TOP 100 NEWS SITES
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| Titian's 'Diana and Actaeon' Comes to Atlanta "Diana and Actaeon" comes to Atlanta's High Museum of Art. online.wsj.com |
Robo-signing eviction scandal rattles Wall Street Bank shares fall over concerns US watchdogs will decide thousands of Americans have been evicted unfairly by employees rubber-stamping repossession documentsFears US regulators will rule that thousands of Americans may have been unfairly evicted from their homes rattled Wall Street today as the scandal over the use of "robo-signers" escalated.Employees at mortgage firms are alleged to have rubber-stamped documents to force out defaulting homeowners without following the correct procedures.Shares in Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo and JP Morgan all fell sharply after it emerged that Xee Moua, an employee at Wells Fargo, the second-largest US mortgage servicer, had pushed through 500 foreclosures a day.The growing scandal over the way homeowners have been evicted came as property data firm RealtyTrac reported that the number of houses seized by banks topped 100,000 for the first time in September. Lenders took possession of 102,134 properties in September. The state with the highest rate was Nevada."Lenders foreclosed on a record number of properties in September and in the third quarter, taking a bite out of the backlog of distressed properties where the foreclosure process was delayed by prevention efforts over the past 20 months," said James Saccacio, chief executive of RealtyTrac.However, Saccacio expected the number of repossessions to slow in October, because of the moratorium some lenders have imposed while they investigate whether they followed procedures correctly.Bank of America, JP Morgan and GMAC are among those to have halted foreclosures after discovering that "robo-signers" had approved thousands documents. At JP Morgan, the staff were known as "Burger King kids" – people who walked in from the street and barely knew what a mortgage was.Attorney generals in 50 American states this week began a joint investigation and have warned that they believed the use of robo-signers "may constitute a deceptive act and/or an unfair practice or otherwise violate state laws".JP Morgan's chief executive, Jamie Dimon, admitted this week that banks could face penalties for their foreclosure practices, while defending JP Morgan's conduct: "We don't think there are cases where people have been evicted … where they shouldn't have been."Court documents reportedly show that Moua, a vice-president of loan documentation for Wells Fargo, said she had signed as many as 500 foreclosure papers a day. In a sworn deposition she admitted she did not verify the principal and interest the bank claimed the borrower owed. The only thing she checked was whether her name and title were accurate. She said she thought the documents had been reviewed by outside lawyers.US housing and sub-prime crisisWells FargoBankingUnited StatesJulia KolleweJill Treanorguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Shots hit Pentagon; Police label it 'random event' By PAULINE JELINEK 2010-10-19T16:52:26ZWASHINGTON (AP) -- Someone fired shots at the Pentagon early Tuesday in what security officials described as "a random event."... hosted.ap.org |
Turkey Arraigns al Qaeda Suspect A Turkish court arraigned an al Qaeda suspect found with software designed to help shoot down Heron drones operating in Afghanistan. online.wsj.com |
George Bush to Mark Zuckerberg: you know what it's like to be a president The former US leader and the Facebook boss compared notes in an hour-long talk and decided they had much in commonWhat does Mark Zuckerberg, the creator and president of Facebook, have in common with that other president, George Bush? Quite a lot, apparently.At least, Bush seems to thinks so. He spent an hour in discussion with Zuckerberg in a Facebook interview streamed live from Palo Alto on Monday night, comparing his time in the White House with Zuckerberg's leadership of the social networking site.They both, Bush said, had had to make quick and difficult decisions based on common sense. They both shared a passion for education, which Zuckerberg has recently embraced, donating $100m (£64m) to state schools in Newark, New Jersey.And they had both faced harsh criticism. "There's a lot of criticism about. You know what I'm talking about?" Bush said, looking Zuckerberg straight in the face.The Facebook chief executive has been attacked for his policies on privacy and received a less than flattering portrayal in the film Social Networking. "We haven't had criticism on the scale of a president, but we've had some," Zuckerberg said.Bush, dressed in a casual shirt and jacket and minus a tie, got brownie points among the techy audience for saying, after he left the White House, "I became a Blackberry person, and now I'm an iPad person."He also endeared himself by saying that he used Facebook to keep in touch with former administration colleagues, though he rather ruined the effect by calling it "the Facebook", seemingly unaware that Zuckerberg dropped the "the" in 2005.Bush needled Zuckerberg over his failure to complete his computer science course at Harvard. For his part, Zuckerberg heaped praise on his fellow president. "It's one of the things I've always admired about you," he said to Bush. "You've always stuck by your principles and pushed through."Bush also gave an impassioned statement against official leaks during the interview. He said leaks were "very damaging and people who leaked ought to be prosecuted".He added that the latest Wikileaks action would make it hard for the US to keep the trust of foreign leaders. "When you have a conversation with a foreign leader and it ends up in a newspaper they don't like it, and I didn't like it. A lot of these relationships depend on trust."George BushMark ZuckerbergFacebookUnited StatesInternetSocial networkingEd Pilkingtonguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |