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Townhall
Finance
Maybe It’s the Lawsuits that Stop
Banks from Making Loans
by
John Ransom
When
New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman announced this
week that he’s going after top banks Bank of America and Wells Fargo
for violations
of the national mortgage settlement agreement, he had a point.
Unfortunately
that point resides mostly at the top of his head.
Schneiderman, like many New York Attorneys General, is playing politics
for the
bleachers even though he’s hurting their case.
“The
settlement included 304 ‘servicing standards,’ or rules over
how to conduct fair and timely service to homeowners applying for some
sort of
relief,” reported the Wall Street Journal. “Mr. Schneiderman said his
office
has found 339 violations of those standards by Wells Fargo and Bank of
America
since October.”
By
contrast the attorney general says that, since the settlement,
7,500 homeowners have worked with state attorneys and the 94 housing
counselors
that Schneiderman hired for $60 million to enforce the terms of the
agreement,
according to the New York World, and another 8,5000 have received some
sort of
modification under the agreement.
That
means that the New York Attorney General has spent $60
million to find that banks are not complying with the terms of the
agreement in
only two percent of all the cases.
That
means that each housing counselor, paid for with tax dollars, has only
found
3.6 violations since October.
I
wonder what they do all the rest of the time.
I
think the wrong party is getting sued-- and screwed-- here.
Two
percent doesn’t seem to be a very big number, especially when
one considers that the banks have to comply with 304 different rules
and
regulations under the settlement…
Read
the rest of the article at Townhall Finance
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