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Globalization and the plan for NWO => Financial Crisis Forum => Topic started by: Dig on October 20, 2010, 02:41:38 AM
Title: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: Dig on October 20, 2010, 02:41:38 AM Welcome to the Machine A Workingman's Guide to MERS and the Shadow Banking System http://chinkinthearmor.net/MERS_Short_List_MLIM.html A story is breaking upon the nation as I write this. It is a story I have been forced to live for the last year and a half. In that year and a half I have come to learn a lot of confusing truths about the way the money in this world really works. The mainstream media is talking more and more about the foreclosure scandal and at the heart of it all is MERS. Mortgage Electronic Registry Service. Its the biggest littlest company you have never heard of before and in the thirteen years of its existence, it has utterly destroyed the real property ownership records system in every county in the United States. The purpose of The Working Joes Guide to MERS & Mortgage Banking is to provide the every day average Joe & Joie the information they need to understand this tremendous scandal unfolding ahead. More importantly, use this information to arm yourself with truth so you can cry BULLSHITTE when the talking heads try to spin the story for you. And they will. Be warned. The story has so many facets that to sit down and take it from one end to the other leaves one a bit befuddled. Smoke comes out of your ears, if you know what I mean. Thinking and operating in the world of MERS is a testament to the infinite adaptability of the human condition. I recall when I first came to the realization of the Meaning of MERS and the smoke started to pour from my ears. It was late at night and I had been researching what had happened to me about a week earlier. I had just invoked the Produce the Note defense in court and had won a stay on the sale in the foreclosure of my house. After the euphoria wore off, I really started to wonder what had just happened. I was geeking out trying to understand. It was late at night. I had been finding and reading court cases for about a week, the lights were out except for the screen, the kids were all asleep, and I sat bolt upright in my chair when the realization struck. My God, they cant deliver clear title~! I blinked into the darkness for about five minutes as the full impact of that washed over me. That was almost a year ago and I have managed to withstand the MERS monsters siege upon my castle since then (not to worry, still plenty of food & water). Living and thinking in a MERS world is common for me now. Newcomers look at their surroundings as if it were their first foray into Toon Town, the refuge of Roger Rabbit when he was running from the law. Ive been here for a while and Im used to it. Oh, yeah, I tell them, that happens all the time. In order to really get into what is going on, you have to pile through a lot of boring mundane stuff. PJ ORourke calls it Dictatorship by Tedium. Any time regular people try to figure out whats going on they feel like they are back in High School Algebra class and not having a clue as to what is going on. Thats how they get away with it. Its not that you cant understand. You can. Its that they make it so boring, you dont want to. In todays specialized world, to a certain extent, you have to trust that they who are the experts are as well studied in their subject matter as you are in yours. Leave all that to people who are interested. This is a complicated story. It is actually six stories interwoven into a larger narrative. Part of the problem is it is so easy to get caught up with one or two pieces of the story and miss the real story. It goes deeply into the arcane runes of the financial world. To tell it in detail would leave you glassy eyed and wondering what you were doing for lunch. So I leave a lot of details out and as a result, it may seem overly simple. Thats because it is. But its not. This is a quick tour so you can understand the big picture. You will, no doubt, find various aspects of it curious and you will want to go back to explore more. All the subjects in here are available for further study through the internet. Thats what I did. This whole story is pulled together from late night google searches. In order to make this easy, lets start out with the shockers. If you have MERS on your mortgage, unless you take action to quiet title, you will NEVER see clear title to your house.
If MERS is on the title history of a house you are thinking about buying, you need to know there is an immense cloud on that title and you will never own what you think you are buying. If your mortgage is securitized, meaning it was used as part of a securitization vehicle, you are paying rent to the Shadow Banking System (SBS) no part of which has an enforceable encumbrance upon your house. And finally, if you have MERS on your mortgage, and there are over 62 MM of us, your house has become the gold coin of the shadow banking system. Ill say that last one again because it really needs to soak in. Your house is the gold coin of the Shadow Banking System. (SBS) Its very complicated, but its very simple. Let me tell you what was really going on in the entire mortgage banking collapse of 2007 - ??? Factoring is a time honoured business practice. Wikipedia defines factoring as a financial transaction whereby a business
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Print Page - Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System http://forum.prisonplanet.com/index.php?action=printpage;topic=189928.0
sells its accounts receivable (i.e., invoices) to a third party (called a factor) at a discount in exchange for immediate money with which to finance continued business. In this case, the mortgage originators (the banks who originated the loan) were factoring their paper to the SBS so they could make more loans so they could factor more paper all to feed the insatiable appetite of the SBS for the security of their periodic, temporary, large cash positions as well as to give pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, and money market funds a place where they could receive an above average return with little to no risk. All of it, the entire scandal destroying the world today boils down to one word. Factoring. Welcome to the Rabbit Hole.
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: citizenx on October 20, 2010, 04:19:24 PM
Quote from: citizenx on October 20, 2010, 03:40:00 PM Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Pimco, New York Fed, part of a consortium of eight Suing Bank of America, Demanding they buy BACK their Mortgage Securities! BUT I have Figured Out - FORECLOSURE is the ONLY Way the Banks Can Cover their Tracks, of their Underwriting FRAUD!
All that wrangling done by the Fed and Treasury in 2008, making One Bank take on another bank's liabilities and business, is now coming to roost. They tried covering up various illegal practices by having mergers of failing firms. Bank of America took on Country Wide Mortgage during that time, both being MERS Corp Banks. So Bank of America got double to triple their exposure to the mortgage Service Foreclosure Fraud of MERS by taking them on. With all the Mortgage Foreclosure Fraud now coming out, with investors of mortgage securities now DEMANDING their investments BACK from the banks due to the fraud of the underwriting and the foreclosure Fraud! Remember the Fraud STARTS at the Underwriting and continues from there - that is why there are "paper irregularities"! The banks may keep foreclosing on people, but at some point it will have to STOP, when enough Judges Rule AGAINST their Right to Foreclose! I find it very interesting the New York Fed is involved in suing Bank of America for their investments. When I became aware of the FRAUD about 2 years ago, and researched it, I figured the government and the Fed would not allow the full extent of fraud to come out, due to them having so much exposure of the fraud! So, it seems to me with the New York Fed joining in on the suit, they may not be able to Stop it after all! Especially with the whistleblowers coming out, saying each mortgage security was sold about 20 times - not just once! The banks have Trillions from one property being sold multiple times, thus they Need to Foreclose for the Write Offs and then they don't have to Pay the investors on their investment - because they would have to Pay 20 funds off! continued: http://sherriequestioningall.blogspot.com/2010/10/pimco-new-york-fed-part-of-consortium.html
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: gEEk squad on October 20, 2010, 09:09:07 PM Here is a very good comment on the blog citizenx posted: This was clear back in 2008 when Congress claimed that TARP money was intended to help with the mortgage bubble but then rabidly refused to allow any of the money to be used by the courts to restructure the bad loans. It was crystal clear at that moment that keeping people in their homes was NOT the goal, keeping the debt servicing going and hidden was.. Add to that the federal programs that are SUPPOSED to keep people in their homes are failing because they are designed to fail. The Sub-Prime mortgages were written to to create the "products" for the CDO market, NOT to grow the housing industry. Banks weren't making money on the mortgages they were making money on selling and re-selling the CDOs secured by the mortgages. The MERS system was created to hide the ownership of the mortgages and hide the fact that they were being sold to multiple "investors." That's why nobody knows what the true obligation is because nobody knows how many investors own the same note. The only way to find out is stop payment and see who comes forward. Thats why the banks are called "to big to fail" and are being bailed out. Bankrupcy would reveal the fraud. UBS, the German bank stepped forward in 2008 and were quickly and quietly bought off, almost certainly with TARP money. That's why the FED audit bill was "disappeared: so quickly, it would have exposed the fraud back then. When the debt was so great it could no longer be serviced and the market collapsed the banks needed a way to cover up the fraud. They had to keep the money following. First it was TARP and now that's running out so they need to get the loans performing again, THAT'S why the rush to foreclosure. Look for Obama to prove he is an accessory to this massive fraud by pushing HR-3808 right after the election. This is perhaps the greatest fraud in history and it is being protected by the US government itself. They will continue to put band-aids on this festering sore until it finally explodes.
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: citizenx on October 21, 2010, 07:34:14 PM Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Guest Post: Mortgages Were Pledged to Multiple Buyers at the Same Time
By George Washington Bank of America alleged in a court filing this June: It appears as though many loans and other mortgage-related assets have been double and even triple-pledged to various
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constituencies . Boa Answer to Freddie Objection in Re Taylor Bean & Whitaker Mortgage Corp.
