Senate Passes Amendment to Stop Contractors From Forcing Employees into Arbitration
Jamie Leigh Jones was a 20-year-old young woman working her fourth day on the job in Baghdad for contractor Halliburton/KBR in 2005, when she says she was drugged and gang-raped by seven U.S contractors and held captive by two KBR guards in a shipping container. But more than four years after the alleged crimes occurred, Jones is still waiting for her day in court because when she signed her employment contract, she lost her rights to a jury trial and, instead, was forced into having her claims decided through secret, binding arbitration.

House Pushes Ahead on Financial-Rules Overhaul
The House of Representatives will consider sweeping legislation rewriting the financial sector's rule book in November, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D., Md.), said Tuesday, boosting the chances that Congress will complete a regulatory overhaul this year.  Mr. Hoyer said the House Financial Services Committee would complete its work on legislation this month, and a wider debate on the House floor would occur next month. Many observers have increasingly said that it was unlikely the broad rewrite of financial regulations would be completed this year, in part because health-care legislation has taken longer to work through Congress than the Democratic majority had anticipated.

U.S. Senate Roll Call Votes 111^th Congress - 1^st Session
To prohibit the use of funds for any Federal contract with Halliburton Company, KBR, Inc., any of their subsidiaries or affiliates, or any other contracting party if such contractor or a subcontractor at any tier under such contract requires that employees or independent contractors sign mandatory arbitration clauses regarding certain claims..This would  prohibit mandatory arbitration clauses such as the Halliburton Company, KBR, Inc., contract that was so devastating to Jamie Leigh Jones who was gang raped by the company employees. See bill...

State Regulators to Congress: End Mandatory Arbitration
Congress should prohibit mandatory, industry-run securities arbitration, and instead “offer a meaningful choice between binding arbitration and civil litigation,” a leading state regulator told a Congressional panel today. Speaking at a hearing of the House Financial Services Committee on capital markets regulatory reform, Texas Securities Commissioner Denise V. Crawford, president of the North American Securities Administrators Assn. (NASAA), said that NASAA, a group of state regulators, believes the take-it-or-leave-it clause in brokerage contracts is “inherently unfair to investors,” and that Congress “should prohibit the mandatory natures of securities arbitration.” Instead, she said, the choice between binding arbitration and civil litigation “should be solely that of the investor.”

D.R. HORTON SUED BY EEOC FOR DISABILITY DISCRIMINATION
D.R. Horton home builder and land developer which identifies itself as the nation's largest home builder refused to accommodate an employee's pregnancy-related disability and unlawfully fired her because of it, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) charged in a lawsuit filed today.

Ruling by judges rattles mortgage industry
Law and custom have long required that property transactions be recorded with a county clerk or “recorder of deeds,” along with information about the person who holds the mortgage...Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, set up a company that would do it all electronically. It is called Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems (MERS)...Once people started defaulting on loans, MERS would announce the default on behalf of its bank clients. Consumer activists and attorneys for homeowners began questioning whether MERS, which represents banks but has no direct financial interest in the loans, could legally trigger foreclosure, but judges were generally not sympathetic to the argument.

GRETCHEN MORGENSON:The Mortgage Machine Backfires
The opinion spotlights a crucial but obscure cog in the nation’s lending machinery: a privately owned loan tracking service known as the Mortgage Electronic Registration System. This registry, created in 1997 to improve profits and efficiency among lenders, eliminates the need to record changes in property ownership in local land records... Dotting i’s and crossing t’s can be a costly bore, of course. And eliminating the need to record mortgage assignments helped keep the lending machine humming during the boom... In April 2006, Mr. Kesler filed for bankruptcy. That July, Landmark National Bank foreclosed. It did not notify either MERS or Sovereign of the proceedings, and in October, the court overseeing the matter ordered the property sold. It fetched $87,000 and Landmark received what it was owed. Mr. Kesler kept the rest; Sovereign received nothing.

Why We Need Robust Consumer Financial Protection
This morning I testified before the House Financial Services Committee to support the creation of a robust new Consumer Financial Protection Agency.  Our current system of consumer protection fails to protect Americans of all races and backgrounds from the most basic exploitation and abuses that can cost individuals and families hundreds of thousands of dollars, and even their homes. Current laws and enforcement allow a range of institutions to escape supervision because responsibilityfor consumer protection is fragmented across too many regulators. Too many finance companies are not regulated at all at the Federal level.

