The bank foreclosure settlement that was intended to speed relief to homeowners is having some problems. Probably not a surprise to those already screwed over by the Big Banks.

On Tuesday, some of the first people to receive payouts under the $9.2 billion deal between federal regulators and the mortgage industry called into a government hotline to report that their bank would not cash their check, the Federal Reserve announced in a press release. Though the unspecified problem was eventually resolved, the Federal Reserve noted, the episode is likely to further erode confidence in a program that has failed to deliver on almost every promise made by federal regulators.

From the press release:

The paying agent for checks being sent to borrowers under the Independent Foreclosure Review has assured the Federal Reserve Board that early problems with some checks have been corrected and that funds are available to cash all checks.

Some early recipients of checks informed the Federal Reserve's consumer helpline on Tuesday that they were told their checks could not be cashed. Members of the Board staff contacted the paying agent, Rust Consulting, Inc., and the paying bank, The Huntington National Bank. Rust subsequently corrected problems that led to some checks being rejected.

The Board will continue to monitor the payments closely and encourages borrowers who have concerns or experience difficulties cashing their checks to call Rust at 1-888-952-9105.

As previously announced, on April 12, payments began to 4.2 million borrowers following an agreement reached by federal bank regulatory agencies and 13 mortgage servicers. More than 50,000 people have already cashed or deposited checks.

Earlier this month, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued a scathing report on the review process, finding that regulators did not provide proper oversight and that some errors likely went undetected.Regulators also recently released new information suggesting that banks may have made errors in as many as 30 percent of all loans that qualified for a review, a figure far higher than previously reported.

And of course, the regulators did not escape the wrath of Senator Elizabeth Warren.

Warren embarrassed the poor regulators during a Senate Banking Committee hearing last Thursday morning as she demanded to know why they won’t reveal how frequently big banks illegally foreclosed on homeowners, only to be told that information about bank's illegal activities is "proprietary" and may not ever be disclosed.

When the Occupy Wall Street encampment was evicted from the park on Nov. 15, 2011, police officers and sanitation workers dismantled and removed belongings and furnishings that had been kept in the park, tossing them onto sidewalks, into metal containers and into a dump truck.

The city of New York will pay more than $350,000 to settle a lawsuit filed last year claiming that police destroyed the private property of those evicted from a park during an Occupy Wall Street raid.

Occupy Wall Street organizers brought the suit against the city last year, claiming that in a raid that took place in Zucotti Park on Nov. 15, 2011, police destroyed thousands of books the movement had accumulated in its so-called "People's Library."

The "books were damaged so as to render them unusable, and additional books are unaccounted for," court papers read. Furnishings and other equipment were also damaged, the suit claimed.

"Our clients are pleased," Normal Siegel, who represented Occupy Wall Street, said following the decision, according to The Village Voice.

"This was not just about money, it was about constitutional rights and the destruction of books."

The settlement calls for the city to pay Occupy $47,000 for the loss of the books and about $186,000 in legal fees it incurred. New York City will also pay $75,000 to Global Revolutions TV, a broadcaster, along with $49,850 in legal costs, for the destruction of its computers and live-streaming equipment. An additional $8,500 will be paid to Times Up New York, an organization that provided bicycle-powered generators to the Occupiers.

As part of the settlement, Brookfield Properties, the owner of Zucotti Park, will pay the city about $16,000 for its responsibility in the property destruction.

Here's a copy of the settlement:

Occupy Wall St. v. City of New York Settlement by nicholasjpinto

[Artwork by Victor Juhasz, Rolling Stone]

In the latest issue of Rolling Stone, Matt Taibbi takes the Justice Department to task over settling with HSBC late last year in the “largest drug-and-terrorism money-laundering case ever.”

"The HSBC case went miles beyond the usual paper-pushing, keypad-punching­ sort-of crime, committed by geeks in ties, normally associated­ with Wall Street," Taibbi writes. "In this case the bank literally got away with murder – well, aiding and abetting it, anyway."

Three-time losers doing life in California prisons for street felonies might be surprised to learn that the no-jail settlement Lanny Breuer worked out for HSBC was already the bank's third strike. In fact, as a mortifying 334-page report issued by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations last summer made plain, HSBC ignored a truly awesome quantity of official warnings.

