"End of Wall Street Boom" - Must-read history

[vanlose kid]

Hacker Group Anonymous Brings Peaceful Revolution To America: Will Engage In Civil Disobedience Until Bernanke Steps Down
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 03/12/2011 21:30 -0500


The world's most (in)famous hacker group - Anonymous - known for effectively shutting down their hacking nemesis security firm (with clients such as Morgan Stanley and, unfortunately for them, Bank of America)- HBGary, advocating the cause of Wikileaks, and the threat made by one of its members that evidence of fraud by Bank of America will be released on Monday, has just launched communication #1 in its Operation "Empire State Rebellion." The goal - engage in "a relentless campaign of non-violent, peaceful, civil disobedience" until Ben Bernanke steps down and the "Primary Dealers within the Federal Reserve banking system be broken up and held accountable for rigging markets and destroying the global economy effective immediately."

The Anonymous manifesto:

•We are a decentralized non-violent resistance movement, which seeks to restore the rule of law and fight back against the organized criminal class.
•One-tenth of one percent of the population has consolidated wealth in unprecedented fashion and launched an all-out economic war against 99.9% of the population.
•We are not affiliated with either wing of the two-party oligarchy. We seek an end to the corrupted two-party system by ending the campaign finance and lobbying racket.
•Above all, we aim to break up the global banking cartel centered at the Federal Reserve, International Monetary Fund, Bank of International Settlement and World Bank.
•We demand that the primary dealers within the Federal Reserve banking system be broken up and held accountable for rigging markets and destroying the global economy, effective immediately.
•As a first sign of good faith we demand Ben Bernanke step down as Federal Reserve chairman.
•Until our demands are met and a rule of law is restored, we will engage in a relentless campaign of non-violent, peaceful, civil disobedience.
•In our next communication we will announce Operation Empire State Rebellion.
Glorious Chairman Ben - our free advice to you: change your e-mail password stat...



*

[vanlose kid]

rats leaving sinking ship.

Dimon, Pandit, Blankfein, Ackermann Join Kremlin Advisory Board
By Jason Corcoran, Ilya Arkhipov and Jack Jordan - Mar 10, 2011 3:07 PM GMT

Wall Street bankers including JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM)’s Jamie Dimon, Citigroup Inc. (C)’s Vikram Pandit and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS)’s Lloyd Blankfein are advising the Kremlin on how to turn Moscow into a global financial center.

President Dmitry Medvedev named 27 people to a working group for the project that also includes Bank of America Corp. (BAC)’s Brian T. Moynihan, Morgan Stanley (MS)’s John Mack, Deutsche Bank AG (DBK)’s Josef Ackermann and Blackstone Group’s Stephen Schwarzman, according to a member of the board who declined to be identified and information posted on the Kremlin’s website.

Russia is seeking to lessen its dependence on natural resources by promoting “innovative” technologies, selling state assets and creating a “special sovereign” fund to attract foreign capital, Medvedev said in an interview on Jan 26. Creating the legal and physical infrastructure needed to lure financial flows to the Russian capital is part of that drive. Moscow ranked 68th of 75 cities in the Global Financial Centers Index commissioned by the City of London in 2009.

“We believe it is very important to participate in the committees advising President Medvedev on how to transform Moscow into a financial center,” said Dimitri Agishev, a Deutsche Bank spokesman, in an e-mailed statement. Russia continues to be a key market with ample opportunities.”

All but eight of the people Medvedev named to the group are foreigners, including Timothy Flynn, Dennis Nally and James Turley, the heads of accounting firms KPMG LLP, PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP and Ernst & Young LLP, respectively.

The Russians include Alexander Voloshin, who was chief of the Kremlin staff under the late President Boris Yeltsin and his successor Vladimir Putin. Medvedev appointed Voloshin head of the government working group on the financial center last July.

German Gref and Andrei Kostin, who run Russia’s two biggest banks, OAO Sberbank and VTB Group, are on the board, as are billionaire lawmaker Suleiman Kerimov and Troika Dialog’s Ruben Vardanian.

Galia Maor of Israel’s Bank Leumi and OAO Sberbank’s Bella Zlatkis are the only women in the group, while Nomura Holdings Inc.’s Kenichi Watanabe is the only Asian.

Andrey Sayko, a spokesman for Micex, Russia’s largest stock exchange, said the bourse’s President Ruben Aganbegyan had been appointed to the panel. Micex shareholders agreed in February to buy a controlling stake in the rival RTS, merging the Moscow- based exchanges.

“Ruben is taking part,” Sayko said by phone in Moscow. “The merger of the RTS and Micex is a part of the bigger picture of making Moscow a financial center.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-1 ... board.html

*

[eyeno]

rats leaving sinking ship

or, extortion by rats who need new block of cheese because they ate all the american cheese, probably doesn't have much choice other than to hand over the assets of the country for cash, slow sale like america was.

selling state assets and creating a “special sovereign” fund to attract foreign capital

[JackRiddler]

.

A new thread started on

"Anonymous to bring down Bernanke and banks"
at viewtopic.php?f=8&t=31474.

Obviously can't help but cram some of it in here:

Hacker Group Anonymous Brings Peaceful Revolution To America: Will Engage In Civil Disobedience Until Bernanke Steps Down
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 03/12/2011 21:30 -0500


The world's most (in)famous hacker group - Anonymous - known for effectively shutting down their hacking nemesis security firm (with clients such as Morgan Stanley and, unfortunately for them, Bank of America)- HBGary, advocating the cause of Wikileaks, and the threat made by one of its members that evidence of fraud by Bank of America will be released on Monday, has just launched communication #1 in its Operation "Empire State Rebellion." The goal - engage in "a relentless campaign of non-violent, peaceful, civil disobedience" until Ben Bernanke steps down and the "Primary Dealers within the Federal Reserve banking system be broken up and held accountable for rigging markets and destroying the global economy effective immediately."

