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At least someone, somewhere is reviewing documents. :) Thanks H!
YouTube: Prosecuting Wall Street Part 1, then Part 2. I don't know that the other links that I posted are coming through, but you can find it on YouTube! Relevant to today's discussion.
"Partnoy: Clearly a slap on the wrist. And part of the problem is the dual nature of how we prosecute these kinds of violations. We have the Department of Justice, which can put people in jail and the Securities and Exchange Commission, which can't. And its sort of like we have this two-headed monster - one head has some teeth. The other head has no teeth. And it was the head with no teeth that went after Angelo Mozilo. So the greatest danger he was in from the beginning was maybe he'd be gummed to death, but not even that happened.
Three months after the SEC settled the civil suit, federal prosecutors in Los Angeles dropped their criminal investigation of Countrywide and its CEO, Angelo Mozilo. We wanted to know why the Justice Department has been unable to bring a single criminal case against Countrywide or any of the major Wall Street banks and Lanny Breuer, the head of the criminal division at the Justice Department, agreed to talk to us.
Kroft: A year ago, in September of 2010, you told the congressional hearing that you seek to prosecute people who make materially false statements. People who told the investors one thing and did something different."
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/prosecuting-wall-street/4/
Was This Whistle-Blower Muzzled?
By WILLIAM D. COHANSEPT. 21, 2013
THE fifth anniversary of Lehman Brothers’ bankruptcy has occasioned one legacy-spinning defense after another. We’ve heard from Ben S. Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve; Henry M. Paulson Jr., the Treasury secretary at the time; and Timothy F. Geithner, then the New York Fed president and later Mr. Paulson’s successor at Treasury, about their historic decisions to use trillions of dollars of taxpayers’ money to bail out the banking system.
But will we ever know what really happened behind all those closed doors? The seemingly appalling treatment afforded Richard M. Bowen III, a former Citigroup executive who blew the whistle on years of malfeasance there, shows that we may not. Thanks to political pressure and the revolving door between Washington and Wall Street, the events leading up to the financial crisis remain obscured and may never be fully revealed.
Mr. Bowen, who was featured in a piercing “60 Minutes” segment in December 2011, had discovered that for years before the crisis, Citigroup, like many other Wall Street firms, had been purchasing tens of billions of dollars’ worth of risky home mortgages and then packaging and selling them as investments. “When I started screaming,” he told me, “I was just trying to do my job. Silly me.” At wits’ end, on Nov. 3, 2007, Mr. Bowen sent an e-mail to a small group of Citigroup executives, including Robert E. Rubin, a former Goldman Sachs executive and former Treasury secretary who was then chairman of the bank’s executive committee (and who received $126 million during his decade at Citigroup). “The reason for this urgent e-mail concerns breakdowns of internal controls and resulting significant but possibly unrecognized financial losses existing within our organization,” Mr. Bowen wrote.
Richard M. Bowen III, a former Citigroup executive who oversaw mortgage underwriting, testified before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission on April 7, 2010. Credit Kevin Lamarque/Reuters
Mr. Bowen told me that the following Tuesday, a Citigroup lawyer told him of his e-mail: We’re taking it seriously. Don’t call us. We’ll call you. He sent more e-mails to the lawyer, but heard nothing. “I mean, silence,” he said. (Months later, the two men did talk about Mr. Bowen’s e-mail to Mr. Rubin.)
Mr. Bowen, who is now 66 and teaches accounting at the University of Texas, Dallas, was fired in January 2009. (After signing a separation and confidentiality agreement, he received a severance package of less than $1 million.) And Citigroup went on to receive a $45 billion bailout from the taxpayers, plus guarantees on nearly $300 billion of securities, some of which were most likely crammed with the very low-quality mortgages Mr. Bowen had warned about.
America became inured to the sight of one extremely wealthy former Goldman Sachs senior partner turned Treasury secretary (Mr. Rubin) asking another (Mr. Paulson) for a favor. But what Mr. Bowen believes happened to him after Citigroup fired him still has the power to shock anyone who cares about accountability and justice. He feels he was muzzled; others involved are adamant that he was not.
In 2008, after his note to Mr. Rubin and after his responsibilities were vastly reduced at Citigroup, but before he was fired, Mr. Bowen decided to become a whistle-blower. That April, he filed a complaint, under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration claiming he had been retaliated against after writing his e-mail to Mr. Rubin. (The complaint was settled as part of his separation agreement with Citigroup.) Then, in July, Mr. Bowen went to the Securities and Exchange Commission. “I testified before the S.E.C.,” he told an audience in Texas earlier this year. “I told them what had happened.” He gave the S.E.C. more than 1,000 pages of documents. “Mr. Bowen, we are going to pursue this,” the agency told him. He never heard back. “Not only did they bury my testimony, they locked it up,” he said in his speech. (The S.E.C. has denied my numerous requests under the Freedom of Information Act for access to Mr. Bowen’s file, even though he has given his permission, claiming that the material was “confidential” and included Citigroup “trade secrets.” On Sept. 11, the S.E.C. denied my administrative appeal of its decision.)
In May 2009, Congress created the 10-member Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, or F.C.I.C., to examine the causes of the financial crisis. Led by Phil Angelides, a former state treasurer of California, it was empowered to get to the bottom of what had happened and why. The F.C.I.C. invited Mr. Bowen to an interview after an investigator read his Sarbanes-Oxley complaint.
Mr. Bowen was excited to finally be able to share his story. What’s more, he told me, he could tell all, freed from various provisions of his confidentiality agreement with Citigroup.
On Feb. 27, 2010, Mr. Bowen met with Victor J. Cunicelli and Tom Borgers, two F.C.I.C. investigators, and, briefly, with Bradley J. Bondi, the commission’s deputy general counsel. For four hours, with his own two lawyers present, Mr. Bowen told them his story. “This was placing the company in extreme risk with regard to losses, and I made that known,” he told the commission staff.
The investigators told him they found his account “very compelling,” and Mr. Bowen was subsequently invited to testify publicly before the commission, on April 7, 2010. Mr. Bowen’s conversation, like hundreds of others, was recorded (including mine when, as the author of two books on the financial crisis, I was interviewed).
Unlike those other conversations, though, Mr. Bowen’s Feb. 27 interview, a transcript of which I have read, is not publicly available. Instead, the document, along with the commission’s other records, was sealed and sent off to the National Archives, where it may be reviewed beginning in 2016. “Why five years?” Mr. Bowen wondered. “I don’t know. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that five years is the statute of limitation for fraud.”
