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It was only a matter of time. A few weeks after every money losing firm in the US and the kitchen sink disclosed it would sue Bank of America in an accelerating attempt to salvage something through litigation, the worst case scenario for Brian Moynhian just got real. As of minutes ago, Norway's Government Pension Fund, which is another name for its Sovereign Wealth Fund, has just announced it is suing Bank of America for mortgage fraud. Not only that but it is also going after Countrywide, obviously, but far more importantly, is also suing KPGM, the auditor on the...

The lawsuits against Bank of America are piling up. The latest comes from Minneapolis-based U.S. Bancorp, which wants Bank of America Corp. to repurchase poorly-written mortgages sold by Countrywide Financial in 2005. Bank of America bought Countrywide Financial Corp. in 2008. The lawsuit, which was filed in New York on Monday, claims Countrywide sold U.S. Bancorp a pool of over 4,000 loans originally valued at $1.75 billion. U.S. Bancorp claims Countrywide ignored its own mortgage underwriting guidelines when issuing those loans. According to the complaint, Countrywide agreed to repurchase loans within 90 days if any of the statements made in...

Bank of America reported a loss of $8.8 billion in the second quarter, as the nation’s biggest bank by assets doled out huge payments to settle legal claims related its troubled mortgage division. The loss, which amounted to 90 cents per share, was steep, but was fully baked into expectations. Analysts predicted the bank would lose 90 cents per share, compared with the second quarter of 2010 when it notched a $3.1 billion profit, or 27 cents a share. The mortgage problems also ate into the bank’s revenue, which fell by roughly 55 percent to $13.2 billion. The revenue drop...

Mark Malone, a former federal and state prosecutor who spent eight years prosecuting the mob, white collar criminals and political corruption, said: "Mozilo was the boss of bosses of predatory lending. He was the inspiration for MERS, the electronic database used to facilitate much of the fraud surrounding predatory lending, mortgage securitization and fraudulent foreclosure practices. If prosecutors are not going to go after low-hanging fruit like Mozilo, the rest of the bankster bosses can sleep well, assured that their fortunes are secure."

The Securites Exchange Commission (SEC) formally charged former Countrywide Financial CEO Angelo Mozilo and two other company executives with civil fraud. The SEC also charged Mozilo with illegal insider trading, an agency spokesman said Thursday. Civil fraud charges also were filed against Countrywide's former Chief Operating Officer David Sambol and ex-Chief Financial Officer Eric Sieracki. Countrywide Financial, the California-based mortgage lender, was a key component to the subprime mortgage crisis in 2007, which was the beginning of the financial decline and current recession in the U.S. Mozilo is the most high-profile individual to face formal charges from the federal government...

Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) seems to at tract friends who, in turn, attract scrutiny from the Securities and Exchange Commission. Thursday, the SEC hit subprime-mortgage giant Countrywide Financial's ex-CEO Angelo Mozilo with a fraud suit for allegedly deceiving investors on the true condition of the company. He was also charged with insider trading. In 2003, Dodd's role on the Banking Committee got him dubbed a "Friend of Angelo" by Countrywide -- and thus eligible for two sweetheart $800,000 loans. The Senate Ethics Committee is -- at a glacial pace -- investigating the circumstances behind Dodd's Countrywide-refinanced mortgages....

Federal prosecutors have ended a criminal investigation of Countrywide Financial Corp. co-founder Angelo Mozilo, a person close to the investigation said Friday. The federal official told The Associated Press that the probe launched in 2008 into the actions of the former chief executive of the housing giant during the mortgage meltdown has been closed with no indictments. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation was never publicly announced, and the Department of Justice as a policy does not announce the closing of investigations. In October, Mozilo agreed to a $67.5 million settlement to avoid civil trial...

U.S. drops criminal probe of former Countrywide chief Angelo MoziloBy E. Scott Reckard, Los Angeles Times February 18, 2011, 4:11 p.m. Federal prosecutors have shelved a criminal investigation of Angelo R. Mozilo after determining that his actions in the mortgage meltdown — which led to $67.5-million settlement against him — did not amount to criminal wrongdoing. As the former chairman of Countrywide Financial Corp., Mozilo helped fuel the boom in risky subprime loans that led to the crippling of the banking industry and the near-collapse of the financial system. A federal grand jury in Los Angeles began probing Mozilo in...

Countrywide’s VIP program is the first subpoena target for House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), said a committee aide. The “Friends of Angelo” program, named for former Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozilo, has been under committee investigation since 2008 for allegedly granting generous mortgage deals to influential government officials, lawmakers and employees at Fannie Mae. “Countrywide orchestrated a deliberate and calculated effort to use relationships with people in high places in order to manipulate public policy and further their bottom line to the detriment of the American taxpayers even at the expense of its own lending standards,”...

