Fraud and the Subprime Mortgage Crisis


Book Description

Nguyen examines mortgage fraud as an inherent part of the subprime mortgage crisis. He traces the exponential growth of mortgage fraud to the loose underwriting standards, alternative loan products, and inadequate regulation and regulatory oversight of the subprime mortgage industry. He describes the various financial crimes constituting mortgage origination fraud, a form of fraud involving fraud for profit, fraud for property, and predatory lending. The accounts of mortgage frauds by industry insiders presented in this book provide a chilling view of the criminal implications of an unregulated financial industry. Nguyen proposes several broad recommendations highlighting the need to recognize the potential for insider fraud, enhance government regulation and oversight, tighten loan qualification requirements, and increase standards of underwriting.




Greed, Fraud and Ignorance


Book Description




House of Debt


Book Description

“A concise and powerful account of how the great recession happened and what should be done to avoid another one . . . well-argued and consistently informative.” —Wall Street Journal The Great American Recession of 2007-2009 resulted in the loss of eight million jobs and the loss of four million homes to foreclosures. Is it a coincidence that the United States witnessed a dramatic rise in household debt in the years before the recession—that the total amount of debt for American households doubled between 2000 and 2007 to $14 trillion? Definitely not. Armed with clear and powerful evidence, Atif Mian and Amir Sufi reveal in House of Debt how the Great Recession and Great Depression, as well as less dramatic periods of economic malaise, were caused by a large run-up in household debt followed by a significantly large drop in household spending. Though the banking crisis captured the public’s attention, Mian and Sufi argue strongly with actual data that current policy is too heavily biased toward protecting banks and creditors. Increasing the flow of credit, they show, is disastrously counterproductive when the fundamental problem is too much debt. As their research shows, excessive household debt leads to foreclosures, causing individuals to spend less and save more. Less spending means less demand for goods, followed by declines in production and huge job losses. How do we end such a cycle? With a direct attack on debt, say Mian and Sufi. We can be rid of painful bubble-and-bust episodes only if the financial system moves away from its reliance on inflexible debt contracts. As an example, they propose new mortgage contracts that are built on the principle of risk-sharing, a concept that would have prevented the housing bubble from emerging in the first place. Thoroughly grounded in compelling economic evidence, House of Debt offers convincing answers to some of the most important questions facing today’s economy: Why do severe recessions happen? Could we have prevented the Great Recession and its consequences? And what actions are needed to prevent such crises going forward?




Big Money Crime


Book Description

An in-depth scrutiny into the American savings and loan financial crisis in the 1980s. The authors come to conclusions about the deliberate nature of this financial fraud and the leniency of the criminal justice system on these 'Gucci-clad white-collar criminals'.




Confessions of a Subprime Lender


Book Description

Former subprime lender Richard Bitner once worked in an industry that started out helping disadvantaged customers but collapsed due to greed, lack of financial control and willful ignorance. In Confessions of a Subprime Lender: An Insider's Tale of Greed, Fraud, and Ignorance, he reveals the truth about how the subprime lending business spiraled out of control, pushed home prices to unsustainable levels, and turned unqualified applicants into qualified borrowers through creative financing. Learn about the ways the mortgage industry can be fixed with his twenty suggestions for critical change.




Corporate Fraud and Corruption


Book Description

Recent large-scale corporate collapses, such as Lehman Brothers, Enron, Worldcom, and Parmalat, highlight the implosion of traditional models of fraud prevention. By focusing on risk factors at the micro level, they have failed to take into account the broader context in which external auditors operate as well as the crucial importance of such factors as corruption, organizational culture, corporate social responsibility, ethical values, governance, ineffective regulation, and a lack of transparency. Corporate Fraud and Corruption engages readers by showing how evidence-based, multi-level micro and macro analysis of fraud risk and protective factors inform effective fraud prevention, in turn minimizing financial catastrophes. Krambia-Kapardis focuses on her own empirical research into the aetiology of fraud to showcase a holistic approach to fraud prevention. This book also features major case studies from the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia.