On March 22, J. Thomas Greene, the commission’s executive director, gave Mr. Bowen a week to write a statement to accompany his April 7 oral testimony. Mr. Bowen says he was told he could have 30 pages. “Tell us what you told us behind closed doors,” he says the F.C.I.C. staff told him. He took that to mean he should feel free to name names, as he had on Feb. 27, and to explain what happened to him after he wrote to Mr. Rubin.
A week later, he finished his 28-page testimony. Just as he sent it to the commission, the Treasury announced that it intended to sell 7.7 billion shares of Citigroup stock — with an estimated value at the time of $32.2 billion. The projected profit at the time, $7.2 billion, would be among the largest from the government bailouts. (The government ultimately made about $12 billion.) Mr. Bowen suggested, in his Dallas speech, that it was probably just a coincidence, but that he had some lingering doubts.
On March 30, one of Mr. Bowen’s attorneys, Steve Kardell, a partner at the Dallas law firm Clouse Dunn, told Mr. Bowen, in an e-mail, that the F.C.I.C.’s Mr. Bondi suggested “some substantial changes” to his testimony and “thinks that the way it’s written now, Citi will declare war on both you and the F.C.I.C., and it will primarily consist of an effort to discredit you.” While Mr. Kardell noted that the F.C.I.C. investigators said they didn’t want to influence his testimony, he said that Mr. Bondi suggested trimming it by 10 pages. Peeved, Mr. Bowen instructed him to find out what changes the F.C.I.C. staff wanted to make. The next day, Mr. Kardell e-mailed Mr. Bowen, “I get the impression that the revisions are non-negotiable.”
Continue reading the main storyContinue reading the main storyContinue reading the main story
Mr. Bowen says the F.C.I.C. wanted him to delete his concern that Citi may have materially misrepresented its certifications of internal controls, which require corporate officers to certify the accuracy of their financial statements under Sarbanes-Oxley.
Remove the names of people at Citi, he says he was told. Take out his post-Rubin denouement, his conversations with the bank’s internal lawyers and the fact that Citigroup’s outside attorneys at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP were conducting an investigation of his charges.
Mr. Kardell also said he thought the F.C.I.C. was “catching some serious, serious heat this morning.”
“Who are they catching heat from?” Mr. Bowen asked, according to a transcript of the call provided by Mr. Bowen.
“Umm, Citi,” Mr. Kardell replied, adding, “It’s just a complete all battle stations with Citi about you testifying.” He then dropped the bombshell that Brad S. Karp, managing partner of the law firm Paul, Weiss, had “gotten involved” and that “our guys” on the F.C.I.C. staff, “who are still extremely pro Dick Bowen — although I think there’s pressure to yank Dick Bowen — our guys want to see something plain vanilla pretty fast.” A stunned Mr. Bowen told Mr. Kardell, “So much for an independent Congressional commission.”
But after a night of prayer, Mr. Bowen acquiesced. He cut the offending passages and his testimony by eight pages. “It’s better to get something on record than nothing,” he decided. He also figured that when he testified on April 7, he’d be able to provide more detail. But that morning, he had breakfast with Mr. Kardell, who told him that Mr. Bondi had said that he was not to respond to the commissioners’ questions about his departure from Citigroup. If the commissioners asked him, for instance, what happened after he e-mailed Mr. Rubin, he was to be silent, and claim “employment issues” as justification. When one commissioner, Peter J. Wallison, asked what had happened, Mr. Angelides cut him off.
Mr. Karp, while conceding that he regularly spoke with Mr. Bondi about Citigroup matters before the F.C.I.C., vehemently denies trying to pressure Mr. Bondi about Mr. Bowen’s testimony. “Paul, Weiss, representing Citi, did not ‘pressure’ the F.C.I.C.,” he wrote me. “We represented and defended Citi. And I am certain that the F.C.I.C. would confirm that.”
Mr. Bondi, now a partner at the law firm Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft, which counts Citigroup among its clients, also rejected the idea that he had been unduly influenced to ask Mr. Bowen to change his testimony. “The F.C.I.C. staff team that investigated issues related to the financial crisis, and Citi in particular, acted impartially and with the highest integrity at each step of the investigation,” he wrote in an e-mail. “Any allegation that information relevant to the Citi investigation was suppressed is untrue.”
Mr. Angelides told me that he had no knowledge of Mr. Bowen’s being censored, but that he was aware that the commission’s staff would generally work with witnesses to focus their testimony “on the most salient facts.” The final report, he said, gave prominence to Mr. Bowen’s most substantial charges, including the e-mail to Mr. Rubin. But, he conceded, the Wall Street banks “and their phalanx of attorneys were putting enormous pressure” on the commission “every day of every week with every witness” in an effort “to discredit people who were testifying against their interests.”
Of course, it’s the old story on Wall Street: One man’s aggressive lobbying is another man’s undue influence. Mr. Kardell believes that “there’s no question that Richard was censored.”
Mr. Bowen told me that, despite the denials from Mr. Karp and Mr. Bondi, he continues to believe he was censored and bullied into changing his testimony. The experience has shaken his faith in the country’s institutions.
“It was devastating,” he said. “It truly was. From my standpoint, the corruption extends to the highest levels of government. I feel absolutely, completely violated. Every principle that I grew up with, and even when I did a brief stint in the R.O.T.C. and the Air Force, it’s just completely violated.”
He plans to keep talking about what happened to him. “By God, I’ve got to leave this country better off than the way I found it.”
William D. Cohan is a former Wall Street investment banker, a contributor to Bloomberg View and Vanity Fair and the author, most recently, of “Money and Power: How Goldman Sachs Came to Rule the World.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/22/opinion/sunday/was-this-whistle-blower-muzzled.html?_r=0
good exposure! Her colleagues and their staff are also investors. :)
On Monday, April 20, Secretary Lew will preside over an executive session of the Financial Stability Oversight Council (Council) via telephone. The preliminary agenda consists of a discussion of the Council’s draft 2015 annual report.
no status conference 4/22
04/20/2015 JOINT STATUS REPORT Regarding April 22 Status Conference, filed by All Plaintiffs. (Cooper, Charles)
Fannie, Freddie great deal now, for less than a Starbucks! Anyone think China stimulus will affect our stock?