The Anonymous manifesto:

•We are a decentralized non-violent resistance movement, which seeks to restore the rule of law and fight back against the organized criminal class.
•One-tenth of one percent of the population has consolidated wealth in unprecedented fashion and launched an all-out economic war against 99.9% of the population.
•We are not affiliated with either wing of the two-party oligarchy. We seek an end to the corrupted two-party system by ending the campaign finance and lobbying racket.
•Above all, we aim to break up the global banking cartel centered at the Federal Reserve, International Monetary Fund, Bank of International Settlement and World Bank.
•We demand that the primary dealers within the Federal Reserve banking system be broken up and held accountable for rigging markets and destroying the global economy, effective immediately.
•As a first sign of good faith we demand Ben Bernanke step down as Federal Reserve chairman.
•Until our demands are met and a rule of law is restored, we will engage in a relentless campaign of non-violent, peaceful, civil disobedience.
•In our next communication we will announce Operation Empire State Rebellion.
Glorious Chairman Ben - our free advice to you: change your e-mail password stat...



*

Hacker Collective Anonymous To Release Documents Proving Bank Of America Committed Fraud This Monday
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 03/11/2011 22:03 -0500

After Julian Assange crashed and burned in his threat to release documents that expose fraud at Bank of America, many thought he had been only bluffing, and that BofA is actually clean. Not so fast. A member of the hacker collective Anonymous, which singlehandedly destroyed "hacker defense" firm HB Gary, who goes under the handle OperationLeakS "is claiming to be have emails and documents which prove "fraud" was committed by Bank of America employees, and the group says it'll release them on Monday" reports Gawker. As to the contents of the possible disclosure: ""He Just told me he have GMAC emails showing BoA order to mix loan numbers to not match it's Documents. to foreclose on Americans.. Shame." If indeed this makes the case against BofA' foreclosure practices stronger, it certainly explains why the banking consortium is scrambling to arrange a settlement, and also why Bank of America recently split off its $2 trillion in mortgages into "good bank" and "bad bank" entities.

As a "teaser", the Anonymous member released a November 1, 2010 email between two Balboa Insurance (a BAC subsidiary) employees, which while not proving any fraud, indicates he/she does indeed have access. The timeline on the email makes sense as it is a few weeks prior to the original disclosure that Wikileaks would expose BofA. Perhaps the Assange team merely handed off its materials to Anonymous, which has previously demonstrated its solidarity with the Australian on various occasions.

The full letter is below.



Gawker with more on why Brian Moynihan may not sleep too soundly overnight:

OperationLeaks, which runs the anti-Bank of America site BankofAmericasuck.com, says the employee contacted the group to blow the whistle on Bank of America's shady business practices. "I seen some of the emails… I can tell you Grade A Fraud in its purest form…" read one tweet. "He Just told me he have GMAC emails showing BoA order to mix loan numbers to not match it's Documents.. to foreclose on Americans.. Shame."

An Anonymous insider told us he believes the leak is real. "From what I know and have been told, it's legit," he said. "Should be a round of emails, then some files, possible some more emails to follow that." The documents should be released Monday on Anonleaks.ch, the same site where Anonymous posted thousands of internal emails from hacked security company HBGary last month. That leak exposed a legally-questionable plot to attack Wikileaks and ultimately led to the resignation of HBGary CEO Aaron Barr.

It is unclear whether this will be yet another climax-free build up, but Anonymous has certainly proven their mettle by putting HBGary effectively out of business with one masterful hack.

Those I've spoken to in Anonymous are convinced there's something to this. Anonymous has a proven track record with leaks, and Bank of America has been in their crosshairs since they cut off payments to Wikileaks in December. If it's real, it could be big. Keep your eye on anonleaks.ch: It should hit Monday.

We urge readers to check into http://hbgary.anonleaks.ch/ first thing Monday - after all this is the portal that released the original damning HBGary evidence, and brought down the firm within weeks. If it can do the same with Bank of America, Monday may just soon be a national holiday.

No problem accessing Tor Project here.

Here comes the flood, everybody!!!

AnonQC Anonyme
Is Bank of America run like a cult? One of the email answers the question: http://i.imgur.com/GUkHA.png #BOA #BlackMonday #AnonLeaks
8 minutes ago Favorite Retweet Reply

First installment:

#BlackMonday Ex-Bank of America Employee Can Prove Mortgage Fraud Part 1

*snip*

My name is (Anonymous). For the last 7 years, I worked in the Insurance/Mortgage industry for a company called Balboa Insurance. Many of you do not know who Balboa Insurance Group (soon to be rebranded as QBE First by Australian Reinsurance Company QBE according to internal communication sent to all Balboa associates) is, but if you’ve ever had a loan for an automobile, farm equipment, mobile home, or residential or commercial property, we knew you. In fact, we probably charged you money…a lot of money…for insurance you didn’t even need.

Balboa Insurance Group, and it’s largest competitor, the market leader Assurant, is in the business of insurance tracking and Force Placed Insurance (aka Lender Placed Insurance, FOH, LPI, etc). What this means is that when you sign your name on the dotted line for your loan, the lienholder has certain insurance requirements that must be met for the life of the lien. Your lender (including, amongst others, GMAC, Aurora Loan Services [a subsidiary of Lehman Bros Holdings], IndyMac Federal Bank [a subsidiary of OneWest Bank], Saxon, HSBC, PennyMac [a collection agency started by former Countrywide Home Loans executive Stan Kurland after CHL and Balboa were sold to BAC], Downey Savings and Loans, Financial Freedom, Select Portfolio Services, Wells Fargo/Wachovia, and the now former owners of Balboa Insurance themselves…Bank of America) then outsources the tracking of your loan with them to a company like Balboa Insurance.

Balboa makes some money by charging these companies to track your insurance (the payment of which is factored into your loan). If you do not meet the minimum insurance requirements set by your lienholder, Balboa Insurance places a force placed insurance policy on your loan. You are sent a letter telling you that you do not have insurance, and your escrow account is then adjusted for the inflated premium of a full coverage policy placed by Balboa’s insurance tracking group, run by Steven Ramsthel, Sr Vice President of Loan Tracking Operations & Customer Care at Balboa Insurance Group, as seen on his LinkedIn profile below:



How is Balboa able to charge such inflated premiums and get away with it?
It’s all very simple.

First, when you call in to customer service, for say, GMAC, you’re not actually speaking to a GMAC employee. You’re actually speaking to a Bank of America associate working for Balboa Insurance who is required by their business to business contract with GMAC to state that they are, in fact, an employee of GMAC. The reasoning is that if you do not realize you’re speaking to a Bank of America/Balboa Insurance employee, you have no reason to question the validity of the information you are receiving from them. If you call your insurance agent and ask them for the lienholder information for your GMAC/Wells Fargo/etc lien (home or auto) you will be provided with their name, but the mailing address will be a PO Box at one of Balboa’s 3 main tracking locations (Moon Township/Coreaopolis, PA, Dallas/Ft Worth, TX, or Phoenix/Chandler, AZ)



Tells me Boa is knowingly hiding Foreclosure information from Feds…

(Tools) needed to Decode the emails….


