congressman Darrell Issa (R-CA) is the Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and he has been investigating the VIP program for a number years. Issa reportedly learned about the four loans after issuing a subpoena to Bank of America. Countrywide was purchased by Bank of America in 2008 and...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Congressional investigators said Monday that four House members received VIP discounted loans from the former Countrywide Financial Corp., the lender whose subprime mortgages was largely responsible for the nation's foreclosure crisis. Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, declined to name the four but wrote the House Ethics Committee that it should investigate the lawmakers. Issa, in a letter dated Friday and released Monday, said there could be additional lawmakers who received discounted loans. The most favored customers of Countrywide were known as "Friends of Angelo," who were given discounts in...

Ex-Countrywide Exec Blows The Lid Off The Systemic Fraud At The Company Eileen Foster, a former senior executive at Countrywide Financial, told CBS's "60 Minutes" Steve Kroft that mortgage fraud was a way of business. "From what I saw, the types of things I saw, it was — it appeared systemic. It, it wasn't just one individual or two or three individuals, it was branches of individuals, it was regions of individuals," she told Kroft. Foster, an ex-senior vice president at the mortgage lender tasked with monitoring and investigating possible fraud, said she found evidence of widespread mortgage fraud during...

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Another trading day and another low for Bank of America's stock. Shares of Bank of America dropped more than 3% Tuesday, hitting a new 52-week low of $5.03 -- its lowest level since March 12, 2009. After the close of trading Tuesday, Bank of America was one of 37 financial institutions downgraded by S&P. Beyond the S&P downgrade, trading could become even more complicated in Bank of America's stock, if it falls below $5. Under that threshold, many broker-dealers will not allow investors to buy or short a stock on margin, according to a spokesperson for...

CHARLOTTE, North Carolina (Reuters) - Bank of America Corp employees are flooding rival companies with resumes as a major cost-cutting program gets under way at the second-largest U.S. bank. Competitors say they are getting an influx of calls, emails and LinkedIn connection requests as the bank embarks on a plan to slash 30,000 jobs over the next few years. The employees are scouting jobs in retail, commercial and investment banking, bankers and recruiters said. "It's definitely picking up," said a senior executive at a rival consumer bank.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s strong statements in support of the “Occupy Wall Street” movement raise an interesting question: Does she, then, oppose the preferential treatment her son received at the hand of the financial industry? Pelosi’s son, Paul Pelosi, Jr., was protected from a round of layoffs when he was a mortgage broker for Countrywide, according to “Reckless Endangerment: How Outsized Ambition, Greed, and Corruption Led to Economic Armageddon,” a 2011 book by Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist Gretchen Morgenson. “Paul Pelosi, Jr., the son of Nancy Pelosi, the former Speaker of the House, worked as a mortgage...

COUNCIL BLUFFS, Iowa—Gov. Rick Perry (R-Texas) blitzed through Iowa Friday with the swagger of a rock star, elevating his high-octane campaign with a series of stage-managed campaign events. As the only sitting governor pursuing the GOP nomination for president, Perry’s Texas-sized entourage and personality project an aura of authority that other candidates envy. His style, though, may risk alienating Iowans accustomed to lower key campaigning and more time for back-and-forth over issues. For example, Perry traveled to campaign events throughout Iowa in a 22-seat Gulfstream IV jet owned by Wells Fargo Equipment Finance, Inc., a subsidiary of the banking conglomerate....