April Charney a consumer lawyer with Jacksonville Area Legal Aid and CNBCs Dennis Kneale noted in February 2009 that courts have found that some mortgages have been sold again and again to different trusts, when they should have only been sold once. Kneale explained that that is the reason that two different banks sometimes try to simultaneously foreclose on the same home:
And today, Chris Whalen told CNBCs Larry Kudlow that Bear Stearns will be exposed as having sold the same loan to different investors on numerous occasions (see 6:45 into video):
As I have repeatedly pointed out, the failure of the mortgage originators and banks to prepare and record proper documentation has led to an epidemic of fraud. The pledging of the same mortgage again and again to different trusts related to mortgage backed securities is just one result. And as long-time foreclosure investigator Nye Lavalle writes: On thousands of occasions I stated to regulators, CEOS, banks, Fannie and Freddie that the practices of the banks were that they were double and multi-pledging assets and pledging paid off and refinance notes to securitizations. This is something April, Max [Gardner] and I have discussed for years now. Now, they come and admit that each of my allegations were true. Without analyzing the deal, as complex as they are, you WILL NEVER KNOW IF THE FORECLOSING PARTY HAS ANY RIGHT TO FORECLOSE!!! for whole article with embedded video links and Scribd document: http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2010/10/guest-post-mortgages-were-pledged-to-multiple-buyers-at-the-same-time.html
Foreclosuregate Fallout: How Bad Can It Get For Wall Street?

Posted by Zach Carter on @ 12:36 pm Article printed from speakeasy: http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy URL to article: http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/2010/10/20/foreclosuregate-fallout-how-bad-can-it-get-for-wall-street/
Foreclosure fraud is ruffling a lot of feathers on Wall Street, and while the full scope of losses remains unclear, even major banks are now acknowledging that this is a multi-billion-dollar disaster, not just a set of minor paperwork headaches. So how bad will it get for Wall Street? There are several disaster scenarios in which the housing market simply shuts down, where the potential losses for Wall Street are simply incalculable. But even situations that do not directly rip apart the basic functioning of the mortgage system could be enough to shut down one or more big banks, creating serious trouble for the financial system, and a major test of the recent Wall Street reform bill. JPMorgan Chase loves using its research department to push its political agenda, and the bank is currently characterizing the foreclosure fraud outbreak as a set of process-oriented problems that can be fixed. That puts them in the rosy optimist camp for this crisis, and theyre projecting a total of $55 billion to $120 billion in losses for the entire industry, spread out over a few years. But take a look at the analysts methodology. The actual scope of losses gets drastically larger if you just change a few arbitrary assumptions. continued -- see above URL/link
When Banks Are the Robbers

By Amy Goodman October 20, 2010 "TruthDig" -- The big banks that caused the collapse of the global finance market, and received tens of billions of dollars in taxpayer-funded bailouts, have likely been engaging in wholesale fraud against homeowners and the courts. But in a promising development this week, attorneys general from all 50 states announced a bipartisan joint investigation into foreclosure fraud. Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, GMAC and other big mortgage lenders recently suspended most foreclosure proceedings, following revelations that thousands of their foreclosures were being conducted like foreclosure mills, with tens of
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thousands of legal documents signed by low-level staffers with little or no knowledge of what they were signing. Then the Obama administration signaled that it was not supporting a foreclosure moratorium. Not long after, Bank of America announced it was restarting its foreclosure operations. GMAC followed suit, and others will likely join in. So much for the voluntary moratorium. GMAC Mortgage engaged in mass document processing, dubbed robo-signing. In several cases, GMAC Mortgage filed documents with courts that were signed by Jeffrey Stephan. Stephan presided over a staff of 12 in suburban Philadelphia. Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray filed a lawsuit against GMAC Mortgage, Stephan and the bank that owns GMAC, Ally Financial (itself a subsidiary of General Motors). According to one report, Stephan received 10,000 mortgage foreclosure documents to process in one month. Based on an eight-hour workday, he would have had to read, verify and sign, in the presence of a notary, about one document per minute. He admitted to signing documents without reading them or checking the facts about homeowners said to be in default. And Stephan was just one of many robo-signers. Recall that GM received $51 billion in taxpayer bailouts; its subsidiary, GMAC, received $16.3 billion; and Ally Financial subsidiary GMAC Mortgage received $1.5 billion as an incentive payment for home loan modification. source: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article26641.htm
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Tags: CORPORATE MEDIA COVER-UP/DECEPTIONS/PROPAGANDA ECONOMY The big banks that caused the collapse of the global finance market, and received tens of billions of dollars in taxpayerfunded bailouts, have likely been engaging in wholesale fraud against homeowners and the courts. But in a promising development this week, attorneys general from all 50 states announced a bipartisan joint investigation into foreclosure fraud. Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, GMAC and other big mortgage lenders recently suspended most foreclosure proceedings, following revelations that thousands of their foreclosures were being conducted like foreclosure mills, with tens of thousands of legal documents signed by low-level staffers with little or no knowledge of what they were signing. Webmaster's Commentary: Again, you need to be careful of these stories that portray the gang-rape of Americans by the bankers as purely a foreclosure fraud issue. It isn't. The heart of the crime is that the mortgages backing the mortgage-backed securities were resold over and over, as many as 20 times, reaping billions in instant profits. But there is no way the sellers of those mortgage-backed securities could make good on the over-subscription, so the only way for the scheme to work is for the housing market to be crashed, and all those mortgages foreclosed as quickly as possible to erase the paper trail that could land the fraudsters in jail! http://whatreallyhappened.com --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Mike Rivero has it right. Amy Goodman anbd the Ford Foundation/CIA are trying to get ma and pa America all p.o.'s about the Foreclosure disaster so they won't pay attention to the massive fraud/ponzi sceme of the banks selling the same mortage to each other about a gazillion time -- the big banks have been engaging in massive fraud and the way they can cover it up is by foreclosing as quickly as possible on the delinquent properties. The real story are the fraudulent collateralized securities the banks were issuing. This tends to get drowned out in the MSM. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Now that I have seen through the b.s. the alternative left (CIA "foundations") are putting out, it disgusts me even more than the b.s. pumped out wholesale by the MSM!
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: Dig on October 21, 2010, 08:01:56 PM
Quote from: citizenx on October 21, 2010, 07:48:01 PM

By Amy Goodman October 20, 2010 "TruthDig" -- The big banks that caused the collapse of the global finance market, and received tens of billions of dollars in taxpayer-funded bailouts, have likely been engaging in wholesale fraud against homeowners and the courts. But in a promising development this week, attorneys general from all 50 states announced a bipartisan joint investigation into foreclosure fraud. Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, GMAC and other big mortgage lenders recently suspended most foreclosure proceedings, following revelations that thousands of their foreclosures were being conducted like foreclosure mills, with tens of thousands of legal documents signed by low-level staffers with little or no knowledge of what they were signing. Then the Obama administration signaled that it was not supporting a foreclosure moratorium. Not long after, Bank of America announced it was restarting its foreclosure operations. GMAC followed suit, and others will likely join in. So much for the voluntary moratorium. GMAC Mortgage engaged in mass document processing, dubbed robo-signing. In several cases, GMAC Mortgage filed documents with courts that were signed by Jeffrey Stephan. Stephan presided over a staff of 12 in suburban Philadelphia. Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray filed a lawsuit against GMAC Mortgage, Stephan and
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the bank that owns GMAC, Ally Financial (itself a subsidiary of General Motors). According to one report, Stephan received 10,000 mortgage foreclosure documents to process in one month. Based on an eight-hour workday, he would have had to read, verify and sign, in the presence of a notary, about one document per minute. He admitted to signing documents without reading them or checking the facts about homeowners said to be in default. And Stephan was just one of many robo-signers. Recall that GM received $51 billion in taxpayer bailouts; its subsidiary, GMAC, received $16.3 billion; and Ally Financial subsidiary GMAC Mortgage received $1.5 billion as an incentive payment for home loan modification. source: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article26641.htm
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Tags: CORPORATE MEDIA COVER-UP/DECEPTIONS/PROPAGANDA ECONOMY The big banks that caused the collapse of the global finance market, and received tens of billions of dollars in taxpayer-funded bailouts, have likely been engaging in wholesale fraud against homeowners and the courts. But in a promising development this week, attorneys general from all 50 states announced a bipartisan joint investigation into foreclosure fraud. Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, GMAC and other big mortgage lenders recently suspended most foreclosure proceedings, following revelations that thousands of their foreclosures were being conducted like foreclosure mills, with tens of thousands of legal documents signed by low-level staffers with little or no knowledge of what they were signing. Webmaster's Commentary: Again, you need to be careful of these stories that portray the gang-rape of Americans by the bankers as purely a foreclosure fraud issue. It isn't. The heart of the crime is that the mortgages backing the mortgage-backed securities were resold over and over, as many as 20 times, reaping billions in instant profits. But there is no way the sellers of those mortgage-backed securities could make good on the over-subscription, so the only way for the scheme to work is for the housing market to be crashed, and all those mortgages foreclosed as quickly as possible to erase the paper trail that could land the fraudsters in jail! http://whatreallyhappened.com --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Mike Rivero has it right. Amy Goodman anbd the Ford Foundation/CIA are trying to get ma and pa America all p.o.'s about the Foreclosure disaster so they won't pay attention to the massive fraud/ponzi sceme of the banks selling the same mortage to each other about a gazillion time -- the big banks have been engaging in massive fraud and the way they can cover it up is by foreclosing as quickly as possible on the delinquent properties. The real story are the fraudulent collateralized securities the banks were issuing. This tends to get drowned out in the MSM. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Now that I have seen through the b.s. the alternative left (CIA "foundations") are putting out, it disgusts me even more than the b.s. pumped out wholesale by the MSM!
