mortgages – Overlawyered

Discrimination law roundup

Walter Olson — Mon, 07 Oct 2019 10:01:45 +0000

Supreme Court reconvenes for new term and tomorrow will hear cases over whether Title VII ban on sex discrimination extends to sexual orientation and gender identity [SCOTUSBlog symposium with contributors including Richard Epstein, William Eskridge; Will Baude, Volokh Conspiracy; George Will; earlier here, here, here, etc.]
New York City Commission on Human Rights declares it a violation of anti-discrimination law to use the term “illegal alien” in workplace, rental, or public accommodation contexts “with the intent to demean, humiliate, or offend a person or persons.” Does it complicate matters that both federal law and the U.S. Supreme Court use “illegal alien” as a neutral descriptive? [Hans Bader]
Minneapolis passes law restricting landlords’ taking into account of tenants’ past criminal histories, evictions, credit scores [Christian Britschgi, Reason]
Obama-era Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) mandated burdensome pay data reporting by employers. Will courts allow a course correction? [Federalist Society teleforum with G. Roger King and James A. Paretti Jr., earlier here and here]
Professor who directs social justice center at Washington, D.C.’s American University proposes new federal Department of Anti-Racism that would wield ample power to order everyone around along with preclearance authority over all “local, state and federal public policies”; also “no political appointees” [Politico via Amy Alkon; Kelefa Sanneh, The New Yorker with more on work of Prof. Ibram X. Kendi]
Late in its tenure, Obama administration began warning Fannie Mae that discouraging some of the riskiest mortgages (>43% debt-to-income) “could be seen as a violation of the Fair Housing Act.” Fannie and Freddie “quickly complied” and brought the punch bowl back out [Damian Paletta, Washington Post/MSN]

Tags: discrimination law, EEOC, immigration law, landlord tenant law, Minnesota, mortgages, NYC, sexual orientation, transgender

Discrimination law roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Banking and finance roundup

Walter Olson — Fri, 14 Jun 2019 10:05:26 +0000

Advice to Mark Calabria, newly installed as head of the Federal Housing Finance Administration, or FHFA [Arnold Kling; more on what to do with Fannie and Freddie]
Bad blood between Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren on consumer bankruptcy issue goes back decades [Matthew Yglesias, Vox]
“Financial planning websites consistently emphasize paying off revolving high-interest debt before saving for retirement (unless a company offers a match rate).” But state-mandated auto-IRAs nudge workers the other way [Aaron Yelowitz, Cato, earlier]
Competition for incorporation: “Nevada adopts fee-shifting: Should Delaware worry?” [Stephen Bainbridge]
“The True Winners and Losers of Financial Regulation” [Diego Zuluaga] Fed vs. narrow banks [John Cochrane, more]
FATCA was the bad fairy’s curse at the royal baby shower: “Welcome to Tax Hell, Little Earl of Sussex” [Suzanne Lucas, earlier]

Tags: bankruptcy, banks, Delaware, FATCA, loser pays, mortgages, Nevada

Banking and finance roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

A case of mortgage discrimination? Look more closely

Walter Olson — Sat, 20 Apr 2019 13:58:50 +0000

NBC picked up and ran with a study it said showed same-sex couples face mortgage discrimination — except that the study showed no such thing. My new Cato post explains.

Tags: discrimination law, mortgages, sexual orientation

A case of mortgage discrimination? Look more closely is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Banking and finance roundup

