From HousingWire:
“Pervasive culture of waste and abuse” discovered in Nevada Hardest Hit Fund program
Thanks to what investigators are calling a “pervasive culture of waste and abuse,” millions of dollars from the federal government that were supposed to help struggling Nevada homeowners keep their homes instead went to pay for cars, holiday parties, employee bonuses, employee gifts, employee outings, staff lunches, and a number of other wasteful expenses, a scathing investigation by a federal watchdog found.
According to a new report from the Office of the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (also called SIGTARP), the state-designated contractor in charge of Nevada’s portion of the government’s Hardest Hit Fund wasted $8.2 million that was designated pay for the administration costs of the program, all while dramatically cutting the number of struggling homeowners that the program actually helped.
…
According to Christy Goldsmith Romero, Special Inspector General For The Troubled Asset Relief Program, the Nevada Affordable Housing Assistance Corporation used the program as a “cash cow for every expense imaginable while all but stopping admitting new homeowners.”Per SIGTARP data, Nevada’s acceptance rate for borrowers into the Hardest Hit Fund program plummeted by 94% from 2013 to 2015, while at the same time, the Nevada Affordable Housing Assistance Corporation used federal money on “wasteful expenses.”
According to the SIGTARP report, the number of homeowners admitted to the program plummeted from 2,111 in 2013 to 541 in 2014 and 117 in 2015.
But at the same time, the NAHAC continued to spend millions of dollars in administrative expenses.
“While Nevada homeowners continue to struggle to recover from the financial crisis, federal dollars designated to help them have been used on holiday parties, luxury office rent, employee gift cards, and other wasteful expenses—even a $500 car allowance for a Mercedes Benz,” Romero said. “That is the textbook definition of waste and abuse.”
…
“We found a pervasive culture of waste and abuse, coupled with a lack of performance,” Romero continued. “To allow this contractor to remain in this program puts millions of taxpayer dollars at significant risk and is a lost opportunity to give Nevada homeowners a fresh start to receive these funds.”The SIGTARP investigation found that n 2015 the Nevada state agency kept nearly one TARP dollar for itself for every TARP dollar it provided to a homeowner.
For six months in 2015, NAHAC kept more in TARP money for itself than it distributed to homeowners.
Good Morning New Jersey
Good Morning Mike.
I don’t know why, but I find the Shkreli-cam quite amusing (periscope). http://fortune.com/2016/09/12/pharma-bro-martin-shkreli-hillary-clinton/
By Amie Tsang
Let’s start the day by going through the Wells Fargo fraudulent accounts scandal, by the numbers:
5,300 — the number of Wells Fargo employees engaged in creating sham accounts for customers.
$1.5 million — the fees customers were charged for these unwanted accounts.
$124.6 million — the amount, according to Fortune, that the executive who oversaw the group of rogue employees is receiving as a payout.
$185 million — the amount that Wells Fargo was fined for the fraudulent accounts.
Good morning Mike. Good morning Expat. Suck it Twitiot.
Been perusing the news. Each day, I find myself a little more accepting of the notion that Clot just may be a visionary and that our future resembles “The Road.”
I wonder if liberals taste like chicken?
@KeithOlbermann
Every few generations, we Americans are called upon to defend our country.
To defend it not so much from foreign dictators or war or terrorism, but from those here who have no commitment to progress or democracy or representative government—no commitment to anything except their own out-of-control minds and the bottomless pits of their egos.
Our society has thrown up these people before:
Joseph McCarthy.
George Wallace.
Father Coughlin.
Jefferson Davis.
Aaron Burr.
The Know-Nothings.
The Blacklisters.
The America-Firsters.
And we have always thrown them out.
And now our generation has its own: the most dangerous individual ever nominated by a major party for the highest office in this country.
His base wants few details and fewer facts; they just want to burn it down and blame their failures on the collective other.
And Donald John Trump is their demonic messiah in Oompa Loompa’s clothing.
We must stop him.
It is not pleasant.
It is not fair that we have to do this.
But it is our turn.
Updated Presidential Election Forecast
http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/
@KeithOlbermann
LMAO!
yome,
She’s a c.unt and well-deserving of the title. But I’m praying she stays healthy when elected because I want to see the level of anger and resentment after what is essentially four more years of the Oblammy administration. I want to know if the lesser half of America finally realizes they’re being used.
Anon-
When Wells Fargo mistreats their customers, their customers have the option to leave and take their business to another bank.
However when the DMV or the VA mistreat their customers, what options do they have anon?
Q. What did one lesbian frog say to the other lesbian frog?
A. They’re right! We do taste like chicken!
I’ll be in Ithaca this week. Any restaurants to recommend visiting (or avoiding)?
Let’s start the day by going through the UBS/Clinton Foundation scandal, by the numbers:
There are an estimated 52,000 Hidden U.S. Citizen Accounts in UBS (Switzerland).
After revealing less than 4,250 of the 50,000 hidden accounts to the IRS, UBS paid Bill Clinton $1.5 million for speaking gigs.
UBS gave $600,000 to the Clinton Foundation.
All of this occurred in 2009, shortly after SHE became Secretary of State.
