Robosigning 2.0: Coming to a Foreclosure Review Near You

Last October, I wrote a post entitled "Robosigning 2.0" that discussed some job ads for outsourced OCC foreclosure reviews.  I predicted based on the job ad qualifications that the foreclosure reviews would be nothing other than a whitewash. The OCC doesn't want anyone digging too deeply into the solvency of the major banks or into the mess they've made of the mortgage paperwork system. Well, now there's evidence that this is exactly what's going on. The interview with this whistleblower is well worth reading. Put this one in the suspension of belief category: 

Supervisors told his entire group that “Wells Fargo had submitted over 10,000 files to Promentory.  Only 4 were found to be in question, and upon final review by Wells, no harm was found.”  So, 10,000 homeowners submitted their complaints and all 10,000 were deemed to be models of perfection. 

It will be interesting to see the final figures on the reviews...if the OCC releases them.  (Maybe I should brush up on my FOIA skills....)  I really hope that mainstream news organizations pick up on this the way 60 Minutes did on DocX. I would say something about how we should be calling for the Comptroller's resignation, but who am I kidding.  The story in consumer finance politics is that when it is banks vs. debtors, the debtors lose. That was the outcome in 2005. That was the outcome with cramdown. And that's the outcome with robosigning.  There's no Association of American Debtors working the Hill.  Consumers only win when the issue affects the middle class, not those falling out of it.  Witness the CARD Act and the CFPB.  And even those took a financial crisis of epic proportions.  I worry where we'll be in five years once the memory of the crisis has faded and "it was overregulation's fault" revisionism has become respectible coventional wisdom for half of the polity.  Sigh.