I am writing today to announce the closure of the Michigan Messenger. After four years of operation in Michigan, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news into a single site, The American Independent at Americanindependent.com. This is part of a shift in strategy, towards new forms [...]
An abstinence-only presentation provided to numerous school districts in Calhoun and Eaton Counties in October of this year provided false and misleading information to students about HIV, experts allege.
Two county registers of deeds filed a class action lawsuit Monday on behalf of Michigan’s 83 counties alleging that the Mortgage Electronic Registration Services owes millions of dollars in property title transfer taxes.
Despite evidence of the impact of mercury on children and public health, Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette last month joined with 24 other state attorneys general in filing a lawsuit to scuttle new EPA regulations that would reduce mercury emissions from power plants.
In case you missed CBS’ 60 Minutes on Sunday night, the program featured an interview by Scott Pelley with former World Savings of California employee Paul Bishop discussing subprime mortgages. Bishop said that World Savings wrote bad mortgages. Without stuttering or hesitation he used the F-word — fraud — quite clearly, having previously told his former employer that they were breaking the law by selling mortgages to people that World Savings knew could not afford them.
World Savings’ former owner Herbert Sandler doesn’t appear in the video, but a letter from him to CBS claims that other employees could dispute Bishop’s claims, that the firm focused on “quality lending,” noting that none of World Savings’ mortgages were moved off the firm’s books having been kept in house.
So where’s World Savings now? It was acquired in 2006 by Wachovia Bank — and Wachovia was acquired in 2008 by Wells Fargo with federal bailout money after Wachovia was forced to take losses and writedowns worth more than the acquisition price of World Savings.
One has to wonder how long it will take before the public learns the full scope and details of subprime mortgage business; in turn these mortgages eventually underpinned more complicated financial instruments which were not adequately regulated after the passage of the Gramm-Bliley-Leach Act of 1999. After nearly eight years of silence on the mounting problems from bad mortgages to unregulated credit default swaps which led the financial industry to fall so spectacularly, 60 Minutes’ Pelley-Bishop interview this week is at least a welcome start.
You can catch Scott Pelley’s interview with Paul Bishop below.
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