1. SOR = System of Record
2.Rembrandt/Tracksource = Insurance tracking systems
3.DTN = Document Tracking Number..

Screen shots of the Emails that was sent…….

“Anonymous” Whistleblower Charges BofA With Large Scale Force Placed Insurance Scheme With Cooperation of Servicers

03/14/2011 - Yves Smith

Ooh, this is ugly.

The charge made in this Anonymous release (via BankofAmericaSuck) is that Bank of America, through its wholly-owned subsidiary Balboa Insurance and the help of cooperating servicers, engaged in a mortgage borrower abuse called “force placed insurance”. This is absolutely 100% not kosher. Famed subprime servicer miscreant Fairbanks in 2003 signed a consent decree with the FTC and HUD over abuses that included forced placed insurance. The industry is well aware that this sort of thing is not permissible. (Note Balboa is due to be sold to QBE of Australia; I see that the definitive agreement was entered into on February 3 but do not see a press release saying that the sale has closed)

While the focus of ire may be Bank of America, let me stress that this sort of insurance really amounts to a scheme to fatten servicer margins. If this leak is accurate, the servicers at a minimum cooperated. If they got kickbacks, um, commissions, they are culpable and thus liable.

As we have stated repeatedly, servicers lose tons of money on portfolios with a high level of delinquencies and defaults. The example of Fairbanks, a standalone servicer who subprime portfolio got in trouble in 2002, is that servicers who are losing money start abusing customers and investors to restore profits. Fairbanks charged customers for force placed insurance and as part of its consent decree, paid large fines and fired its CEO (who was also fined).

Regardless, this release lends credence a notion too obvious to borrowers yet the banks and its co-conspirators, meaning the regulators, have long denied, that mortgage servicing and foreclosures are rife with abuses and criminality. Here’s some background courtesy Barry Ritholtz:



More at http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/03/wikileaks-whistleblower-charges-bofa-of-engaging-in-large-scale-force-placed-insurance-scheme-with-cooperation-of-servicers.html


===



ECONned: How Unenlightened Self Interest Undermined Democracy and Corrupted Capitalism
Yves Smith

====

Bank Employee Urges Anonymous to Help Other Bank of America Employees Leak Details on Fraud
Submitted by kgosztola on Mon, 03/14/2011 - 05:55

ImageAnonymous, the hacktivist group known for supporting WikiLeaks and mounting actions in cyberspace in defense of freedom of information and transparency, launched “#BlackMonday” at midnight. Emails between an Anonymous user and an employee with Balboa Insurance, whose work is connected to the operations of Bank of America, were posted.

The employee claims to have worked for the company for the last seven years. He writes, “Many of you do not know who Balboa Insurance Group (soon to be rebranded as QBE First by Australian Reinsurance Company QBE according to internal communication sent to all Balboa associates) is, but if you’ve ever had a loan for an automobile, farm equipment, mobile home, or residential or commercial property, we knew you. In fact, we probably charged you money…a lot of money…for insurance you didn’t even need.”

Emails from the employee allegedly affirm suspicions that banks like Bank of America have been engaged in rampant fraud. But, the bigger story here is Anonymous has made contact with an employee at Balboa Insurance and opened up a conduit for getting information out to the world. He appears intent to push others to blow the whistle of Bank of America fraud.

In an email sent on March 11, 2011 at 7:06 pm, the Balboa Insurance employee writes about a key strategic issue that Anonymous faces in its campaign to take down Bank of America for its disingenuous and fraudulent dealings (particularly a campaign that began when the bank announced it would cease to process donations to WikiLeaks).

The employee describes only having emails that focus around a core group of managers. He suggests the emails only “drive the nail into 1 of the hydra’s many heads” and that “Bank of America knows damage control.” He goes on to write, “All you have to do after bringing the one story to light is create an avenue for everyone else to start doing what I did. Once employees see that they can be successful at it, you won’t just have a stronger axe to cut off 1 head…you’ll have 1000 axes aimed at all of the heads.”

It is clear the employee has followed the operations of Anonymous closely. Continuing the hydra metaphor, he notes that, while HBGary Federal had a “handful of people” destroyed, a head will grow in place of where those people used to be and be smarter and faster.

The employee is prepared to work with Anonymous to get in touch with others, who can share emails or evidence of criminal conduct. He writes in an email what he thinks of Bank of America is that it is “a faceless corporation but it is managed and operated by real people like you and I. These people are scared because the Bank of America family is the only safe place they know. Some of them are bad, but some of them are good people that don’t even realize what they’re involved in is wrong. They’re bombarded with corporate brainwashing on a daily basis and never told the full story. They’re encouraged to ignore the media and only listen to official Bank of America internal emails for legitimate news.”

When told Anonymous is can help others tell their story, he reacts, “Don’t hold your breath. These people are conditioned to take orders and not think about anything. Nobody works at BofA because they grew up dreaming to work there. They work there because they’re too scared to stand on their own in this world and want to be protected by the corporate family.”

“This place is run like a cult,” writes the employee. It is clear that he is significantly appalled with Bank of America. And, he pleads with Anonymous to encourage those within Anonymous to listen to other employees’ stories and take them seriously “no matter where they are on the corporate ladder.” He urges Anonymous to “encourage them to take a stand against what they know is wrong. Let them know the BofA way of life is not the only way of life. Give them a voice. What you’ll find when you do that will amaze you.”

Key Exchange Indicating Fraud

An operations manager sends the following:

Subject: GMAC DTNís for Image Removal ñ Urgent Request
Importance: High
Hello,
The following GMAC DTNís need have the images removed from Tracksource/Rembrandt.
354499768
354499769
354499770
354499771
354499772
354499773
354499774
354499775
354499776
354499777
354499734
354499735
354499736
354499739
354499740
354499741
354499742
354499745
354499746
354499747
354499750
354499751
354499754
354499725
354499726
354499727
354499728
354499729
354499730
354499731
354499732
354499733
354499718
354499719
354499720
354499721
354499722
354499723
354499724
354499707
354499708
354499710
354499711
354499713
354499714
354499715
354499697
354499698
354499699
354499700
354499702
354499704
354499705
354499706
354499667
354499668
354499669
354499670
354499671
354499672
354499673
354499674
354499675
354499676
354499677
354499678
354499679
354499680
354499681
354499682
354499683
354499686
354499687
354499688
354499691
354499692
354499693
354499694
354499695
354499696

These are "document tracking numbers," a number assigned to all incoming/outgoing documents (letters, insurance documents, etc).

