Ohio Attorney General Fights Against Wall Street
By MICHAEL POWELL
COLUMBUS, Ohio — Back East, at the corner of Broad and Wall Streets, the view is swell. The Dow is soaring, and bankers look pleased.
But here on East Broad Street, the mood is gloomier. At least 90,000 residential and commercial foreclosure notices will be filed in Ohio this year. Pension funds for teachers, secretaries and janitors have suffered grave losses. And multitudes of the unemployed in Ohio now speak of turning to prayer.
Ohio’s attorney general, Richard Cordray, might be seen as their pinstriped avenger.
“There’s a belief here that Wall Street is a fixed casino and it’s back in business, and we’re left holding the bag,” said Mr. Cordray, whose office overlooks East Broad. “It’s important for us to show we’ll go after a company that does wrong.”
Mr. Cordray in two years in office has demonstrated a willingness to sue early and often, filing lawsuits against global financial houses, rating agencies, subprime lenders and foreclosure scammers. He has wrested about $2 billion so far, a string of gilded pelts: a $475 million Merrill Lynch settlement, $400 million from Marsh & McLennan and $725 million from the American International Group.
Last week, he filed suit against GMAC Mortgage, accusing the loan servicer of filing fraudulent affidavits in hundreds of Ohio foreclosures.
His office has returned money to investors, pension funds, schools and cities. And he has directed millions to agencies fighting foreclosure.
“We see what Washington doesn’t: the houses lying vacant, the eyesore stripped for copper piping with mattresses out back,” Mr. Cordray says. “We bailed out irresponsible banks, but we forgot about everyone else.”
It speaks to this political age that such words are more rarely heard from federal regulators, who walk quietly and carry big bailout checks. Instead state attorneys general, in this case, a sandy-haired 51-year-old Democrat who sits about 400 miles from Washington, are giving full throat to popular outrage.
If Eliot Spitzer, the former New York attorney general, was the prototype of this breed, a handful of current ones, like Mr. Cordray, Martha Coakley of Massachusetts, Lisa Madigan of Illinois, Tom Miller of Iowa and Roy Cooper of North Carolina, lay claim to his mantle. Like recessionary scouts, they spot trouble, like a rapacious foreclosure-rescue operator, a predatory credit card company or a financial firm draining a pension fund.
Ms. Coakley secured millions of dollars in mortgage modifications from Countrywide Financial and reached a $102 million settlement with Morgan Stanley over its role in financing the subprime loans that fed the housing crash in Massachusetts.
“We were the first to go after predatory loans — we’re not waiting for federal agencies to act,” Ms. Coakley said.
Some express skepticism, suggesting that such lawsuits are emotionally pleasing but economically destructive. Former Senator Michael DeWine, a Republican who is running against Mr. Cordray, a Democrat, in the November election, has implied that Mr. Cordray wields an antibusiness cudgel. Better to rely on federal regulators, others argue, to constrain global corporations.
That strikes James E. Tierney, director of the National State Attorneys General Program at Columbia, as a bit beside the point.
“Is state action as effective as a federal regulator going after these companies? Absolutely not,” says Mr. Tierney, a former state attorney general for Maine. “But when regulators are too worried about giving offense, there’s no reason an enterprising attorney general can’t go in there,”
Born in Grove City, Ohio, Mr. Cordray was educated at Michigan State, Oxford and the University of Chicago Law School. A Supreme Court clerk, he also argued cases before the court. In 1987, he enjoyed a run as a five-time winner on the television show “Jeopardy!”
Somewhere along the way, he hankered for more. His father ran a program for mentally disabled people; his mother, a social worker, founded an organization of foster grandparents; and he wanted to enter the public sphere. Mr. Cordray began running for office.
His yearning often went unrequited; voters, he noted with a hike of the eyebrows, elected him state representative but rejected his run for Congress and an early attempt at state attorney general.
He shrugs.
“I really got my head pounded in over the years in politics,” Mr. Cordray says. “My wife thought I was nuts.”
Eventually, he downsized his ambitions, and ran successfully for Franklin County treasurer and later for state treasurer. And in 2008, he won a special election for attorney general.