Total donations by UBS to the Clinton Foundation grew from less than $60,000 through 2008 to a cumulative total of about $600,000 by the end of 2014, according to the foundation and the bank,” they report. “The bank also joined the Clinton Foundation to launch entrepreneurship and inner-city loan programs, through which it lent $32 million. And it paid former president Bill Clinton $1.5 million to participate in a series of question-and-answer sessions with UBS Wealth Management Chief Executive Bob McCann, making UBS his biggest single corporate source of speech income disclosed since he left the White House.”
And you wonder why NOONE trusts the Clintons?
Everything in this post is FACT. Unlike everyone of Anon’s BS tweets.
[7] comrade yome,
Clinton wins this in a walk.
For fun, lets start the electoral body count–people killed as a direct result of election. I put the over/under at 16.
re: “Clinton wins this in a walk.”
538 is owned by Bob Iger, via Disney and ESPN and is hardly unbiased.
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/disneys-bob-iger-hosts-hillary-913028
Conspiracy theorist Clinton is now saying a cartoon frog is wacist. She is bound
to have a few more mental breakdowns and insult the electorate a few times before Nov 8th.
The are allot of undecided voters who will hold their nose as they walk into the voting booth on election day. Who they will pull the lever for is anyone’s guess.
Presumption of bias aside, I think their work has generally been accurate and that narrowing you see on the charts now will become a wide gulf. Unless Clinton collapses on stage or gets found in another lie, that is. As it stands, she can run out the clock.
Nom – bias…..
“Poll results aggregated from HuffPost Pollster, RealClearPolitics, polling firms and news reports.”
Meet the Deplorables . . .
http://money.cnn.com/2016/05/04/news/economy/america-left-behind-white-men/index.html?iid=ob_article_footer
Also Nom there is history of the bias in many of these websites before they were bought out by Iger and others. It can be misleading to average results from multiple polls.
Flash back 2008 before they were purchased.
“When Nate Silver of rival site FiveThirtyEight.com claimed RealClearPolitics.com was rigging its averages to favor Senator John McCain and other Republicans, McIntyre denied having a conservative bent, stating, “We’re running a business, We have no interest in screwing around with that for partisan purposes”.
Juice,
Okay, I see your point, GIGO. Still, unless Silver is commanded by his overlords to tank a topic, I think his shop will be the one to prove the impact of strategic voting in the primaries, and will accurately predict the final numbers.
Nom – social-desirability bias in this PC world we live in is now more than ever real.
“narrowing you see on the charts now will become a wide gulf”
Possibly later, but I anticipate in the near term for that gulf to become even more narrow. 538 forecast is based on polls which haven’t yet picked up the public reaction to deplorables and pneumonia. There are betting markets which show a rather large bump in Trump odds jumping from 25%ish to 35%ish over the past couple of days. For comparison, the only comparable moves in 2012 were after Romney’s 47% comment and the first debate.
538’s Nate who is an admitted leftist from the NY Times just last week gave a cash for presentation to a bunch of Republican Billionares at Le Jardin saying Trump can win, even tough his site says he won’t. Cannot let that pay day pass him by for sure. He had Trump winning in July for heaven sake, this election will be decided by the unaffiliated voters. They will hold their nose when they vote meaning both candidates STINK and it is anyone election right now.
I think Nate Silver is a libertarian, and while I cannot vouch for his staff at 538, I haven’t seen him personally write anything that was less than objective. After all, he put a chapter in his book about how the UN global warming predictions all basically failed, and reality didn’t even fall within their earlier 95% confidence intervals.
A bunch of Romney Republicans tried to convince themselves that polls and Silver’s methodology was missing something, but he’s using the same transparent prediction methods this election.
ClintonReality on!
Pneumonia my behind. If you passed out liked that with pneumonia is because your blood oxygen level/saturation bottomed out lower than needed for consciousness. To recover you need positive pressure – invasive or non-invasive at least for many hours. Lots of oxygen, nebulizers with bronchodilators and likely bronchoscopy lavage to clean up the major airways.
My bet still Myasthenia Gravis.
Pete;
There are betting markets which show…
I kind of miss Intrade. I believe in the premise, but also understand its limitations, too. Mostly, that the 0-100 market price of an either-or political event doesn’t translate directly to margin of victory between the competing alternatives — which is exactly what many reporters used the price to try to do.
Clinton wins this in a walk.
Depends. What’s the pace of the walk, brisk? What’s the temperature outside? What kind of support staff are we talking about to accompany on said walk?
Pneumonia Virus Terrified After Remembering What Clintons Capable Of
This is bad for Hill. She’s now damaged goods; her veil of invincibility has slipped. Hence, the humor writers are now brave enough admit that there can be funny things said at the expense of a Democrat after all.
Well, still not Jon Stewart, but some things are too much to hope for.
More leaks from the DNC and Powell’s gmail.
Grab some 🍿 and head over to @lhfang to see these amazing Colin Powell emails. Last year #SickHillary was so weak she couldn’t climb steps
In anticipation of a Hillary “victory” (which is kinda like calling a successful bank robbery a victory), I’ve added to my commodities portfolio today.
Decided to go with metal over carbon fiber. Cannot wait to try it out.
LOL. Colin Powell emails now in the mix.