Cops Fishing for Cash With Bogus Drug Stops

Posted on April 3, 2012 by Kevin S. Willis

Just add this to the list of reasons to avoid Illinois. Alas, they are hardly the only place stopping folks for things they didn’t do in order to attempt to confiscate their cash and cars.

Asset forfeiture is the process by which law enforcement agencies can take possession of property suspected of being tied to illegal activity. Under these laws, the property itself is presumed to be guilty of criminal activity. Once the property has been seized, it’s up to the owner to prove he obtained the property legitimately.

In about 80 percent of civil asset forfeiture cases, the property owner is never charged with a crime. And in Illinois — like many states — the law enforcement agency that makes the seizure gets to keep the cash or the proceeds of the forfeiture auction (in Illinois, the prosecutor’s office gets 10-12 percent).

Critics say civil asset forfeiture is rife with poor incentives, and violates the Fifth Amendment’s protection against seizure of property without due process of law. Police can seize a car, cash, even a home on the flimsiest of evidence.

Filed under: War on Drugs | Tagged: , , | 95 Comments »

Unprecedented?!?!

Posted on April 3, 2012 by ScottC

President Obama is nothing if not bold. Yesterday, in an abuse of language for which there is unfortunately a great deal of precedent, the president opined on SCOTUS’s recent hearing regarding the fate of ACA.

Ultimately I am confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress

Unprecedented and extraordinary? Really? No law passed by Congress has ever been overturned by the court before?

Politics is politics, of course, and we all know the games of semantic deception that are regularly played by politicians. But, especially for a former professor of constitutional law, this is a particularly embarrassing departure from reality. Doesn’t it debase our politics even more than is already the case to have a Chief Executive who is so shameless in his disregard for the meanings of the words he uses and the reality he pretends to describe?

Filed under: 2012, aca, Obama, Supreme Court | 54 Comments »

Morning Report

Posted on April 3, 2012 by Brent Nyitray

Vital Statistics:

Last Change Percent
S&P Futures 1410.0 -2.6 -0.18%
Eurostoxx Index 2486.0 -15.2 -0.61%
Oil (WTI) 104.53 -0.7 -0.67%
LIBOR 0.4692 0.001 0.21%
US Dollar Index (DXY) 78.934 0.114 0.14%
10 Year Govt Bond Yield 2.16% -0.02%
RPX Composite Real Estate Index 170.63 0.1

Equity markets are slightly lower this morning on no major news. Bonds are up half a point and MBS are up about 1/4 of a point. After spiking to 2.38%, the 10 year bond has been slowly rallying, with yields back to 2.16%.

Regulators are trying to figure out how to apply some of the terms of the landmark $25 billion settlement to other financial firms. Iowa AG Patrick Madigan fires a shot across the bow of servicers: “Loan servicing has been a mess for the past four of rive years. Reforming that industry is very important and very challenging.” He goes on further to say that it isn’t only the servicer / borrower relationship that he is focused on, it is also the servicer / MBS investor. Of course this helps explain why you can’t give away MSRs right now. Regulators are going after another 8 banks – SunTrust, US Bancorp, PNC, EverBank, GOldman, OneWest, MetLife, and HSBC.

The $25 billion settlement included a foreclosure moratorium which kept a lot of property off the market. They are about to be released, and RealtyTrac estimates that prices could drop as much as 10 percent. Moody’s estimates sales of REO will probably rise 25% this year. A lot of these properties could be 100% losses. Interesting statistic from the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland:  Foreclosures held less than a year lose about 35%.  After two years, the loss is close to 60%.

The NYT has yet another piece on institutional investors buying REOs and turning them into rentals.

The markets will be looking to the release of the FOMC meeting minutes for more clues into QEIII and what replaces Operation Twist. They should be released around 2:00 – 2:15 EST.

Filed under: Morning Report | 21 Comments »