Mr. Cordray is no William Jennings Bryan inveighing against the evils of monopoly capital. He can be eloquent about corporate misbehavior, in an eyes-downcast and soft-spoken fashion. (His language reads hotter on the page than it sounds in person.)
He is, however, tapping a populist tradition in Ohio. This is where politicians mounted challenges to the Standard Oil monopoly of John Rockefeller and where Senator John Sherman led a late 19th-century campaign to pass the Sherman Antitrust Act, which was the first law to require the federal government to investigate companies suspected of running cartels and monopolies.
Mr. Cordray carefully describes his allegiance to capitalism, although he says the financial crisis should explode forever the efficient-markets theory, popular with economists, that the best market is a self-correcting one. (Adam Smith’s “Wealth of Nations” shares space on his office bookshelf with books by the urbane Keynesian John Kenneth Galbraith.)
“The notion that banks will just get things right over time is perhaps true,” Mr. Cordray says. “But over what time period, and at what terrible cost to the individual American?”
Certainly, he has not minced words in pursuing a steady stream of cases against corporations.
He accused Marsh & McLennan of conspiring to eliminate competition in the insurance business by generating fictitious quotes. He denounced three credit rating firms, Fitch Ratings, Moody’s Investor Services and Standard & Poor’s, for giving inflated ratings to packages of troubled mortgages put together by the big investment houses. He says that Ohio pension funds lost close to half a billion dollars by investing in those triple-A rated securities.
And last October, he accused Bank of America officials of concealing critical facts in the acquisition of Merrill Lynch, even as that firm careened toward insolvency. Top bankers, he said, had not come remotely clean about the extent of the losses at Merrill and its bonuses.
The lawsuit against Bank of America was the first of its kind, although Mr. Cordray’s actions drew rather less press than a lawsuit filed months later by Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo of New York. Mr. Cuomo, whose skill with the tactical leak, news release and the lawsuit is considerable, tends not to work closely with his fellow state attorneys general, say two officials from states other than Ohio.
Attorneys general are perhaps more successful at extracting large sums of money than in changing corporate behavior. A Goldman Sachs or Marsh & McLennan, to this view, tends to see such settlements as a cost of doing business.
“The settlements are large, but the changes in behavior don’t seem to be that large,” said Daniel C. Richman, a former federal prosecutor and professor at Columbia Law School. “These targets have massive amounts of money to pay off and continue on their merry way.”
Raise this criticism to Mr. Cordray and he nods in agreement.
“In an ideal world, if the S.E.C. had done its job, that would be much better,” he said. “Our settlements make up for the losses fractionally.”
As it happens, Mr. Cordray now faces a more existential threat. Legal challenges to corporate misbehavior are not proven electoral gold. This year, Ms. Coakley, a Democrat, fell to Republican Scott Brown in a race to fill the Senate seat of Edward M. Kennedy.
And polls show Mr. Cordray running behind in his race with Mr. DeWine. He’s no natural glad-hander — he apologizes when he realizes he has automatically extended his hand at a luncheon. More paradoxical, he finds himself at risk of being identified with “them,” which is to say the establishment that Ohio residents view as having failed them.
Again, he shrugs. He is not inclined to blame voters for his troubles.
“Politicians are kind of like adolescents, always looking in the mirror and assuming that’s what people see,” he says. “But there’s a great anxiety out there, a great unease about our future. Most people are hurting, and they don’t have the time to pay attention to us.”
Filed under: bubble, CDO, CORRUPTION, currency, Eviction, foreclosure, GTC | Honor, Investor, Mortgage, securities fraud | Tagged: Eliot Spitzer, Lisa Madigan, Martha Coakley, Ohio, Richard Cordray |
This seems like a very good move by Cordray…except it has more to do with the upcoming election than his concerns over crimes being commited against Ohioans!
I have personally been complaining about the FRAUD that has been perpatrated on me and other Ohioans since 12/08. I started crying about the FRAUD in the origination of our loan…then I informed his office about FRAUD in the servicing of the loan. After receiving a letter from the servicer full of lies our case was closed out…even though I provided PUBLIC RECORD proof that they were lying…
Now we are on our own to fight the FRAUD in the FORECLOSURE of the predatory loan that was fraudulently serviced…luckily I have the PROOF through public records that it is all LIES.
