The Whole Delivery

In the midst of illegal foreclosures from the likes of GMAC and possibly the big banks being challenged , a bill that rushed through the House of Lords of all places is one Obama signature away from hurting homeowners : A bill that homeowners advocates warn will make it more difficult to challenge improper foreclosure attempts by big mortgage processors is awaiting President Barack Obama's signature after it quietly zoomed through the Senate last week. The bill, passed without public debate in a way that even surprised its main sponsor, Republican Representative Robert Aderholt, requires courts to accept as valid document notarizations made out of state, making it harder to challenge the authenticity of foreclosure and other legal documents. The timing raised eyebrows, coming during a rising furor over improper affidavits and other filings in foreclosure actions by large mortgage processors such as GMAC, JPMorgan and Bank of America. How convenient that while 450 other bills f...

President Obama has officially nominated Elizabeth Warren to her new role, to be his assistant and help Timothy Geither set up CFPB. It appears my initial reaction towards this was wrong, and that is a thing I'm happy about. Warren seems to be very satisfied with the role she has taken. As Marcy Wheeler indicates , Warren wouldn't be in this position unless she maintained real relevance and ability to shape things without having to worry about her ideas getting slapped down by Geithner and Larry Summers. In short, Warren is happy with her new role from reports. In fact, this esteemed champion for middle class families even posted on the White House blog this morning . May her new job fully be able to facilitate the CFPB to protect consumers across the country, and not be hindered by any forces trying to disrupt and destroy her valuable services. Also, may this lead to Chris Dodd quietly going into retirement instead of offering silly press quotes about placing Warren in ...

The talk over the Obama White House nominating Elizabeth Warren to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has escalated over yesterday's report of her being at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. But the nomination is the easy part of this entire process that has been made somewhat difficult by this political trepidation to just nominate her now. The legitimately hard part though is confirming her for the position. There will be premature celebrations of happiness when Warren is placed from the White House hands into the arms of the House of Lords, praising Obama for making the move to show that he truly means it when he says that he will possibly stand up to Wall Street to the fullest of lengths. It is a wonderful move to basically take all the blame off itself (or have an excuse that it's official and unofficial PR spokespeople) and place the potential failure of Warren at the top of the CFPB on the hands of that chamber where almost every good thing comes out of it a wra...

Wall Street is now giving Republicans more donation money than they are Democrats after the nutcase party defended them so valiantly in the last few months . He really is still stuck in 2008 . John McCain just can't quit Obama. A fun pattern has emerged from the Arizona Republican's Senate campaign, as he's fought through a heated Republican primary challenge from former Rep. J.D. Hayworth. While McCain has certainly been dishing out the attacks on Hayworth, he's also been rallying the Republican base by training his fire on another nemesis: President Barack Obama, the man who defeated him in the 2008 presidential election. In many ways this makes sense. Obama is both a cause of and target for the conservative base's ire, and anything that McCain can do to rally them on that basis should do him well. And as Larry Sabato once explained to us, McCain can be much more credible by being "Mr. Anti-Obama" than he can by being "Mr. Anti-Immigratio...

This is one article from Huffington Post financial writer Shahien Nasiripour that does have quotes in it, and does have stuff on the record that dictate how massive this situation is . Americans for Financial Reform, a coalition of more than 250 groups organized to fight for strong financial reform, endorsed Warren on Monday to head the new agency. Rep. Carolyn Maloney, a New York Democrat, and Senator Tom Harkin, a Democrat from Iowa, are both asking colleagues to sign letters urging Obama to nominate Warren for the post. Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont aligned with Senate Democrats, wrote Obama on Monday asking him to nominate Warren. "No one in our nation could do a better job," Sanders wrote. And here is that letter: Dear Mr. President: At a time when doubts about Wall Street and its practices are very deep, at a time when many Americans believe that we have not acted as aggressively and rapidly as we might have acted in limiting Wall Street rec...

Here is a way to have an already dubious centrist bill get more lukewarm, tepid support. You give negative signs about hiring one of the leading titans for people in America against Wall Street overloads, especially if you are a much maligned figure creating those negative sentiments . Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has expressed opposition to the possible nomination of Elizabeth Warren to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, according to a source with knowledge of Geithner's views. Probably no one else could rip the incompetent and fortuitous Geithner as well as world class MIT economist Simon Johnson did last night. Oh it is worth the read and thensome . If the Democratic leadership really wants to win in the November elections, they should think very hard about the further consequences of Mr. Geithner. Politics aside though, the Harvard law professo is a lady who just deserves anything great that comes her way. Elizabeth Warren cares about people, simple...