A woman with Balboa Insurance replies:

I have spoken with my developer and she stated that we cannot remove the DTNís from Rembrandt, but she can remove the loan numbers, so the documents will not show as matched to those loans.

I will need upper management approval from Jason, Peggy and Kirsten, since this is an usual request, before we move forward.

Rembrandt is the insurance tracking system.

Peggy with upper management replies, "Where will these letters show up then?" The woman from Balboa responds, "The letters will not show in Rembrandt if you search by loan number. If you search by DTN, you will find the document, but it will not be matched to any loan."

The numbers' removal are then "approved."

The operations manager expresses his concern:

I'm just a little concerned about the impact this has on the department and company. Why are we removing all record of this error? We have told Denise Cahen, and there is always going to be the paper trail when one of these sent documents come back, this to me, seems to be a huge red flag for the auditors: example: a scanned document that was mailed to us asking why the letter was received when the letter, albeit erroneous ñ this being the letters that went out in error ñ the auditor sees the erroneous letter but no SOR [System of Record] trail or scanned doc on the corrected letter is in the SOR and scanned in). What am I missing? This just doesnít seem right to me.

What Goes on When Working

The employee describes Balboa Insurance Group as a business that profits off of “insurance tracking and Forced Placed Insurance (aka Lender Placed Insurance, FOH, LPI, etc).”

What this means is that when you sign your name on the dotted line for your loan, the lienholder has certain insurance requirements that must be met for the life of the lien. Your lender (including, amongst others, GMAC, Aurora Loan Services [a subsidiary of Lehman Bros Holdings], IndyMac Federal Bank [a subsidiary of OneWest Bank], Saxon, HSBC, PennyMac [a collection agency started by former Countrywide Home Loans executive Stan Kurland after CHL and Balboa were sold to BAC], Downey Savings and Loans, Financial Freedom, Select Portfolio Services, Wells Fargo/Wachovia, and the now former owners of Balboa Insurance themselves…Bank of America) then outsources the tracking of your loan with them to a company like Balboa Insurance.

Balboa makes some money by charging these companies to track your insurance (the payment of which is factored into your loan). If you do not meet the minimum insurance requirements set by your lienholder, Balboa Insurance places a force placed insurance policy on your loan. You are sent a letter telling you that you do not have insurance, and your escrow account is then adjusted for the inflated premium of a full coverage policy placed by Balboa’s insurance tracking group.

One email in particular details fraud and alleges Balboa Insurance/Countrywide knowingly hid foreclosure information from federal auditors during the federal takeovers of IndyMac Federal (a subsidiary of OneWest) and Aurora Loan Services (a subsidiary of Lehman Bros holdings). The email says loan documentation was falsified “in order to proceed with foreclosures by fixing letter cycles in the system, reporting incorrect volumes to all of their lenders and to the federal auditors to avoid fines for falling behind on Loan Modifications, purposely and knowingly adjusting premiums for REO (Real Estate Owned) insurance for their corporate clients while denying forbearance for individual borrowers.”

Such a revelation, when coupled with the revelation that IndyMac/OneWest had “robosigners” sign at least 24,000 mortgage documents monthly, simply adds to the sea of evidence that has been stacking up against banks like IndyMac and Lehman Bros. In fact, a group of homeowners filed a class-action lawsuit against Aurora Loan Services on August 20, 2010, “claiming the mortgage company duped them into paying tens of thousands of dollars each to have troubled mortgages reviewed by the company with promises of loan modifications, only to have their property foreclosed with little or no notice.” The suit stated Aurora Loan had “reaped more than $100 million” in “illicit profits” from the “scheme.”

He details coming in from Countrywide through a buyout and having “inside knowledge” of portfolios transferred to Bank of America with them. He discusses what happened when a Countrywide/BAC contract was made and how he was soon sitting in the same building. The “cross pollination of customer information” (that he considers to be “shady”) happened, and he thinks that should have been addressed by the government during Bank of America’s buyout.

He outlines what is going on: “When you call Blockbuster, you’re not talk to a Netflix rep, or when you return an item to Target, you don’t get Walmart store credit, but somehow that’s allowed in the banking industry. A data entry processor can be working on a loan for GMAC one minute, BofA the next and HSBC the next.”

It gets better: “When you have a loss and call in to their claims department, their representatives aren’t trained on the federal regulations quoted at the bottom of their emails. When you call in to Sprint, for example, you’re required to verify the last four digits of your social security number, date of birth or some other type of information, but when you call in for a home or auto claim to Balboa, regardless of the lender, they will give you any loan information you ask for without you ever having to verify any personal information as long as you know either your loan number, VIN number, or property address, depending on the situation.”

Another couple of emails highlight the division of labor among employees and a “prize” system. The detailing of that system reveals that “mundane tasks” are “outsourced to SPI in the Philippines and Mphasis in India.” He writes, “Every day, there is a call where the execs at those companies are disputing errors” for things like errors with addresses because the “address system is different so they often don’t realize that 123 N Main St is the same address as 123 Main St.”

This highly anticipated release of material should have high impact throughout the day. It is not the release of material Julian Assange or WikiLeaks has been promising, but it looks like the emails will be enough to re-focus people’s attention on the issue of mortgage fraud.

Unfortunately, much has come to the fore in the US on fraud but no executives from banks have faced prosecution or gone to jail.

There is little question that it has taken place. Groups or organizations have engaged in specific actions to call attention to the fraud. Arizona and Nevada have sued Bank of America for "misleading customers with 'false promises' about their eligibility for modifications on their home mortgages." And, US Uncut(a newly formed coalition of activists inspired by UK Uncut) has launched actions against Bank of America to catalyze a movement that will bring an end to the corporate tax dodging Bank of America routinely engages in.

The First Bank of America Document Leak: Force-Placed Insurance Scams?
By ABIGAIL FIELD
Posted 12:30 PM 03/14/11 Company News, Bank of America


At one minute past midnight on Monday morning, a hacker collective released a set of emails on the website BankofAmericaSuck.