100% correct! These Billion here and Billion there ain't shit when compared to the $27.3 Trillion that the Fed stole in one year!
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: citizenx on October 21, 2010, 10:27:53 PM Right, as their Ponzi schemes collapsed last time -- who was recruited (raped) to pay to bill? All of us. Same with the collateralized securities that are still in the process of collapse -- begging another huge intervention -- if we let them get away with it again! ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------In that vein:
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Two Front Crisis Of Foreclosure Fraud for Banks - Fraud Committed by Foreclosing on Homeowner Illegally AND Most Investors of Mortgage Securities are DEMANDING Their Money BACK! Looks Like Banks are Getting it From ALL Sides! AAhhh....... Don't cha Just Feel Sorry for Wall Street, Right now As The Walls Come Tumbling DOWN!
Bloomberg has an article saying the Wall Streets Banks are Getting it From all Sides! First the Fraudulent Paperwork of Illegally Foreclosing on Homeowners! BUT, NOW the BIG story is becoming ALL THE INVESTORS WANTING THEIR MONEY BACK - OUT OF MORTGAGE SECURITIES! Already Billions Are being Demanded Back from Investors! Seems to me, we have a situation that can Cause the Walls of Wall Street to come tumbling Down Very Fast! They are getting Hit from all sides! Oh..... lets all say together...... aaaahhhhhhh.... Poor Wall Street, don't cha just feel so sorry for them right now, as they are handing out the biggest bonuses ever in the history of Wall Street! (they know the end game is here? getting all they can, out, fast?) Portion:
Shoddy mortgage lending has led bankers into a two-front war, pitting them against U.S. homeowners challenging the right to foreclose and mortgage-bond investors demanding refunds that could approach $200 billion.
While federal regulators and state attorneys general have focused on flawed foreclosures, a bigger threat may be the cost to buy back faulty loans that banks bundled into securities. JPMorgan Chase & Co., Bank of America Corp., Wells Fargo & Co.
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and Citigroup Inc. have set aside just $10 billion in reserves to cover future buybacks. Bank of America alone said this week that pending claims jumped 71 percent from a year ago to $12.9 billion of loans.
The biggest risks for banks may be loans packaged into mortgage-backed securities during the housing bubble, of which $1.3 trillion remain. The aggrieved bondholders include government-controlled firms Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, bond insurers and private investors. link: http://sherriequestioningall.blogspot.com/2010/10/two-front-crisis-of-foreclosure-fraud.html -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------On a side not our budget deficit for the year is estimated to be 1.3 trillion, so if we have to foot right no the bill we are talking about doubling that right now. To give it some scale perspective. To put it another way, 1.3 trillion USD divided by 300 million Americans is 4,333.33$ for every man woman and child in the U.S. of A. That should make it real clear for everyone what we are talking about. (In addition to the tens of trillions already stolen.)
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: citizenx on October 22, 2010, 03:25:27 AM One trillion of that 1.3 may be to bail out Fannie and Freddie (again). (http://i1010.photobucket.com/albums/af223/dacitizen/FannieFreddieCartoon-thumb-510x337.jpg)
The Daily Bail National Debt & Deficit Portal. Bailout News. QE - The New American Bloodsport. THE FED UNDER FIRE: Must See Clip Oct222010
UPDATE: Fannie, Freddie bailout could double in size to $360 Billion -- It Will Eventually Be $1 Trillion
Yes, Barney is guilty. And so are the banks who packaged shit into shinola. We heard from another one of the guilty parties earlier this week: Franklin Raines On Foreclosure Fraud AND Mortgage Put-Backs - VIDEO Story detail from Diana Olick, links, and a cartoon. And, yes, $1 trillion. --From Diana Olick at CNBC (excerpts) So out of the blue this morning I get a bill for anywhere from $221 billion to $363 billion; it wasn't addressed to me alone, but as a taxpayer I tend to take these things very personally. The "projected" bill came from the overseer of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the FHFA (Federal Housing Finance Agency), which "released projections of the financial performance of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, including potential draws under the Preferred Stock Purchase Agreements with the U.S. Department of the Treasury." (You can read the full release here)... ...So far the Treasury has infused $148 billion to keep Fannie and Freddie afloat; this as their book of business from the height of the housing boom continues to bleed through every band-aid applied. The "projections" released today, "are intended to give policymakers and the public useful snapshots of potential outcomes for the taxpayer support of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac," writes FHFA Acting Director Edward DeMarco in the release... ...So as we approach election day and as we approach the Administration's promised January deadline for a GSE reform game plan, we get to look at some super scary scenarios of what the continuing mortgage mess is going to cost us all. There is a disclaimer: "The results do not define the full range of possible outcomes. This effort should be interpreted as a sensitivity analysis of future draws to possible house price paths."...
...The Deeper Second Recession assumes restricted access to credit, continued high unemployment and a reverse in the moderate rebound in home construction we saw in 2009. Peak-to-trough decline is 45 percent with the trough in Q1, 2012. From that trough, prices increase 11 percent through 2013. GSE bill: $363 billion. Continue reading --Eventually the bailout bill will be $1 trillion: CNBC with Robert Shiller
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Total Cost To Taxpayers Of Fannie, Freddie Bailout Could Reach $1 Trillion
http://dailybail.com/home/update-fannie-freddie-bailout-could-double-in-size-to-360-bi.html
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: citizenx on October 22, 2010, 06:55:54 AM And from the New York Slimes, we get this:
Fannie and Freddie May Need Infusion

By BINYAMIN APPELBAUM Published: October 21, 2010 WASHINGTON The federal bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac may be winding down with relatively little additional cost to taxpayers so long as the economy continues to recover. But if the economy tips back into recession, the bailout could nearly double in size, according to new government projections announced on Thursday. Add to Portfolio Federal National Mortgage Assn Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp Go to your Portfolio The troubled mortgage companies are likely to require about $19 billion in additional federal aid over the next three years, according to a projection by the Federal Housing Finance Agency. If the economy recovers more quickly than expected, the projections show that the companies could need as little as $6 billion in new aid. By contrast, if the economy falls into recession, the companies could need another $124 billion. The Treasury Department has spent $135 billion on Fannie and Freddie since they were seized by the government in 2008, to cover their losses on soured mortgage loans. The government is propping up the two companies to make sure that money remains available for mortgage loans. Even under the worst case detailed on Thursday by the housing finance agency, the pace of new cash infusions would decline sharply. continued (for what it's worth): http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/22/business/22fannie.html?hpw ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Could need as little as 6 billion? Bullshit. Bullshit in the extreme. Thank you Bilderberg for your steady stream of effluence you try to pass off as journalism. Fu#% you, too. Infusion? Makes it sound like a cup of fu#%ing tea. Hey, here's a quick question. Is the government going to give you a 6 billion dollar "infusion"? I don't fu#%ing think so. Trillion dollar "infusion"? Not unless your name has bank after it.
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: citizenx on October 22, 2010, 08:21:58 AM If you read the backpages, you get closer to the truth though:
Legal/Regulatory
The Mortgage-Backed Securities Mess

October 22, 2010, 10:00 am Peter J. Henning follows issues involving securities law and white-collar crime for DealBooks White Collar Watch. While much of the focus lately has been on problems with home foreclosures, the greater threat to financial firms like Bank of America is likely to come from potential liabilities related to billions of dollars of mortgage-backed securities. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York and others are trying to force banks to buy back problem mortgage loans, and Bank of America has vowed to fight demands to take back loans that were not underwritten properly.