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A federal judge has approved a $1 million settlement of a class-action lawsuit filed by demonstrators who were pepper-sprayed during a protest at the University of California, Davis in 2011.

Via:

Under the settlement, UC agreed to pay $30,000 to each of the 21 plaintiffs, $100,000 to be split among 15 other individuals and $250,000 for their attorneys.

The Nov. 18, 2011, incident prompted national outrage, angry campus protests and calls for the resignation of Chancellor Linda Katehi after online videos shot by witnesses went viral.

Images of a police officer casually spraying orange pepper-spray in the faces of nonviolent protesters became a rallying symbol for the Occupy Wall Street movement.

The settlement also calls for the University of California to set aside $100,000 to pay other individuals who can prove they were arrested or pepper-sprayed during the protest of tuition hikes and police brutality. The university would also give the ACLU up to $20,000 for its work reviewing free speech and protest policies at UC Davis.

Without reading the final settlement, it's difficult to say, but it seems that this might replace the Independent Foreclosure Review, and provide some real relief for homeowners and families who suffered foreclosures. But, as Lynn Drysdale, a lawyer at Jacksonville Area Legal Aid and a former co-chairwoman of the National Association of Consumer Advocates, said: “It’s certainly a victory for consumers and could help entire neighborhoods. But the devil, as they say, is in the details, and for those people who have had to totally uproot their lives because of eviction it may still not be enough.”

NYT:

Banking regulators are close to a $10 billion settlement with 14 banks that would end the government’s efforts to hold lenders responsible for foreclosure abuses like faulty paperwork and excessive fees that may have led to evictions, according to people with knowledge of the discussions.

Under the settlement, a significant amount of the money, $3.75 billion, would go to people who have already lost their homes, making it potentially more generous to former homeowners than a broad-reaching pact in February between state attorneys general and five large banks. That set aside $1.5 billion in cash relief for Americans.

Most of the relief in both agreements is meant for people who are struggling to stay in their homes and need the banks to reduce their payments or lower the amount of principal they owe.

The $10 billion pact would be the latest in a series of settlements that regulators and law enforcement officials have reached with banks to hold them accountable for their role in the 2008 financial crisis that sent the housing market into the deepest slump since the Great Depression. As of early 2012, four million Americans had been foreclosed upon since the beginning of 2007, and a huge amount of abandoned homes swamped many states, including California, Florida and Arizona.

The five largest banks involved in the $26 billion settlement with the Justice Department and the Department of Housing and Urban Development -- JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Citigroup and Ally Financial -- are included in the current negotiations.

There were five of them, not even men yet, accused of a violent rape. They were prosecuted aggressively by district attorneys and vilified by a tabloid press, then sent to prison for as many as 13 years.

In 1989, the case of the Central Park Five, as the attack on a 28-year-old white investment banker in uptown Manhattan has come to be known, roiled the country, touching on race and class and fears about crime.

But the defendants -- all black or Latino, none older than 16 -- didn't commit the attack on the Central Park jogger. They were the victims of coerced confessions and authorities eager for scapegoats.

Then in 2002, after the five had all spent years in jail, a previously unknown man admitted to beating and sexually assaulting the woman. All five of the convictions were vacated.

An explosive new documentary looks at a case once referred to as "the crime of the century": the Central Park Five. Many people have heard about the case, but far too few know that innocent teenagers were imprisoned as a result. The film tells the story of how five black and Latino teenagers were arrested in 1989 for beating and raping a white woman in New York City’s Central Park. Media coverage at the time portrayed the teens as guilty and used racially coded terms like "wolf pack" to refer to the group of boys accused in the attack.

Donald Trump took out full-page ads in four city newspapers calling for the reinstatement of the death penalty so they could be executed. However, the convictions of the five were vacated in 2002 when the real rapist came forward and confessed to the crime, after the five defendants had already served sentences of almost seven to 13 years.

New York City is refusing to settle a decade-long civil lawsuit brought by the men. And now lawyers for the city are seeking access to footage gathered for the new film.

Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! speaks to one of the Central Park Five, Raymond Santana; filmmaker Sarah Burns; and journalist Natalie Byfield.

Full transcript after the jump.

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By Cora Currier -- ProPublica

Florida has the highest percentage of home loans in foreclosure in the country. So why is more than $300 million that could help homeowners sitting unused?