While all the allegations involve Bank of America (BAC) -- through a soon to be ex-subsidiary called Balboa Insurance -- they also implicate many other big banks that are clients of Balboa, including: "GMAC, Aurora Loan Services [a subsidiary of Lehman Bros Holdings], IndyMac Federal Bank [a subsidiary of OneWest Bank], Saxon, HSBC, PennyMac [a collection agency started by former Countrywide Home Loans executive Stan Kurland after CHL and Balboa were sold to BAC], Downey Savings and Loans, Financial Freedom, Select Portfolio Services, Wells Fargo/Wachovia and [BofA]."

Note: Unless otherwise linked and stated without caveat, all the information in this article comes from the documents posted at the site.

Who Is the Anonymous Leaker?

The leaker claims to be a former seven-year employee of Balboa Insurance -- first, when it was part of Countrywide and then under Bank of America when it took over Countrywide -- who alleges that he was persecuted by BofA, labeled a terrorist, and had his career destroyed. Much of the information on the site is a Q&A with the leaker, although one email chain is included.


Perhaps realizing credibility could be an issue, the Q&A focuses on the leaker's self-reported motivation and employment experience. The leaker essentially says he has nothing left to lose -- BofA has already taken it all away -- plus he wants to set the record straight.

As to the leaker's credibility, Naked Capitalism's Yves Smith notes that he makes a number of typos and also uses some terms incorrectly, saying "lienholder" when "servicer" is clearly meant. Nonetheless, Smith finds the allegations credible. So do I.

Importantly, the information is not from the same database that Wikileaks reportedly has, as the leaker offers to decode that information if it's made available to him.

As the documents are labeled "Ex Bank of America Employee Can Prove Mortgage Fraud 1," but the information thus-far revealed doesn't really involve mortgage fraud, perhaps a "Part 2" will include such documents, translated Wikileaks or otherwise.

Force-Placed Insurance Scams

The leaker's information relates primarily to "force-placed insurance" -- insurance taken out by a mortgage servicer on a home when the homeowner doesn't maintain the level of insurance required by the loan -- and the role of Balboa Insurance in that industry.

Force-placed insurance is such a problem that the proposed bank settlement on improper foreclosure and loan-servicing practices currently in the work contains many "shall nots" regarding it, including such things as: Thou shalt not buy force-placed insurance, charging a borrower and taking borrower's money from escrow to pay for it, when borrower already has an insurance policy in place.

Felix Salmon details the kind of scams involved, discussing reporting by Jeff Horowitz at American Banker, including these examples:

"A homeowner had a $4,000 insurance policy, which was paid by the loan servicer, Everbank, from an escrow account. But Everbank allegedly let that insurance policy lapse, allowing it to replace the policy with a different policy, this one costing more than $33,000. The insurer, a subsidiary of Assurant [the market leader ahead of Balboa], then paid Everbank a $7,100 kickback for giving it such a lucrative policy. And, writes Horwitz, 'left the door open to further compensation' down the road."

and

"Horwitz has found one case where an $80,000 property was being insured for $10,000 a year, and also notes that at Assurant, 'the unit handling force-placed insurance has accounted for $811 million of its $879 million in profits during the last two years.'"

So force-placed insurance involves grossly inflated premiums, something the leaker also reported. And the servicer can simply decide not to use a borrower's money that is specifically set aside in escrow to pay the insurance premium for the existing insurance.

Why the Scam Works

When the borrower experiences force-placed insurance, it is his servicer that is the one buying the insurance. The leaker's first big revelation -- at least to industry outsiders -- is that only a handful of companies do this for many servicers. So if the insurance tracking and purchasing is done by an insurance company like Balboa, why do borrowers think their lenders are doing it? The employees of Balboa Insurance falsely present themselves as employees of the servicer when dealing with borrowers:

"when you call in to customer service, for say, GMAC, you're not actually speaking to a GMAC employee. You're actually speaking to a Bank of America associate working for Balboa Insurance who is required by their business to business contract with GMAC to state that they are, in fact, an employee of GMAC. The reasoning is that if you do not realize you're speaking to a Bank of America/Balboa Insurance employee, you have no reason to question the validity of the information you are receiving from them [about the price of the force-placed policy]. If you call your insurance agent and ask them for the lienholder information for your GMAC/Wells Fargo/etc lien (home or auto) you will be provided with their name, but the mailing address will be a PO Box at one of Balboa's 3 main tracking locations (Moon Township/Coreaopolis, PA, Dallas/Ft Worth, TX, or Phoenix/Chandler, AZ)"

Horowitz seemed to find the same situation. He noted that when a borrower's attorney tried to investigate a force-placed policy, he discovered that:

"While the people [responding to requests about the force-placed insurance] there claimed to represent the servicer, they were operating out of an office belonging to a force-placed policy insurer since acquired by QBE Insurance Group.

[The attorney] didn't understand why the insurer would be speaking on behalf of the servicer. But shortly after he began asking questions about the relationship between servicer and insurer, the case settled. Confidentially. At the insurer's request..."

A Different Kind of Assembly Line

One of the hallmarks of the foreclosure scandals is how much of the problem was caused by outsourcing relatively high-level functions to companies that minimize costs by industrializing processes that really aren't amenable to that treatment. One small example is preparing court filings like affidavits of indebtedness or assignments of mortgage.

By using an assembly-line system of blank-fillers, signers, notarizers, and witnessers, document creation became very efficient, but also flawed -- both legally and substantively. The industrialization of the paperwork was driven by incentives and disguised by having the single-task completers act in the name of the various servicers, rather than their true employers.

According to the leaker, force-placed insurance works precisely the same way. The processes within Balboa have been industrialized such that people are only doing one step of a multi-step process, over and over, and never see the full picture. Processing speed is a focus and is financially rewarded. The bonuses require people to process 200 to 2,000 loans per day, depending on the job function.

And even though having Balboa do the work for the various servicers is in itself a type of outsourcing, Balboa reduces costs further by outsourcing work to SPI in the Phillipines and Mphasis in India, according to the leaker. (Homeowners I've spoken with have gotten calls in the name of their servicers from such countries, so the leaker's explanation of this is very plausible to me.)

