HARMAN, DREIER “InDY ACT” PROVIDES RETROACTIVE PROTECTION FOR INDYMAC DEPOSITORS Congressional Desk

American Chronicle echoes the same message about the Press release on behalf of Congresswoman Harman and Congressman Dreier.

A couple of nice quotes here:
“Our bill will restore to IndyMac customers what they suddenly lost in July 2008, and treat them as equals to other Americans whose savings were swallowed by the economic crisis,” said Harman. “Congress can make these people whole again. We have spent a trillion dollars bailing out Wall Street, the auto industry and banks. It´s time for more help for Main Street.”

“Seeking fairness for former IndyMac depositors has been a priority since the bank´s takeover in the summer of 2008,” Dreier said. “Their losses were no less difficult and no less tragic than those that occurred later that same year. It is only fair that the families and small business owners who kept their savings with IndyMac receive the same protection as those who lost funds at other financial institutions but were covered by the higher deposit insurance amount.”

To read the American Chronicle article, Click Here.

Indymac depositors get another shot at retroactive deposit insurance

Ryan Carter
Posted: 05/27/2010 04:23:20 PM PDT

Local lawmakers Thursday introduced an amendment to financial reform that would allow depositors at failed Pasadena-based Indymac Bank to recoup a collective $233 million in lost savings.

The amendment, called the Indy Act, would make a federal deposit insurance cap of $250,000 retroactive to the time IndyMac failed in July of 2008. At the time, deposit insurance was set for deposits up to $100,000. But as the financial crisis grew Congress only a few months later approved the heightened cap.

But the cap did not extend to institutions that failed before October 2008.

“The whole thing is about fairness,” said Rep. David Dreier, R-San Dimas, who along with Rep. Jane Harman, D-Venice, introduced the bill Thursday.

Read more: http://www.pasadenastarnews.com/news/ci_15176568#ixzz0pCo8I9Re

Thrifts post 1Q net income of $1.82B, By MARCY GORDON The Associated Press Monday, May 24, 2010; 7:29 PM

A glimpse of this article:

Many lawmakers and consumer advocates have criticized the OTS for what they say was lax oversight of the thrift industry in the run-up to the financial crisis. The previous OTS director, Scott Polakoff, was put on leave pending an investigation into improper backdating of cash infusions at six thrifts including IndyMac. He later left the government. Sweeping legislation to overhaul financial regulations that passed the Senate last week calls for abolishing the OTS.

To read more of this Washington Post article, Click Here.

Bankers jailed, sued as Iceland seeks culprits for crisis May 12 01:44 PM US/Eastern

More than a year and a half after Iceland’s major banks failed, all but sinking the country’s economy, police have begun rounding up a number of top bankers while other former executives and owners face a two-billion-dollar lawsuit.

Since Iceland’s three largest banks — Kaupthing, Landsbanki and Glitnir — collapsed in late 2008, their former executives and owners have largely been living untroubled lives abroad. Maybe the US will be next? or will we just dole out more TARP funds for Banker’s bonuses?

To read the full story, Click Here!

Mortgage Meltdown: How Banks Silenced Whistleblowers In-House Investigators at Banks Say Company Officials Ignored Their Warnings About Fraud

Amid the frenzy of the nation’s mortgage boom, the back-of-the-hand treatment that Parmer describes wasn’t out of the ordinary. Parmer was one of a small band of in-house gumshoes at various financial institutions who uncovered evidence of corruption in the mortgage business—including made-up addresses, pyramid schemes, and organized criminal rings—and tried to warn their employers that this wave of fraud threatened consumers as well as the stability of the financial system. Instead of heeding their warnings, they say, company officials ignored them, harassed them, demoted them, or fired them.

In interviews and in court records, 10 former fraud investigators at seven of the nation’s biggest banks and lenders—including Wells Fargo (WFC), IndyMac Bank, and Countrywide Financial—describe corporate cultures that allowed fraud to thrive in the pursuit of loan volume and market share. Mortgage salesmen stuck homeowners into loans they couldn’t afford by exaggerating borrowers’ assets and, in some cases, forging their signatures on disclosure documents. In other instances, banks opened their vaults to professional fraudsters who arranged millions of dollars in loans using “straw buyers,” bogus identities, or, in a few instances, dead people’s names and Social Security numbers. To read the full story of fraud encounters: Click Here