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More troublesome than that, the Securities and Exchange Commission and plaintiffs lawyers may start circling Bank of America and other banks that played a large role in the securitization process, possibly pursuing fraud claims in lawsuits that may challenge the truthfulness of disclosures made in peddling the securities. About White Collar Watch Peter J. Henning, writing for DealBooks White Collar Watch, is a commentator on white-collar crime and litigation. A former lawyer at the Securities and Exchange Commissions enforcement division and then a prosecutor at the Justice Department, he is a professor at the Wayne State University Law School. He is currently working on a book, The Prosecution and Defense of Public Corruption: The Law & Legal Strategies, to be published by Oxford University Press. Mary L. Schapiro, the chairwoman of the S.E.C., said earlier this week that whenever there are suggestions that there may have been any kinds of issues with respect to disclosure, misrepresentations or omissions, we are always looking at that kind of conduct. That means disclosures that companies made to their own shareholders will be looked at, as well as what was said about the value of the loans packaged into mortgage-backed securities that the banks sold to various investors. The mortgage-backed securities market was transformed from a small niche in the bond market into a trillion-dollar sector as companies like Countrywide Financial, later acquired by Bank of America, generated huge numbers of home loans that were quickly packaged and sold to investors to fund even more loans. When the housing market started collapsing in 2007, so too did the value of the securities sold, as more loans went into default and the terms of a number of mortgages were modified to avoid foreclosing on properties. continued: http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/22/the-mortgage-backed-securities-mess/ --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Another trillion dollars worth of worthless derivatives (CDO's) -- that sounds more like reality.
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: citizenx on October 22, 2010, 08:31:25 AM So what part of that trillion dollar CDO market is garbage?
Quote from: citizenx on October 21, 2010, 07:23:11 PM Looks like Citi is in even more trouble than B of A:
80% of Citi Mortgages Defective

Bloomberg notes: Richard M. Bowen, former chief underwriter for Citigroups consumer-lending group, said he warned his superiors of concerns that some types of loans in securities didnt conform with representations and warranties in 2006 and 2007. In mid-2006, I discovered that over 60 percent of these mortgages purchased and sold were defective, Bowen testified on April 7 before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission created by Congress. Defective mortgages increased during 2007 to over 80 percent of production.
In addition, a reader sent me documents which he says prove that Citi was running foreclosure mills. I will post the documents after I have time to read and digest them. to read more: http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2010/10/80-of-citi-mortgages-defective.html
That gives you some idea.
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: citizenx on October 22, 2010, 09:15:39 AM (http://i1010.photobucket.com/albums/af223/dacitizen/chart-elmo-national-debt-gdp.jpg) Won't somebody think of the children?
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: redeux on October 22, 2010, 10:20:35 AM I just looked at my security deed and low and behold MERS....... what a f*cking crock of shit....
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: agentbluescreen on October 22, 2010, 11:10:29 AM
Quote from: citizenx on October 21, 2010, 10:27:53 PM Right, as their Ponzi schemes collapsed last time -- who was recruited (raped) to pay to bill? All of us. Same with the collateralized securities that are still in the process of collapse -- begging another huge intervention -- if we let them get away with it again! ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------In that vein:
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Two Front Crisis Of Foreclosure Fraud for Banks - Fraud Committed by Foreclosing on Homeowner Illegally AND Most Investors of Mortgage Securities are DEMANDING Their Money BACK! Looks Like Banks are Getting it From ALL Sides! AAhhh....... Don't cha Just Feel
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Sorry for Wall Street, Right now As The Walls Come Tumbling DOWN!
Bloomberg has an article saying the Wall Streets Banks are Getting it From all Sides! First the Fraudulent Paperwork of Illegally Foreclosing on Homeowners! BUT, NOW the BIG story is becoming ALL THE INVESTORS WANTING THEIR MONEY BACK - OUT OF MORTGAGE SECURITIES! Already Billions Are being Demanded Back from Investors! Seems to me, we have a situation that can Cause the Walls of Wall Street to come tumbling Down Very Fast! They are getting Hit from all sides! Oh..... lets all say together...... aaaahhhhhhh.... Poor Wall Street, don't cha just feel so sorry for them right now, as they are handing out the biggest bonuses ever in the history of Wall Street! (they know the end game is here? getting all they can, out, fast?) Portion:
Shoddy mortgage lending has led bankers into a two-front war, pitting them against U.S. homeowners challenging the right to foreclose and mortgage-bond investors demanding refunds that could approach $200 billion.
While federal regulators and state attorneys general have focused on flawed foreclosures, a bigger threat may be the cost to buy back faulty loans that banks bundled into securities. JPMorgan Chase & Co., Bank of America Corp., Wells Fargo & Co. and Citigroup Inc. have set aside just $10 billion in reserves to cover future buybacks. Bank of America alone said this week that pending claims jumped 71 percent from a year ago to $12.9 billion of loans.
The biggest risks for banks may be loans packaged into mortgage-backed securities during the housing bubble, of which $1.3 trillion remain. The aggrieved bondholders include government-controlled firms Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, bond insurers and private investors. link: http://sherriequestioningall.blogspot.com/2010/10/two-front-crisis-of-foreclosure-fraud.html -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------On a side not our budget deficit for the year is estimated to be 1.3 trillion, so if we have to foot right no the bill we are talking about doubling that right now. To give it some scale perspective. To put it another way, 1.3 trillion USD divided by 300 million Americans is 4,333.33$ for every man woman and child in the U.S. of A. That should make it real clear for everyone what we are talking about. (In addition to the tens of trillions already stolen.)
http://forum.prisonplanet.com/index.php?topic=190147.msg1128353
Quote from: Letsbereal on October 22, 2010, 07:11:51 AM Treasury Gets 36% Return Buying Toxic Mortgages From Banks in First Year 22 October 2010, by Christopher Condon (Bloomberg) http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-22/ppip-funds-surge-36-on-average-in-first-year-treasury-says.html Excerpt: Returns are not a function of better fundamental data, said Phlegar of AllianceBernstein. Its largely a function of compression in yield premiums, he said, meaning buyers are willing to accept a lower return in the current bond market, bringing prices up.
Excerpt: A U.S. government program aimed at reviving the mortgage-backed securities market returned more than triple what stocks or bonds gained in the past year. Dare we say three front war?
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: citizenx on October 22, 2010, 06:56:43 PM It sounds like the gov't is helping to create yet another mortgage bubble as you say, AB, but I'm not sure what the scop of it is just yet. Still, yes, not a good thing: another bubble of toxic mortgage-backed securities.
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: citizenx on October 22, 2010, 08:24:33 PM The Market Ticker - Commentary on The Capital Markets Posted 2010-10-11 22:05 by Karl Denninger in Foreclosuregate
The MERS Edifice Quavers....

And threatens to crumble into dust.... Yes, this is a draft. But it is coming from a law school's scholarly paper mill - not exactly the sort of place you want to ignore. A few good cites will set the table for those willing to dig into what's really not that hard to understand... In the mid-1990s mortgage bankers decided they did not want to pay recording fees for assigning mortgages anymore.11 This decision was driven by securitizationa process of pooling many mortgages into a trust and selling income from the trust to investors on Wall Street. Securitization, also sometimes called structured finance, usually required several successive mortgage assignments to different companies. To avoid paying county recording fees, mortgage bankers formed a plan to create one shell company that would pretend to own all the mortgages in the countrythat way, the mortgage bankers would never have to record assignments since the same company would always own all the mortgages.12 What do you call an artifice designed to evade the payment of taxes - which these fees are?
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They incorporated the shell company in Delaware and called it Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc.13 Even though not a single state legislature or appellate court had authorized this change in the real property recording, investors interested in subprime and exotic mortgage backed securities were still willing to buy mortgages recorded through this new proxy system. continued (and I can't recommend this one strongly enough): http://market-ticker.org/post=168845
Is ForeclosureGate Sloppy Paperwork or Push Button Financial Fraud?

