Sunday, September 1, 2013

Monday September 2 Housing and Economic stories


Woman gets 10 years in prison for multimillion dollar mortgage fraud - (www.centralvalleybusinesstimes.com) Hoda Samuel, 62, of Elk Grove, has been sentenced to ten years in prison for a mortgage fraud scheme that caused more than $5.5 million in loss, says U.S. Attorney Benjamin Wagner. “Taking fraudsters out of the residential real estate industry and sending them to prison has been one of this office’s top priorities,” says Mr. Wagner. “Today’s sentence is another success in our fight against the mortgage fraud schemes perpetrated by Hoda Samuel and her co-defendants that wreaked havoc in this region.” “Greed-based crimes such as these can undermine the stability of our financial institutions and the economy, resulting in devastating consequences for homeowners, businesses and the communities in which the properties are located,” adds Special Agent in Charge Monica Miller of the Sacramento Division of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. According to evidence presented at trial, Ms. Samuel, a licensed real estate broker, owned and operated real estate agency Liberty Real Estate & Investment Company and Liberty Mortgage Company. The government presented evidence of 30 fraudulent sales transactions between April 5, 2006, and February 26, 2007.

Soros’s biggest holding? A bearish call on the S&P 500 - (www.marketwatch.com) It’s 13F revelation time, and the headlines are full of news about big investor George Soros going hot for Apple and dumping on gold in the second quarter. However, there’s something else in those numbers that should make investors sit up a little. Possibly buried amid the Apple excitement is the fact that Soros Fund Management’s biggest position is a put on the S&P 500 ETF SPY -0.36%. Soros bought a put on1,248,643 SPY units in the quarter. A put option gives the owner the right to sell a specific amount of an asset at a set price within a set time, and generally means the investor expects that asset will go down in price.

Veteran arrested after refusing to leave home after foreclosure - (www.clatl.com) Harris and his supporters set up tents on his front lawn on Friday afternoon and refused to leave. According to Occupy Our Homes Atlanta's Tim Franzen, who was one of the people in attendance, about 15 to 20 people joined Harris and spent the night in the yard. Police returned the next afternoon and warned the protesters that they had 30 minutes to leave. Four people, including Harris, refused to do so and were arrested. Overall, five people were charged with criminal trespass. Two of those five people also received an additional charge of obstruction of the law for attaching their arms to a PVC pipe and threading it through a trash can filled with cement in order to prevent officers from removing them from Harris' driveway. (You can watch a video of the arrest, produced by Occupy Our Homes Atlanta, after the jump)''

Foreclosures Surge Again as Legal Logjam Breaks - (www.bloomberg.com) Foreclosures are surging again in Baltimore, which became a symbol of the U.S. housing crash when the city’s desolate blocks of abandoned row homes served as a backdrop for the HBO TV series “The Wire.” Maryland’s biggest city saw foreclosures almost triple in July from a year earlier to 2,073, the biggest gain among the 20 largest U.S. metropolitan areas, according to data released today by RealtyTrac. Baltimore was one of five cities including Miami and New York that showed more properties gettingdefault, auction and repossession notices, bucking a 32 percent nationwide decline to 130,888. More homes are being seized after banks broke the legal logjam of state legislation and court rulings that kept some lenders at bay after the housing boom went bust in 2008. Foreclosures stalled in 2010 when Maryland passed a law requiring banks to try alternatives to eviction.

Accounting Magic: Treasury Ran $98 Billion Deficit in July--But Debt Stayed Exactly $16,699,396,000,000 - (www.cnsnews.com)  The Treasury Department's Financial Management Service (FMS), which publishes both the federal government's official Daily Treasury Statement and its official Monthly Treasury Statement, is reporting that in July the federal government ran a deficit of $98 billion but that the federal government's debt remained exactly $16,699,396,000,000 for the entire month. The FMS said that the deficit went up $98 billion ($97,594,000,000) in the Monthly Treasury Statement for July, which it released on Monday. At the same time, the FMS said the debt stayed at exactly $16,699,396,000,000 in its Daily Treasury Statements, which are published every business day. The Daily Treasury Statements show the daily value of the federal government debt that is subject to a legal limit set by Congress. At the static $16,699,396,000,000 level that the Treasury reported for every day of July, the debt was just $25 million below the legal limit of $16,699,421,000,000 that was set in a law passed by Congress and signed by President Barack Obama. If Treasury's daily statements were to declare that the government had borrowed an additional net $98 billion to cover the $98 billion deficit the Treasury declared in its monthly statement for July, the Treasury would be conceding that the government had already surpassed the legal limit on the debt--and has been violating the law by continuing to borrowing additional money.






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