Countrywide: The toilet that keeps on overflowing

[marmar]

from the NY Times:



The Justice Department on Wednesday announced the largest residential fair-lending settlement in history, saying that Bank of America had agreed to pay $335 million to settle allegations that its Countrywide Financial unit discriminated against black and Hispanic borrowers during the housing boom.

A department investigation concluded that Countrywide had charged higher fees and rates to more than 200,000 minority borrowers across the country than to white borrowers who posed the same credit risk. It also steered more than 10,000 minority borrowers into costly subprime mortgages when white borrowers with similar credit profiles received prime loans, the department said.

The pattern and practice covered the years 2004 to 2008, before Countrywide was acquired by Bank of America.

“The department’s actions against Countrywide makes clear that we will not hesitate to hold financial institutions accountable, including one of the nation’s largest, for discrimination,” Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said. “These institutions should make judgments based on applicants’ creditworthiness, not on the color of their skin.” ..............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/22/business/us-settlement-reported-on-countrywide-lending.html?_r=1&hp

[Starry Messenger]

1. k&r

[Myrina]

2. ... and all the execs get from the AG's office is a scolding.

“The department’s actions against Countrywide makes clear that we will not hesitate to hold financial institutions accountable, including one of the nation’s largest, for discrimination,” Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said. “These institutions should make judgments based on applicants’ creditworthiness, not on the color of their skin.”


Anyone going to jail?
Anyone losing their end of the year bonus?
No. didn't think so.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

3. Yep. If you are a poorer less affluent minority, you are more likely to cross paths....

... with a loan officer who is either..... A) Lazy (doesn't want to step outside his comfort zone and send you conventional).... or B) looking to gouge the fuck out of you....... or C) All of the above.

I saw it a few times in an office I worked in. We had a few people who ONLY did subprime loans. They were too stupid or too lazy to run the deal through the convetional pipe line so they would send marginal deals suprime for no good reason.

People who really got fucked were people who bought right before the shit hit the fan and got put in these subprime ARMs with crippling adjustment margins.

[hifiguy]

4. And yet somehow no one ever goes to jail

for stealing billions of dollars, where Joe Schmuck gets hard time for a lid of weed.

[Hell Hath No Fury]

5. It's all about the settlements --

If these things are "settled", criminal charges rarely, if ever, follow. That's the whole point. Thankfully a few State AGs are not going to stand for these settlements and are, instead, opening investigations.