Fired CBO Analyst Continues Asking Why Federal Watchdog Agency Appeared To Sweep Securitization, Robosigning Shams Under Rug When Informing Congress

ABC News reports:

• Lan Pham, an economist fired by the Congressional Budget Office two years ago, is still asking whether the watchdog agency appeared to "diminish or deny" the problem of foreclosure fraud while providing analysis to Congress.



• As lawmakers enter budget season in Washington D.C. and wrangle over House Republicans' new budget blueprint, Pham is hoping to draw more attention to the housing market's woes.



• "Why is one of the most powerful government agencies that can determine the direction of the nation's policies appearing to diminish or deny that the issue of mortgage securitization is a problem?" she said. "If it is a problem, we have a $7 trillion in mortgage-backed securities that has brought chaos to homeowners, whether or not they are in foreclosure."



• Pham said her questions like those have led attorneys general to reach the $25 billion foreclosure abuse deal announced last month, and could affect not just underwater homeowners across the country but the entire U.S. housing market.



• With a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota, Pham worked for the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) for only two and a half months before she was fired in December 2010. In Pham's termination letter, her supervisor, Deborah Lucas, CBO's assistant director, said "a number of performance issues are the basis for the decision."



• But Pham said she was fired for providing an analysis about the banking sector and foreclosure fraud issues involving mortgage-backed securities and robosigning that she said displeased her bosses.



• Pham said the main issues of foreclosure problems relate to securitization, the pooling of mortgages that collateralize mortgage-backed securities, and the Mortgage Electronic Registration System, which has electronic records of ownership on about 65 million mortgages, about half in the country.



• In her first interview since releasing a letter addressed to Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, through the website Zero Hedge on Thursday, Pham said she is less concerned with losing her job but rather with bringing more transparency to her former employer.



• "Because you see the losses around the country from those who purchased homes with banks foreclosing on homeowners that don't have the title to the mortgage, this is an issue where financially we're talking about a $7 trillion mortgage backed securities problem," Pham, who is looking for employment, said. "To me, talking about my career is just beside the point."



• Pham said she was assigned to write a brief, or short paper, about foreclosures and that her supervisor rejected her discussions on the decline in property taxes, home prices, and the impact of foreclosures on homeowner assets or wealth.



• Pham said her supervisor handed her policy thoughts from Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs which "appeared to minimize the exposure of banks to securitized mortgage problems." She said her supervisor said foreclosure problems were just media "sensationalism," and asked, "Don't you want house prices to go up?"

For more, see 'Whistleblower' Says Mortgage Securitization Still an Issue for U.S. Homeowners.

For even more, see, Zero Hedge: Terminated CBO Whistleblower Shares Her Full Story With Zero Hedge, Exposes Deep Conflicts At "Impartial" Budget Office:

• The bottom line is that the CBO was warned at least by Ms. Pham (and possibly others) over the dangers of precisely the issue that Attorneys General are scrambling to shove under the rug in exchange for a wristslap to all mortgage originators (i.e., the same banks that somehow are now getting bailed out by taxpayers and the GSEs on an annual basis).



• And just like every other issue that merely gets a cosmetic and very transitory liquidity facelift, nothing ever is actually fixed.



• As Ms. Pham says: "It is unclear how the recent State attorney generals’ agreement to a proposed yet unpublished terms of the $25 billion robo-signing settlement would repair the chain of title issues that continue to mutate. In January 2011, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court reversed the foreclosure actions of two banks for lacking proof of clear title, followed by a decision in October 2011 that a buyer who purchased a house that was improperly foreclosed upon does not make the buyer the new owner of the house; the sale does not transfer the property."