Walter Olson — Mon, 11 Mar 2019 09:59:00 +0000

Progressive sentiment vs. actual progress: Philadelphia bans cashless stores [Jeffrey Miron; related, Billy Binion, Reason (council member thinks city should legislate against “elitism”), Joe Setyon, Reason (NYC)] Meanwhile, heading in the opposite direction: “California bill would require businesses to offer e-receipts” [Don Thompson, Associated Press]
“Overhaul CRA? Why Not Eliminate It?” [Diego Zuluaga, American Banker; video of panel on CRA at Federalist Society National Lawyers Convention with Bert Ely, Deepak Gupta, Keith Noreika, and Jesse Van Tol, moderated by Hon. Joan Larsen]
SEC should see its role as fostering, not just reining in, risk taking [Cato audio with Commissioner Hester Peirce; more from Peirce, Cato Journal]
Your taxes pay for bad mortgage loans [Hans Bader]
“With Emulex Corp., Supreme Court Could Raise Bar for ‘Merger Tax’ Securities Suits” [Stephen Bainbridge, WLF; Emulex Corp. v. Varjabedian]
In car insurance, credit scores “effectively predict risk of claims within racial and ethnic groups” and banning their use would likely “result in insurers finding other, less good and possibly discriminatory methods of distinguishing high from low risks” [Luke Froeb, Managerial Econ via Alex Tabarrok]

Tags: banks, debtor-creditor law, mortgages, Securities and Exchange Commission, securities litigation

Banking and finance roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Banking and finance roundup

Walter Olson — Tue, 05 Jun 2018 09:57:36 +0000

Dodd-Frank “rollback” nips around the edges only [Victoria Guida and Zachary Warmbrodt, Politico, Diego Zuluaga, Cato] Study on law’s impact on small businesses and banks [Michael D. Bordo and John V. Duca, NBER via Tyler Cowen]
“In Defense of Cash: Around the world, governments are trying to kill paper money. It’s a terrible idea.” [William J. Luther, Reason]
U.S. Department of Labor: shareholder resolutions demanding environmental, social, or corporate governance changes can run counter to best interest of investors, and sponsors should not pretend otherwise in weighing fiduciary duty [Ike Brannon, Cato] “Corporate social responsibility” is not politically neutral [Stephen Bainbridge] More: Burchell Wilson, Economics 21;
How to improve the CFPB, assuming that abolishing it isn’t on the agenda [Diego Zuluaga, The Hill]
Lingering federal prohibitions doom state-legal cannabis to the plight of an unbanked industry [documentary screening and video of Cato panel with Matt Wood, Julie A. Hill, John Hudak, Jeffrey Miron, and George Selgin]
“Mortgage Interest Deduction Reform Worked; Sky Isn’t Falling” [Vanessa Brown Calder, Cato]

Tags: CFPB, corporate governance, Dodd-Frank, illegal drugs, mortgages

Banking and finance roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Banking and finance roundup

Walter Olson — Tue, 06 Mar 2018 10:49:03 +0000

SCOTUS by 9-0, Ginsburg writing, agrees with Cato amicus (and disagrees with Sen. Grassley amicus) that Dodd-Frank doesn’t cover “whistleblowers” who never told the SEC [Digital Realty Trust v. Somers: Ilya Shapiro/Harvard Law Review, Joel Nolette/Least Dangerous Blog, earlier]
Claim: “rolling back bank regulations is a good way to trigger a financial meltdown.” How much truth in that? [George Selgin, Cato]
Crosstown hypocrisy: a closer look at the cities who tell judges and bond investors as needed that their infrastructure will or won’t face future destruction owing to climate change [Dan Walters, CalMatters; Jay Newman, Wall Street Journal, earlier]
Mortgage systems in Canada, Germany appear to operate with less risk and lower default rates. Would Americans accept the trade-offs? [Arnold Kling]
Tag-along private suits following regulatory action, familiar in US courts, now crop up in Australia [Kevin LaCroix]
Regrettable Lovenheim ruling turned liberal shareholder groups into boardroom players [Prof. Bainbridge] The law of corporate social responsibility and shareholder accountability [same]

Tags: Australia, banks, climate change, corporate governance, Dodd-Frank, mortgages, securities litigation, whistleblowers

Banking and finance roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Banking and finance roundup

