Fannie/Freddie Give Stern the Boot

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I feel like I should let Andy Kroll have first crack at this story, but all’s fair in love and blogging. In any case, it looks like Fannie and Freddie have finally decided to give the boot to David J. Stern’s infamous foreclosure mill down in Florida:

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have terminated their relationships with a top Florida foreclosure law firm and began taking possession of loan files on Monday afternoon from the firm, which processes evictions on behalf of the mortgage-finance giants.

….Freddie Mac took the rare step of removing loan files after an internal review raised “concerns about some of the practices at the Stern firm,” a Freddie spokeswoman said. “We have begun taking possessions of all files on Freddie Mac mortgages simply to protect our interest in those loans as well as those of the borrowers,” the Freddie spokeswoman said. A Fannie spokeswoman declined to elaborate.

And not a moment too soon. For more on Stern’s business practices, Andy’s original story is here. I’m sure he’ll have more later.

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

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