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Fines and “Resolving this Mess”

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Yves does a thorough smackdown on the departing Michael Barr’s description of all the things the government is going to get to the bottom of the foreclosure fraud problem, noting that the foreclosure task force simply isn’t investigating the problem in enough detail to understand, much less solve, the problem.

But I wanted to look just at Barr’s language, both in his interview with Felix Salmon and in his presentation to the Financial Stability Oversight Council yesterday. Here are the five things he described as the key focus of the Foreclosure Working Group:

  1. Determining the scope of problems
  2. Holding the banks accountable for fixing these problems
  3. Making sure individuals who have been harmed are given redress and that firms pay penalties where appropriate for their actions
  4. Getting the mortgage servicing industry to do a better job for households in financial difficulty by providing alternatives to foreclosure
  5. Acting in a coordinated and comprehensive way to hold the firms accountable, bring clarity and certainty, and help households

Note, already, the choice of language here. The working group will “hold the banks accountable … for fixing these problems.” The firms will “pay penalties where appropriate for their actions.”

Barr uses the language the federal government has been consistently using since the scope of this problem became widely clear, in which the government envisions “holding banks accountable” by forcing them to operate effectively going forward, while making right the crimes of the past. Nowhere, in his presentation to the FSOC at least, does Barr envision holding the people who committed fraud accountable. In fact, there’s a lovely detail at 7:54 where Barr describes that the process is designed to assess whether affidavits and claims “are accurate.” Now, the government learned sometime since May–six months ago now–that they are not. But they have not yet prosecuted anyone for fraud. Which leads me to believe that when Barr says “assess whether affidavits are accurate,” he means, “assess whether they accurately reflect the state of the loan,” and not whether “the claims made by robo-signers are in fact true.”

And besides, how in hell could the government give those who have been harmed redress if the government is only reviewing a select subset of the loan files? Is the government going to provide everyone who believes they were screwed some legal aid to prove their claim?

Now compare what the soon-to-be-gone Barr told the FSOC in its kabuki public session with what he told Salmon.

And keeping everything coordinated is the new Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force which has been put together under the leadership of Justice’s Tom Perrelli.“Why are we investing these resources and including Tom Perelli in the discussions?” asked Barr. “We’re holding the banks accountable to fix it.” I asked him whether he thought that was even possible. “Their conduct suggests they can’t,” he said, adding that “they can be held accountable for not following the law. HUD can assess significant fines on them.”

Barr was clear about what he expected to happen in 2011. Specifically, he said, “if there are legal violations found, banks are responsible for fixing them and for addressing the problems.” And more generally, the government’s actions “will increase the chance that when foreclosures happen, they will happen according to established law.”

After listing all the investigating going on, Barr stresses they’re coordinating with DOJ’s Financial Fraud Task Force. Why are they including the FFTF (which, btw, seems to focus primarily on origination fraud)? As a way, Barr explains, “to hold the banks accountable to fix it”–echoing that same formula of holding banks accountable to fix problems, but not to be prosecuted for committing fraud. Now jump ahead to where Barr describes how they can be held accountable: “they can be held accountable for not following the law. HUD can assess significant fines on them.” Let me repeat, again, that HUD has been aware of the foreclosure problems since around May and has thus far levied no fines. More importantly, note how (at least in Salmon’s presentation) Barr jumped from having DOJ hold the banks accountable to HUD doing so? Either Barr doesn’t believe DOJ has the power or the will to hold banks accountable and he reverts to fines as the magical way the federal government will holds the banks accountable. And the outcome of all this? To “increase the chance that when foreclosures happen, they will happen according to established law.” Not, “to make sure we restore the integrity of the property system,” but to increase the overall odds but not guarantee that when a family is thrown out of its home, they were done so legally.

Barr doesn’t even envision ending foreclosure fraud! He just envisions making it much less likely, shifting the odds somewhat from the stacked odds the banksters currently enjoy.

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FSOC’s 15 Minutes to Save the World

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As I noted, the Financial Stability Oversight Council is meeting today. As announced, they discussed foreclosure fraud and securitization.

For less than 15 minutes.

And then they moved on, without once raising the issue of whether or not the banks’ exposure due to securitization problems posed a systemic risk to our financial system.