Fraud in the Markets


Book Description

A dramatic look at fraud's role in our financial markets-and how you can protect yourself Fraud In the Markets reveals the critical role fraud played in the global financial crisis-even as many of the perpetrators continue to go unpunished. Shedding light on the reckless conduct of the former senior executives at major Wall Street firms such as Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch and others just before their collapse, this timely book shows how the culture of "anything goes" on Wall Street fueled the innovation of exotic but deadly asset-backed securities. A frank insider look at the most dramatic economic and business headlines in recent memory, you will find revealing discussion of The egregiously fraudulent lending practices that engulfed the entire US mortgage industry The brazenly deceptive marketing of asset-backed securities A road map to prevent similar disasters from recurring Fraud in the Markets offers forward-looking advice, with practical guidelines for protecting yourself and your company from various forms of fraud that were found to have played a role in the current economic and financial crisis.




The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report


Book Description

The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report, published by the U.S. Government and the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission in early 2011, is the official government report on the United States financial collapse and the review of major financial institutions that bankrupted and failed, or would have without help from the government. The commission and the report were implemented after Congress passed an act in 2009 to review and prevent fraudulent activity. The report details, among other things, the periods before, during, and after the crisis, what led up to it, and analyses of subprime mortgage lending, credit expansion and banking policies, the collapse of companies like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the federal bailouts of Lehman and AIG. It also discusses the aftermath of the fallout and our current state. This report should be of interest to anyone concerned about the financial situation in the U.S. and around the world.THE FINANCIAL CRISIS INQUIRY COMMISSION is an independent, bi-partisan, government-appointed panel of 10 people that was created to "examine the causes, domestic and global, of the current financial and economic crisis in the United States." It was established as part of the Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act of 2009. The commission consisted of private citizens with expertise in economics and finance, banking, housing, market regulation, and consumer protection. They examined and reported on "the collapse of major financial institutions that failed or would have failed if not for exceptional assistance from the government."News Dissector DANNY SCHECHTER is a journalist, blogger and filmmaker. He has been reporting on economic crises since the 1980's when he was with ABC News. His film In Debt We Trust warned of the economic meltdown in 2006. He has since written three books on the subject including Plunder: Investigating Our Economic Calamity (Cosimo Books, 2008), and The Crime Of Our Time: Why Wall Street Is Not Too Big to Jail (Disinfo Books, 2011), a companion to his latest film Plunder The Crime Of Our Time. He can be reached online at www.newsdissector.com.




Understanding the Securitization of Subprime Mortgage Credit


Book Description

Provides an overview of the subprime mortgage securitization process and the seven key informational frictions that arise. Discusses the ways that market participants work to minimize these frictions and speculate on how this process broke down. Continues with a complete picture of the subprime borrower and the subprime loan, discussing both predatory borrowing and predatory lending. Presents the key structural features of a typical subprime securitization, documents how rating agencies assign credit ratings to mortgage-backed securities, and outlines how these agencies monitor the performance of mortgage pools over time. The authors draw upon the example of a mortgage pool securitized by New Century Financial during 2006. Illustrations.




Chain of Title


Book Description

In the depths of the Great Recession, a cancer nurse, a car dealership worker, and an insurance fraud specialist helped uncover the largest consumer crime in American history—a scandal that implicated dozens of major executives on Wall Street. They called it foreclosure fraud: millions of families were kicked out of their homes based on false evidence by mortgage companies that had no legal right to foreclose. Lisa Epstein, Michael Redman, and Lynn Szymoniak did not work in government or law enforcement. They had no history of anticorporate activism. Instead they were all foreclosure victims, and while struggling with their shame and isolation they committed a revolutionary act: closely reading their mortgage documents, discovering the deceit behind them, and building a movement to expose it. Fiscal Times columnist David Dayen recounts how these ordinary Floridians challenged the most powerful institutions in America armed only with the truth—and for a brief moment they brought the corrupt financial industry to its knees.