By Matthew R. Lee
WASHINGTON, March 12 -- While Congress continues to resist holding the financial institutions responsible for the meltdown accountable, five blocks from the Capitol on March 12, Federal Housing Administrator David Stevens bragged of having "shut down 356 lenders." He focused on Florida-based Taylor, Bean & Whitaker, the third largest FHA lender in the country until it filed bankruptcy in August 2009. At that time, Inner City Press / Fair Finance Watch noted that TBW had given it the run around to obtain its Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data, perhaps a clue to more fundamental illegality.
What Stevens didn't follow up on was the banks which enabled and did business with Taylor Bean and its ilk. There was, of course, Alabama-based Colonial Bank, which have been intertwined with Taylor Bean was seized by the FDIC, its branches sold to BB&T and many of them shut down.
But there were bigger players at the trough. As Inner City Press reported back in November 2009:
"Deutsche Bank AG and a unit of BNP Paribas SA separately sued Bank of America
Corp. on Wednesday, alleging that the bank has failed to repay about $1.7
billion in secured notes issued by a special-purpose entity. The
breach-of-contract lawsuits, filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, allege
that Bank of America has failed to redeem $480.7 million in secured notes held
by BNP Paribas and $1.2 billion held by Deutsche Bank. The notes were issued by
Ocala Funding LLC, a special-purpose entity that provided short-term liquidity
funding to Taylor, Bean & Whitaker Mortgage Corp..."
This a a sample of the chicanery behind the global financial crisis, and players who have not been held accountable.
Footnote: Stevens was preceded in the NCRC conference by another HUD official, John D. Trasvina, head of fair housing and fair lending. He was asked about HMDA data, but noted its time lag, that one can't get study disparities in rates of restructuring of mortgages. This publication has requested more recent data: watch this site.
