Remember how major banks paid a $25 billion settlement to states earlier this year? In a nutshell, it was for mishandling foreclosures — robo-signing etc.
In Jamie Dimon's annual letter to shareholders, he talks about JP Morgan's part in all of that. Essentially it was "not our finest hour," he said, but at least JPM wasn't as bad as other banks (even their subprime mortgages performed better than theirs). Plus JPM got a ton of crappy mortgages from WaMu and Bear Stearns.
But then there's what happened once all those mortgages started going to hell:
"...when delinquencies and foreclosures grew dramatically, we were ill-prepared operationally to deal with the extraordinary volume of troubled mortgages and upset borrowers. Our servicing operations left a lot to be desired: There were too many paperwork errors, including affi- davits that were improperly signed because the signers did not have personal knowledge about what was in the affidavits but, instead, relied on the company’s processes. However, the information in the affidavits was largely accurate – i.e., the borrower, in fact, was in default, we did have the mortgage and so on."
Not sure if a lot of Americans would be satisfied with the "however" bit.