Brown has voted for it, along with that wonderful duo of Collins and Snowe. Feingold seems to have voted against it after doing so on cloture. And Ben Nelson voted for it. Gregg voted no despite loving TARP so much this week. Update : Now they are onto the conference vote with the fixes (sort of like Health insurance reform all over again!). And it's 60-39, same end result.

While bill weakening isn't leading to the likes of Cosmo Truck Guy Brown to still give it the full support, Russ Feingold has had enough with the Financial Reform Bill dissipating in power. The Wisconsin Senator simply states he cannot support the bill . Wall Street and its allies have been calling the shots in Congress for decades, so they must be glad to see how things are shaping up on financial regulatory reform. Congress is about to vote on a final bill that fails to fix the key flaws in the bills passed by both the House and Senate. At the start of this process I made clear that I had a simple test for financial reform -- will it stop another financial meltdown? This bill fails that test, and I won't support legislation that fails to protect the people of Wisconsin from the pain of another economic disaster. And I don't need to be lectured about this issue by people who supported the repeal of Glass-Steagall, which paved the way for this terrible recession. F...

She's a populist crusader now ! A far-reaching proposal to regulate derivative trading will not be scaled back in Wall Street reform legislation, at least for now, multiple Senate aides confirm. The development comes as welcome news to an unusual mix of progressives, financial officials, and at least one conservative Democrat: Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR). Lincoln is the author of the derivatives title in the Senate's financial regulation bill, and for weeks has faced opposition from Wall Street, the White House, and members of her own party over a provision to force financial firms to spin off their derivatives trading desks into stand-alone entities. The proposal to weaken the derivatives title was ultimately drafted by Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd--the Democrats' chief financial reform negotiator--and introduced yesterday at the eleventh hour of the debate over Wall Street reform. In it, Dodd proposed kicking the spin-off provision down the road for t...

Despite it being just one audit, and it going back to only 2007 (good centrist protection policy), the audit of the Fed has been pass through the House of Lord, I mean, the Senate, by a rousing 96-0 vote. Comprehensive across the board bi-partisanship that will make the White House and David Broder smile, as Bernie Sanders tampered down amendment goes through. But the bi-partisanship didn't extend to an even stronger version of Grayson-Paul's version through the David "Diaper Man" Vitter's window dressing amendment, trying to steal the shine of Grayson and Paul. So him not getting credit for that is the only saving grace of not passing something that should have been passed. And get this key tidbit from the invaluable David Dayen on how scared Blanche Lincoln is right now of Bill Halter : …The amendment passes 96-0. Having that many Senate votes for this level of transparency from the Fed will be a powerful symbol that something’s rotten at the central ba...

The White House just loves themselves some Blanche Lincoln : "Leading the fight to hold wall street accountable" and "She stands besides the side of workers." I guess this is the stuff that didn't make the cut for his comedy speech on Saturday night. It would have been a hell of a lot better than the drone joke , that's for sure . It really is amazing how they just won't stay out of this primary (and probably the Sestak-Spector one), and want to help an insane centrist insider who cares all about herself first and foremost before she does anyone else. Bill Halter's momentum has made Lincoln so desperate as to request that Obama cut her an ad. The President has done just so, as she tries to remain right in the "House of Lords." It is a shame that they are choosing to throw a bone again for Lincoln instead of just staying out of this primary. I guess they have truly become Washington themselves, no matter how much they try and play ...

Photo from AFP Well, Greece has received their lone awaited relief from the rest of their continental brethen : The European Union and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have agreed a $146.2bn bail-out package over three years to rescue Greece's indebted economy. Finance ministers from the 16 nations that use the euro endorsed the plan on Sunday in Brussels after days of negotiation. The Greek government has announced a series of budget cuts and tax rises in return for loans, which George Papandreou, the prime minister, said involved "great sacrifices". Thank you again Wall Street!

Man, oh man , oh man : In a sane world, Bob Corker would never speak on a financial issue (or any other issue for that matter) again. This clown talks about not being in the politics of this, yet he voted against cloture one on Tuesday and once on yesterday . Oh, and by the way, we sure as hell don't live in a sane world.

