2011 Chrysler 200
Better, Duh!

More complete information and full photo sets of the 2011 Chrysler 200 are now circulating. The Chrysler 200 replaces the less-than-successful Chrysler Sebring. Under Cerberus, Chrysler was starved for product development money, and the Sebring was one of the vehicles most affected. Post-buyout, the Sebring needed to be replaced, like yesterday, but there wasn't the time or money to do a complete do-over. Under the circumstances, new Chrysler has done a good job putting new flesh on old bones. The moderate reskinning of the old Sebring platform renders the 200 basically inoffensive even if it isn't a raging beauty. The old hard plastic interior has been thrown out, and soft touch plastics now predominate. The biggest change is in the powertrain. Chrysler's new Pentastar V6 is the optional engine, with a new 6-speed automatic transmission. The base engine is the carryover 4-cylinder engine, but a six-speed transmission is available even with the 4-cylinder. Virtually all of the auto sites are running stories on the 200. Here's a link to Autoblog's

Mortgage Securitization - A Case Study

Dan Edstrom, of DTC Services, performs mortgage securitization audits. He prepared the chart below showing how his own mortgage was securitized. I tried to explain the diagram, but I ended up just improvising "do a head fake, and go long."

Source zerohedge via huffpost.com.

Cat vs. Alligator

Fannie Mae to Stern Law Firm: You're Fired
Foreclosure Mill Faces its Demise

Fannie Mae sent a letter last week to all of its affilliates servicers telling them to immediately take Fannie Mae loans out of the hands of the Stern Law Firm. If you're not familiar with the Stern firm, it's a Florida based "foreclosure mill" firm that has been at the heart of controversies involving robosigned and otherwise questionable documents.

DJSP Enterprises, a publicly-traded company set up to do the back office processing of the Stern cases immediately announced a lay-off of 435 of its 1,600 employees. It was once the 9th largest employer in Broward County (Ft. Lauderdale), Florida. DJSP's major subsidiary, DAL Group LLC defaulted on a $12 million line of credit with Bank of America. Bank of America, of course, is into the foreclosure mess up to its proverbial corporate eyeballs.

Are Potterheads Nerds?

I have often wondered whether it is fair to call serious Harry Potter fans "nerds". There are similarities to typical nerds, but there are differences as well. Potterheads read actual books on paper that don't have the word "Star" in the title. Here on the eve of the opening of Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows, Part One, Daniel Ratcliffe deposits a solid of helping of evidence in the "pro" category of the nerd debate by reciting Tom Lehrer's Element Song from memory. Pretty impressive.



BUT is it more impressive than Al Franken drawing a map of the United States from memory?



Is Al Franken a nerd? Just because you're smart and you know a good party trick, that doesn't make you a nerd, right?

Tomorrow Never Knows

Will Apple announce tomorrow (Tuesday 11/16/2010) that iTunes will (finally) be getting Beatles music?

Congratulations, Rand Bragg

Rand Bragg was awarded the Vern Countryman award for Consumer Advocate of the Year by the National Association of Consumer Advocates. Rand currently is of counsel for the Horowitz, Horowitz firm in Chicago with a practice specializing in Fair Debt Collection Practices class action cases. Many years ago, Rand was the litigation director of UAW Legal Services Plan. I met Rand when I was in private practice quite a few years before I came to UAWLSP. Rand was a very important early mentor for me. He gave me some important tips on case selection, helped me learn about class actions. He was always a gentleman, never condescending, and he never asked anything in return for any of the advice he gave me. Congratulations, Rand, this is an award you truly deserve.

How We Doin?
Update on Mortgage Foreclosure and Modification Statistics November 2010

I'm blogging from the National Consumer Rights Litigation Conference in Boston. Professor Alan White will be giving his presentation on the latest statistics regarding foreclosures and mortgage modifications. Last year, the the numbers showed that the HAMP program was barely putting a dent in mortgage foreclosures, and the problem was growing. We'll see how the situation is changing.

Since the remarks at the conference are supposed to be "off the record, I'm not going to post details. By past practice the same data that he's discussing here will be distributed in a published report within a few days. Here's a link to Professor White's website with monthly foreclosure reports.

Auto Fraud and the FTC
NACA is looking for complaints

With a Republican-controlled Congress, consumer advocates expect that there will be very little new consumer-friendly legislation over the next two years. Luckily, the Consumer Financial Protection Act was passed this year, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) was established. It will take about a year for the CFPB to be set up, and at least another year before the agencies new rule-making authority can bear fruit, at least on big issues. That being said, the Federal Trade Commission is still in business, and the FTC is collecting information on auto fraud. In July, the FTC gets APA rulemaking authority over car dealers, this authority was the quid pro quo that dealer lobbyists had to accept to get exempted from CFPB regulation. (The dealers' legislative victory may backfire. If they were covered by the CFPB, nothing would really be done for at least two years, and probably longer, because the banks and mortgage industry have to be fixed first.)

Even though the FTC is indicating a new activism, in recent years, when used cars complaints have been made to the FTC, they've tended to vanish, sometimes without even acknowledgement that they were ever received. The FTC blamed the lack of complaint information on defects with their Sentinel system, a system that has stayed rarely used and unfixed for years. With that in mind, the National Association of Consumer Advocates (NACA) is collecting auto fraud complaints from lawyers for forwarding to the FTC. Send your auto fraud complaints to autocomplaints@naca.net. In this particular case, NACA is looking for court filed (or arbitration) complaints alleging auto fraud complaints, primarily in .pdf form. Anything in the last five years is fair game.

2012 Hyundai Elantra to Get 40 MPG

According to Autoblog.com, the entire model line of the 2012 Hyundai Elantra will be rated at 40 mpg highway and 29 mpg city. This is quite the achievement because the Honda Civic and Toyota Corolla can't touch 40 mpg, and models of the Chevrolet Cruze, Ford Fiesta, and probably the 2012 Ford Focus will have 40 MPG highway ratings, but only for special high MPG subvarients.

The 2012 Elantra will be assembled in the United States and will use a 1.8 liter, 148 horsepower, 131 ft.lb. torque engine. That's more horsepower but less torque than the Chevrolet Cruze Eco, a direct competitor. Hyundai has been aggressively introducing new models lately, and some of the models have featured engines with fuel-efficient, direct-injected engines. Somewhat surprisingly, the Elantra engine does NOT feature direct injection. The Elantra will make its official debut at the Los Angeles Auto Show next week.