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Below are some helpful posts from bankruptcy lawyer blogs on the topics of mortgages, foreclosure, loan modification and the Making Homes Affordable Program. Go to the BK Lawyer Blogs page on this site to see a full state-by-state list of bankruptcy lawyer blogs. (And get in touch if you have a blog and don’t see it listed.)
Update 9.10.09: There’s a great piece on NPR about foreclosures and the black-box decision making process regarding loan modifications (“Major Banks Still Grappling with Foreclosure“). At one point, there’s a clip of reporter Chris Arnold in the Bank of America call center, listening over the shoulder of a call center rep who tells a homeowner they’re not eligible for a loan modification. Arnold questions the rep and receives a not so satisfying explanation. The issue is raised with the supervisors and it turns out the homeowner was in fact eligible for a loan modification. How frequently is this scenario replaying itself?
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*Correction: The cartoon previously referred incorrectly to a “Chapter 7 repayment plan.” Apologies for the confusion.
Below are some helpful posts from bankruptcy lawyer blogs on the topics of unemployment, median income and the means test. Go to the BK Lawyer Blogs page on this site to see a full state-by-state list of bankruptcy lawyer blogs. (And get in touch if you have a blog and don’t see it listed.)
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p.s. Regarding copyright issues, our legal counsel, IP Aileen, says: “Other bloggers/websites/publications: You are more than welcome to post Strip #19 – Law Firm Raids on your sites as long as you also include all of the text, links and images in this post, including this paragraph. If you fail to respect our wishes, we’ll send you back to Kirkland’s restructuring group (Chicago office).”
Systemic Indifference (S. Todd Brown comments on reckless and indifferent collection practices of mortgage companies cited in a Huffington Post piece by Karen Weise. Ties commentary into accuracy of claims process in bankruptcy cases, particularly asbestos cases.)
$40 Million Benchslap for Weil Gotshal (relates to IP and litigation, but anything about Weil Gotshal is bankruptcy relevant from Bankruptcy Bill’s perspective)
BAPCPA Man #3 – Enter Subprimulus resulted in increased media exposure, as indicated below. BAPCPA Man’s secret identity, meanwhile, remains a mystery….
*It bears mentioning that the #1 article (“Three more banks fail, bringing total to 72, The Deal, August 10, 2009″) is, in fact, dated August 10, meaning that BAPCPA Man should have been the #1 article and making this a fairly clear violation of the absolute priority rule. (Well, our version of it anyway.) Further research on the issue is warranted and may result in a “preference” action.
For this book, Karen Ho, a professor of anthropology at the University of Minnesota, actually spent three years working for a Wall Street bank as part of her on-site research, and the investment bankers are referred to as “natives” (in the anthropological parlance). One of the interesting notions she presents is that the process of using corporate layoffs to improve the share price and bottom line is more correctly viewed as Wall Street exporting its own internal culture–one of insecurity and adaptability–to the rest of corporate America.