As described above, FHFA's analysis concludes that the current average level of guarantee fees is appropriate based on current assessments of cost and risk. Because these average guarantee fees currently include the adverse market charge, removing this fee component necessitates other guarantee fee adjustments. As a result, FHFA is directing the Enterprises to replace the revenue attributable to the adverse market charge with targeted changes in fees that address various risk-based and access-to-credit considerations. Overall, FHFA expects these changes to be revenue neutral to the Enterprises based on their recent mix of business.
"Of these three components, the second (cost of capital) is by far the most significant. Despite the Enterprises' inability to retain capital under the Senior Preferred Stock Purchase Agreements (PSPAs) entered into with the U.S. Department of the Treasury in 2008, FHFA has established guarantee fee levels consistent with the amount of capital the Enterprises would need to support their guarantee businesses if they were not in conservatorship and retained capital."
http://www.fhfa.gov/mobile/Pages/public-affairs-detail.aspx?PageName=Results-of-Fannie-Mae-and-Freddie-Mac-Guarantee-Fee-Review.aspx
Maybe a status conference Wednesday too!
Carney failed to correct himself after his last article. Then, after Bove called him out, he asked tweeters not to make any comments over the weekend, then, he made 2 more comments about Bove after that. Carney is not quite staying up to speed.
At least depositions are beginning. I can't imagine the CEO's in front of Judge Sweeney, saying, "I'm sorry, I can't answer that question without FHFA's permission." Ha!
Isn't that supposed to be up and running this summer?
Agreed.
That's exactly what needs to be put out there. Any CFO or Treasurer of a business or organization that I've been involved with is almost excited to provide information requested. The few bad apples avoid questions, and then it gets weird. Stand up Lew, answer the questions directly. We're all waiting.
Fannie, Freddie employees deserve a company party upon release for working under these conditions, IMO.
"...On November 15, 2012, the Conservator revised and expanded the categories of items requiring Conservator approval, instructing the Board that it should oversee that management consults with and obtains approval of the Conservator before taking action in the following areas:
Matters requiring the approval of or consultation with the U.S. Department of the Treasury (Treasury) under the covenants of the Senior Preferred Stock Purchase Agreement (Purchase Agreement) between the company and Treasury;
Redemptions or repurchases of subordinated debt, except as necessary to comply with the limit in the Purchase Agreement;
Increases in Board risk limits, material changes in accounting policy, and reasonably foreseeable material increases in operational risk;
Matters that relate to the Conservator’s powers, the status of Freddie Mac in conservatorship, or the legal effect of the conservatorship on contracts, such as, but not limited to, the initiation of material actions in connection with litigation addressing the actions or authority of the Conservator, repudiation of contracts, qualified financial contracts in dispute due to conservatorship status, and counterparties attempting to nullify or amend contracts due to conservatorship status;...."
Love it!!
Cfljmljfl, Changes don't go in effect until after September. I'm still counting on us being released this year! :)
. The new plan, under the direction of Mel Watt, calls for changes that the regulator expects not to cause any "material" change to loan volume or revenue.
I was going to go back to the video from the hearing. I wanted to remember what Watt had to say about your same question.
Didn't they try and ask Watt that at his last hearing?
I don't mind some of the negative, just shows they're getting nervous. :)
Thanks Patswil!
I did. It's an excellent read. IMO
On the humble note, I wonder what Russell Simmons thinks of Fannie, Freddie? Can you work on that one? He would be fun to talk to at shareholder meetings. He's over there on the East Coast. :)
Super Rich by Russell Simmons & Chris Morrow
https://itun.es/us/Bs45x.l
That's not iPhone silly. That's ok, just have your daughter program it to pick up all the important Fannie, Freddie info :)
Did you get the big one? Here are some tips, so you can keep up with your Fannie info. :)
http://www.gottabemobile.com/2014/10/27/iphone-6-plus-tips-tricks/
I know what you're saying. I'm still just loving the part that I see "paid back, and then some!"
It seems they've been doing a run at the end of the day, lately. Hope we get one today!
I'm only pointing out the part where she says the two have paid their taxpayer bailout, and then some. Few journalists will take that leap and add that part in writing. She has defended Fnf shareholder concerns before (again few journalists will). I wasn't actually getting into the Affordable Housing Debate part.
Here's the transcript again too.
Fairholme Funds, Inc., et al. v. USA 3/31/2015
PROCEEDINGS
-----
(Proceedings called to order at 11:03 a.m.)
MR. COOPER: -- Fairholme and others. With me this
morning, Your Honor, are Mr. Colatriano --
MR. COLATRIANO: Good morning, Your Honor.
MR. COOPER: -- well known to the Court, and Mr.
Thompson --
MR. THOMPSON: Good morning, Your Honor.
MR. COOPER: -- also well known to the Court. On
the phone today is our client, the general counsel of Fairholme, Christine Cubias.
THE COURT: And for the United States?
MR. DINTZER: Good morning, Your Honor. Kenneth Dintzer for the Department of Justice, representing the United States. And with me at counsel table today, Your Honor, is Gregg Schwind, Elizabeth Hosford, Renee Gerber, and Anthony Schiavetti.
THE COURT: Very good. Thank you so much.
MR. DINTZER: Thank you, Your Honor.
THE COURT: Well, before we begin this morning, I advise the parties of some troubling activity that
wanted to
has occurred that in no way involves your clients. It’s troubling to the Court because there is the specter that’s -- that may have been raised that there may be some unscrupulous
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1 people that might be trying to prey on investors. I don’t
2 know if that’s, in fact, the case or not, but I will just let
3 you know what happened yesterday.
4 Faxed to our Court, to nearly every judge on this
5 Court and special master, was a 38-page document. It’s
6 rambling, largely incoherent. It references today’s status
7 conference, the case number, the conservatorship, FHFA, the
8 Department of Treasury, the network sweep, the housing --
9 well, HERA. The document also references King James I, as
10 well as the First Charter of Virginia from 1606, quotes from
11 the Holy Bible, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, and double-
12 entry bookkeeping. The individual who sent these -- this --
13 responsible for the mass faxing refers to herself as the
14 “revocable living trust.” I’ve seen that in a number of tax
15 cases with sovereign citizen cases. I don’t know if she’s
16 part of that or not. I have no idea.