No matter what the obvious facts and actual truth is, the sub prime mortgage crisis caused Goldman Sachs to reasonably act like they were at the World Series of Poker.

And where all of these serious GOP-er demanding that more time by had on this bill ??? Yup, no where at all to be found, besides probably in the back room yucking it up and having a good time with their wannabe fool Nelson. There is nothing quite like "The House of Lords." Update : And guess who was the first to speak right after the official vote, with Reid voting against it to start debate again.....Mark Begich and Mark Warner, who are both Democrats for those who don't know. Just another great day in The House of Lords.

(Photo from AP's Burke) It already is bad enough when your college announces as your commencement speaker a person who really doesn't meet your expectations. But it's even more unbearable when your school selects a person whose history is so egregious that he or she shouldn't be allowed to even speak at a kindergartner's graduation. That is the situation that Columbia's grad students of the School of International and Public Affairs were placed in when their school decided to select "wonderful" Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit as their commencement speaker in next month's graduation. And with their recognition of Pandit being one of the major players in Wall Street's omprehensive arrogance and robbing of money and dreams in the last several years, the students were certainly none too please . "He represents an industry that, even when it was stable and not in crisis, paid itself outrageous salaries," fumed Daniel Safran-Hon, 29. Ryan...

Because it's too funny and infuriating at the same time : Politico reports that two years earlier, with WaMu at the center of the expanding subprime-mortgage bubble, company lenders gathered at a retreat in Hawaii to celebrate their wealth — by rapping. In a “Karaoke-style ode to greed – complete with faux WaMu rappers tossing play money into the crowd,” lenders re-mixed the 1992 hip-hop hit “Baby Got Back” into their own “I Like Big Bucks”: “I like big bucks and I cannot lie/You mortgage brothers can’t deny,” sang the WaMu rappers. The presentation, which included cheerleaders moving in time to the music, and choreographed moves by the singers, continued: “That when the dough roles in like you’re printin’ your own cash/And you gotta make a splash/You just spends/Like it never ends/“ Speechless am I. I have got to see if Sir Mix-A-Lot got some money from the bailout, even if Lehman Brothers is long gone. Better yet, did Sir Mix-A-lot get paid by WaMu for them even doing h...

Photo from AP's Chuck Burton It's spring like weather here in New York today, but this following piece of news reads like a "Cold day in Hell." "Bank of America" did something really good for the consumer in America. Yup, hard to believe, but they actually did so. In fact, it is a little impertinent of me to just label it as "good". Because it is nothing short of "great." In a move that could bring an end to the $40 cup of coffee, Bank of America said on Tuesday that it was doing away with overdraft fees on purchases made with debit cards, a decision that could cost the bank tens of millions a year in revenue and put pressure on other banks to do the same. The outrageous nature of overdrafting has plagued the people of this nation far too long. This has always been a pretty facile and clever way of banks adding to their profits at the expense of Main Street. You surly wouldn't have seen this from Bank of America under the tute...

And the beat just keeps on going American International Group plans Wednesday to pay another round of employee bonuses, worth about $100 million, said several people familiar with the matter, a year after similar payments at the bailed-out insurance giant infuriated many Americans and inflamed Washington. But they took a wonderful pay cut through, showing how aware they are of the time. This week's retention payments go to those employees at the company's Financial Products division who agreed recently to accept 10 to 20 percent less money than AIG had initially promised them two years ago. In return, they are to receive their payments more than a month ahead of schedule. AIG executives have been scrambling to hammer out a compromise before March 15, when the firm faces a deadline to pay nearly $200 million in bonuses to employees at Financial Products, the unit whose risky derivatives deals brought the insurer to the brink of collapse in 2008. Government and AIG offici...

After arguably the strongest move on Wall Street, where it even brought positive reaction out of the most critical progressives on whether he has been truly standing up to them, President Obama's press conference on the big banks didn't warm the hearts of everyone on his economic team. In fact, it even led to some grumbling being heard loud and clear. And that grumbling came from a guy who really shouldn't even be opening his mouth unless it is exhaling carbon dioxide. Oh Timothy and your unnecessary time for being a troll for AIG again: Geithner has reservations on US bank limits-sources Sigh : President Barack Obama's newest Wall Street crackdown was met with hesitation from Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who is concerned that politics could be sacrificing good economic policy, according to financial industry sources. Geithner is concerned that the proposed limits on big banks' trading and size could impact U.S. firms' global competitiveness...