Walter Olson — Mon, 13 Nov 2017 11:03:58 +0000

New research suggests “SEC rule intended to prevent conflicts of interest among staff has actually had the perverse effect of causing staff to profit from their knowledge as insiders of the SEC” [Thaya Brook Knight, Cato]
“Federal Prohibition Left California Cannabis Farmers Without Insurance or Banks When Wildfires Struck” [Christian Britschgi]
“Is Dodd-Frank/SOX reform dead?” [Stephen Bainbridge]
Trial lawyers and CFPB did little to correct Wells Fargo fake-account scandal [Ted Frank WSJ letter]
Study finds that more-cumbersome judicial foreclosure methods tend to correlate with tougher lending standards especially for poor; should constriction of home credit for poorer households be interpreted as a good? [Brian Feinstein, Chicago via CL&P]
A different way to encourage more prudent home lending practice, scale back FDIC coverage [Scott Sumner]

Tags: banks, Dodd-Frank, mortgages, Securities and Exchange Commission

Banking and finance roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Banking and finance roundup

Walter Olson — Fri, 14 Apr 2017 10:01:43 +0000

“The real-world impact of Dodd-Frank, stress tests and other regs” [M&T Bank slideshow, American Banker] “Six feet of new mortgage regulations help explain slower housing market” [Ira Stoll]
Will Trump administration allow banking for cannabis-related businesses? [Kevin Funnell]
“‘Sustainability Standards’ Open A Pandora’s Box Of Politically Correct Accounting” [Howard Husock and Jim Copland]
An assumption of complete transparency would take away “the reason for financial intermediation in the first place” [Arnold Kling]
Statutes of repose in securities actions are important in protecting interests on both sides [WLF on CalPERS v. ANZ Securities, Inc.]
Encrypted messaging services allow Wall Streeters to bypass all sorts of regulatory scrutiny and speak freely, can’t have that [Bloomberg]

Tags: accounting, Dodd-Frank, mortgages, securities litigation, Wall Street

Banking and finance roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Banking and finance roundup

Walter Olson — Fri, 27 Jan 2017 11:13:12 +0000

SEC in-house administrative law judges are unconstitutional, rules 10th Circuit, creating circuit split [ABA Journal, Jonathan Adler]
“Dear Sen. Warren: If we care to share our policy views, we’ll let you know. Otherwise MYOB. Signed – 33 firms” [Elizabeth Warren letter demanding to know what financial firms think of delay in Labor Department fiduciary rule, coverage WSJ/MarketWatch]
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s grab for more regulatory power over financial institutions would erode due process protections [New York Post quoting Mark Calabria]
“Supreme Court Probes Whether Miami Can Sue Banks Over Foreclosure Crisis” [Daniel Fisher, earlier on Bank of America v. Miami here, etc.] Arnold Kling’s prescriptions for getting the government out of the mortgage market;
Mini-symposium on the personal benefit standard for insider trading in the recent Supreme Court case of Salman v. U.S. [Bainbridge]
India’s devastating crackdown on cash [Cato Daily Podcast with Jim Dorn and Caleb Brown]

Tags: Andrew Cuomo, Elizabeth Warren, India, mortgages, Securities and Exchange Commission, Wall Street

Banking and finance roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

About that “Mnuchin’s bank foreclosed on widow over 27 cents” tale

Walter Olson — Fri, 20 Jan 2017 14:16:02 +0000

Last month Politico reported that Treasury Secretary nominee Steven Mnuchin’s bank “filed to take a 90-year-old woman’s house after a 27-cent payment error.” Ted Frank writes that four minutes of fact checking would have shown the story wrong. “A. Widow was never foreclosed on and never lost her home. B. It wasn’t Mnuchin’s bank that brought the suit….The story on its face made no sense. No court permits that kind of foreclosure, and banks lose money on the deal.” The story was widely spread in the media (CNN, Vanity Fair, The Hill) and popped up again at Mnuchin’s confirmation hearing for Treasury secretary.

Tags: mortgages, Ted Frank

About that “Mnuchin’s bank foreclosed on widow over 27 cents” tale is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system