Posts Tagged ‘bankrupt’
Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign manager, Maggie Williams, earned about $200,000 on the board of a Long Island subprime lender that charged prepayment penalties — a practice that Clinton, a critic of the subprime industry, now seeks to eliminate.
Katherine M. Porter, a University of Iowa law professor, examined 1,700 recent Chapter 13 bankruptcy cases filed in 24 states, including Georgia. She discovered that mortgage lenders regularly fail to file documents required by law and that fees and charges billed to homeowners often are unreasonable.
The excesses of the current ‘subprime’ era are not the only excesses with ties to structured finance transactions. Many banks were sued by Enron Corporation. Enron filed suit in September 2003 against 11 banks, accusing them of conspiring with former Enron officials to manipulate the energy company’s finances. Enron says the banks helped set up a series of structured finance transactions with Enron that buried the company in debt, forcing it into bankruptcy. Every bank settled and paid Enron.
The current financial crisis, evidenced by the fall of Bear Stearns, is a result of failed economic policy that kept the United States economy moving after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Some say fundamentalists struck at the heart of America’s financial district. American excesses and influence around the world were the targets. The idea was to take something valuable away from Americans in a sudden, shocking, and coordinated manner.