KeNo's Housing and Economic Portal: Friday April 11 Housing and Economic stories

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A whistleblower's worst nightmare - (www.washingtonexaminer.com) Winston, 62, is a mild-mannered Ph.D. and a veteran leadership executive who has held top jobs at elite corporations such as McDonnell Douglas, Motorola and Merrill Lynch. After taking time off to nurse his ailing parents, Winston was recruited by Countrywide Financial to help polish their corporate Image. He was quickly promoted -- twice -- and had a team of 200 employees. It's almost unheard of for a top-tier executive turning whistleblower, but that's what Winston became after he noticed many of his staff were sickened by noxious air in their Simi Valley, California, office. When the company failed to fix the problem, Winston picked up the phone and called Cal-OSHA to investigate. Retaliation was immediate. Winston's budget was cut and most of his staff was reassigned. Several months later, Winston says he refused Countrywide's request to travel to New York and, basically, lie to the credit ratings agency Moody's about corporate structure and practices. That was the death knell for Winston's stellar 30-year-long career. When Countrywide was bought out by Bank of America in 2008 -- following Countrywide's widely reported lead role in the sub-prime mortgage fiasco that caused the collapse of the U.S. housing market -- Winston was out of a job. In early 2011, after a month-long trial, a jury overwhelmingly found that Winston had been wrongfully terminated and awarded him nearly $4 million. Lawyers for Bank of America (which had assumed all Countrywide liabilities) immediately asked the judge to overturn the verdict. Judge Bert Gennon Jr. denied the request saying, "There was a great deal of evidence that was provided to the jury in making their decision, and they went about it very carefully." Winston and his lawyer maintain they won despite repeated and egregious perjury by the opposition. Winston never saw a dime of his award, and nearly two years later, B of A appealed. In February 2013, the Court of Appeal issued a stunning reversal of the verdict. The court declared Winston had failed to make his case.

Ukraine to hike domestic gas prices by 50% - (www.cnbc.com) Ukraine is raising the price of gas for domestic consumers by more than 50 per cent from May 1 and will implement further rises under a fixed timetable until 2018, an official of state energy company Naftogaz said on Wednesday. The step, which will be widely unpopular with ordinary Ukrainians who have grown used to subsidized gas prices from the Soviet era, were taken in response to demands by the International Monetary Fund. The interim government of Arseny Yatseniuk is in the final stages of talks with the Fund to secure $15-20 billion in a new aid package.

Investors get over 'Crush'; King bloodied post-IPO - (www.cnbc.com) King Digital Entertainment officially began life as a publicly traded company on Wednesday, but plunged below its initial pricing levels on the New York Stock Exchange, after weeks of breathless publicity.On Tuesday, the maker of the addictive mobile game "Candy Crush" priced its shares at $22.50 after the U.S. markets closed. The gaming company, listed as "KING" on the Big Board, issued 22.2 million shares, giving the initial public offering (IPO) an initial value of just under $500 million. Yet just hours after pricing, investors appeared to lose their sweet tooth. The game maker, which first rose to prominence as a Facebook application, saw its stock open on the NYSE at $20.50—but quickly swan-dived by 12 percent as buzz over the hotly awaited IPO began to fade. In heavy midday volume, the stock tumbled as low as $19 per share.

Credit Suisse Helped The Nazis Steal In Europe Now They’re Trying To Steal From Jamaicans In NY - (www.mfi-miami.com) A “Ghetto Loan” is a subprime loan specifically targeting homeowners of African descent who may not know that they qualify for a low cost and low interest loan. In most cases the banks played on the homeowner’s lack of knowledge about finance to set the homeowner up to fail with high cost loans in order to get them to continually refinance. Many banks and brokers did this for the pursuit of profit. Gary soon learned that he wasn’t alone in his fight with Greenpoint Mortgage Funding. He learned that between 2004-2006, Greenpoint under the ownership of Capital One had put nearly 3200 Black and Latino homeowners in Ghetto Loans. There were so many homeowners affected by Greenpoint Mortgage Funding’s Ghetto Loans that then New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo who used his previous experience as Secretary of HUD, to successfully sue Greenpoint Mortgage Funding and Capital One for lending discrimination. Contrary to the sweet and sexy image Swiss Miss, Swiss bankers have a history of being hostile to non-white people in the U.S. and around the world. Within 60 days after Cuomo successfully sued Capital One and Greenpoint Mortgage Funding, Capital One shut down Greenpoint Mortgage Funding, sold the loans to to an mortgage backed securities trust and the servicing rights to Select Portfolio Servicing a division the Swiss bank, Credit Suisse.

Scores of Puerto Rico Trades Below $100,000 Canceled by Dealers - (www.bloomberg.com) Scores of trades in bonds Puerto Rico issued this month have been canceled by dealers, including some that were under the $100,000 minimum transaction level stipulated in deal documents, data compiled by Bloomberg show. The self-governing U.S. territory sold $3.5 billion of debt March 11, in the biggest-ever high-yield offering for the $3.7 trillion municipal market. The issue gave the island, which was cut to junk last month, cash to pay bills through June 2015, as officials try to revive a shrinking economy. Hedge funds bought the majority of the bonds at issue. Dealers report voided transactions to the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board, said Ernesto Lanza, deputy executive director at the Alexandria, Virginia-based self-regulatory organization. The group removes such trades from its Electronic Municipal Market Access website, though regulatory authorities have access to the trading history, he said in an interview.

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