Lending settlement can’t undo the damage

This “settlement” is a farce.

This week, Bank of America agreed to pay $335 million to resolve allegations that its Countrywide unit engaged in a widespread pattern of discrimination against qualified African-American and Hispanic borrowers on home loans.

From New York’s Lower Hudson Valley’s MLoHud’s article:

It sounds like a tidy sum, but the $335 million settlement announced Wednesday between the U.S. Justice Department and Bank of America, addressing longstanding claims that its Countrywide Financial unit discriminated against black and Hispanic borrowers, is a pittance compared to the grievous harm the lender brought to families across the nation, including New York. While it is the largest fair-lending settlement in history, the amount doesn’t even begin to match the compensation lavished upon the firm’s CEO in the run-up to the Great Recession.

If a federal judge goes along, the settlement will pay borrowers anywhere from a few hundred dollars to several thousands. The pact addresses lending between 2004 and 2008, before BofA bought the lending behemoth. This was during the height of the real estate bubble, fueled by “no doc” liar loans, loose regulation, corruption, greed and willful blindness to the storm to come. Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozilo, named by Time Magazine as one of the “25 People to Blame for the Financial Crisis,” received compensation totaling some $470 million between 2001 and 2006. His tenure was more costly than that. Over the summer, BofA agreed to pay $8.5 billion to bondholders who bought garbage securities backed by Countrywide mortgages — prototype for the reckless deals that caused the financial collapse. Wednesday’s pact revealed some of the harm done to those closest to those loans.

Continue reading here.

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Hmmmmm, anything we can do to express our opinions or perhaps encourage Black and Latino fraudclosure victims to submit victim statements to the federal judge?

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4closureFraud.org

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Pew Institute Report | Twenty-to-One – Wealth Gaps Rise to Record Highs Between Whites, Blacks and Hispanics