Issa demands details on Countrywide's VIP loan programBy Peter Schroeder - 02/16/11 06:31 PM ET Bank of America will have to turn over all documents and records tied to Countrywide Financial's VIP lending program after House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) issued a subpoena for them Wednesday. Issa announced the far-reaching subpoena, his first as chairman of the panel, and made clear that he wanted to know specifically what public employees or elected officials may have benefited from the program. Issa is looking for all documents about the program, and is particularly interested in what "covered borrowers" were involved...

As the final days of his long congressional career were falling from the calendar, corrupt Democratic Sen. Christopher Dodd was uplifted as one special interest after another heaped praise upon him. They were the beneficiaries of his years of generosity with other people's money and his advocacy of federal mandates that enriched them. And for all those years, they completed the quid pro quos by delivering copious sums and manpower for his re-election campaigns. In another context, prosecutors would call this extortion or racketeering; in this context, however, it's just called government. The news media, new and old, also kissed...

Judge Eileen Bransten granted a motion to allow the insurer, MBIA, to use statistical sampling, turning down the objections by Bank of America. Bank of America had told investors that it intended to fight repurchase requests—also known as put-backs—on a “loan-by-loan basis.” That process would have required MBIA and others seeking to force Bank of America to buy back loans it pooled into mortgage securities to proceed one loan at a time, a costly and time-consuming process. MBIA has proposed that for each of the 15 securitizations—each of which contains thousands of home loans—it is challenging, it will sample 400...

According to Richard Holbrooke, Richard Holbrooke is essentially this country's top diplomat -- Hillary Clinton is merely his "pupil. This despite the fact that Holbrooke has hit the trifecta of shady business dealings over the last few years: a member of AIG's board with more than $800,000 in compensation, a managing director at Lehman Brothers, and the recipient of a "Friends of Angelo" loan from Countrywide (that alone was enough to get Jim Johnson thrown under the Obama campaign bus). Now comes another revelation from the New York Times. Despite repeated denials, according to three sources, Holbrooke did offer former...

ABC News has learned that Richard Holbrooke, the US Special Representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, has died. On Friday, Holbrooke was rushed to the hospital with a torn aorta. He went through more than 20 hours of surgery. Earlier this evening, speaking at the US State Department, President Obama sang Holbrooke's praises and called him "a tough son of a gun." Holbrooke, 69, was a former ambassador to the United Nations and served as chief negotiator at the Dayton Peace Accords, which ended the war in Bosnia. The New Yorker's George Packer wrote a nice story about Holbrooke last year,...

Bank of America Corp has put up for sale at least $1 billion worth of toxic mortgage assets, the New York Post said on Monday, citing sources. Bids are due by the end of December for the assets, which includes already written-off loans and mortgage-servicing rights, the paper said.

Charlie Gasparino told Shep Smith today that Bank of America has set up a "legal swat team" in case the next big WikiLeak is directed at them. The official line thus far is that they've had "no indication" they're being targeted, however Gasparino says he's spoken to a person who claims to have seen some of the bank-related documents and says that while they couldn't make out how damaging the documents were they "clearly pointed to Bank of America." The big fear inside Bank of America, says Gasparino, is that the documents will lead back to (BofA-owned) Countrywide Financial, and...

Bank of America Is in Deep Trouble, and There May Be Financial Disaster on the Horizon Will Bank of America be the first Wall Street giant to once again point a gun to its own head, telling us it'll crash and burn and take down the financial system if we don’t pony up for another massive bailout? When former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson was handing out trillions to Wall Street, BofA collected $45 billion from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) to stabilize its balance sheet. It was spun as a success story -- a rebuke of those who urged...

Today, Connecticut’s United States Senator Christopher Dodd,(D/CT) had given his farewell speech in the USA Senate. As expected, he reviews all that he had done in the Senate. Also he made a special plea, recorded in the short video reports, as it was posted explaining:“Sen. Chris Dodd devoted his final speech to imploring the new Senate not to change the rules and to work with one another for the common good. Dodd has been Connecticut’s Democrat U.S. Senator since 1980.” Sen. Dodd even invoked the apostle Paul, using a passage from 2 Timothy about having “fought the good fight”. For...

The GOP takeover of the House holds the nightmare scenario for Democrats of putting Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) in charge of the House Oversight Committee. Issa spent the last two years attempting to get subpoena power for a range of inquiries into activities in the Obama administration, including the firing of Inspector General Gerald Walpin, and to get a much closer look at the Friends of Angelo program at Countrywide Mortgage that appeared to offer sweetheart loan packages to leading Democrats in position to help Angelo Mozilo with regulators and legislation. Issa told Chris Wallace that the latter scandal would...

In a breaking development that may affect the close California Senate race, Pajamas Media has learned The Foundation for Ethics in Public Service sent a letter to Eric Holder last Thursday requesting the attorney general “begin an investigation to determine whether United States Senator Barbara Boxer violated any criminal laws or should be liable for any civil penalty for failure to disclose real property on her Personal Financial Disclosure Reports between 2002 and 2010.” The Foundation for Ethics in Public Service is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization “that seeks to bring a new level of transparency, accountability and integrity to all...