Housing-Market / US Housing Oct 20, 2010 - 11:38 AM By: Washingtons_Blog
Foreclosure Expert Confirms Mortgages Pledged Multiple Times, Not Actually Securitized, Document Problem Is Really a System of "Push Button Fraud" Yesterday, I showed that mortgages were fraudulently pledged to multiple buyers at the same time. Today, foreclosure expert Neil Garfield (former investment banker, trial lawyer and board member of several financial institutions) confirms this, explains that the loans were not actually securitized, and the whole "sloppy paperwork" excuse is really an attempt to explain away a system of push-button fraud: The game was to move money under a scheme of deceit and fraud. First sell the bonds and collect the money into a pool. Second take your fees, third take whats left and get it committed into loans (which were in actuality securities) sold to homeowners under the same false pretenses as the bonds were sold to investors. By controlling the flow of funds and documentation, the middlemen were able to sell, pledge and otherwise trade off the flow of receivables several times over a necessary complexity not only for the profit it generated, but to make it far more difficult for anyone to track the footprints in the sand. If the loans had actually been securitized, the issue would not arise. They were not securitized. This was a mass illusion or hallucination induced by Wall Street spiking the punch bowl. The gap (second tier yield spread premium) created between the amount of money funded by investors and the amount of money actually deployed into loans was so large that it could not be justified as fees. It was profit on sale from the aggregator to the trust (special purpose vehicle). It was undisclosed, deceitful and fraudulent. Thus the credit enhancement scenario with tranches, credit default swaps and insurance had to be created so that it appeared that the gap was covered. But that could only work if the parties to those contracts claimed to have the loans. And since multiple parties were making the same claim in these side contracts and guarantees, counter-party agreements etc. the actual documents could not be allowed to appear nor even be created unless and until it was the end of the road in an evidential hearing in court. They used when necessary copies that were in fact fabricated (counterfeited) as needed to suit the occasion. You end up with lawyers arriving in court with the original note signed in blue (for the desired effect on the Judge) when it was signed in black but the lawyer didnt know that. The actual original is either destroyed (see Katherine Porters 2007 study) or lost. In this case lost doesnt mean really lost. It means that if they really must come up with something they will call an original they will do so. continued: http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article23644.html
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: citizenx on October 22, 2010, 08:47:12 PM NY Times: Fannie and Freddie may need 6, 19, maybe 123 billion. My a$$. Somewhere between 363 billion and one trillion. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fannie, Freddie May Draw $363 Billion, FHFA Says

By Lorraine Woellert - Oct 22, 2010 9:13 AM GMT+0900 Tweet (46)LinkedIn Share Business Exchange Buzz up! Digg Print Email Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac may need as much as $363 billion in Treasury Department aid through 2013, the Federal Housing Finance Agency said. Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg
Oct. 21 (Bloomberg) -- Michael Feder, chief executive officer of Radar Logic Inc., talks about the outlook for housing and foreclosures. Feder says the U.S. needs a "simpler solution" to foreclosures that is "not a moratorium." Feder speaks with Matt Miller on Bloomberg's "Street Smart." Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage-finance companies operating under U.S. conservatorship, could draw a total of
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$363 billion in Treasury Department aid through 2013 if the housing market worsens, the Federal Housing Finance Agency said. The FHFA, which oversees the government-sponsored entities, offered the estimate today as the worst-case in an analysis modeled on the stress tests conducted on the nations biggest banks last year. The actual total cost to taxpayers under the regulators most dire scenario would be $259 billion, because almost 30 percent of the funds would come back to Treasury as dividend payments on its holdings of senior preferred stock. Under the best-case scenario, which assumes a strong near- term recovery in the housing market, the total cost to taxpayers would be $221 billion, or $142 billion after dividends. A middle-ground scenario would require total aid of $238 billion, or $154 billion after dividends. So far the companies have drawn $148 billion and returned $13 billion in dividends to Treasury. These projections are intended to give policy makers and the public useful snapshots of potential outcomes for the taxpayer support of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, FHFA Acting Director Edward J. DeMarco said in a statement released with the report. The results reflect the potential effects of a limited set of hypothetical changes in house prices. continued: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-21/fannie-freddie-may-draw-363-billion-fhfa-says-update1-.html
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: redeux on October 22, 2010, 09:47:48 PM
Quote from: citizenx on October 22, 2010, 08:24:33 PM The Market Ticker - Commentary on The Capital Markets Posted 2010-10-11 22:05 by Karl Denninger in Foreclosuregate
The MERS Edifice Quavers....

And threatens to crumble into dust.... Yes, this is a draft. But it is coming from a law school's scholarly paper mill - not exactly the sort of place you want to ignore. A few good cites will set the table for those willing to dig into what's really not that hard to understand... In the mid-1990s mortgage bankers decided they did not want to pay recording fees for assigning mortgages anymore.11 This decision was driven by securitizationa process of pooling many mortgages into a trust and selling income from the trust to investors on Wall Street. Securitization, also sometimes called structured finance, usually required several successive mortgage assignments to different companies. To avoid paying county recording fees, mortgage bankers formed a plan to create one shell company that would pretend to own all the mortgages in the countrythat way, the mortgage bankers would never have to record assignments since the same company would always own all the mortgages.12 What do you call an artifice designed to evade the payment of taxes - which these fees are? They incorporated the shell company in Delaware and called it Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc.13 Even though not a single state legislature or appellate court had authorized this change in the real property recording, investors interested in subprime and exotic mortgage backed securities were still willing to buy mortgages recorded through this new proxy system. continued (and I can't recommend this one strongly enough): http://market-ticker.org/post=168845
...and who is the White House from Delaware? Joe Gaff-o-matic Biden..... Delaware is a haven from criminal creditors and these jerks aka MERS......
Hey banks, buy back these crappy loans

Foreclosure Fiasco
We'd like to return these bad loans, please

By Charles Riley, staff reporterOctober 22, 2010: 5:58 PM ET
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The foreclosure document fiasco has already caused a major headache for U.S. banks -- and that headache may soon escalate into a migraine. But the additional pain isn't coming from the Obama administration or state attorneys general, both of whom have stepped up pressure on the banks. Nor is it coming from individuals who allege their homes were wrongly foreclosed on. 50Email Print CommentIt's coming from institutional investors who bought home loans that had been bundled together by banks and then sold off as Residential Mortgage Backed Securities, or RMBS. These investors thought they were buying solid investments. But the recent robo-signing debacle shed light on document problems in foreclosures, revealing problems with the underlying paperwork and quality of the loans. continued: http://money.cnn.com/2010/10/22/real_estate/repurchase_banks/index.htm?cnn=yes
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Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: citizenx on October 22, 2010, 11:08:39 PM Just watch: B of A, Citi and Wells are going to bite the big one on this and JPM and GS are going to come off smelling tlike a rose again (thanks to their friends in the admin. and the Fed):
Another Wells Fargo robo-signer

Posted by Colin Barr October 22, 2010 1:24 pm Is Wells Fargo's foreclosure process really as sound as the giant bank says? That's the question raised Friday by a report in ProPublica. The investigative journalism outfit says it has located another Wells (WFC) employee who has admitted to signing foreclosure affidavits without reviewing the case files as required.
Stagecoach yet to be hitched up The employee, Tamara Savery, twice submitted unverified documents to a Texas bankruptcy court, ProPublica reports. Those weren't the only times she ran afoul of laws obliging affidavit signers to attest to the truthfulness of their claims, the report suggests: she said she "couldn't guesstimate" how often she did so, ProPublica said. Questions about Wells' practices are swirling because the bank has taken pains to paint itself as the least affected of the big financial firms by the foreclosure-process probes that have sprung up all over the country. Bank of America (BAC), the biggest U.S. bank, has seen its shares tumble to a 52-week low amid questions about the high level of bad loans on its books and how it has handled foreclosures in the past. JPMorgan Chase (JPM) is widely seen as better run and therefore less exposed than BofA, but CEO Jamie Dimon conceded on the bank's earnings call this month that Chase may have to pay some penalties to settle state inquiries. continued: http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2010/10/22/another-wells-fargo-robo-signer/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------Big fish eat little fish (or relatively smaller fish, as the case may be.)
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: ekimdrachir on October 22, 2010, 11:22:28 PM "There's never been a better time to buy the custom home of your dreams! If you think you can't afford it, think again!" Spouts the radio.
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: jofortruth on October 23, 2010, 12:10:32 PM A MERS eRegistry Kit I found online: http://www.scribd.com/doc/20956273/MERS-eRegistry-Membership-Kit
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: citizenx on October 23, 2010, 03:34:10 PM excerpts:
As Shahien Nasiripour reports: Just four firms dominate the trustee market for mortgage-backed securities in which the mortgages aren't guaranteed by Uncle Sam: Deutsche Bank, U.S. Bancorp, Bank of New York Mellon, and HSBC serve as trustees for 70.5 percent of all such issuance since 2005, according to Asset-Backed Alert, an industry newsletter and data provider. An additional four firms -Wells Fargo, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, and Citigroup -- control 29.1 percent, Asset-Backed Alert data show. All told, these eight firms have served as trustees for 99.6 percent of all private-label mortgage-backed securities issued since 2005.
As David Faber notes: The worry centers on the mortgage loan pools created by many of the big banks as they fed the seemingly endless desire for mortgage-backed securities and CDO's (collateralized debt obligations) made from them.
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It appears the mortgage content of many of those poolscreated when the banks were dominating the mortgage securitization market in 2005, 2006 and 2007may have been misrepresented. For example, an underwriter may have maintained that 80 percent of the mortgages in the pool were for primary residences when in fact far fewer were for that purpose. Or the underwriter stated that only 10 percent of the pool would be made of of "no-doc" loansthose that include less documentation about the borrowerwhen in fact the percentage was far higher. That could be fraud, and if so, the creator of the mortgage pool could be liable. Given that the market for private label RMBS (residential mortgage-backed securities) was $1.5 trillion, the potential liability may be considerable. And while most of the originators of these mortgages are long gone, the securitizers are not.
for entire (blog) article (highly recommended and funny!): http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2010/10/real-danger-in-foreclosure-crisis.html
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: citizenx on October 23, 2010, 04:04:22 PM Saturday, October 23, 2010
The Securitization Scam: Foreclosures and the Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems (MERS)
Bob Chapman globalresearch.ca The foreclosure crisis has set its sights on MERS, the Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, which files almost all of the foreclosure actions in behalf of lenders. The problem never anticipated by lenders is that the company has no legal standing to do such things. In addition they broke the law by not requiring a notarized document of transfer of title signed by the seller and buyer. That is because they did not own the loans. Only the owner of the loan can file. Thus, many of the titles are now subject to fraudulent conveyance. This means that foreclosure proceedings could be subject to legal challenge. Another question is could the foreclosures done since 2007 be nullified? How could a settlement be arrived at in a few months when there are millions of homeowners involved. The banks, which obviously deliberately broke the laws, will be responsible for fines and settlement with injured parties could cost them more than $10 billion. While this scenario moves forward the banks still are acting like goons and violating laws, to get people out of homes.