So Richard Cordray you may have scored some main stream press with this timely lawsuit but not my VOTE that you will be needing to see the litigation through!
so if the servicer doesn’t have authority to foreclose who does on sue?
Great article !
The time is nigh for all of us to fight for what’s right regardless of political or corporate persuasion.
If we keep the winning momentum, criminal behavior will eventually curb, as it will become too expensive to continue the charade and blame their shameless antics on the “deadbeat” American public.
Well……..”Shioot”!
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GlobalDealBookMarketsEconomyEnergyMediaPersonal TechSmall BusinessYour Money…Business > Companies > Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation.Volume
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$0.32At close 10/11/2010Federal Home Loan Mortgage CorporationFMCC: OTC Bulletin Board Market; Financials/Consumer Financial Services
OTHER EXCHANGES: Mexico, Buenos Aires, More ».Updated: Aug. 18, 2010
Freddie Mac, a publicly traded company that operates under a federal charter, is the nation’s second-largest mortgage buyer. Along with its larger rival, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac was taken over by the federal government on Sept. 8, 2008, as it faced steep losses, new questions about its accounting and a flight by investors. Many experts believe that Fannie and Freddie are likely to remain wards of the state for years.
And, given the alarm in some quarters over the mounting budget deficit, these two giants and their vast obligations are likely to remain off the federal books although they have become one of the most expensive aftereffects of the financial meltdown. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have obligations of $3.9 trillion to investors who bought bundles of mortgages that the companies assembled.
Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have called for their eradication. But few policy makers are willing to take aggressive steps that might weaken the housing market. On Dec. 24, 2009, the White House quietly disclosed that it had, in effect, given the companies a blank check by making their federal credit line unlimited; the ceiling had been $400 billion.
Fannie and Freddie now buy about two-thirds of new mortgage loans. Nine out of 10 new mortgages receive a government guarantee of some kind. At a conference in August 2010, Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner affirmed that the government would continue to play an important role in the mortgage lending system.
But even if the current approach to guarantees is basically preserved, Fannie and Freddie are unlikely to survive in recognizable form. Taxpayers have spent more than $150 billion covering losses that the companies incurred in recent years, largely by investing in lower-quality mortgage loans to bolster profits. The companies, once broadly popular, are now badly tarnished.
Getting rid of them, however, would not be easy. Fannie and Freddie still own vast portfolios of troubled loans. Fannie, for example, expects to lose money on the loans it acquired in every year from 2005 to 2008 — loans that still make up 47 percent of its total holdings. The companies cannot be completely shut down until those losses are absorbed, a process expected to drag on for years. The Congressional Budget Office has predicted that the final bill could reach $389 billion.
Read More…
Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae buy mortgages from lending institutions and then either hold them in investment portfolios or resell them as mortgage-backed securities to investors. The two companies play a vital role in providing financing for the housing markets.
Their roles had also been controversial, due to their unusual status. As government-chartered entities, they were able to borrow money at lower rates than their competitors, as most investors took for granted that their operations were implicitly guaranteed by the government. At the same time, as publicly traded companies, they sought to maximize their revenues and returns. Critics questioned their accounting, which they said was manipulated by executives to justify their large and growing compensation.
Freddie and Fannie had traditionally backed the “plain vanilla” end of the mortgage market, concentrating on 30-year fixed rate loans. But as the mortgage market exploded in the middle of the decade, they found themselves losing market share to the more aggressive private lenders, and made a fateful decision to expand their lending to keep up.
As the housing market soured, both companies reported steep losses. But the mortgage meltdown also made the companies more important. When the credit markets seized up, Fannie and Freddie regained their central role in mortgage finance after losing significant market share to investment banks during the housing boom. They issued most of mortgage securities sold in the first half of 2008, after investors lost confidence in deals put together by big investment banks.
In the spring of 2008, federal officials eased restrictions on lending by Freddie and Fannie in an effort to calm the turmoil afflicting the mortgage markets. Officials said the change could allow the two companies to invest $200 billion more in mortgages.
But as the year progressed, Freddie and Fannie began to look less like saviors of the housing market than like the biggest casualties of the boom’s collapse.
Hide
Related: Fannie Mae. | Mortgages and the Markets. | David B. Kellerman..