17 But, one, it was troubling to have this mass fax
18 nonsense going on, but upon further investigation, I’ll just
19 say, by my law clerk, as it turns out there is -- now, I
20 don’t know whether these articles are accurate or whether
21 they’re -- just something appears in cyberspace doesn’t mean
22 it’s accurate, but there are articles that appear online that
23 claim that the individual with the identical name to the
24 person who sent the fax was involved in a number of
25 confidence schemes and one Ponzi scheme. And I don’t know
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1 whether it originated out of Canada, but it targeted U.S. and
2 Canadian investors.
3 Apparently, they were able to bilk, I believe, over
4 600 investors out of their hard-earned money and I would hate
5 to think that any of the stockholders, the shareholders in
6 Fannie and Freddie, are being targeted by unscrupulous
7 people. AllIcansayisif--I’mnotsureifthisisthe
8 public service announcement portion, something that I don’t
9 usually -- I’ve never engaged in before, if an investor would
10 be contacted by someone who claims that they represent the
11 Court, that those people should know that no one has been
12 retained by this Court to engage in asset recovery.
13 Apparently, part of these other Ponzi schemes, if,
14 in fact, what I read online is accurate, that the individual,
15 again with the same name as the person who sent the fax --
16 I’m not saying it’s the same person; I’m not even saying any
17 of these articles I read are even accurate -- but someone
18 with the same name apparently claimed to be an expert in
19 asset recovery.
20 So, just people should be cautious about with whom
21 they deal, and we all heard about the Nigerian prince who’s
22 in need of assistance. We’ve all heard about the scams from
23 -- in theory, cold calls from the IRS telling the individual
24 that their -- that they owe the Government X number of
25 dollars and would they please provide their bank account
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1 information or they’d even be willing to take a credit card
2 over the phone.
3 So, you have to know who you’re dealing with. You
4 need to be careful, and I just mention that today, just in
5 case there are some citizens here in the courtroom today who
6 may have received either a phone call or otherwise be
7 contacted by this individual. I have alerted the U.S.
8 Marshals. They’re involved; they are investigating this.
9 The phone calls to various chambers yesterday from this
10 individual indicated that it was from a federal office, it
11 had WITS on the caller ID; therefore, a number of the
12 chambers thought it really was someone from the Federal
13 Government contacting them.
14 It was a spoofed caller ID. And, you know, there
15 are ways that people can alter the phone numbers that they’re
16 using so it appears that it’s coming from the IRS or the
17 Federal Government. So, just please be careful with whom you
18 deal.
19 So, I apologize for taking counsel’s time this
20 morning with that, but it was of concern to me. So, I thank 21 you.
MR. DINTZER: Thank you, Your Honor.
MR. COOPER: Thank you.
THE COURT: I’m ready to begin.
MR. COOPER: I think we’re here, Your Honor, this
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1 morning on Mr. Schwind’s request, and so perhaps it would be
2 more appropriate for him to open the proceedings.
3 MR. SCHWIND: Thank you, Your Honor, and good
4 morning. What we would like to do is provide the Court today
5 first a general update -- a status update of where we are
6 with discovery and then turn to the issue identified by the
7 parties in the joint status report, having to do with the
8 depositions of government witnesses.
9 As to the status of discovery, the Court extended
10 the period of discovery in this case until the end of June.
11 Since the last status conference on February 25th, document
12 review has continued, and since then, there have been further
13 productions of Treasury and FHFA documents, again, the two
14 agencies that are the focus of document discovery in this
15 case.
16 We have also produced a revised privilege log. In
17 total, just to give the Court an idea of the volume of
18 documents we’re talking about, we have now produced in this
19 case, in this litigation, over 400,000 pages of documents.
20 That’s from FHFA and Treasury combined. We hope to complete
21 our document production in April, and that, of course, will
22 be pending final resolution of the privilege logs. We’ve
23 agreed with Plaintiffs to produce revised privilege logs
24 every two weeks. We’re going to continue to do that, and
25 we’re making our best efforts to complete those logs by
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1 sometime in May.
2 In addition, we have met with Plaintiffs. Your
3 Honor will recall at the last status conference that the
4 Court asked the parties to meet and try to --
5 THE COURT: You kindly agreed.
6 MR. SCHWIND: -- talk about whether there were any
7 privilege issues that were categorical in nature, that didn’t
8 require a document-by-document review or anything like that
9 or any type of categorical privilege issues that could be
10 briefed while document discovery is ongoing. We’ve done
11 that. The parties have exchanged some ideas on some
12 categorical privilege issues that they believe, again, do not
13 require the type of document-by-document review that would be
14 incredibly time-consuming at this time.
15 That said, we are concerned that a number of what
16 we’ll call sideshow issues raised by Plaintiffs will delay
17 our completion of document discovery and our completion of
18 the privilege logs in this case. And I want to talk about
19 those in conjunction with the second issue, again, the one
20 identified in our joint status report having to do with the
21 depositions of government witnesses.
22 We want to make the Court aware of some potential
23 problems out there, and I think we’ve all been involved in
24 cases where judges have looked askance at us and said why
25 didn’t you tell me about this earlier. So, we’re merely just
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1 doing -- we’re trying to make the Court aware so if this does
2 come up later on, we’ve at least tried to solve it up front.
3 First of all, the depositions that Plaintiffs have
4 proposed, and we agreed on dates with them, but these
5 depositions have several elements to them that make them --
6 that make them premature and potentially disruptive. First,
7 we have not completed our document productions of either FHFA
8 or Treasury documents. Moreover, Fairholme has stated that
9 it intends to challenge many assertions of government
10 privilege in this case. And, of course, if the Court
11 sustains any of those challenges, it may result in the
12 production of additional documents.
13 Now, what this means is that Fairholme intends to
14 depose government witnesses before documents have been
15 produced in this case, and we’ve told Plaintiffs this, point
16 blank. And we’ve told them that we believe these depositions
17 are premature. And, again, we’ve agreed on dates with
18 Plaintiffs, because the Court did allow depositions in its
19 February 26th, 2014, discovery order, and we understand that.
20 We’re not trying to fight that.
21 But what we do have a problem with, and this is why
22 we wanted to bring this to the Court’s attention today, is
23 that assuming these depositions go forward, we’re not going
24 to agree to further depositions of these witnesses should
25 Plaintiffs say, well, oh, now, we have these new documents.
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
THE COURT: Understood.
MR. SCHWIND: And -- and Plaintiffs have not agreed with that. We’ve told them we’re not going to agree, we’re going to move to quash, and Plaintiffs’ response has been, well, we’ll deal with that problem when it happens.