The question is who has the loan paper and that is the note-holder. He or they are the only ones with legal standing to request a court to foreclose and evict. That all changed with the coming of MBS, mortgage backed securities. Loans were bundled into tranches or REMICs, a vehicle designed to hold the loans for tax purposes. These mortgages were cut into bits and pieces to satisfy the different tastes and needs of investors. During this process the note was not signed over to the bondholders, because the mortgage may have been split into pieces and no one could know which part would default first. Therefore the MBS held the note.
The MERS system was a bridge and repository for these mortgages, a shadow holder owned by lenders and Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac. The system located mortgages and was involved in the altering of mortgages. The upshot was a broken chain of title. When that happens the mortgage note is no longer valid. The borrower does not know who to pay and so pays no one. Then come the foreclosure mills and that led to falsification of documents to assist the lender, which is fraud. These actions expedited foreclosures and evictions and that was all the lenders were interested in. There is no question a massive fraud took place. It was identified by the title insurance companies who the lenders are trying to blame this criminality on. The result was the banks went around the title insurance companies and used foreclosure mills, when the title companies wouldnt play ball.
continued: http://poorrichards-blog.blogspot.com/2010/10/securitization-scam-foreclosures-and.html
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: citizenx on October 24, 2010, 02:14:03 AM The Daily Bail National Debt & Deficit Portal. Bailout News. QE - The New American Bloodsport. Oct232010
Felix Salmon Explains Why Lawsuits Are Flying At Banks Who Turned Crap Into Triple AAA (Mortgage Mess TV)
Video: Felix Salmon says investment banks face massive legal risk due to the way they built their mortgage bonds. He explains EXACTLY how banks built these bonds - with lies and cover-ups every step of the way.
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This is a very, very good clip. Great explanation, excellent detail, and it runs only 2 minutes. Don't skip the last 30 seconds and Salmon's conclusion. Story background: 80% of Citigroup's mortgages were defective Chris Whalen Explains Foreclosures, Loan Put Backs & Bank Risk David Faber: Mortgage Put-Backs Don't Require Fraud Just Inaccuracy --Video: Felix Salmon says investment banks face massive legal risk due to the way they built their mortgage bonds. Ive been getting a lot of good feedback about my post yesterday on the way in which just about every major investment bank in the world might have huge legal risk surrounding the way that they built their mortgage bonds. The stock market in general might be relatively sanguine about the mortgage mess, but bank stocks are falling, and I suspect that the worst is yet to come. Certainly the tail risk to the banking industry as a whole is as high as its been since TARP was first unveiled. link to article (with embedded video): http://dailybail.com/home/felix-salmon-explains-why-lawsuits-are-flying-at-banks-who-t.html
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: kerrymti on October 24, 2010, 11:14:57 AM Thanks Dig for starting this thread. ;D
I have been a paralegal working in the 'real estate closing' field for close to ten years. Our office mainly conducts real estate closings for local Credit Unions. We also write title insurance for one of the largest title insurance companies in the nation, Mississippi Valley/Old Republic. I conduct title searches at the local court houses, checking for previous liens on properties as well as checking the 'chain of title'. For the last five or six years, I have been complaining and worried about the MERS situation. Here is an example of how this has affected our small operation: We receive a request from our client to conduct a closing for a member of the credit union. This member is refinancing a mortgage where they are currently making payments to WAMU (for example), they give us a 'payoff statement' from WAMU. When I conduct my search, all I find is a mortgage to MERS for First State Bank (for example). I HAVE NO WAY TO KNOW IF THE MORTGAGE I FIND AT THE COURTHOUSE IS ACTUALLY THE ONE WE ARE PAYING OFF TO WAMU. We have been forced to 'blindly' accept that the payoff is actually for the mortgage we find at the courthouse. In the world before MERS, you would find a mortgage to First State Bank and then an 'assignment' from First State Bank to WAMU, making it easy to track the mortgage and who currently owns it. This is creating a virtual nightmare for title companies, whose job it is to track the chain of title, including liens. Citi mortgages are the worst. Any time we run across a Citi mortgage we are paying off, I am suspicious and nervous. They will fax us a payoff statement, we conduct the closing, mail the money (or sometimes wire it) to Citi only to have them mail it back saying it is short by 50 dollars...considering a day of mail to them, a day for their processing and a day mailing back to us, us processing and a day mailing back to them...you've added an additional 5 days of interest to the payoff. This amount may not seem like alot, but when the mortgage is in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, this can be hundreds of dollars additional money from the borrower, plus overnight fees, etc. We have, in the past, held out more than is stated on their payoff statement, inform the borrower of this and send the payoff, if it is rejected, we are able to quickly return with the additional money. If Citi does not reject the payoff, we then return the additional money to the borrower. I believe this new legislation that is 'coming down the pike' is going to create a situation where no title insurance companies are going to be willing to insure a chain of title. At the point we are now, we can trace property back to the original land grants from the USA, if this continues, that will no longer be possible, there will be 'breaks in the chain of title'.
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: citizenx on October 24, 2010, 04:20:50 PM Saturday, October 23, 2010
Lawsuit Alleges that MERS Owes California a Potential $60-120 Billion in Unpaid Land-Recording Fees
Former hedge fund manager Shah Gilani notes:
In creating MERS, these institutions actually changed the land-title system that this country - for much of its history - has relied upon to determine legal ownership status of land titleholders. Not only did the lenders sidestep (read that to mean avoid) paying billions of dollars in fees to local governments, they paid themselves from the fees that MERS collected. MERS is facing class-action lawsuits and civil racketeering suits around the country and their members are being individually
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named in all these suits. One suit alleges that MERS owes California a potential $60 billion to $120 billion in unpaid land-recording fees. If suits against MERS and all its members are successful, unpaid recording fees and fines (that can be as much as $10,000 per incident) would make every one of them insolvent. continued: http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2010/10/lawsuit-alleges-that-mers-owes.html
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: citizenx on October 24, 2010, 04:25:47 PM Oct 24 08:34
Class Action vs Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Gmac, Deutsche Bank, Nation Star, Aurora, Bac, Citi, Us Bank, Lps, Et Al
Tags: ECONOMY Webmaster's Commentary: MERS Mortgage Electronic Ripoff System! http://whatreallyhappened.com --------------------------------------------------------------------------------See Scribd document for actual motion (complaint) filed: http://www.scribd.com/doc/38654717/Class-Action-vs-Mortgage-Electronic-Registration-Systems-Gmac-DeutscheBank-Nation-Star-Aurora-Bac-Citi-Us-Bank-Lps-Et-Al
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: jofortruth on October 24, 2010, 06:58:34 PM
Quote from: redeux on October 22, 2010, 10:20:35 AM I just looked at my security deed and low and behold MERS....... what a f*cking crock of shit....
Watch these videos for more info. Tells about the MERs problem and what you can do if on your Mortgage docs. (See links below video) http://forum.prisonplanet.com/index.php?topic=190299.0
There are some 60 million Americans with this problem, unfortunately!
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: agentbluescreen on October 24, 2010, 09:29:11 PM
Quote from: citizenx on October 22, 2010, 06:56:43 PM It sounds like the gov't is helping to create yet another mortgage bubble as you say, AB, but I'm not sure what the scop of it is just yet. Still, yes, not a good thing: another bubble of toxic mortgage-backed securities.
This is no bubble it's like a bugle call to blow down the walls of Jericho that's going to open up a 6 front battle. It's starting to look more like Mortgagegeddon. The ironic thing is it's like watching another 9/11 "inside job" going off all over again in slow motion on a colossal scale, all over huge, fraudulent, mass mortgage-kiting scheme. When this reaches the Supreme Court it's gonna be "Katie bar the door" time... There's just no possible good outcome.