The one email chain that is included in the leak reflects the dynamics that result in such a set up. The chain describes employees of BofA/Balboa trying to hide the fact that they sent out erroneous letters relating to some 80 GMAC loans by delinking the letters from the loan files. Even though concern was expressed in the email chain that such delinking would be problematic from an audit perspective, it was authorized.

Fixing the Wrong Mistakes

Another dynamic that results from the cost-cutting focus of the system, according to the leaker, is this: A lot of effort is spent fighting over trivial errors by the foreign data entry companies because proving such errors results in big savings to Balboa. The leaker was not, however, authorized to spend money to fix more substantial problems:

"If I bring up a system glitch that's affecting 10,000 loans held by real human beings in the real world, in the system, that's a $25,000 project to fix that only truly affects .001% of the loans on paper (discussing numbers like that in a dozen meetings only to have the initiative turned down is the real waste). If I can drop one of our offshore vendors' quality below a certain level, however, than I've just saved the company $250,000."

Another Allegation

An unrelated and unsubstantiated allegation that is leveled almost incidentally must also be mentioned. The leaker claims that Balboa/Countrywide:

"knowingly hid foreclosure information from federal auditors during the takeovers of IndyMac Federal (a subsidiary of OneWest) and Aurora Loan Services (a subsidiary of Lehman Bros Holdings), falsifying loan documentation in order to proceed with foreclosures by fixing letter cycles in the system, reporting incorrect volumes to all of their lenders and to the federal auditors to avoid fines for falling behind on Loan Modifications, purposely and knowingly adjusting premiums for REO (Real Estate Owned) insurance for their corporate clients while denying forbearance for individual borrowers, etc, etc, etc."

The leaker makes this claim without supplying an email to back it up. It's perhaps worth noting, however, that fabricating letters to facilitate a foreclosure is a type of document fraud that has shown up in a Countrywide-turned-BofA foreclosure case in Pennsylvania, so the allegation sounds plausible to me.

It would certainly be provable/disprovable by subpoenaing documents. But I have little hope of that happening. Gretchen Morgenson reports in the New York Times that the attorneys general did not investigate the servicers before they created their proposed settlement of the mortgage mess, relying instead on the many, many complaints their offices received from borrowers.

Talk to the Waitresses and Bartenders

A rich set of future sources, according to leaker, are the drunken BofA employees and the waitresses and bartenders who serve them at the happy hour spots near BofA processing centers. Leaker claims they all have many stories to tell. I'm not sure where the nearest one of those to me is, but I'll look into it. As should you.

Get info on stocks mentioned in this article

Abigail Caplovitz Field

Financial Writer

Abigail Caplovitz Field is an attorney with a solo general practice on Shelter Island, New York. After graduating from NYU Law with honors in 2001, she worked as an associate for a major corporate law firm in New York City, and then as a consumer and good government lobbyist for the New Jersey Public Interest Research Group. Her lobbying duties included identity theft prevention, financial privacy and health care. She's written on topics as diverse as pharmaceutical marketing, toxic pollution, and racial profiling.

From http://www.dailyfinance.com/story/compa ... /19878237/

[JackRiddler]

http://news.firedoglake.com/2011/03/05/a-liberal-is-a-villager-whos-been-screwed-by-a-mortgage-servicer/

A Liberal Is a Villager Who’s Been Screwed By a Mortgage Servicer

By: David Dayen Saturday March 5, 2011 1:40 pm


The past week has seen a pronounced evolution in the writing of Dana Milbank. Earlier in the week he severely criticized the incestuous relationship between the political and media culture in Washington – including engaging in a healthy dose of self-criticism – revealed by the Kurt Bardella email scandal. Where did this newfound self-awareness come from? Perhaps that can be explained by his latest piece. See, Milbank discovered that, regardless of his prominence in the DC journalism community or access to power, to the banks he was still nothing but a mark.

Last fall, my wife and I refinanced our mortgage with Citibank. Sixty days later, we received a “cancellation notice” from our homeowners insurance company “for non-payment of premium.”

Turns out Citibank, which had been collecting hundreds of dollars a month from us to pay the insurer, hadn’t made the payments. It was, I later learned, one of the usual tricks mortgage servicers use to squeeze more cash out of their customers. About a month later, I learned of another trick: Citibank informed us that it was increasing our monthly payment by nearly $300.

Along the way, a simple refi became a months-long odyssey: rates misquoted, interest charged on a phantom account, legal documents issued in wrong names, a mortgage officer who disappeared for days at a time (first it was his birthday, then his laptop was in the shop), a bounced check from Citibank’s own title company, and the freezing of our bank accounts.

Sometimes it takes only a little shared experience to recognize the major problems in our society. For Milbank to understand the mortgage crisis, he needed to experience it first-hand. And he recognizes that he’s one of the relatively luckier ones; borrowers without his income stream or resources are being forced into foreclosure when they confront these situations.

Now, I don’t totally agree with one of his premises, that House Republicans are about to make this worse by attempting to repeal HAMP. In fact, these routine stories of servicer abuse happen inside HAMP every day, because of a program that is entirely discretionary and a Treasury Department that has to this day offered no sanctions for abusive servicer conduct or violations of program guidelines. Milbank recognizes this but can’t tear himself away from the position of many consumer advocates, that HAMP is bad but better than nothing. This relies on a pipe dream that you could actually fix HAMP and make it work for consumers; I think we’re beyond that stage.

But Milbank gets quite a bit right in this piece. He realizes that servicers have no concern over foreclosures and in fact have the financial incentive to foreclose over a modification. He understands the illegal fee laddering and the forced-place insurance scandal and robo-signing and all the other illegal activities which have become endemic to the servicers. He sees that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau would be in a position to rein in the worst of these abuses if they don’t have their funding and responsibilities stripped away by House Republicans and handed over to the Office of Bank Advocacy Office of Comptroller of the Currency. And this is a fine conclusion:

My wife and I are reasonably savvy consumers – she has a brand-name MBA, and I began my career as a business reporter for the Wall Street Journal – but we were no match for a bungling bank. After five months of trying, we still haven’t been able to resolve all of Citibank’s mistakes – nearly all of them, curiously, in the bank’s favor [...]

That so much can go wrong with such a simple refinance doesn’t bode well for the 5.5 million homeowners in default (on top of the 3 million already foreclosed). It’s impossible to know for sure, but by some estimates, half of them are victims of some form of servicers’ errors.

