KeNo's Housing and Economic Portal: Wednesday October 13 Housing and Economic stories

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TOP STORIES:

BofA Suspends Foreclosures; States Look at JPMorgan - (www.cnbc.com) Amid growing public anger over U.S. home seizures, Bank of America has suspended some of its foreclosures and JPMorgan Chase has come under investigation in California and Connecticut. Bank of America said on Friday it is delaying foreclosures in 23 states to review whether it has been conducting them properly. Two other big lenders—JPMorgan and Ally Financial's GMAC Mortgage—have already suspended foreclosures. Also, a Maine state court judge reprimanded GMAC Mortgage for how it repossesses homes. The judge concluded that GMAC submitted a company official's affidavit to support a foreclosure "in bad faith." Companies are scrambling to defend and where needed improve their foreclosure procedures in the face of anger among homeowners and regulators. The issue came to the forefront last month when GMAC revealed that officials had signed thousands of affidavits supporting such proceedings without knowing their contents. Banks are expected to take over a record 1.2 million homes this year, up from about 1 million last year and just 100,000 as recently as 2005, real estate data company RealtyTrac Inc said on Thursday.

China to the Rescue! Wen Offers to Buy Greek Debt - (www.cnbc.com) China offered on Saturday to buy Greek government bonds in a show of support for the country whose debt burden triggered a crisis for the euro zone and required an international bailout. Premier Wen Jiabao made the offer at the start of a two-day visit to the crisis-hit country where he says he expects to expand ties in all areas. "With its foreign exchange reserve, China has already bought and is holding Greek bonds and will keep a positive stance in participating and buying bonds that Greece will issue," Wen said, speaking through an interpreter. "China will undertake a great effort to support euro zone countries and Greece to overcome the crisis." Greece needs foreign investment to help it fulfill the terms of a 110 billion euro (US$150 billion) bailout. This rescued it from bankruptcy in May but also imposed strict austerity measures, deepening its recession.

Pentagon Losing Control of Bombs to China’s Monopoly - (www.bloomberg.com) “It’s a seller’s market now,” says Bai Baosheng, 43, puffing a cigarette in his office in Baotou, China, where his company sells bags of powder containing a metallic element known as neodymium, vital in tiny magnets that direct the fins of bombs dropped by U.S. Air Force jets in Afghanistan. The U.S. handed its main economic rival power to dictate access to these building blocks of modern weapons by ceding control of prices and supply, according to dozens of interviews with industry executives, congressional leaders and policy experts. China in July reduced rare-earth export quotas for the rest of the year by 72 percent, sending prices up more than sixfold for some elements. Military officials are only now conducting an inventory of where and how U.S. suppliers use the obscure but essential substances -- including those that silence the whoosh of Boeing Co. helicopter blades, direct Raytheon Co. missiles and target guns in General Dynamics Corp. tanks. “The Pentagon has been incredibly negligent,” said Peter Leitner, who was a senior strategic trade adviser at the Defense Department from 1986 to 2007. “There are plenty of early warning signs that China will use its leverage over these materials as a weapon.” While two rare-earth projects are scheduled to ramp up production by the end of 2012 -- one owned by Molycorp Inc. in California and another by Lynas Corp. in Australia -- the GAO says it may take 15 years to rebuild a U.S. manufacturing supply chain. China makes virtually all the metals refined from rare earths, the agency says. The elements are also needed for hybrid-electric cars and wind turbines, one reason supply may fall short of demand in 2014 even with the new mines, according to Kingsnorth of Imcoa.

Prominent Tiburon, CA realtor dead in apparent suicide - (www.marinij.com) A longtime real estate broker died Monday night of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound, Tiburon police said. Paul Grothe, 71, of Tiburon, was co-owner of Marin Land Co. at 1610 Tiburon Blvd. with his wife, Zohre. His body was found by his wife in the couple's garage Monday night, said Tiburon police Chief Michael Cronin. He said Grothe had been depressed about business and personal matters. The Marin County Coroner's Office, which will determine the official cause of death, was expected to conduct an autopsy Wednesday. "There is absolutely no suggestion that there is any foul play here," Cronin said. Grothe was an active member of the Rotary Club of Tiburon-Belvedere; he served as the club's president about six years ago and continued to attend the club's weekly lunches, members said. "He's going to be missed," said Dean Popplewell, club president. "He was a great Rotarian and very community-minded person." Grothe also was a member of the Tiburon Peninsula Chamber of Commerce and other local groups.

Banks Just Counterfeit Documents... No, Really! - (www.market-ticker.org) In an absolutely stunning display that has apparently become endemic in our "foreclosure" process we now see what the banks are willing to do in order to get what they want - counterfeit court process! That's right - when the banks cannot manage to produce documents that show you were properly served (because you weren't) or when they can't produce a note they actually destroyed on purpose, they simply counterfeit something and present that to the court instead. Yet we are expected to obey the law and meet our obligations, from paying our debts to paying our taxes to deferring to alleged authority and law, even when that alleged authority obtains what it gets by defrauding courts and people...... What's wrong with this picture?

JPMorgan halts 50K foreclosures for possible flaws - (www.sfgate.com) JPMorgan Chase has temporarily stopped foreclosing on more than 50,000 homes so it can review documents that might contain errors. JPMorgan's move Wednesday makes it the second major company to take such action this month, underscoring a growing legal problem. The issue could stall an already overloaded foreclosure process. Still, analysts don't expect the delays to reduce the number of foreclosures over the long run. "It will probably slow things down for a couple months while these documents are reviewed," said Rick Sharga, a senior vice president at foreclosure listing service RealtyTrac Inc. "It won't stop things." But if the problems turn up at more of the largest mortgage companies, a foreclosure crisis that's already likely to drag on for several more years could persist even longer. GMAC Mortgage LLC last week halted certain evictions and sales of foreclosed homes in 23 states to review those cases. The company said it found procedural errors in some foreclosure affidavits. After GMAC's announcement, attorneys general in California and Connecticut told the company to stop foreclosures in their states until it proves it's complying with state law. The Ohio attorney general this week asked judges to review GMAC foreclosure cases. And in Florida, the state attorney general is investigating four law firms, two with ties to GMAC, for allegedly providing fraudulent documents in foreclosure cases.