DD returns again to his interest in OneWest, formerly IndyMac, aka Satan’s Bank in Pasadena. It sits at the corner of Lake and Walnut, across from Ralphs supermarket and DD passes right by it everyday on his stroll to pick up supplies. If I go at lunchtime, I often see some of Satan’s minions pouring out of the place in their banker shirts, striding across the way to Ralphs to buy lunch, a latte or perhaps some condoms which they will put on before commencing to screw others, not their wives, later in the week.

I’ve discussed it before here in connection with the Huffington Post’s publicity stunt campaign to fight evil banksters. In that post, I embedded a video of Bill Maher exhorting us all to end our relationships with giant evil banks and to move our money to smaller community-minded heart-and-soul banks. To do this, we were to surf out to MoveYourMoney.Info and plug our zip codes into a ‘finder’ which would return a safe list of small, community-minded allegedly not evil banks.

Of course, this turned out to be horseshit. The idea’s OK but the due diligence and rigor apparently aren’t there to make it work. DD plugged in zipcodes for Pasadena and got a short list containing OneWest.

There is now no shortage of bad news on OneWest on the web and in newspaper and magazine databases.

IndyMac did the things all the banksters are now accused of in the US. It specialized in really risky subprime lending and then went tits after the people at the top made a killing on the Ponzi scheme. Prior to the death of Lehman Brothers and the big bailout, the FDIC stepped in and saved it.

In the reorganization, some superwealthy guys took over and renamed it OneWest.

OneWest’s business model, as told in news stories on it, is to continue the certified nasty practices of the Wall Street financial giants.

That is, it profits off distressed holdings by using the taxpayer-funded government guarantees for detoxifying its subprime lending. OneWest is not small or community-oriented, unless you consider forclosing on people’s homes nationwide using taxpayer money as guarantee profit margin against what would be certain losses to be goodness for communities.

One fellow on the web explains it this way:

Several times per week, I get phone calls from attorneys. These calls all start out the same. “I am unable to get loan modifications done through a lender. What can I do???? The first question I ask is if the lender is Indymac/One West. Invariably, it is.

When OneWest took over Indymac, the FDIC and OneWest executed a “Shared-Loss Agreement??? covering the sale. This Agreement covered the terms of what the FDIC would reimburse OneWest for any losses from foreclosure on a property. It is at this point that the details get very confusing, so I shall try to simplify the terms.

Some of the major details are:

OneWest would purchase all first mortgages at 70% of the current balance

OneWest would purchase Line of Equity Loans at 58% of the current balance.

In the event of foreclosure, the FDIC would cover from 80%-95% of losses, using the original loan amount, and not the current balance.

That article is here.

It contains a demonstration using simple arithmetic.

That thought exercise shows how OneWest uses government guarantees for distressed assets in its rescue to ensure a profit on forclosures. In essence, the US government uses taxpayer money indemnifying OneWest against loss on a distressed property it owns, indeed guaranteeing a certain good amount of profit on it. It is the very essence of vulture crony capitalism and its main purpose, socially, is profit for OneWest through capitalization of the very badness of its former self through the working over of subprime mortgage holders.

“At this point, it becomes readily apparent why OneWest Bank has no intention of conducting loan modifications,” writes the man. “Any modification means that OneWest would lose out on … additional profit.”

“Many of OneWest’s investors worked at Goldman Sachs at some point in their careers, and have made lucrative careers out of buying distressed assets,” reported ABC News here in a story on a OneWest foreclosure operation reprimanded by a judge.

“Experts say private equity firms are making a killing in this economy, as they buy failed assets at huge discounts, and then resell what they can at a profit,” continued ABC.

“Financially, this is relatively smart, but ethically it’s challenging,” said someone to the news organization. “There’s no long-term interest for OneWest in bailing out these people in Patchogue.”

Particularly when the Uncle Sam is guaranteeing and underwriting a profit on the action.

Indeed, one can even find a complaint in the comments section at The Huffington Post, ironically in a post on the economic crisis, banking and mortgage loan modification:

I have tried from the first day this loan was available to get this loan from IndyMAC/One West.

They have lied numerous times. I read the 17 page loan qualifications the first day it was out, and the I qualified for the loan.

I sent my loan docs through certified mail and they were signed off by IndyMAC., Now they say they never got them. Then, they were shipped to Houston! Then I called back. They don’t have a Houston office! Then they moved from Austin to Austin. They said they have no outside phone line and no way to reach loan officers, they said I did not have a Fannie Mae loan, but I checked and I do.

When I first tried to get this loan my mortgage and all my bills were current. I filed under a hardship clause.

I am a single mother who has made do for 20 years …. I have an autistic son who lives with me … but my other son hurt his arm and the surgeons made a mistake and did the wrong surgery and now my son has a crippled arm and a day to day, life or death, blood dyscrasia. He moved in with me from the dorms at UCSD. The medical bills have sunk me, along with IndyMAC/One West.

Now, 10 months after the surgical mistakes, I am on the brink of dominos falling. I would not be in trouble if IndyMAC/OneWest were a lender with integrity.

That post is here.

So DD once again travelled to MoveYourMoney.Info to see if the Huffington operation had bothered to remove OneWest from it’s recommended list of community-minded banks. In the socially good cause of purging evil banks, so to speak.

You know the answer already. I plugged in Pasadena yesterday and got back this.

Now Satan’s Bank OneWest is listed not once, but twice, in MoveYourMoney.Info’s returned list of community banks to move your money to in Pasadena.

That’s certainly progress!

Make a protest, do some real civic action and do the MoveYourMoney.Info thing, says Eugene Jarecki, someone said to be a famous film-maker and author, in this video clip from the Tavis Smiley show on PBS.

Displayed on MoveYourMoney.Info’s blog, Jarecki says: “[… Put it in a community bank or credit union where the people know your name like on Cheers, they care about you, they know about your kids, they know who’s got a sore throat, all that stuff …”

(You need to see the clip. To call it fatuous insults the meaning of fatuous.)