“What happened to you,” Ira Rheingold of the National Association of Consumer Advocates told me, “happens to people every single day.” And it will continue, with its resulting drag on the economy, unless and until the big banks can be brought to heel.

If Dana Milbank didn’t come face to face with what homeowners see every day, I don’t believe this piece gets written. That’s often what it takes sometimes; the notion that it can happen to anyone doesn’t register until it happens to them. Now that there’s at least one person in the DC establishment who has had this experience, maybe he’ll pass this along to his colleagues, and keep writing about it. And maybe someday we’ll have an establishment which recognizes the depths to which our financial sector has stooped in search of profit.

[seemslikeadream]

Another Inside Job
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: March 13, 2011

Count me among those who were glad to see the documentary “Inside Job” win an Oscar. The film reminded us that the financial crisis of 2008, whose aftereffects are still blighting the lives of millions of Americans, didn’t just happen — it was made possible by bad behavior on the part of bankers, regulators and, yes, economists.

What the film didn’t point out, however, is that the crisis has spawned a whole new set of abuses, many of them illegal as well as immoral. And leading political figures are, at long last, showing some outrage. Unfortunately, this outrage is directed, not at banking abuses, but at those trying to hold banks accountable for these abuses.

The immediate flashpoint is a proposed settlement between state attorneys general and the mortgage servicing industry. That settlement is a “shakedown,” says Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama. The money banks would be required to allot to mortgage modification would be “extorted,” declares The Wall Street Journal. And the bankers themselves warn that any action against them would place economic recovery at risk.

All of which goes to confirm that the rich are different from you and me: when they break the law, it’s the prosecutors who find themselves on trial.

To get an idea of what we’re talking about here, look at the complaint filed by Nevada’s attorney general against Bank of America. The complaint charges the bank with luring families into its loan-modification program — supposedly to help them keep their homes — under false pretenses; with giving false information about the program’s requirements (for example, telling them that they had to default on their mortgages before receiving a modification); with stringing families along with promises of action, then “sending foreclosure notices, scheduling auction dates, and even selling consumers’ homes while they waited for decisions”; and, in general, with exploiting the program to enrich itself at those families’ expense.

The end result, the complaint charges, was that “many Nevada consumers continued to make mortgage payments they could not afford, running through their savings, their retirement funds, or their children’s education funds. Additionally, due to Bank of America’s misleading assurances, consumers deferred short-sales and passed on other attempts to mitigate their losses. And they waited anxiously, month after month, calling Bank of America and submitting their paperwork again and again, not knowing whether or when they would lose their homes.”

Still, things like this only happen to losers who can’t keep up their mortgage payments, right? Wrong. Recently Dana Milbank, the Washington Post columnist, wrote about his own experience: a routine mortgage refinance with Citibank somehow turned into a nightmare of misquoted rates, improper interest charges, and frozen bank accounts. And all the evidence suggests that Mr. Milbank’s experience wasn’t unusual.

Notice, by the way, that we’re not talking about the business practices of fly-by-night operators; we’re talking about two of our three largest financial companies, with roughly $2 trillion each in assets. Yet politicians would have you believe that any attempt to get these abusive banking giants to make modest restitution is a “shakedown.” The only real question is whether the proposed settlement lets them off far too lightly.

What about the argument that placing any demand on the banks would endanger the recovery? There’s a lot to be said about that argument, none of it good. But let me emphasize two points.

First, the proposed settlement only calls for loan modifications that would produce a greater “net present value” than foreclosure — that is, for offering deals that are in the interest of both homeowners and investors. The outrageous truth is that in many cases banks are blocking such mutually beneficial deals, so that they can continue to extract fees. How could ending this highway robbery be bad for the economy?

Second, the biggest obstacle to recovery isn’t the financial condition of major banks, which were bailed out once and are now profiting from the widespread perception that they’ll be bailed out again if anything goes wrong. It is, instead, the overhang of household debt combined with paralysis in the housing market. Getting banks to clear up mortgage debts — instead of stringing families along to extract a few more dollars — would help, not hurt, the economy.

In the days and weeks ahead, we’ll see pro-banker politicians denounce the proposed settlement, asserting that it’s all about defending the rule of law. But what they’re actually defending is the exact opposite — a system in which only the little people have to obey the law, while the rich, and bankers especially, can cheat and defraud without consequences.

[JackRiddler]

.

Here's a really simple summary from FDL, starting by defining this species of fraud you never even heard of until now. I hadn't. The banks are aces at inventing new frauds. In this case, it's an old kind of fraud but a new way to do it.

Bottom line, it involves taking advantage of their power and position to rip people off, with the effect of pillaging the economy as a whole.

Anyway, when a bank/lender forecloses on a mortgage property, they must pay house insurance. If the mortgage holder had a policy, the foreclosing bank must keep paying it. Instead, the banks meet the insurance requirement by taking out a new, much more expensive house insurance from a crony insurer. The crony insurer gives a kickback to the bank. But why the hell does the bank want to pay higher premiums? They just add that bill to the tab of the hapless mortgage holder, or, given that most mortgages are securitized, they pass it on to the stupid investors who bought the AAA-rated junk paper believing what Moody's told them. Either way, more people end up on the street.

The new twist: that so many millions of junk mortgages are in play and securitized as aggregates that are all sliced and repackaged in a variety of bonds according to intentionally convoluted processes. Thanks to the constant crazy shifting of titles and paper work that no one can possibly figure out, BoA/Countrywide could illegally separate the title records from the insurance records, so it would become very hard to see or track the fraud. Especially given that the government doesn't actually want to do that. Since these banks own the government. Besides which, they create all the oxygen and water on the planet, and we would all die, and God would also die and the whole universe would fall back into a singularity if they failed, or if they failed to make a profit. Also, the devil would put everyone into triple-hell forever. So if any big element finally fails as a result of the shell game -- the bank or the insurance company -- it must be rescued, with no questions asked about the crime since such questions make the Street nervous and could also lead to loss of bank profits, therefore loss of oxygen, water, life, God, universe and an eternity in hell, shut up.

http://news.firedoglake.com/2011/03/14/anonymous-emails-accuse-bofa-with-forced-place-insurance-scam/

Anonymous Emails Accuse BofA With Forced-Place Insurance Scam

By: David Dayen Monday March 14, 2011 6:49 am


I have not been able to get into the Anonymous leak of Bank of America emails so far, but as I understand it, the source of the emails doesn’t work for BofA but Balboa Insurance, which used to be owned by them. And his claim is that BofA operated a large forced-place insurance scandal.

