Rep. Brad Miller: “Protecting bank solvency has been a goal of Treasury that I do not share”

One of the more amusing moments of yesterday’s House Financial Services Committee hearings on foreclosure fraud was when the representatives for the loan servicers were asked why they were subsidiaries of the large financial institutions. The link between the servicers and the big banks, mainly caused by a series of mergers, leads to all kinds of conflicts of interest, because it inevitably pairs them up with the originator or trustee of the loan. The servicers had no real answer to this question. Finally, the Wells Fargo representative claimed that it was for “customer convenience,” because some customers had their mortgage and their checking accounts at the same bank.

Everyone’s jaw dropped in the hearing room.