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Thanks for all the kind words in response to the post here last Tuesday, November 18. I would like to thank everyone here at one time and place. Thank you.
My wife is out of ICU and at home. We are settling into a schedule, more or less, including seeing doctors who were never in the treatment picture at the hospital. It is a good schedule to have to look forward to, all in all.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Please Read The Disclaimer. Copyright 2014 by Dennis J. Wall. All rights reserved.
Yesterday my wife was taken to the Intensive Care Unit at our local hospital. She is there now. She fell and hit her head yesterday.
I have not been told a diagnosis and there have been many possibilities suggested at the hospital, including a stroke.
How quickly things change. So quickly. One reason I want to write this quick post is because of the time of year. Christmas is approaching. Yesterday reminded me of the reason that Jacob Marley's ghost told Scrooge that he appeared to Scrooge at the beginning of "A Christmas Carol" by Mr. Charles Dickens.
Marley told Scrooge that he "procured" his appearance to Scrooge so that Scrooge would have an opportunity to avoid Marley's own fate. The moral was that if people's actions are changed, so are the results at the end of our lives.
I have been given a chance to reflect on where I am going. You have a chance to reflect on where you are going, too. The reality is that we can and do make that choice every day of our lives.
As I wrote above, my wife is in the ICU and I do not yet have a diagnosis for her condition. I am on my way to the ICU now.
Please Read The Disclaimer. Copyright 2014 by Dennis J. Wall. All rights reserved.
Condominium prices are rising and pressure is increasing on the Federal Housing Administration. The FHA is being pressured by realtors and mortgagees to guarantee or backstop with taxpayer money, what amount to subprime mortgages. It is said that the FHA guarantee will enable people to buy condominiums who cannot afford them now. See Kenneth R. Harney, "FHA Squeezing Loans for Condos Despite Surging Demand" (Los Angeles Times Online, posted Sunday, November 9, 2014).
But is it really a good thing for the borrowers whose condominium units will be foreclosed when they can no longer pay the mortgage? And is it the kind of public policy we really want to put in place, to guarantee and likely pay for those mortgages with your tax money?
The realtors and mortgagees think so. For example, a former head of the FHA changed his mind apparently since he left his post as Commissioner of the FHA. Now he is the head of the Mortgage Bankers Association and his views have changed. There is no reason for restrictions now, it seems, that the foreclosure crisis "has abated, as at present." (To be fair, these are apparently not the Mortgage Banker's words, at least not a direct quote, but words written by the reporter on the story to finish what the Mortgage Banker was saying about disappearing foreclosure problems.)
Who told you that "the crisis has abated, as at present"? Probably not someone in foreclosure, at present.
There is a second set of mortgages that realtors and mortgagees and other investors want to insure with money from the Federal Treasury. The article mentions that the COO of "ReadySetLoan" is among those who want the FHA to guarantee the purchase of reverse mortgages by seniors, also.
Why do you think it would be a good idea to put your mom or dad, or someone else's mom or dad, or any of your clients or customers, into a reverse mortgage, and then backstop default with money provided by the Federal Government, so that investors and others can be paid?
It seems that we have seen this movie, as they say. Perhaps most recently in about 2008? There may and undoubtedly are better ways to spend the guarantees that amount to Federal Housing Insurance paid for by you and by me.
Dennis Wall is writing a book on the topic of residential mortgage contracts and lender force-placed insurance. It is scheduled for publication by the American Bar Association in the Spring of 2015.
Please Read The Disclaimer. Copyright 2014 by Dennis J. Wall. All rights reserved.
In the lead-up to the Financial Fiasco that broke in 2007-2008, and continuing now, executives of companies under the jurisdiction of the Securities and Exchange Commission received payments including stock options even though their companies lowered their earnings reports. The Dodd-Frank Act required the S.E.C. to write a new rule which would change the law to make it simpler for companies to recoup payments they had already made to executives in the event that those companies had to report lower earnings during the executives' financial watch:
The availability of so-called "clawbacks" would be expanded to cover the past as well as the current executives already covered under Federal law in the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002.
Proof of intentional misconduct would not be required in order for the companies to recoup the monies they had already paid. (The Sarbanes-Oxley Act requires proof of intentional conduct.)
Companies could recover stock options as well as salaries and bonuses in cash, whereas Federal law did not previously authorize recovery of stock options.
The fairly clear requirements of the Federal law are summarized in Gretchen Morgenson, "Fair Game / A Blank Page in the S.E.C. Rule Book" p. 1, col. 4 (New York Times Nat'l ed., "SundayBusiness" Section, Sunday, November 9, 2014).
To say again, the S.E.C. has yet to issue the clawback rule clearly required by Congress when it passed the Dodd-Frank Act in 2010.
In the past 4 years, the S.E.C. has succeeded in finally writing 94 out of 102 regulations which Dodd-Frank required it to write. Of the remaining 8, there are 3 related to money paid to executives.
Reportedly, what is pretty clearly a simple issue has been made into a complicated one by the financial industry and its lawyers unwilling to allow any such rule to be issued. See Gretchen Morgenson, New York Times, supra, quoting Dennis M. Kelleher, CEO of Better Markets.
And, undoubtedly when an overly long and complicated rule is finally issued, they will lead the chorus of complaints against it, first and foremost because the rule-to-be-issued will be too long and unnecessarily complicated.
Please Read The Disclaimer. Copyright 2014 by Dennis J. Wall. All rights reserved.
A current majority of the U.S. Supreme Court has given effect to a variety of jury trial waivers in various contracts. The contracted waivers of jury trial they have approved go beyond waivers to affirmative agreements: to arbitrate rather than sue, to arbitrate in a certain venue, or to arbitrate according to the usual practice in arbitration proceedings without a record of the proceedings, among other things.
The true story of how to handle unripe first-party bad faith claims in Florida.
Florida law requires that the policyholder or other insured prevail on the question of whether there is insurance coverage for a given claim, before there can legally be a claim for first-party bad faith. (In Florida, every first-party bad faith claim is statutory. There is no common law of first-party bad faith in Florida.)
A claim for first-party bad faith filed before coverage is determined is called "unripe". There is a question whether a Court applying Florida law should abate an unripe first-party bad faith claim in a case before the Courrt, or dismiss the unripe claim without prejudice.
At least in some Federal Courts in the Middle District of Florida, the emerging answer is to abate. See Smith v. 21st Century Centennial Insurance Co., 2014 WL 5474591 *1 (M.D. Fla. October 29, 2014).
Please Read The Disclaimer. Copyright 2014 by Dennis J. Wall. All rights reserved. No claim to Original U.S. Government Works.