Briefly, forced-place insurance is this: when a homeowner doesn’t pay for homeowner’s insurance for their mortgage, the loan servicer must step in to buy an insurance policy for the homeowner. This policy is supposed to be of comparable worth, but in this scheme, the servicer will purchase insurance for the homeowner that costs ten times as much or more, get a kickback from the insurance company for buying such an expensive policy, and then charge the investors or even the homeowner for the insurance. And the servicer usually reinsures the insurance, which means this expensive policy will never face a claim.

Business Insider describes the content of the emails:

The following codes pertain to the emails, so use as reference:

SOR = System of Record
Rembrandt/Tracksource = Insurance tracking systems
DTN = Document Tracking Number. A number assigned to all incoming/outgoing documents (letters, insurance documents, etc)

The first email asks for a group of GMAC DTN’s to have their “images removed from Tracksource/Rembrandt.” The relevant DTNs are included in the email — there’s between 50-100 of them.

In reply, a Balboa employee says that the DTN’s cannot be removed from the Rembrandt, but that the loan numbers can be removed so “the documents will not show as matched to those loans.” But she adds that she needs upper management approval before she moves forward, since it’s an unusual request.

Then it gets approved. And then, one of the Balboa employees voices their concern. He says,

“I’m just a little concerned about the impact this has on the department and the company. Why are we removing all record of this error? We have told Denise Cahen, and there is always going to be the paper trail when one of these sent documents come back. this to me seems to be a huge red flag for the auditors… when the auditor sees the erroneous letter but no SOR trail or scanned doc on the corrected letter… What am I missing? This just doesn’t seem right to me.”

BofA (and Courtney Comstock) don’t think there’s much there. Yves Smith, on the other hand, is skeptical but finds it plausible.

One reason I am predisposed toward taking this at face value is I have been hearing widespread complaints from readers about forced place insurance. And the industry experts I consulted with thought BofA was a likely candidate since it already owned a large insurer. The narrative from BankofAmericaSucks is a bit wobbly on the roles of some of the parties [...]

And if these allegations are indeed accurate, they make a mockery of the settlement charade underway among 50 state attorneys general, Federal regulators, and what amount to banking industry crooks, aka servicers.

The writing style of the author (some typos, not that yours truly is one to make much of that sort of thing) and the errors regarding the roles of key parties will lead to questions regarding validity. But as indicated, previous abuses in this area, the past behavior of underwater servicers, and the complaints I have been hearing make this all too credible.

Just because something has a lot of anecdotal evidence behind it doesn’t necessarily mean the specific case is true. But the forced-place insurance scam has been part of other servicer lawsuits, so it definitely exists. Whether this set of emails shows that taking place is another matter. Apparently this is just the first Anonymous email dump, so there should be more on the way.

.....

[JackRiddler]

http://tpmlivewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/03/frustrated-crowd-to-ny-fed-chief-i-cant-eat-an-ipad.php?ref=fpb

Frustrated Crowd To NY Fed Chief: 'I Can't Eat An iPad'
David Taintor | March 14, 2011, 9:12AM


New York Fed President William Dudley


New York Federal Reserve President William Dudley on Friday tried to calm people's nerves about rising food prices by reminding them that other products -- like iPads -- are getting cheaper.

"Today you can buy an iPad 2 that costs the same as an iPad 1 that is twice as powerful," Dudley said in Queens, Reuters reports. "You have to look at the price of all things."

But better iPads don't put food on the table, audience members reminded him.

"When was the last time, sir, that you went grocery shopping?" one person asked.

And, perhaps most succinctly, another told him, "I can't eat an iPad."

Yahoo's The Lookout points out that food prices have been rising since November 2009, and that consumers should expect to pay 4 percent more for food this year.

h/t The Lookout

[JackRiddler]

.

Hm, it hadn't occurred to me but a dollar sell-off is underway by Japanese holders to pick up yen for payment of the insurance costs stemming from the disaster. This is likely to be the costliest disaster of all time, in money terms, given that it's in a rich country where everything's insured.

.

[bks]

Nikkei futures down 16%? Uncharted waters.

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/nikkei ... oose-japan

[Ben D]

Asian markets going south....

http://au.finance.yahoo.com/intlindices?e=asia

[anothershamus]

Asian markets going south....

http://au.finance.yahoo.com/intlindices?e=asia

Nikkei futures down 16%? Uncharted waters.

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/nikkei ... oose-japan

NIKKEI 8,459.54 -1160.95 Kitco chart 10:05pm Mon. March 15th

SHIT HITTING FAN!

[JackRiddler]

.

Not to focus on money trivialities in the face of that horror for millions, but this is the Wall Street thread. Asians now have a big incentive -- and a cover -- for a dollar sell-off.

! JUST WATCHED INSIDE JOB !

It IS all that! Really. I'll leave my predictable quotient of quibbles for some other time. (Probably watching it again tomorrow with bks, no less.) Very comprehensive, properly weighted accounting of the crisis causes and dynamics and the varieties of criminality covered here. Excellent film-making (clearly had a decent budget and made good use of it). Ground-breaking is the section on the academic helpers to banksterdom, getting several of them into interviews and achieving significant exposure of their corruption.

.

[bks]

Serendipitous!! Just watched it tonight as well at www.archive.org.

Lighter-weight treatment of the "academic problem" at faculty.unlv.edu/phelan/Research/Propaganda.pdf

[JackRiddler]

...can't help but assimilate...

Great interview!
Regular listener of Sam Seder here...about two thirds in the interview, the real scandal withing government as well is discussed...


Monday, March 14, 2011 [54:33] Hide Player | Play in Popup | DownloadGuest: Author and journalist Yves Smith

Yves Smith, author and founder of Naked Capitalism.com joins Sam to discuss the recent dump of Bank of America emails by the hacktivists Anonymous and she explains what they expose about the way BOA made tons of money in an insurance scam.Check out Yves Smith’s book ECONned: How Unenlightened Self Interest Undermined Democracy and Corrupted Capitalism

interview-
http://official.fm/track/222181

=======
Enitre Show (Well worth a listen too!)
http://majority.fm/2011/03/14/monday-ma ... #more-1274