Florida was awarded those millions in February as part of the $25 billion national settlement between five of country's biggest banks and forty-nine states and the District of Columbia. The settlement resolved allegations of wrongful foreclosures and other mortgage servicing abuses, and required banks to offer some homeowners the opportunity to modify their loans or refinance, or, in some cases pay homeowners directly for wrongful foreclosure.

The banks also had to pay $2.5 billion directly to state governments. Florida's sum was the largest, after California, in part a measure of how deeply the mortgage crisis affected the sunshine state.

Yet Florida is one of just a few states where the Attorney General has not announced plans for a significant portion of the money. We've contacted every state to find out what they were doing with that money. Of the $2.5 billion going to states, just over a billion dollars has been pledged for housing-related programs, while a roughly equal amount has been diverted to plug budget holes or fund programs unrelated to the foreclosure crisis. $378 million is still to be determined, and almost all of that is Florida's.

Florida's funds are caught between the Attorney General, Republican Pam Bondi, and the Republican state legislature. Bondi has pledged to make the money available to homeowners; earlier this year, she called for suggestions from the public. Some state lawmakers, however, insist that it needs to go through the regular appropriations process u2014 where it could potentially be siphoned off into other programs. And that wouldn't happen until March, when the legislative session begins.

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Bank of America announced on Friday that it will pay $2.43 billion to settle a class-action lawsuit with shareholders following its acquisition of Merrill Lynch in 2008. The $50 billion deal came within days of Merrill Lynch’s collapse, effectively preventing the bank from going bankrupt. Bank of America denied the lawsuit’s allegations that its executives made misleading statements about both firms’ financial health at the time, but has said it will institute new corporate governance policies as part of the settlement. The costly suit will result in a $1.6 billion blow to the bank’s third-quarter earnings, the results of which will be reported on Oct. 17th.

The 10 hours and 35 minutes of video footage shot by the NYPD during the raid of Zuccotti Park that was released by Anonymous on Monday gives a more expansive view of what happened on the morning of November 15, 2011, albeit in a more sanitized form. Much of the footage, which also includes clips from the Duarte Square action and the re-opening of the park the following evening, is heavily edited, especially scenes that include arrests. Still, some of it is informative and contradicts the statements or positions made by city officials defending the raid, most notably, that Occupy's Library was dismantled and destroyed by Brookfield employees, and that reports of press harassment and arrests were part of a "myth."

Via:

The first four minutes of this footage shows protester Ted Hall giving a monologue as police in riot gear watch, but the remaining time shows police notifying Occupy's medical tent that they must leave. An officer tells the doctor on duty that he must leave, but that EMS will take care of his patients. The doctor declines, and refuses to leave his two patients. A long standoff ensues, as several officers believe that one of the protesters stole a scalpel. A nurse ensures them that they haven't. That nurse, "Nurse Jane," wrote about the experience here. She describes the medical tent as "the most amazing clinic I've ever worked in!"

Eventually, the tent is ripped by police knives, and everyone is forced out. Nurse Jane is seen speaking with another officer, explaining to him her concerns (11:40 mark), and notes that it doesn't help that there is a man filming her. "That would be me," the TARU officer from behind the camera replies.

The Gothamist has downloaded the footage into seven videos (including the one above) and breaks down each into note worthy events, you can view them all here.

Non-violent students at UC Davis protesting tuition hikes in November 2011 were sprayed with pepper-spray by campus police.

The University of California has agreed to pay $1 million to settle a lawsuit filed by demonstrators who were pepper-sprayed during an Occupy protest at UC Davis last fall, according to a preliminary settlement filed Wednesday.

Under the proposed settlement, each of the 21 protesters named in the complaint will receive $30,000 and an additional $250,000 for their attorneys to split.

A Letter from Quebec:They Villified Us,Then We Won.

Elderly veterans facing foreclosure: Robert Moses is 92, an African American and a World War II Navy veteran.

Don Baird is a couple of weeks shy of his 90th birthday, is scheduled for heart surgery next week, and is also a World War II veteran.

Aside from being former servicemen, both men also share one other thing: they are about to lose the homes they owned, each for more than four decades, to foreclosure.

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The US' housing bubble burst nearly six years ago, but the worst may be yet to come. After a landmark settlement, the major banks have lifted a freeze on foreclosures and government relief has been too small to make a difference.

[Via]