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: citizenx on October 24, 2010, 10:42:13 PM Oh yeah, we are looking at quite the legal and financial mess. Much larger than it appears (since it doesn't appear in the MSM at all). Yes, that pretty much sums it up. Kind of makes you wonder if someone didn't want to destroy our financial system, hence the deregulation going back nearly twenty years ago that created much of this mess -- like the creation of these kited (and evidently largely fraudulent)
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"derivatives". These CDO's are still just the tip of the iceberg, though, in terms of these financial WMD's are concerned. There are still 600 trillion USD in OTC interest rate derivatives waiting to implode. There will be no barring the door then -- none at all. (The "good news" about those derivatives is we actually have to start "recovering" before that market will likely tank.)
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: kerrymti on October 26, 2010, 09:04:20 PM Be aware that just because your mortgage (deed of trust) says MERS does not necessarily mean that yours is lumped into the 'problem' mortgages. Some of the MERS mortgages were bought by reputable banks and were transferred correctly, but the vast majority were not transferred (i.e. assigned) correctly/legally.
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: citizenx on October 26, 2010, 09:34:27 PM True, but the thing is: nobody knows which is which or whether any particular MERS mortage is correct without checking the entire system to make sure it was not transferred multiple times in order to verify that the mortagage holder (at present) is correct. Hence the chaos at the moment (soon to be made legal by the Demoblicans and Rpubocrats after the phony baloney election cycle is complete.)
Quote from: kerrymti on October 26, 2010, 09:04:20 PM Be aware that just because your mortgage (deed of trust) says MERS does not necessarily mean that yours is lumped into the 'problem' mortgages. Some of the MERS mortgages were bought by reputable banks and were transferred correctly, but the vast majority were not transferred (i.e. assigned) correctly/legally.
Whether the mortgage was used as a derivative has no bearing on the fraudulent nature of these mortgages....... If the Note says the "at risk lender" and the security instrument says "MERS"... you have a fraudulent mortgage...most states that I have seen thus far do not afford a "Nominee" the "Power of Sale".....MERS cannot act as a fiduciary in regard to the note......
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: redeux on October 26, 2010, 09:47:43 PM A current class action suit here in Ga. states this: "MERS lacks the capacity to act as a Trust or Corporate Fiduciary in the State of Georgia, thereby rendering void the security deeds of the Plaintiff and putative plaintiffs that named MERS, acting solely as 'nominee' for the Lender and the Lender's successors and assigns."
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: redeux on October 26, 2010, 09:50:46 PM Ga. Supreme Court Ruling:
"Finally, because we construe the trial court's grant of partial summary judgment as enjoining the foreclosure sale based solely on the foregoing two grounds, the trial court, on remand, may address issues such as the appropriate relief to be granted against MERS on the default judgment and such as whether MERS, as a nominee for the original lender and its successors, has the power to foreclose on an existing security deed either with or without the participation of the existing note holder." So even if BOA or whomever is involved the lower court was correct in providing relief because the mortgages are FRAUDULENT......
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: redeux on October 26, 2010, 10:25:49 PM Earlier cases focused on the inability of MERS to produce a promissory note or assignment establishing that it was entitled to relief, but most courts have considered this a mere procedural defect and continue to look the other way on MERS technical lack of standing to sue. The more recent cases, however, are looking at something more serious. If MERS is not the title holder of properties held in its name, the chain of title has been broken, and no one may have standing to sue. In MERS v. Nebraska Department of Banking and Finance, MERS insisted that it had no actionable interest in title, and the court agreed.
Its right there if MERS holds the security instrument and yet is not a "secured creditor" the mortgage is FRAUDULENT..... Here is the analysis under Neb. Law.... Section 45-702 {8} states that [m]ortgage loan means any loan or extension of credit secured by a lien on real
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property, including a refinancing of a contract of sale or an assumption or refinancing of a prior loan or extension of credit. In this case, the parties agree that the inquiry is limited to whether MERS acquires mortgage loans under 45-702(6). Further, although 45-703 contains several exemptions to the Act, the parties agree that MERS does not fall under any of the exemptions.
MERS response; The document also states that MERS shall at all times comply with the instructions of the beneficial owner of mortgage loans as shown on the MERS System. MERS argues that it does not acquire mortgage loans and is therefore not a mortgage banker under 45-702(6) because it only holds legal title to members' mortgages in a nominee capacity and is contractually prohibited from exercising any rights with respect to the mortgages (i.e., foreclosure) without the authorization of the members. Further, MERS argues that it does not own the promissory notes secured by the mortgages and has no right to payments made on the notes. MERS explains that it merely immobilizes the mortgage lien while transfers of the promissory notes and servicing rights continue to occur. Brief for appellant at 12. Here comes some good shit... The Department argues that MERS, through the assignment of lenders' interests in mortgage loans, indirectly acquires mortgage loans and therefore falls within the scope of the Act. The Department further asserts that a loan and corresponding mortgage or deed of trust are inextricably intertwined and that, accordingly, the interests acquired by MERS are interests in mortgage loans, making MERS a mortgage banker subject to the requirements of the Act.
The decision was though that MERS is in fact not aquire mortgage loans...... my position is that Note and Deed being "split" makes the mortgage unsecured...... Bellistri v Ocwen Loan Servicing, Mo App.20100309 MERS is named as nominee as beneficiary. MERS is NOT named on the note. This appellate case from Missouri, quoting the Restatement 3rd, simply says that the note was split from the security instrument, and that there is no enforcement mechanism available under the Deed of Trust. Hence, the court concludes, quiet title was entirely appropriate and the only remedy to the situation because once the DOT and note are split they is no way to get them back together. There are many arguments taking place right now regarding this notion that the Security Deed and Note cannot be split to do so is to destroy hundreds of years of black letter law.........
Consider CARPENTER V. LONGAN, 83 U. S. 271 (1872) From Justice Swayne "The note and mortgage are inseparable; the former as essential, the latter as an incident. An assignment of the note carries the mortgage with it, while an assignment of the latter alone is a nullity. [Footnote 3]" The footnote is Jackson v. Blodget, 5 Cowan 205; Jackson v. Willard, 4 Johnson 43 If the foreclosure claimant cannot produce the NOTE or a valid chain of custody in the form of valid assignments back to the holder of the NOTE, the case is over for lack of establishing the court's subject matter jurisdiction over the case. Present physical possession of the NOTE must be established pursuant the fact that if the NOTE is still in existence, and a party not the holder and without a valid assignment traceable in an unbroken chain of valid assignments back to the present holder, is awarded judgment against the mortgagor (you), at some time in the future the present holder of the original wet-ink NOTE could appear and file another lawsuit to enforce the NOTE.
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: redeux on October 26, 2010, 10:28:54 PM In light of the fact that virtually all promissory notes taken by banks, mortgage companies, etc., were sold at some time after the "closing" for the respective transactions --- without the right in discovery to physically inspect, and photocopy the original wet-ink instrument, (production of the original instrument), meaning that the bank, mortgage company, etc., retained physical possession of the NOTE, or can PROVE a valid assignment of the rights of the holder to enforce the instrument from the holder of the original wet-ink NOTE, standing in a court to enforce the instrument in foreclosure is impossible pursuant to the Uniform Commercial Code. (UCC).
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: redeux on October 26, 2010, 10:32:09 PM Even if the claimant produces the original wet-ink NOTE, there is a defense to the action pursuant to UCC 3-305. Illegality and false representation (fraud) perpetrated in the transaction.
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Did the bank disclose the SOURCE of the money for the transaction? Did the bank disclose to the NOTE issuer (you) that the money for the transaction was provided at no cost to the bank? Did the bank disclose that the NOTE would be sold at the earliest possible convenience, and that such sale and receipt of money from a third party would actually pay off the NOTE? (Satisfaction of Mortgage). Did the bank make the false representation that a "LOAN" transaction was being executed? Did the bank identify the issuer of the promissory note (you) as a "borrower?" Many discovery questions to be asked when a claimant initiates foreclosure proceedings.
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: citizenx on October 26, 2010, 10:35:19 PM Wow, redeux, good work. I've learned a lot from you. Man, this thing is even more screwed up than I understood. What a mess! So, MERS really had not business legally doing what it was doing -- even if the mortgages in question weren't transferred nmerous times -- though we know that frequently they were. What a clusterfu#%!
Quote from: citizenx on October 26, 2010, 10:35:19 PM Wow, redeux, good work. I've learned a lot from you. Man, this thing is even more screwed up than I understood. What a mess! So, MERS really had not business legally doing what it was doing -- even if the mortgages in question weren't transferred nmerous times -- though we know that frequently they were. What a clusterfu#%!
thnx yes my contention is because the security instrument and promissory note have been separated the mortgage is unsecured, chances are if you look at your Form Z it will tell you that the loan originated out of a "warehouse" if so I am sure the damn thing was bundled and sold.... the whole f*cking thing is shit hammered..... I beat GM about 12 yrs ago on a Lemon Law case I hope to beat BOA this yr and gain quiet on my title......
