Matt Taibbi on how foreclosure courts are helping big banks screw over homeowners 
The foreclosure  lawyers down in Jacksonville had warned me, but I was skeptical. They told me the state of Florida had created a special super-high-speed housing court with a specific mandate to rubber-stamp the legally dicey foreclosures by corporate mortgage pushers like Deutsche Bank and JP Morgan Chase. This "rocket docket," as it is called in town, is presided over by retired judges who seem to have no clue about the insanely complex financial instruments they are ruling on — securitized mortgages and laby­rinthine derivative deals of a type that didn't even exist when most of them were active members of the bench. Their stated mission isn't to decide right and wrong, but to clear cases and blast human beings out of their homes with ultimate velocity. They certainly have no incentive to penetrate the profound criminal mysteries of the great American mortgage bubble of the 2000s, perhaps the most complex Ponzi scheme in human history — an epic mountain range of corporate fraud in which Wall Street megabanks conspired first to collect huge numbers of subprime mortgages, then to unload them on unsuspecting third parties like pensions, trade unions and insurance companies (and, ultimately, you and me, as taxpayers) in the guise of AAA-rated investments.

Alleges: "Junk Justice" System And Mortgage Fraud
Queens Homeowner Fights To Hold Onto Home Stolen In Deed Theft Scheme.  Sunny Shue, died Saturday June 26, 2010. In Queens County, New York, The Black Star News reports on the story of Sun-Ming Sheu, a local resident and immigrant from Taiwan who had his home ripped off from out from under by scammers in 2001 in a straw buyer scam which utilized a forged power of attorney to complete a fraudulent trandfer of the title to the house. The scammers then obtained a mortgage against the home, failed to make the mortage payments, and Sheu has been fighting off a foreclosure ever since.

Florida Appeals Court Reverses Another Rubber Stamped Foreclosure
Banks need to show evidence they own and hold the mortgage on a home when asking judges to foreclose on a property, according to a ruling issued in the 4th District Court of Appeal In West Palm Beach on Wednesday.Foreclosure mill law firm] Shapiro & Fishman, one of four large Florida foreclosure law practices being investigated by the Florida attorney general for alleged inaccurate or false documents, is handling the Servedio case for US Bank. The firm could not be reached for comment Wednesday despite several attempts by phone and e-mail, but in the past has denied any wrongdoing.

Foreclosure Hearings Show Homeowners Who in Washington Cares
I know that even as I write this, no amount of proof or testimony from experts will stop seemingly sanctimonious, self-righteous ignoramuses from making comments about deadbeat homeowners who caused the entire economic meltdown because they simply didn't want to pay their bills.  Aside from being ignorant and baseless, the problem with those comments is that they rely on the rest of us assuming one of two things: 1.) That somehow millions of people woke up one morning and collectively decided to commit fraud using the most complex and intricate financial instruments invented, and 2.) Everyone woke up stupid.

Experts share solutions to solving the foreclosure mess
The federal government just reported that 4.2 million homeowners are "seriously delinquent" on their mortgages and some 10.9 million borrowers are underwater, meaning their loans exceed the value of their homes.  To make matters worse, there is the threat of protracted litigation between banks and borrowers because lenders might not have followed the letter of law in processing foreclosure paperwork.  An even bigger source of worry is the $426 billion in so-called second liens — home equity loans, second mortgages and other loans "junior" to the primary mortgage — that sit on the balance sheets of Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo and Citigroup...  Add it all up and there's the potential for the U.S. housing market to languish in a stupor for years to come. As bleak as all that might sound, there could be a way out — one that doesn't involve another government bailout.

Walking away with less
...deal is called a short sale, and it's sweeping the country. In these deals, a lender allows a troubled borrower to sell a home for less than what's owed on the mortgage. Completed short sales have more than tripled since 2008, and 400,000 of these deals are projected to close this year, according to mortgage research firm CoreLogic. The giant mortgage financier Fannie Mae approved short sales on 36,534 home loans it owned in the first half of the year, nearly triple the number in 2007 and 2008 combined. Freddie Mac, its sister company, approved 22,117 in the first half of 2010, up from a mere 94 in the first half of 2007.

Conn., Calif. join probe of Ally
Attorneys general in Connecticut and California ordered Ally Financial's GMAC mortgage unit to freeze all foreclosures within their borders, joining a growing list of states investigating whether the firm and other lenders improperly kicked people out of their homes. Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal on Monday accused Ally of using "defective foreclosure documents" in its filings and said he ordered the moratorium "to forestall horrendous, illegal harm against homeowners." California Attorney General Edmund G. Brown Jr. on Friday called Ally's document review process a "sham."

Some Harris County Habitat for Humanity homeowners face foreclosure
Skyrocketing escrow fees and escalating mortgage payments have some low-income homeowners pointing a finger of blame at a Harris County chapter of Habitat for Humanity. Residents of the Cherie Cove subdivision in northwest Harris County blame the nonprofit agency for creating conditions that could force some families out of their homes.

Some Houston Habitat for Humanity homeowners face foreclosure
HOUSTON—Skyrocketing escrow fees and escalating mortgage payments have some low-income homeowners pointing a finger of blame at Habitat for Humanity. Residents of the Cherie Cove subdivision in northwest Harris County blame the nonprofit agency for creating conditions that could force some families out of their homes.

Executives with criminal records slip through FHA crackdown, documents show
A crackdown on reckless mortgage lenders by the Federal Housing Administration has failed to root out several executives with criminal records whose firms continue to do business with the agency in violation of federal law, according to government documents, court records and interviews. The get-tough campaign has also been hamstrung because, even when the FHA can ban mortgage companies for wrongdoing or an excessive default rate, the agency does not have the legal power to stop their executives from landing jobs at other lenders, or open new firms.