Company Information
Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp, formerly Freddie Mac, is engaged in purchasing residential mortgages and mortgage-related securities in the secondary mortgage market and securitizing them into mortgage-related securities that can be sold to investors. The Company purchases single-family and multifamily mortgage-related securities for its mortgage-related investments portfolio. It also purchases multifamily residential mortgages in the secondary mortgage market and hold those loans either for investment or sale. Freddie Mac finances purchases of its mortgage-related securities and mortgage loans, and manages its interest-rate and other market risks, by issuing a range of debt instruments and entering into derivative contracts in the capital markets. The Company operates in three segments: Investments, Single-family Guarantee and Multifamily.
Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation
8200 Jones Branch Drive McLean VA 22102
Phone: +1 (703) 903-2000
Fax: +1 (703) 903-2759
Web siteARTICLES ABOUT FEDERAL HOME LOAN MORTGAGE CORPORATION
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Helping Homeowners to Refinance
The government should be doing more with Fannie and Freddie to assist homeowners.
October 9, 2010 .G.O.P. Cites Tax Cuts and Health Care as Main Focus With ‘A Pledge for America’
By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN
House Republicans on Thursday are issuing a legislative blueprint called “A Pledge to America” that they hope will catapult them to a majority in the November elections.
September 23, 2010 .How Underwater Mortgages Can Float the Economy
By GLENN HUBBARD and CHRIS MAYER
A crash program of refinancing would boost the economy but cost taxpayers nothing.
September 19, 2010 .Housing on the Brink
The glimmer of hope in this week’s housing data — a rise in pending home sales — is not likely to be sustainable.
September 3, 2010 .For Cuomo as HUD Secretary, a Mixed Score
By DAVID M. HALBFINGER and MICHAEL POWELL
At the Department of Housing and Urban Development, Andrew M. Cuomo voiced warnings about subprime loans but could have been more effective.
August 24, 2010 .Banks Get Stuck With the Bill as Mortgage Loans Fail
By FLOYD NORRIS
Big banks have already taken losses of nearly $10 billion on loans gone bad, though they were far from the only institutions at fault.
August 20, 2010 .Why Mortgage Giants Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae Must Endure
By ANDREW ROSS SORKIN
Few people are happy with the mortgage buyers Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, but the private market is not yet ready to step in for them.
August 17, 2010 .Say Goodbye to Fannie and Freddie
By WILLIAM POOLE
Two flawed agencies the housing market would be better off without.
August 12, 2010 .Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac: Too Big Not to Fail
By JOHN CARNEY
Government-backed mortgages shouldn’t be exempt from risk rules.
August 12, 2010 .STOCKS AND BONDS; 10-Year Treasury Yields Slide On Fed’s Decision to Buy Debt
By CHRISTINE HAUSER; KEITH BRADSHER and SEWELL CHAN CONTRIBUTED REPORTING.
Ten-year Treasury yields, vital benchmark for home mortgages and corporate loans, drop to 2.765 percent, lowest level in more than year, after Federal Reserve decision to purchase government debt in effort to boost struggling economy; yields on mortgage securities issued by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac fall to record lows; Fed hopes move will increase demand for securities, pushing up price while reducing yields and range of interest rates; Dow Jones industrial average falls 54.50 points, or 0.51…
August 11, 2010 .Fed Holds Mortgage Securities and a Dilemma
By BINYAMIN APPELBAUM
Keeping the securities could cost the central bank money and make it harder to fight inflation, while selling them could drain money from the economy.
July 23, 2010 .Loan Giants Opt to Block Energy Programs
By TODD WOODY
An effort to help homeowners pay for energy improvements is unlikely to go forward because of the liens involved.
July 4, 2010 .PACE Energy-Efficiency Programs in Jeopardy
By TODD WOODY
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac may not accept home loans if consumers take advantage of energy-efficiency programs.
July 1, 2010 .Cost of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Keeps Rising
By BINYAMIN APPELBAUM
Now two of the country’s biggest landlords, the mortgage finance companies may wind up costing more than the banking industry rescue.
June 20, 2010 .Fannie and Freddie Falling Off the Big Board
By RICHARD BEALES and ROBERT CYRAN
The mortgage financing giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will be delisted from the New York Stock Exchange.
