Tuesday’s Regulatory & Legislative Round-Up

U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is proposing policy changes to improve access to low-poverty neighborhoods – recent research (summarized here) indicates that place has a lot to do with educational attainment and earning power throughout life. HUD’s housing choice voucher program is proposing new rules that will increase access to lower poverty neighborhoods by allowing higher fair market rent calculations.

Monday’s Adjudication Roundup

NY Federal Court ended the suit against US Bank and Bank of America brought by Blackrock and NCUA for failure to properly oversee residential mortgage-backed security trusts finding that most of the trusts fell under state law.
Deutsche Bank, Morgan Stanley and UBS Securities have settled with Federal Home Loan Bank of Boston for misleading it to purchase $5.9 billion in bad mortgage-backed securities.
Associated Bank agrees to $200 million, record-breaking settlement with US Department of Housing and Urban Development in discriminatory lending suit.

Quicken Loans Inc. filed a complaint against the Justice Department and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development claiming that they tried to get Quicken to make false admissions during a settlement. The Government in turn sued Quicken under the False Claims Act for improper underwriting of mortgages and benefitting under the Federal Housing Administration insurance payouts.
The United States Supreme Court denied cert to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which argued that using contracts rather than grants to fund Section 8 public housing projects would impair the program.
The Second Circuit Court of Appeals revived suit against Citigroup. The claims, which alleged that Citigroup tricked a Korean bank into taking $25 million in toxic collateralized debt obligations, were dismissed in the New York District Court in March 2013.
Federal court requires RBS Securities to hand over which specific loans it is going to re-underwrite to National Credit Union Administration after allegedly causing the failure of at least two credit unions by misleading investors over hundreds of millions of dollars in mortgage-backed securities.
Bank of America asks Second Circuit to vacate a $1.3 billion fine after jury found BofA had defrauded Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac using its “High-Speed Swim Lane” program.