Homebuilder KB Home loses $66M in fiscal 3rd-qtr
KB Home set out to compete with foreclosures last year by building smaller, more affordable homes, and the homebuilder’s decision is paying off. The company said Friday it cut its third-quarter loss as new home orders surged 62 percent from a year earlier and its cheaper-to-build Open Series homes helped bring down costs...the average selling price of its homes fell 15 percent.

Warranty Week: New Home Warranties
One CEO recently said the worst of this cycle may be behind us. In terms of sales decreases and price declines, maybe so. But in terms of warranty costs, the worst is right now, as builders have less cash to pay for warranty work on units they sold at the end of the boom years. And then there's the question of how costly the defective Chinese drywall will turn out to be to replace. At least two homebuilders -- KB Home and Beazer Homes -- made houses in 2006 and 2007 that were apparently built so well that the companies found it appropriate to make absolutely no accruals at all during certain periods. In other words, their financial accountants must have predicted that some of their homes were so well-built that they would need no warranty work at all. The very next quarter, accruals sprang back to levels of $2,000 or more per home, but the companies were just as silent about these apparent quality reversals as they were about their flawless predecessors.

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DOW JONES NEWSWIRES: Builder KB Home: About 140 Homes Affected By Chinese Drywall
NEW YORK -(Dow Jones)- Builder KB Home (KBH) has identified about 140 homes, primarily in Florida, affected by Chinese drywall, executives said in an earnings conference call Friday. The Los Angeles-based builder estimates a repair cost of about $10 million, and it took a $6 million charge in the third quarter to increase its warranty liability. Builders have been disclosing their exposure to allegedly defective drywall - also known as wallboard - imported from China during the housing boom. A growing number of homeowners complain that it generates sulfurous odors and corrosion. The complaints have led to continuing investigations by several government agencies. Earlier Friday, KB Home said that, for the quarter ended Aug. 31, it lost $66 million, or 87 cents a share, compared with a prior-year loss of $144.7 million, or $1.87 a share. Shares of KB Home recently were down 7.44% at $17.16 in a broad market downturn.  

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A message from Janet Ahmad: Taxpayers Stimulus at Work, the Magic Kindom of Mortage Gifts and Promises

The Magic Mortgage Kingdom of KB Home - KB Home Offers a Magical Gift for Homebuyers
Like Disney magic KB Home defies its many critics with more of its same old lending gimmicks that left families with toxic mortgages and homeless.  Not too long ago HUD recommended shutting down builders subsidiary lending institutions like KB Mortgage; in fact HUD imposed negligible fines for massive loan irregularities.  Confident builders responded by filing a lawsuit against HUD.  Today HUD has backed off and KB Home boldly, if not playfully leads the pack amongst homebuilders and freely continues the same practices that contributed to the nation’s worst financial meltdown in history.  Together with the National Association of Home Building (NAHB) KB helped cleverly craft an $11 million Federal Taxpayer Stimulus through USDA a no-money-down, no PMI, contingent upon using builders’ affiliates like the death-defying KB Mortgage.  Related articles: Stimulus Tax Dollars At Work for KB Home

New Community Website - Cracked Houses.com - D.R. Horton & Vision Homes
Why have numerous D.R. Horton and Vision Homes foundations failed in so many of our beautifully designed Huffines Signature Community of Savannah Texas? Why have several D.R. Horton and Vision Home owners experienced water intrusion problems? Why have so many of us experienced this in the first, second and third years after moving into our new homes? Why have so many of us have experienced the same problems more than once after being supposedly 'fixed' by our builders? Read more...

Local homeowners accuse builders of deceptive trade
Bill and Connie Consentino thought they were getting a good deal on a Pulte home in the age-restricted Solera community in Anthem. The incentive package for financing through the builder's mortgage lender included free upgrades, new appliances, landscaping and payment of Local Improvement Districts, or money used to pay for neighborhood infrastructure. The complaints call attention to sales and lending practices of some of the nation's largest public homebuilders, including Pulte Homes, KB Home and Lennar Homes, and their affiliated mortgage companies, Alliance spokeswoman Denise Martin said.