June 17, 2010 .SEARCH 983 ARTICLES ABOUT FEDERAL HOME LOAN MORTGAGE CORPORATION:
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Stock Snapshot
Monday’s open $0.32
Friday’s close $0.32
52-week range
52-week high $1.86
52-week low $0.24
Market capitalization 208.1M
Avg. volume (10-day) 2.0M
Shares outstanding 649.2M
FMCC does not pay dividends
Key Fundamentals
P/E ratio n.a.
Earnings per share –$8.75
Revenue $64.6B
Profit margin –36.06%
Return on equity n.a.
Fundamentals are for the trailing 12 months
View financials »
Analyst Ratings
Buy 0
Outperform 0
Hold 0
Underperform 1
Sell 0
Consensus
Underperform
(As of 10/08/2010)
Executive Officers
Executive Title
Charles E. Haldeman CEO since 2009
Ross J. Kari CFO since 2009
Bruce M. Witherell COO since 2009
Robert E. Bostrom Exec.VP since 2006
Paul G. George Exec.VP since 2005
Latest Insider Trades
09/06/2010KENNY TIMOTHY F
Payment of exercise price or tax liability by delivering/withholding secs incident to the receipt/exercise/vesting pursuant to Rule 16b-3
Shares sold: 278
Share price: $0.34
Trans. value: $94.52
06/05/2010MAY MICHAEL C
Payment of exercise price or tax liability by delivering/withholding secs incident to the receipt/exercise/vesting pursuant to Rule 16b-3
Shares sold: 1,017
Share price: $1.19
Trans. value: $1,210.23
06/05/2010MCLOUGHLIN HOLLIS S
Payment of exercise price or tax liability by delivering/withholding secs incident to the receipt/exercise/vesting pursuant to Rule 16b-3
Shares sold: 1,081
Share price: $1.19
Trans. value: $1,286.39
Filings
10-QQuarterly Financials
August 9, 2010
10-QQuarterly Financials
May 6, 2010
10-KAnnual Financials
February 24, 2010
View all filings »Q & A
About Fannie and Freddie
A guide to the government-sponsored lending institutions.
.Headlines Around the Web
What’s This?
The Washington Post
October 12, 2010
Foreclosure logjam threatens Fannie, Freddie
Wall Street Journal
October 11, 2010
Home-Loan Rates Would Lose at Limbo
Reason Magazine – Hit & Run
October 11, 2010
New at Reason: Robert Pollock on Slashing Fannie and Freddie
Reason Magazine
October 11, 2010
Nightmare on Every Street
seminal.firedoglake.com
October 7, 2010
Foreclosure Fraud: Every Affidavit a Fraud?
More at Blogrunner »
Multimedia
Video
CNBC: Geithner on Financial Reform
Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner testifies before the House Financial Services Committee.
.
Video
Fannie & Freddie: One Year Later
Twelve months after Washington took over two giant mortgage financing companies, CNBC’s Diana Olick considers how long the government will offer support and what its exit strategy might be.
.
Video
Fannie Mae and the Financial Crisis
How Fannie Mae’s problems helped lead to the country’s financial crisis.
.
Interactive Graphic
Making Sense of Problems at Fannie and Freddie
An examination of how Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac work, the current problems and some proposed actions.
.More Multimedia »
Freddie Mac
A list of resources from around the Web about Freddie Mac as selected by researchers and editors of The New York Times.
Freddie Mac Home
About Freddie Mac
Investor Relations
Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight
Other Coverage
Fannie and Freddie to the Rescue?
BusinessWeek.com Jan. 28, 2008
Fannie and Freddie ride again
Economist July 7, 2007
Documents
2007 Annual Report
2007 Proxy
OFHEO 2007 annual report to Congress
Report of the special examination of Freddie Mac
OFHEO Dec. 2003
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E-MAIL.Peer Performance 30-day
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Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation –2.58% –81.26% 1.0M
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Federal National Mortgage Association +3.19% –79.65% 2.2M
Cities in Debt Turn to States, Adding Strain »
PHH Corporation –0.95% +7.22% 158.0K
SLM Corporation –7.26% +23.93% 929.2K
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