San Francisco Chronicle
by: John Wildermuth

More than 80 percent of the residential mortgage loans that have gone into foreclosure in San Francisco contain one or more clear violations of the law, Assessor-Recorder Phil Ting said Wednesday.

While the errors, many of them technical paperwork violations, don’t necessarily indicate criminal conduct by lenders and others in the mortgage industry, they do show that changes must be made in California’s century-old real estate regulations, he added.

(more…)

San Francisco Bay View
by: Brightline Defense Project

San Francisco, Feb. 15 – In the Board of Supervisors Budget and Finance Committee this afternoon, a resolution approving the 34th America’s Cup nears a vote as a stormy outlook forms over the project. On top of questions around project terms, the question of local hiring on America’s Cup remains unresolved, despite an outpouring of dozens of community and labor advocates in support of local hiring two weeks ago. Just this week, advocates shared with Mayor Lee and policy makers a December 2010 agreement in which the America’s Cup Event Authority committed to complyingwith the San Francisco Local Hiring Policy for Construction on all aspects of pre- and post-event construction.

(more…)

The Huffington Post
by: Preeti Vissa

One intriguing question from the subprime mortgage meltdown and ensuing financial crisis is: Could the crisis have been averted if our financial regulators were more plugged into the communities that were hit first and hardest?

There’s a good case to be made that it could have been. But, as a new Greenlining Institute report, “Government That Looks Like America? Racial and Ethnic Diversity in Financial Regulatory Institutions,” shows, our financial regulators are very far from looking like America.

(more…)

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Executives at Some Key Agencies 100% White, Study Finds

Contact: Bruce Mirken, Greenlining Institute Media Relations Coordinator, 510-926-4022; 415-846-7758 (cell)

BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA – The federal agencies that regulate America’s financial industry don’t come close to matching the nation’s diversity, a new study released today by The Greenlining Institute shows. The report, “Government That Looks Like America? Racial and Ethnic Diversity in Financial Regulatory Institutions,” comes as the recently-created Offices of Women and Minority Inclusion are gearing up their operations and its authors argue that failure to include regulators from diverse backgrounds may cause these agencies to miss emerging trends.

(more…)

Diversity Inc

A new report by the Greenlining Institute, entitled “Government That Looks Like America? Racial and Ethnic Diversity in Financial Regulatory Institutions,” is being released first on DiversityInc.com. It examines the demographics of the organizations regulating the financial-services industry, and they come up short—especially at the top.

(more…)

San Francisco Chronicle
by: Carolyn Lochhead

San Francisco Chronicle
by: Brenda Payton

New America Media

SAN FRANCISCO — California Attorney General Kamala Harris today announced she had secured $18 billion to help the state’s foreclosure victims, as part of a national multi-state settlement with the nation’s
five biggest banks.

As part of the settlement — more than a year in the making –  Ally/GMAC, Bank of America, Citi, JPMorgan Chase, and Wells Fargo will pay as much as $25 billion in relief to homeowners and payments to states and the federal government to settle investigations that found the loan servicers foreclosed on homeowners without properly verifying underlying documents (a practice referred to as robo-signing).

(more…)

San Francisco Chronicle
by: Carolyn Said

Central Valley Business Times

The state of California has joined in an out-of-court settlement with the nation’s largest banks over mortgage abuse.

The settlement is with Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citigroup and Ally Financial.

But mortgages owned by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government’s housing finance agencies, will not be included, thus excluding more than half of the mortgages in the country.

(more…)