The P-I reports that the King County Prosecutors office has created a Complex Prosecutions and Investigations Division, which:
will handle cases that often require specialized know-how and time, including identity theft, mortgage and insurance fraud, elder abuse, computer offenses and organized crime.This is important. I commend the late Norm Maleng for initiating the new division and Dan Satterberg for shepherding it into existence. I know of an important case that this division could pursue.They're felonies in which the proverbial smoking gun is often buried in overflowing boxes of bank records, complicated evidence threatens to baffle juries and con artists may have gone undetected for years.
The P-I continues:
Until now, as police and prosecutors pursued more straightforward violent crimes, such cases could easily be pushed asideGood thing such cases won't be pushed aside any longer!
WaMu accused of strong-arming appraisers to inflate home values
"ALBANY, N.Y. -- New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said Thursday a major real estate appraisal company colluded with the nation's largest savings and loan companies to inflate the values of homes, contributing to the subprime mortgage crisis."
Posted by: John Bailo on November 1, 2007 12:38 PMWAMU is run by Kerry Killinger
(2006 Annual Report dated March 2007)
Maybe Satterberg should have his "crack" team start there.
Unfortuneately Fay Chapman, SVP & CLO, will take Dan Satterburg to the woodshed for gross incompetence
Posted by: WAMU whips Satterburg on November 1, 2007 02:34 PMhttp://edixon.members.winisp.net/Email%20to%20Sims.htm
It involves manipulating the legal and legislative process to allow $2 Billion of public funds to be spent on an unneeded and unsafely sited sewage treatment plant.
Posted by: Just the facts ma'am on November 2, 2007 10:02 AMWho was it who created the programs that mortgage brokers sold to customers??? Who was it who set the guidelines for those programs??? Who was it who heavily promoted those programs themselves for years??? Who was it who gave mortgage brokers incentives to promote and deliver to them loans under those programs??? Put the lions share of the blame where it belongs: on the big banks.
They had no problem pushing those products and then when things go south, they are not the ones held aoccountable for them. And now they want the feds to bail them out and the blame to be placed on the heads of the mortgage brokers. Can you say "pure and utter horsecrap"??? Here is something else to consider.
In the state of Washington, mortgage brokers have to take a test to originate loans along with supplemental education classes and all of this is at a cost to them financially and time-wise as well as having significant restrictions on where they can originate. (Loan officers have loan officer numbers and brokers have mortgage broker loans.) These in and of themselves are not a problem of course if not for the fact that the loan officers at the big banks are exempt from these same regulations.
That is correct folks: the big banks and their loan officers cannot be held accountable in the same way that mortgage brokers can if things go wrong. Furthermore, they are national and not local so they have an even further hedge against being held accountable and the ears of the congress as well as deep pockets to buy their way out of trouble.
Couple all of this with some of the largest banks engaging in monopolistic lending practices by promoting products that cannot remotely be matched by any mortgage broker -mainly because the bank makes its money reinvesting the money from loans they make rather than directly from the clients- and you have another example of a Standard Oil kind of monopoly on mortgage lending.
A conservative worthy of the name would not in any way support or endorse such things happening but watch how many of them decide to "go down to their local Bank of America" or whatever for their latest "no frills loan." There are plenty of "frills" to those loans but they are not seen by the consumer. Or shall I say they will not see them at the time but remember the subprime meltdown and also that Bank of America and the other big banks are the ones who were responsible for it. The question is, will you the "conservative" reward them for their bad behaviour or not??? Inquiring minds want to know.
Who was it who created the programs that mortgage brokers sold to customers??? Who was it who set the guidelines for those programs??? Who was it who heavily promoted those programs themselves for years??? Who was it who gave mortgage brokers incentives to promote and deliver to them loans under those programs??? Put the lions share of the blame where it belongs: on the big banks.
They had no problem pushing those products and then when things go south, they are not the ones held aoccountable for them. And now they want the feds to bail them out and the blame to be placed on the heads of the mortgage brokers. Can you say "pure and utter horsecrap"??? Here is something else to consider.
In the state of Washington, mortgage brokers have to take a test to originate loans along with supplemental education classes and all of this is at a cost to them financially and time-wise as well as having significant restrictions on where they can originate. (Loan officers have loan officer numbers and brokers have mortgage broker loans.) These in and of themselves are not a problem of course if not for the fact that the loan officers at the big banks are exempt from these same regulations.
That is correct folks: the big banks and their loan officers cannot be held accountable in the same way that mortgage brokers can if things go wrong. Furthermore, they are national and not local so they have an even further hedge against being held accountable and the ears of the congress as well as deep pockets to buy their way out of trouble.
Couple all of this with some of the largest banks engaging in monopolistic lending practices by promoting products that cannot remotely be matched by any mortgage broker -mainly because the bank makes its money reinvesting the money from loans they make rather than directly from the clients- and you have another example of a Standard Oil kind of monopoly on mortgage lending.
A conservative worthy of the name would not in any way support or endorse such things happening but watch how many of them decide to "go down to their local Bank of America" or whatever for their latest "no frills loan." There are plenty of "frills" to those loans but they are not seen by the consumer. Or shall I say they will not see them at the time but remember the subprime meltdown and also that Bank of America and the other big banks are the ones who were responsible for it. The question is, will you the "conservative" reward them for their bad behaviour or not??? Inquiring minds want to know.