Weekly Brief: BoA Sued; SCOTUS Shortlists; Fund Fights Argentina
The years since the 2007–2008 financial crisis have been marked with milestone settlements of claims against the major mortgage “aggregators” (sometimes also known as “investors” in the mortgage purchasing context), who then...more
On June 3, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), as conservator for the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac), filed a lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York...more
The SEC will vote today on what it’s calling Regulation Best Interest, “which says brokers can’t put their own paychecks ahead of a customer’s needs”—the more-industry-acceptable revision of an Obama-era fiduciary duty rule...more
Less than a day after the Journal reported that CBS and the Redstones are nearing a deal to resolve their many differences, we’ve learned that CBS chief Les Moonves—facing an investigation into alleged sexual harassment...more
Is the SEC officially on record with a warning about the viability of unregulated ICOs? It is. Is that stopping start-ups from creating and selling new virtual currencies at a torrid pace? It is not....more
The IRS isn’t waiting around for virtual currency to gain wider acceptance. No, it’s more than happy to go after Bitcoin users who have sought to use the virtual currency as a means of evading taxes....more
Investor plaintiffs won a big discovery battle with the US gov’t over its 2012 decision to seize Fannie & Freddie’s profits. Federal Claims Court Judge Margaret Sweeney has ruled that the government improperly invoked the...more
The Treasury Dept’s Office of Financial Research has found that money-market funds are increasingly entering into direct repurchase loans with large investors and insurers—another sign that “participants in short-term lending...more
Add another mega-settlement to the rapidly growing list of huge payouts by the nation’s largest banks to federal agencies. Wells Fargo reportedly has now agreed to pay the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), which oversees...more
As of June 30 of this year, Wells Fargo & Co., this nation’s largest mortgage lender, had received demands to repurchase $1.4 Billion out of the $343 billion of residential-mortgage loans Wells Fargo sold to Freddie Mac and...more