Banks don't get it, may get sued once again

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said Monday he intends to sue Bank of America and Wells Fargo for failing to help struggling homeowners.  This is a poster child case in the Financial Services Industry, they reach a settlement after committing mass felonies, pay a fine and promise to be good, then go back to committing more crimes.

The New York AG was involved in negotiating the first $25 Billion settlement last year, and now he has notified the Settlement Monitors that he will sue the banks for failing to honor the agreement. 

“Wells Fargo and Bank of America have flagrantly violated those obligations, putting hundreds of homeowners across New York at greater risk of foreclosure,” Schneiderman said in a statement. “I intend to use every tool available to my office to hold these companies accountable.”

“Like General Schneiderman, I continue to believe there are areas in which the banks must improve their treatment of their customers,” Joe Smith, monitor of the National Mortgage Settlement, said Monday. As part of the settlement, Smith may conduct reviews of the banks’ compliance and report them to the public. “As Monitor, I intend to use the full breadth of my power under the Settlement to hold the banks accountable,” he said.
Advocacy groups have grown weary of the settlement. At the time the deal was reached, consumer advocates were pleased that it included extensive servicing standards to prevent a repeat of the types of abusive foreclosure practices that ran rampant during the housing crisis. But within months of the agreement, housing counselors started to receive complaints that servicers were back to their old behavior.

The settlement monitor, Joseph Smith, says his office received 5,818 consumer complaints about servicers through February and hundreds more that came from professionals such as lawyers.

When oh when does somebody go to jail?

Picking our Pockets

Move over too big to fail banks, there's another monopoly in town that has jacked up the cost of living to new heights, I'm talking internet monopoly here.  The Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) has published an article on its blog that points out that the companies dominating the internet broadband market (AT&T, Concast, Time Warner Cable, Verizon, et al) are selling internet internet access for about $500 / Year while it costs them less than $100 / subscriber, making a tidy 80% gross margin on that service.

How do they manage to keep this racket going?  Why the American way, they hire hundreds of lobbyists and partner with ALEC to buy protection against competition.  They do this with the Municipal Telecommunications Private Industry Safeguards Act the model legislation that outlaws communities efforts to build their own broadband networks, because that would be infringing on "Free Enterprise".  Such measures have now passed in 19 states, including our neighbors in Washington State. This is the worst of crony capitalism at work.