From SmartMoney: Why There’s No “Trust” in Securities-Backed Mortgage Biz

Igor Greenwald, writing for Smart Money magazine, lays bare some cold, hard truths about the “collateralized” home mortgage industry in this article entitled “Banking Runs on Margins and Interest, Not Trust.“  While that might seem like a “duh” moment to some, I’d be willing to bet that to many homeowners, the notion of their mortgages [...]

Are Lenders Lying to Home Owners Seeking to Renegotiate?

I can’t answer the question above, obviously, but it’s the only question that comes to mind after hearing from not one, but eight different colleagues across the country reporting the same sad story:

Client faces foreclosure
Client wisely begins investigating Chapter 13 as a solution
Client gets phone call from lender - “Don’t fret, we’ve got it under [...]

Credit Card Disclosure System Broken?

The American Bankruptcy Institute (disclosure: I am a member) discussed the recent Senate Committee hearings on the credit card industry in its weekly e-newsletter. The following sums up the hearing and what occurred there:

Chairman Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.), in the first of a series of Senate Banking Committee oversight hearings to address credit card industry [...]

Hospitals Learning Valuable Lesson About Collection Efforts

This article reprinted in the Sun News caught my eye. It seems hospitals are learning from their own mistakes and are revamping their formerly aggressive approaches to patient debt collection efforts. However, the rationale behind the move might be a little more fiscally-minded than ethically-minded. If you’ve never been the target of a hospital [...]

SC Class Action Filed Against Manufactured Home Lender

Mobile and manufactured housing industry participants have gotten a bad rap, as a group. Is it deserved? While I’m loathe to draw parallels and sweeping condemnations, the fact remains, as this article 10 days ago from The Sun News shows, two class action suits have been filed against such a lender - Vanderbilt Mortgage and [...]

Bogus Debts and Heavy Activity

As this article from ConsumerAffairs.com makes clear, debt collection companies across the country are aggressively pursuing illegitimate debts from consumers. I’ve posted about this before, and it continues to be a big problem. But thankfully, state attorneys general are beginning to take notice of the anticonsumer activities taking place inside their jurisdictions.
Example: West [...]

Not All Debt Collectors Are Created Equal

In this column for the Washington Post, Michelle Singletary attempts to defend her previous advice to a reader to pay the entirety of an old debt although the purchaser of that account offered to settle for about $10,000 less than the full amount. In defending her advice, she had this to say:

[T]his is more about [...]

Debt Collectors Have the Wrong Number

This frightening article in The Boston Globe (free registration required) demonstrates that debt collection is, indeed, a growing industry - it’s growing excessively arrogant and careless.
Details of the profiled individuals and their unbelievable experiences with debt collectors are all too familiar to consumer lawyers, unfortunately. There is anecdotal evidence to suggest that recent explosive growth [...]