Tag Archives: fines

Is $321 Billion The Right Amount?

Posted on by

Whipping Post and Stocks

The Boston Consulting Group has released its Global Risk 2017 report, Staying the Course in Banking. Buried in the report is Boston Consulting’s calculation of the amount of penalties paid by banks since the financial crisis:  $321,000,000,000. The report states,

Strict regulatory enforcement has now been place for several years, with cumulative financial penalties of about $321 billion assessed since the 2007-2008 financial crisis through the end of 2016.

About $42 billion in fines were assessed in 2016 alone, levied on the basis of past behavior. While postcrisis regulatory fines and penalties appear to have stabilized a lower level in 2105, with US regulators remaining the most active, we expect fines and penalties by regulators in Europe and Asia to rise in coming years.

As conduct-based regulations evolve, fines and penalties, along with related legal and litigation expenses, will remain a cost of doing business.  Managing these costs will continue to e a major task for banks. They will have to create a strong non-financial framework around the first, second, and third lines of defense — business units, independent risk function, and internal audit — to avoid continued fallout from past behavior.

*     *     *

[C]onduct risk and the prevention of financial crime remain high on regulators’ agendas. (16-17, references omitted)

Readers of this blog know that I have called for aggressive enforcement of wrongdoing in the consumer financial services sector. But I have also have trouble figuring out if the penalties assessed were properly scaled to the wrongdoing. Now that ten and eleven figure settlements have become routine, we may have forgotten that they were unheard of before the financial crisis. Many of these settlements were negotiated by federal prosecutors who were constrained only by their own judgment and the possibility that a defendant would call the government’s bluff and go to trial.  Now that post-crisis litigation is winding down, it makes sense to study how to make sure that the financial penalty fits the financial crime.

Free or Treed?

Posted on by

photo by Dazdncnfuzd333

Realtor.com quoted me in Woman Can’t Live in Her Treehouse Even Though It’s Quite Posh (Take a Look!). It opens,

Most people live in houses, but Shawnee Chasser prefers her tree. In fact, the 65-year-old has been living in her custom-made abode between the forked trunks of an oak and fig tree on her late son’s half-acre property in Biscayne Gardens, FL, for the past 24 years. Hey, if it makes her happy, who cares, right?

Well, it turns out county officials do care, since they’ve deemed the treehouse to be unsafe. They’ve told Chasser to tear the structure down, but she’s flat-out refused—sparking a flurry of commentary nationwide about a controversial topic: How much control do we really have over where and how we live, anyway?

Chasser, at least, believes she has a right to stay put in her treetop chateau—a surprisingly spacious two-story place with a double bed and kitchenette complete with a tiny oven and sink. There’s even a small couch often occupied by Coonie, her pet raccoon.

“I’m not taking anything down,” Chasser told the Miami Herald. “I’ll chain myself to that tree house.” (But what about Coonie?)

Part of a land trust run by Chasser’s daughter, the property also has a cottage and minicamper, but Chasser prefers to rent those out. She also lets people pitch tents on the land to make extra cash to supplement her organic popcorn business.

About a year ago, someone called 311 to complain that Chasser was running the property like a hippie apartment complex. That’s when county code enforcement swung by and issued her a citation for illegally renting out the land, as well as living in a treehouse.

County officials concede that if the treehouse had been built with the proper permits and safety standards, there would be no problem. But, well, it wasn’t. And in an area prone to hurricanes, Chasser is endangering her own life, as well as her guests, officials claim.

As a result, Chasser has paid $3,000 in fines and could face an additional $7,000 in liens. She says she doesn’t have the money to hire engineers to rebuild or retrofit her treehouse to get it up to code, and has filed an appeal.

Although she has plenty of sympathizers, real estate experts are split over the treehouse tumult.

“The government has broad authority to regulate our daily lives in order to protect the health and safety of the people living under it,” insists David Reiss, research director at the Center for Urban Business Entrepreneurship at Brooklyn Law School. “The fact that someone has been able to operate under the radar does not give them a pass once the government has identified a violation of zoning and building codes.”

Evicted by Homeowners Association

Posted on by

photo by respres

Realtor.com quoted me in Homeowner Evicted for Not Paying HOA Dues: Can This Happen to You? It opens,

Who knew? Even if you pay your mortgage on time every month, your home can still be foreclosed on and sold from under your feet. That, at least, is what Triss McQuiston from Tomball, TX, learned recently when she was notified that she’d have to vacate her place. Why? It turns out she was evicted for not paying her HOA dues.

According to ABC13, McQuiston admits that she was guilty of procrastinating on paying her HOA fees to the Canyon Gate at Northpointe Owners Association in 2014 and 2015. Because she was opening a new business, her HOA bills slipped through the cracks, for a grand total of $1,800 in unpaid dues.

An attorney for the HOA claims that since March 2014, they’d sent McQuiston 12 notices by first-class certified mail to collect these assessments, warning her what would happen if she didn’t. When they received no response, they proceeded with the foreclosure, and sold the home at auction back in September.

Yet McQuiston argues that she’d received no warnings, and was made aware of her dire straits only when she received an eviction notice on her doorstep on May 20. She has since hired an attorney to help fight the case and remain in her home.

“I would never have thought in my wildest dreams that an HOA … would go to these lengths and they’d have this much power,” McQuiston told ABC13.

If this story has you viewing HOAs in a harsh (and terrifying) new light, we don’t blame you. And while the laws vary by state, it turns out that in most cases, HOAs really do have the power to foreclose on your home for unpaid dues, as do condo owners associations.

“Contrary to common perceptions, even if a person is current on a mortgage, the HOA or COA may foreclose,” says Bob Tankel, a Florida attorney specializing in HOA law. “What’s the moral of the story? Pay your assessments. These are not huge amounts. People apparently think that just because assessments are small there’s nothing bad that can happen. But that’s not true.”

To know specifically how your HOA or COA handles late payments, homeowners should “check the Declaration of Covenants, Conditions & Restrictions (CC&Rs),” says David Reiss, research director at the Center for Urban Business Entrepreneurship at Brooklyn Law School. You should check not only what constitutes a late payment, but also how you’ll be penalized; additional fees could include late charges, fines, interest, as well as attorneys’ fees.

It’s also smart to check what rights and recourse you have in your state if you end up unable to pay these assessments. “Some states have enacted some procedural protections for homeowners,” says Reiss. “It’s worth figuring those out if you are not able to pay off your HOA right away.”

Monday’s Adjudication Roundup

Posted on by