THE COURT: No. I agree with you. I’m going to wait to hear what Plaintiffs’ counsel has to say, but it’s -- what’s always been fair is you don’t have to have this kind of piecemeal approach to a deposition, that if a counsel wants to engage in a deposition without having all of the documents, they do so at their peril. It’s one bite at the
10
11
12 apple.
13 It’s one thing if you’re talking about, well,
14 30(b)(6) deponent, you’re trying to find out who is a
15 repository of the -- of documents, if you’re trying to
16 identify additional witnesses down the chain, and that’s a
17 purpose of the deposition, but if the purpose of the
18 deposition is to depose individuals to find out how they’re
19 tied to the specific documents and to get further insights
20 into what transpired, then they get one bite at the apple.
21 They get to take one deposition.
22 MR. SCHWIND: Thank you, Your Honor. And just
23 to -- I won’t dwell on that aspect anymore.
24 THE COURT: Can you explain a little more to me,
25 though, what is -- with these witnesses, what is -- are they
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taking a deposition to determine whether or not there are other repositories of information? Is that the purpose of the deposition? Or is it to depose and I’ll hear -- obviously I’ll hear -- get the Plaintiffs’ world view -- but what is your understanding of these depositions?
MR. SCHWIND: Well, none of the depositions is a
Rule 30(b)(6) deposition.
THE COURT: Right. No, I understand that.
MR. SCHWIND: First of all, Your Honor.
THE COURT: But, I mean, is it --
MR. SCHWIND: Second -- and, secondly, of course,
Plaintiffs haven’t disclosed, nor do they necessarily have an obligation to tell us --
THE COURT: Right.
MR. SCHWIND: -- all the matters that they want to question the witness on. But the parameters of the depositions, as we understand it, are the Court’s -- are the subjects in the Court’s discovery order.
THE COURT: Okay.
MR. SCHWIND: That said, our expectation, and we expect this to be accurate, is that this is not, you know, Plaintiffs trying to find out where documents are. One of the witnesses, for example, is one of the signatories to the third amendment. Okay, it’s the former director of the FHFA. There are two other FHFA witnesses, again, whose names are on
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1 a number of documents that we’ve produced in this case and
2 that were -- at least one of them was involved with the third
3 amendment; another one was involved in the conservatorship
4 decision back in 2008. So, we expect these to be substantive
5 depositions, not merely depositions of the type Your Honor
6 referred to.
7 THE COURT: The only exception that I would find to
8 what I said would be if at the deposition of another witness
9 if something -- if there would be something unforeseen that
10 would come up, the Plaintiffs could not have anticipated,
11 despite having all the documents they need, that there might
12 be -- there can be grounds for reopening a deposition, but to
13 take multiple depositions of the same individual is -- it’s
14 not fair and it’s not efficient. So, you know, I’ll wait to
15 hear what the Plaintiff has to say. They may have a good
16 explanation as to why they want to go down the road that they
17 do, but I’m just indicating to you what I -- how I would --
18 how I intend to rule if Plaintiffs cannot give me a good
19 reason as to why they want to engage in this piecemeal
20 approach to deposing a particular witness.
21 MR. SCHWIND: Right. Thank you, Your Honor. And I
22 just want to point out briefly that everything we do is
23 essentially a distraction from our main focus right now,
24 which is document production, which is getting the privilege
25 logs done. And this would be a major interference with our
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1 ability to do that.
2 Again, we are trying to work with Plaintiffs, but
3 if they could merely, again, push these out until after we
4 finish those things, again, it would greatly assist our
5 ability -- excuse me -- to complete document production on
6 the schedule that the Court has set out, which is our intent.
7 Thank you, Your Honor.
8 THE COURT: Understood. Thank you.
9 Sorry to be the wet blanket before you even start,
10 Mr. Cooper.
11 MR. COOPER: Well, Your Honor, I think there is
12 some confusion at work here, and I hope I can clear it up.
13 If counsel for the Government is saying that his only concern
14 is that we wait to take any deposition until he completes his
15 document production, which he has said he will complete, and
16 I’ve not heard even today or before today any suggestion that
17 he’s off track here, but that he will complete document
18 production by the end of April.
19 If that -- and that -- and that after that time he
20 will have no concerns about our going forward with
21 depositions in May and in June, because, remember, we have an
22 end-of-June discovery cutoff. Then I -- then I don’t think
23 we’re going to have any disagreement. We’ll be willing to
24 put the depositions that we have scheduled with counsel by
25 agreement, which -- one of which takes place on April 17th,
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the other one takes place on April 29th. We’ll be happy to put those over for two weeks or so.
THE COURT: Well, let me --
MR. COOPER: But --
THE COURT: Well, let me just ask. Mr. Schwind,
will you be able to complete the production of documents as Mr. Cooper has outlined?
MR. SCHWIND: The production of documents, Your Honor, but not the -- not the completion of the privilege logs in this case. We still have the issues out there, and, again, if it’s Plaintiffs’ intent to challenge privilege, and if Plaintiffs hope to discover more documents as a result of that privilege challenge process, we think that -- assume we can do that. But the answer to your questions are yes, we do, but we don’t think that solves the problem.
THE COURT: Then I understand --
MR. COOPER: There’s the rub.
THE COURT: -- and that’s -- well, that’s why I’m
going back and forth. And when do you think the privilege log completion -- when do you anticipate completing the privilege logs? I know you said you’re supplementing every two weeks. Was that correct?
MR. SCHWIND: Yes, Your Honor.
THE COURT: Okay.
MR. SCHWIND: We are targeting May. We’ll say end
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1 of May. I don’t want to commit to any earlier than that.
2 THE COURT: Okay. Okay, the end of May. All
3 right. And I will -- and I know the last thing you want me
4 to do is to reset the deadline, but rather than have the
5 Plaintiff be penalized by having the clock run out on them, I
6 will enlarge the discovery schedule so that you have the
7 entire universe of documents that you need, that you will
8 have all the privilege logs that you need before you conduct
9 your depositions. I mean, fair is fair.
10 MR. COOPER: Your Honor --
11 THE COURT: But, again, I know you don’t want to
12 keep pushing out the time.
13 MR. COOPER: There is the further issue that
14 counsel for the Government has raised with us, but which has
15 not come forward clearly yet, and that is, after the document
16 production is complete at the end of April and after we get a
17 nonprovisional final privilege log, which we have been
18 assured is going to contain thousands of documents, after we
19 get that by the end of May, I have little doubt, frankly,
20 that the parties -- that the Plaintiffs are going to dispute
21 some of the claims of privilege. And at that stage, we will
22 have a document-by-document arm wrestle with the Government
23 over that.
