November 18, 2011 - Occupy Philly Forcloses on Wells Fargo - the full uncensored version.

A jury acquitted a dozen Occupy Philadelphia demonstrators Tuesday -- and the judge shook their hands -- in their appeal of misdemeanor convictions stemming from 2011 arrests during a sit-in at a Wells Fargo Bank branch.

Philly.com:

They were charged with "defiant trespass."

But after a Common Pleas Court jury on Tuesday acquitted the 12 Occupy Philadelphia protesters arrested in a 2011 bank sit-in, the trial judge shook their hands and called them the "most affable group of defendants I've ever come across."

"I think what this really shows is that when the people of Philadelphia make a decision, they want someone accountable," said Aaron Troisi, a 26-year-old working toward a master's degree in education at Temple University. "Accountability and justice is not what they experienced with banks like Wells Fargo."

Troisi and 11 fellow Occupy demonstrators were acquitted of conspiracy and defiant trespass in the Nov. 18, 2011, sit-in inside a Wells Fargo Bank branch at 17th and Market Streets in Center City.

The jury of 10 women and two men had deliberated about 13 hours since Friday before it returned the verdict to a packed courtroom shortly before noon.

Afterward, Judge Nina N. Wright Padilla took the unusual step of coming down from the bench and asking all 12 to approach so she could shake their hands.

"I hope you continue your work in a law-abiding way," said Padilla.

Last year, Wells Fargo and four other major lenders reached a $25 billion settlement with attorneys general across the nation to end investigations into alleged foreclosure abuses.

U.S. District Court Judge Jed Rakoff is stepping up his fight with the Securities and Exchange Commission over its regulation of Wall Street. After accusing the regulator of negotiating a weak settlement with Citigroup, Rakoff said the SEC withheld important information that prevented him from doing his job.

The SEC isn’t taking Rakoff's attacks sitting down:

Meanwhile, the SEC took the dramatic step of asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit to overrule a recent Rakoff decision by issuing a special writ generally reserved for cases in which a judge has grossly overstepped his bounds. Called a writ of mandamus, such a direct and personal challenge to a judge is far from a routine gambit.

The judge and the SEC are locked in an extraordinary battle over how the government should police financial fraud, and just when it seemed that the conflict could not get more contentious, Thursday’s development added a dimension.

Rakoff, who presides over major Wall Street cases from his bench in Manhattan, has been pushing the SEC to stop negotiating settlements in which firms accused of securities fraud neither admit nor deny wrongdoing. In a recent case involving a Citigroup mortgage deal in which investors allegedly lost more than $700 million, he rejected a settlement under which Citigroup would pay $285 million, saying it was “neither fair, nor reasonable, nor adequate, nor in the public interest.”

Companies can look upon such settlements as “a cost of doing business,” he wrote.

A spokesman for the SEC issued a statement saying that the agency “will respond as appropriate in the proceedings before the Court of Appeals.”

[Via The Washington Post]

This video is the successful appeal of one Georgia couple, Ken and Meredith Williams to convince Bank of America to finally close on the couple's home loan. The pair launched a no-holds-barred social media campaign against the bank, to convince them to close a loan that had been delayed for more than two months.

“All I want is to have a home, and a front yard for my garden gnome. Bank you’ve got to close this loan!” Williams sings at the end of the song. “We can sign the papers and grab a beer, then you take my money for 30 years. Bank you’ve got to close this loan!”

In late September, a senior mortgage officer told the Williamses that the $203,000 loan they had applied for to buy a home in Decatur, Ga., would close on October 31st, according to a timeline the couple posted on closeourloan.wordpress.com, a blog they created to broadcast their plight.

But after numerous delays, the loan was still pending as of mid-December. What's more, the couple was now being charged $50 a day by the home's seller for not having closed the deal earlier, WSB-TV reported.

That's when Ken and Meredith decided to make some noise: Ken made a theatrical appeal through a YouTube music video while Meredith banged the social media drums of Twitter and WordPress. She tweeted to @BofA_help, Bank of America's customer service Twitter handle, got her friends to send similar tweets, and created the "Close Our Loan" blog to host the couple's YouTube escapades and a timeline detailing their loan troubles.

"Why can't a house go fast when a buyer's got cash, preapproval and two cats," sings Williams, as he dances in front of a Bank of America office. "It takes time, obviously, a month or even two, but now we're looking at three!"

Ken Williams made the video on Saturday and posted it to YouTube on Sunday afternoon. By 10 a.m. on Monday morning, Bank of America called the couple.

He said the matter “escalated really fast” and the couple received phone calls from a representative of the bank’s CEO.

[Via, Via, Via]