As the first order of business in the public session (the Council had an hour of private business before the public session), the departing Michael Barr reviewed what the “foreclosure working group” was doing about the problem. He noted that there seemed to be problems, but described that onsite examiners were collecting information and would not be done doing that until the end of the year; they’d issue a substantive report in January. He did, however, say that there had been significant putbacks and he expected them to continue.

And that was it. Timmeh Geithner asked if anyone had questions. And no one did. No one asked, “What do you expect will happen between now and January?” No one asked, “Do you think this is systemic?” No one asked, “What kind of exposure are we talking about here? Are the banks insolvent?”

No one even pointed out that existing home sales were sliding again, at least partly because the banksters couldn’t sell their foreclosures and partly because consumers weren’t stupid enough to buy them. So no one mentioned that waiting until January may not be so smart, as nothing is getting fixed in the meantime.

Now perhaps they did ask these questions during the hour of private business before the cameras started rolling. Perhaps they spent the hour before we got to watch screaming “hair’s on fire, hair’s on fire, hair’s on fire,” before taking a sip of tea, and then performing a complete lack of concern about this. Perhaps they talked about how serious this might be before we were allowed to watch, not wanting to concern the markets (which are busy freaking out, in any case, about a run on Europe’s banks).

But the optics of it–this apparent lack of concern about the way the banks will postpone admitting to their own insolvency by degrading the private property system in this country at the expense of real people–suck. They sure provide zero confidence that the FSOC intends to do its job to prevent this from becoming a systemic crisis.

Update: Felix Salmon has a good article describing where Michael Barr thinks this is all going.

Me? I’m w/Salmon. This isn’t going to fix things. Note, particularly, that Barr (who is probably one of the more aggressive folks at Treasury on this, at least for the next two weeks) is still just talking about fines, not prison.

Michael Barr–Liaison on Foreclosure Fraud Investigation–Leaves Treasury

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Just one week ago, Iowa’s Attorney General Tom Miller told Chris Dodd that Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Financial Institutions Michael Barr was the key person from Treasury working with the Attorneys General investigation into foreclosure fraud.

Miller: We haven’t had any contact with the [Financial Stability Oversight Council]. We have had repeated contact with the Department of the Treasury, with Assistant Secretary Michael Barr and his staff. We’ve developed a terrific ongoing relationship with them. We talk about these issues and try and help and support each other on these issues. So we’ve had a lot of discussions with Treasury but not with that particular Council.

That’s funny. Because Barr is leaving Treasury. Imminently.

Diana Farrell, deputy director of President Barack Obama’s National Economic Council, and Assistant Treasury Secretary Michael Barr are leaving the administration, adding to the turnover in the ranks of the White House economic team that worked on the government’s response to the worst financial crisis in more than 70 years.

Farrell will leave by the end of the year and Barr’s last day at Treasury will be Dec. 3. Both played key roles in shaping Obama’s financial regulatory overhaul plan, which was signed into law in July.

[snip]

Treasury spokesman Steve Adamske said Barr would continue his academic career at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

(Note, Barr is not currently listed as teaching next semester.)

In addition to working with the Attorneys General “investigating” the banksters’ foreclosure fraud, Barr had been considered a leading candidate–after Elizabeth Warren–to lead the Consumer Finance Protection Board and/or the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (the agency that regulates the big banks) and (as the Bloomberg piece makes clear) had a key role in Dodd-Frank.

As you recall, the same day that Tom Miller told Dodd he was working closely with Barr, at almost the moment when Miller said the investigation would take months, sources that sounded an awful lot like the banks were suggesting a deal on the “settlement” ending the “investigation” was close. But even that article didn’t seem to suggest it’d be done by December 3.

Also note, the Financial Stability Oversight Council–the entity set up by Dodd-Frank to stave off systemic crises–meets on Tuesday; they promise to address efforts so far on the foreclosure fraud problem.

The group will provide an update on what various agencies are doing to investigate widespread paperwork problems that have called into question millions of foreclosures across the country, as well as how regulators are coordinating with the Justice Department, state attorneys general and other officials scrutinizing the mess.

Mind you, I don’t know what Barr’s departure means. But I find it notable that–after recently being floated for key positions going forward and given his role in efforts to respond to the foreclosure mess–he is leaving now.