24 Our concern is this, Your Honor, and it has been
25 what we, at least, have understood to be the Government’s
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1 explicit position, that our depositions should not take
2 place, not only until the end of May and beginning presumably
3 in June with an end of June deadline, which you’ve just said
4 you will relax, but rather that the depositions, as far as
5 the Government is concerned, should not take place until all
6 privilege issues have been resolved.
7 And it is their position, as at least we understand
8 it, that if a deposition takes place before all privilege
9 issues are resolved and the Government feels it necessary to
10 instruct a witness not to answer because of a claim of
11 privilege and we contest that claim and the Court ultimately
12 agrees with us, that we will not have an occasion after that
13 because the Government will preclude our ability to possibly
14 re-empanel that witness and ask that witness about a document
15 that has just now come into our possession that we never had
16 before.
17 Now, the Court opened the hearing by noting that if
18 our purpose in these depositions is to question a witness
19 about a document or about documents and there’s substantive
20 knowledge of the case, on the topics and only the topics that
21 this Court has authorized us to inquire into, we understand
22 that, we accept those restrictions in deposition discovery,
23 no less than in document discovery. But if our purpose is to
24 do that and we don’t have a document because we’ve not waited
25 until the end of document discovery, well, then we’re taking
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1 that risk. We understand that. We understand that. We
2 won’t get a second bite at that witness with respect to a
3 document that is produced to us as responsive.
4 But what we can’t accept, Your Honor, and we can
5 find no authority that suggests we ought to accept, the
6 notion that if a deposition is taken before all privilege
7 issues have been resolved, as they almost always are, in my
8 experience anyway, it’s not at all infrequent that claims of
9 privilege come up in depositions.
10 THE COURT: You’re absolutely right.
11 MR. COOPER: Not at all infrequent. And those
12 claims get either resolved by the parties or they get brought
13 to you and you resolve it, and once it’s resolved, then with
14 -- if the party disputing the claim of privilege prevails,
15 some new information comes forward. And then maybe it
16 warrants asking that witness more questions and bringing them
17 back together for that narrow purpose.
18 And, Your Honor, we’re just -- we just want to make
19 sure -- because we understand the Government to take a
20 position contrary to this, we want to make sure that we will
21 not be foreclosed here and now from coming back possibly if
22 nonprivileged information comes into our possession after
23 what we expect to be a lengthy period of disputing on
24 privilege issues. The Government expects and has said in its
25 papers here that it expects that to take months.
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1
2 privilege log that we have received, the provisional
3 privilege log, as the Court will recall from our last
4 conference, not even final, we haven’t got a single document
5 or final claim of privilege yet that we could bring to this
6 Court and get this process started, if we disputed it. And
7 maybe we won’t dispute these thousands of documents, but the
8 truth is we know we will because we’ve got 900 provisional
9 claims of privilege, and if they remain, there’s going to be
10 some disputes.
11 But after we get in the end of May thousands of
12 assertions of privilege over documents, we believe we’re
13 going to have meritorious objections to those claims to bring
14 to the Court. And, Your Honor, we do not think it is
15 feasible to delay depositions until all that is done. I know
16 of no precedent for doing that. And if the disputes over
17 privilege yield additional information and it warrants an
18 additional deposition, at least to the Plaintiffs’ mind, and
19 the Government resists, we’ll bring our complaint to you and
20 you’ll either agree with us or you’ll agree with them. But
21 that’s how these things work.
22 THE COURT: Well, just -- well, let me just ask you
23 this. I mean, Mr. Schwind has represented to me that over
24 approximately 400,000 pieces of paper -- I don’t think it’s
25 just been documents.
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We don’t doubt that it will if, in fact, the
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1 MR. SCHWIND: Pages.
2 THE COURT: Pages have been produced. Thank you.
3 Now, I could have a dedicated phone line for the time that
4 you’re going through depositions and you all can have me on
5 speed dial and I can just sit at my desk all day and do
6 nothing but rule on privilege, whether a document is
7 privileged. That doesn’t seem to be terribly -- I understand
8 why the Plaintiff would be anxious to move forward with
9 taking the deposition, but isn’t it cleaner to have all the
10 documents produced and then determine what’s privileged and
11 what’s not by whether you were going seriatim and just taking
12 each document and making that determination where the parties
13 can agree as to what’s privileged and what’s not.
14 The general case, at least in my experience as a
15 litigator, was when a -- it was not unusual to have a
16 document challenged at a deposition as being privileged, but
17 it was more the unusual case -- and it wasn’t that there
18 would be a banker’s box full of documents that were going to
19 be challenged. It might have been one or two, three or four
20 at the most. Maybe that’s just my unique experience. But I
21 never -- it was a rare occurrence that someone would go into
22 a deposition knowing that 45 documents were going to be
23 challenged and they would have to bring it to the judge that
24 day for a ruling.
25 MR. COOPER: And, Your Honor, I -- forgive me,
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1 because I didn’t mean to suggest that scenario. The scenario
2 I expect is one in which we will not have those documents,
3 those 45 documents. We will not have them.
4 THE COURT: Right.
5 MR. COOPER: We’ll be taking a deposition, but we
6 will be -- you know, again, the deposition discovery will be
7 delayed a period of months, according to the Government
8 itself, as the parties dispute over the validity of the
9 claimed assertion of privilege, assertions that we can’t
10 bring to you on a categorical basis --
11 THE COURT: Right.
12 MR. COOPER: -- because the Government and we, you
13 know, can’t -- we’ve only identified -- the Government’s only
14 agreed to one categorical issue that could be resolved by the
15 Court in advance, and that simply isn’t going to narrow the
16 privilege issue. So, that’s off the table. We are -- the
17 parties and the Court, unfortunately, are going to be going
18 through document-by-document assertions of privilege and
19 disputes.
20 And, so, we’d like to take depositions now or
21 promptly anyway, at least after the close of document
22 discovery, when they have said -- they have produced all
23 responsive, nonprivileged documents to us. We have them all.
24 The only thing they’re not producing to us are the privileged
25 ones, the thousands of privileged ones. We’d like to begin
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1 depositions because if, again, deposition discovery is
2 delayed until all the disputes are resolved, that would delay
3 depositions months from now. And, Your Honor, that has very
4 real costs to the interests, we believe, in our professional
5 judgment, to our -- to our -- the interest that we’re here to
6 advance, our client’s interest.
7 So, the scenario, Your Honor, will be that there
8 will be documents that we don’t have to question a witness
9 about, but that months later, after a dispute has been
10 resolved and the Court perhaps resolves it favorably to the
11 Plaintiffs, we’ll come into the possession of a document or
12 documents that will then warrant a supplemental deposition to
13 ask the witness about those particular documents, a narrow,
14 focused deposition at that time. But this is not at all
15 unusual.
16 What we are -- you know, we’re hopeful that the
17 Court will not suggest here or advise us, that it’s the
18 Court’s judgment, that if we take a deposition even after
19 document production is complete, but before the drawn-out
20 process of resolving privilege claims has been completed,
21 that any victories we may win in that process will -- will do
22 us no good, at least in the sense that we won’t be able to
23 then potentially seek the Court’s permission to take a
24 supplemental deposition of a witness that we’ve already
25 deposed.
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1 THE COURT: What would you be gaining, Mr. Cooper,
2 by -- rather than having the entire universe of documents
3 that you need to depose a witness, what good does it do to
4 move forward with that deposition?
5 MR. COOPER: Your Honor, we are very concerned
6 about the period of time that it has taken -- that’s
7 discovery taken already. We’re at the one-year anniversary
8 of the discovery. We’ve had -- now, we’re on our third
9 extension of time with respect to discovery. It may well be,
10 Your Honor, that the depositions we contemplate taking now,
11 we won’t -- you know, what we can’t know is whether we will
12 find it necessary to come back to the Court and ask for a
13 supplemental deposition because of newly released and
14 disclosed information.
15 And, Your Honor, witnesses’ memories fade and these
16 events, particularly the events with respect to the third
17 amendment
18 witnesses
19 to -- you
20 about the period of time that has taken place.
21 THE COURT: How much --
are -- with every passing day, they’re fading and become unavailable and they become more difficult know, to schedule and we’re becoming very nervous
22 MR. COOPER: One thing I should say, that the
23 depositions that we have now agreed to schedule, the
24 Government has agreed to schedule with us, are depositions
25 that are limited to some FHFA personnel, three FHFA
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1 personnel. We identified them after the January 28th, I
2 think, status conference when the Government represented to
3 the Court and to us that FHFA document discovery was very
4 nearly complete, that there would be only one more document
5 production relating to FHFA documents.
6 And, Your Honor, we got a substantial document
7 production with respect to FHFA documents last week, late
8 last week. We assumed that FHFA document production was
9 done. We were informed this morning that that’s not
10 and, in fact, there are going to be more than one --
11 additional one that, on January 28th, the Government
12 represented was left. And, so, we focused on FHFA personnel
13 because we assumed that we would have the complete document
14 production with respect to FHFA personnel. And the only
15 thing left would be documents that they withheld on a claim
16 of privilege that may or may not come into our possession
17 down the road.
18 So, Your Honor, we -- that sensible process is
19 exactly what occurred to us as well. But we -- again, we are
20 very, very reluctant to delay deposition discovery. I’m put
21 in mind of an exchange -- I’m sure you don’t remember this,
22 but an exchange that you and I had in -- back in July of
23 2014, when we were arguing about the Government’s motion for
24 a protective order and when the Court put in place the order
25 -- the confidentiality requirements that have governed
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1 discovery ever since. But the Court urged me to start taking
2 -- just take depositions.
3 “THE COURT: Well, let me ask you this, with the
4 documents, what about just taking depositions of
5 conservators?”
6 And then I respond, “Well, we’re looking forward to
7 doing that.
8 “THE COURT: Wouldn’t that just resolve it? You
9 wouldn’t have to then ask for any internal documents. I
10 mean, do you get what you need to meet the ripeness
11 argument?” One of the jurisdiction arguments. “And take one
12 at a time, your choice.”
13 I responded, “Yes, but, Your Honor, we do
14 anticipate taking depositions and we’ve identified and the
15 Government has identified individuals to us who have the
16 relevant information in their possession. Before we take a
17 deposition, we believe that the discovery that the Court has
18 authorized is a necessary element of that.”
19 Then the Court responded, “Well, discovery --
20 obviously, it includes depositions.”
21 So, Your Honor, it’s -- we’ve -- now, it’s nine
22 months after that exchange and, yes, we’ve been anxious to
23 take depositions throughout those nine months. We believe
24 that our interests are being prejudiced now by not taking
25 depositions. And, so, we would like to move forward and we
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1 would plan to move forward unless the Court has an objection
2 to it. But, again, we -- we are -- we urge the Court not to
3 foreclose now, in advance, the possibility that the Court
4 might agree down the road that newly produced information
5 would warrant a supplemental deposition.
6 THE COURT: Well, no one has requested that I quash
7 a deposition. It sounds like what you all are looking for is
8 an advisory ruling, which judges don’t provide. But I
9 certainly -- I don’t want to see witnesses inconvenienced.
10 MR. COOPER: Of course not.
11 THE COURT: However, if Plaintiffs can make an
12 argument at a later time as to why they need to -- why it was
13 prudent to take the deposition, because I don’t know whether
14 someone is -- no one has said that any of the witnesses are
15 gravely ill, but if to make sure that memories don’t fade any
16 more than they generally do. I don’t know whether or not you
17 would be able to wrap up the dispute with discovery within
18 just a few months. If you could, it would make sense to
19 perhaps wait on the depositions. If you can’t and it’s going
20 to be an extended time period, then I can understand why you
21 might want to move forward.
22 But since there’s only one of Mr. Schwind and his
23 other colleagues, then I don’t know, given the limited
24 resources they have, whether they can both be conducting
25 depositions and conducting document reviews and producing
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1 privilege logs. So, I don’t know. I guess you just have to
2 weigh what you think is best for your client and make the
3 prudent decision.
4 MR. COOPER: Your Honor -- yes, Your Honor, I
5 appreciate that, and that is what we have been -- obviously,
6 our guiding standard from the beginning and today. And,
7 again, if the only thing at work here is postponing the
8 depositions until the end of April when the Government has
9 represented it will have completed document production, then
10 that’s something we can live with. Postponing the
11 depositions until after, you know -- you know, who knows how
12 long of litigating privilege disputes with the Court, that’s
13 something that is going to be very, very hard for us to live
14 with. But, you know, I hear the Court and I really don’t
15 have anything to add to those points.
16 THE COURT: Very good, thank you.
17 MR. SCHWIND: Thank you, again, Your Honor. I just
18 want to respond briefly to Plaintiffs’ assertion that we have
19 stated that the privilege challenge process was going to
20 involve months. We have never said that. In fact, the only
21 thing delaying discovery after May, after we hopefully
22 complete our privilege logs, is Plaintiffs’ challenge to
23 documents. So, it’s not our expectation that the privilege
24 challenge document will take months. It’s really up to
25 Plaintiffs what they choose to make of that process.
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1
2 proposing is the norm. We have time in this case to do
3 things in the right order. They haven’t put on any even hint
4 of prejudice, any demonstrated prejudice. We have time to do
5 things in the right order in this case and, again, I think,
6 as Your Honor has suggested, the right order is that
7 Plaintiffs have documents, then they do their depositions,
8 and we go forward after that. So, I just want to make that
9 point again, that how long this process takes, the privilege
10 challenge process is up to Plaintiffs. So, for Plaintiffs to
11 say it’s not fair to make them put off depositions until this
12 process is complete, well, they have control of that process.
13 THE COURT: Well, certainly, what you and Ms.
14 Hosford and Mr. Dintzer, going forward in the privilege logs,
15 I mean, it’s certainly -- it’s not as though Plaintiffs are
16 in the driver’s seat. I mean, they have to review the
17 privilege logs that you provide and then determine what they
18 will challenge or what makes sense to them.
19 So -- but what seems to me, at this stage, is that
20 it makes sense to wait until documents -- the entire universe
21 of documents have been produced and then they can examine the
22 privilege logs and then make a determination of whether or
23 not it’s prudent to move forward. In the ideal world, they
24 would wait and review the privilege logs with you, determine
25 if perhaps you might have been overly conservative in
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So, we don’t think that what Plaintiffs are
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1 documents you’ve designated to be privileged, work out what
2 issues you can, then bring the remaining ones to me. I have
3 confidence that you all can resolve that on your own, but if
4 you need me to become involved, I’m happy to do so.
5 But that’s the ideal world. I don’t know
6 whether -- but, again, I can understand from Mr. Cooper’s
7 perspective that if the process would take another eight
8 months or so, that that’s so far removed from the original
9 time line that the Plaintiffs will be concerned about
10 memories fading. But, you know, again, that’s a decision
11 that each counsel will make on behalf of their client as to
12 what is in their best interest. But I appreciate everything
13 that you and your colleagues have done in moving the case
14 forward and staying on top of the discovery issue.
15 MR. SCHWIND: Thank you, Your Honor. We’ll
16 continue to do so.
17 THE COURT: Thank you.
18 Mr. Cooper?
19 MR. COOPER: Thank you, Your Honor, as will we.
20 Thank you.
21 THE COURT: Okay, very good. Well, thank you very
22 much. I’m delighted that the two sides, while having very
23 differing views of the case certainly, seem to work very well
24 together despite, again, having different world views. But
25 if there’s something else that you think I can assist the
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1 parties in doing with regard to resolving any of the
2 privilege disputes, please bring that to me sooner than
3 later. It’s up to Plaintiffs as to how they want to conduct
4 the depositions, you know, what time line. You all are very
5 able counsel.
6 So, I -- and I’m sure you will do what is in your
7 clients’ best interest, and then if the Government has a
8 different world view in terms of whether or not depositions
9 should have been taken at the time they were originally
10 taken, well then, I’ll deal with that when it comes.
11 Hopefully, we won’t go down that road, but whatever you need
12 to do on behalf of your client, I know you will. And
13 whatever you give me to resolve, I will resolve. So, thank
14 you very much and good morning.
18 a.m.)
MR. COOPER: Thank you, Your Honor.
MR. SCHWIND: Thank you, Your Honor.
(Whereupon, the hearing was adjourned at 11:46
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CERTIFICATE OF TRANSCRIBER
I, Sara J. Vance, court-approved transcriber, certify that the foregoing is a correct transcript from the official electronic sound recording of the proceedings in the above-titled matter.
DATE: 3/31/2015
s/Sara J. Vance
SARA J. VANCE, CERT
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As far as starting depositions, I believe in the end, Sweeney gave her concerns, but then still left it up to the attorneys, whom she knew would still want to act in the best interests of their clients.
It shouldn't be quite so easy for Fnf to be used and abused. We need to hold accountable those few individuals that unilaterally changed the rules. Depositions coming soon!
"During certain periods of his tenure, Tim Geithner spoke with you more than almost any other person. When the secretary of the Treasury calls, what do you talk about?
Generally, when somebody from government talks to me, they ask about retirement and my views of it. They may want to talk to me about Fannie Mae (FNMA) and Freddie Mac (FMCC). They may want to talk to me about China or France or Germany. We manage more retirement money than any firm in the world. We manage more insurance company assets and sovereign wealth funds and on and on and on.
So we have a point of view. What I will say is I understand the propriety of the calls, whether it’s the secretary of the Treasury or a governor of a central bank or a finance minister for another country. It is generally a privilege to have that relationship. You have to understand, your conversations are one directional. It’s not for me to ask them, “What’s going on in the economy?” or, “What do you see?” It’s for them to learn some information from me. And over time with many of these men and women, you develop a personal relationship, too. So sometimes it can be as simple as, “How was your weekend?”
http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2013-08-08/blackrocks-larry-fink-on-the-retirement-savings-crisis
"Will taxpayers be on the hook for another mega-bailout, given that Fannie and Freddie combined were the biggest bailout cases of all, at $187.5 billion? Though the two have paid back their taxpayer bailout, and then some, housing analysts have decried free, easy money as the reason for the housing meltdown, arguing, if borrowers can't afford a house, they should rent until they can."
http://www.foxbusiness.com/industries/2015/04/17/fannie-and-freddie-restart-risky-affordable-housing-programs/
"Though the two have paid back their taxpayer bailout, and then some."
Great idea! When they make a movie of this, your list will be very helpful!
Next week will be busy. I wonder if they'll hold a status conference 4/22?
That's interesting! It's been confusing listening to Stevens, seemed contrary to what other members have said before. One of the panelists at today's hearing was there on behalf of Mortgage Bankers Association. I didn't catch the whole hearing, but he certainly didn't sound like Stevens.