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: citizenx on October 27, 2010, 02:57:06 AM Scroll down for VIDEO - Interview with MERS CEO
MERS DEATH ZONE - Double Class Action Lawsuits Filed Against Mortgage Registration Puppet ---
IN THE SUPERIOR COURT OF FULTON COUNTY STATE OF GEORGIA DUSTIN ROLLINS v.
MORTGAGE ELECTRONIC : REGISTRATION SYSTEMS, Inc.; and MERSCORP, Inc The Plaintiff shows herein that MERS foreclosure on Plaintiffs property was not valid and was wrongful, as are those foreclosures by MERS on the property in the State of Georgia of all similarly situated persons to the Plaintiff wherein MERS sent the notice of foreclosure to the debtor and wherein MERS purports to have exercised the power of sale and auctioned the property. MERS does not have the authorized power to send a valid notice of foreclosure within the State of Georgia for those deeds where it is solely a nominee and does not have the authority or power under Georgia law to foreclose on a property or engage in an auction of sale on such property where is is solely a nominee on such deeds.
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continued (including PDF of Georgia suit): http://dailybail.com/home/mers-death-zone-double-class-action-lawsuits-filed-against-m.html
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: citizenx on October 27, 2010, 03:35:07 AM
The Perfect No-Prosecution Crime

25 October 2010 56 Comments By Greg Hunters USAWatchdog.com Did you know that in the aftermath of the Savings and Loan (Thrifts) scandal there were more than a thousand felony convictions of financial elites? The cost of the wrongdoing associated with the rip-off and closure of nearly 800 Thrifts cost taxpayers more than $160 billion. The current sub-prime/mortgage-backed security scandal is 40 times bigger according to Economics professor William Black. That means the size of the crime is $6.4 trillion by my calculation. Can you guess how many indictments there have been on financial elites who created this enormous mortgage crisis mess? Zero, none, nada, zip. Yes, not one single prosecution or conviction has been started of achieved. That is simply outrageous considering the width and breadth of the many crimes committed. There was rampant mortgage fraud in the loan application process according to the FBI as far back as 2004. (Click here to see one of many stories of the FBI warning of mortgage fraud) There was real estate document fraud when the original Promissory Notes and loan documents were lost. The Promissory Notes were required to create tens of thousands of mortgage-backed securities (MBS). No note, no security. That is security fraud. No security means the special IRS tax treatments for the MBSs were fraudulently obtained. That is IRS tax fraud. Because there were no documents, the rating agencies fraudulently made up triple A ratings for the securities. When the whole mess blew up, big banks hired foreclosure mill law firms to create forged documents. That phony paperwork was and is being used to wrongfully remove homeowners from their property. That is foreclosure fraud. It appears to me the entire mortgage/securitization industry is one giant criminal enterprise. And yet, last Wednesday, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan said, We have not found any evidence at this point of systemic issues in the underlying legal or other documents that have been reviewed. What! Well, look a little harder Mr. HUD Secretary. (Click here for the complete Reuters story with Donovans quote.) Donovan did say the foreclosure fiasco is shameful, but that is not the same as a criminal prosecution now is it? Where is U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder in all of this? I guess hes busy planning a lawsuit to stop California from making pot smoking a misdemeanor. Holder is probably also very busy with continuing legal actions against Arizonas immigration law. I guess trillions of dollars in mortgage and securities fraud is just not enough of a legal priority for America! All 50 State Attorneys General are looking into what is now being called Foreclosuregate. Iowa AG, Tom Miller, is leading the investigation for the 50 states. His focus, according to a recent Washington Post story, is preventable foreclosuresones in which small changes might keep the homeowners in their home benefits all parties involved. The borrower keeps the house. The servicer continues to collect fees, and the investors receive more income than a foreclosure would bring. The community has one less deserted home. Millers office also says, This is a public policy issue. (Click here to see the complete Wa Po story.) continued: http://usawatchdog.com/the-perfect-no-prosecution-crime/
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: citizenx on October 27, 2010, 04:27:29 AM From prisonplanet.com today:
How Did the Banks Get Away With Pledging Mortgages to Multiple Buyers?
Washingtons Blog Oct 27, 2010 Ive repeatedly documented that mortgages were pledged multiple times to different buyers. See this, this and this. In response, some people (including one of the countrys top bankruptcy lawyers) have told me they dont buy it. Specifically, they ask such questions as: With a mortgage sold to two different entities, wouldnt the income from the mortgage be shown on the books of both entities? Was the interest/principal payments that were made by the homeowner before they stopped being divided between both entities? If so, wouldnt this have rung alarm bells immediately? If only one was getting it, why didnt the other entity immediately try to foreclose? If there was one servicer involved, was the servicer covering the difference between what was collected and the payments actually made? If so, how did the servicer do this and still remain in business? If two servicers were involved, why didnt this come out sooner or were both servicers hiding this fraud? So I wrote to some of the leading experts on mortgage fraud L. Randall Wray (economics professor), Christopher Whalen (banking expert with Institutional Risk Analytics), and William K. Black (professor of economics and law, and the senior regulator during the S & L crisis) to seek their insight.
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Chris Whalen told me: All good points, but the short answer is that nobody may have noticed until now. The issue of substitution and other games played by servicers makes exact tracking of loans problematic. It should show up in the servicers reports and should be caught, but there are a lot of things that go on in loan servicing that nobody talks about. Until about 2006, the GSEs and banks would advance cash and would substitute, but not now. The noble practitioners you heard from are all sincere and want to believe in intelligent design. Having A Supply Of Healthy Foods That Last Just Makes Sense (AD)
Whalen explained: Prior to FAS [i.e. Financial Accounting Standards] 166/167, a defaulted loan might sit in a FNM/FRE pool for up to a year before the default was removed from the trust. The issuer would then place a new loan into the pool or substitute for the old loan. No purchase event was booked. The investor would never know. In fact, the issuer would keep paying interest on the original principal amount in those days. Now under FAS 166/167, the issuer must immediately repurchase the defaulted loan and take the loss less estimated recovery. That is why the pace picked up this year when it comes to repurchase demands. You should refer your dubious and very naive friends to the case of National Bank of Keystone, WV. One of the worst failures per $ of assets in FDIC history. The management hid a Ponzi scheme in the loan servicing area for five years. Paid interest to investors with their own principal. Two auditors missed the fraud and later were sued by the FDIC acting as receiver for the dead bank. And this was a small operation. The big five are an even worse mess. Remember, when the seller of a loan and the servicer are the same, anything can happen. And it usually does. Professor Black told me: Double pledges (as theyre typically called, though one could pledge multiple times) are a well known fraud device. It is correct that one of the key purposes of adopting Article 9 of the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) was to reduce the risk and frequency of this form of fraud. So, double pledges in the modern era require both (A) fraud (on the part of the borrower or purchaser) and incompetence, indifference, or corruption on the part of the original secured lender or their agents if the borrower is the fraudster or the purchasers if they are the fraudsters. The two potential sources of fraud: A fraudulent borrower could pledge the same home as security for multiple mortgage loans. Title checks, by the lender/title insurer are so easy to conduct and so vital to protect the lender that this form of fraud is vanishingly rare. Alternatively, and far more likely, the lender could sell the mortgage to multiple buyers. Those buyers could have far lower incentives to check on prior pledges and less ability to check for prior pledges. The entity selling a loan to multiple parties (A) has a compelling incentive to hide the prior pledge(s), (B) is financially sophisticated, and therefore more capable of deception than a homeowner, and (C) can pick who to make the multiple sales to allowing them to select the most vulnerable targets for fraud. Subpart (C) provides the logical transition to the second requisite for multiple pledge frauds vulnerable victims. The characteristics they would exhibit include (A) growing massively, (B) purchasing nonprime loans without fully underwriting the quality of the loans (and quality in this context inherently requires superb paperwork), (C) poor internal and external controls, and (D) opaque systems that make it extremely difficult to determine the beneficial owner and locate key mortgage documents that would reveal multiple sales. Unfortunately, these four characteristics were characteristic of many purchasers of nonprime mortgages. That is why I have long stated that the process was dominated by the financial sector equivalent of dont ask; dont tell. Bottom line: the elite bankers and the anti-regulators have been so unwilling to find the truth that no one knows how bad these frauds became. Finding the facts is essential and can and should be done by reviewing samples of the loans pledged or sold to Fannie and Freddie and the Fed. And professor Wray told me that record-keeping by servicers was terrible, and pointed me to the following article from the Tampa Tribune: Peter Bakowski, a 58-year-old former Tampa mortgage broker, has admitted orchestrating a Ponzi scheme that involved more than 30 investors and institutions and more than 150 deals, documents show. *** Bakowski sold the mortgage assignments to multiple investors, promising high rates of return and using all the money he generated to keep the scheme afloat, according to his plea agreement. http://www.prisonplanet.com/how-did-the-banks-get-away-with-pledging-mortgages-to-multiple-buyers.html
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: agentbluescreen on October 27, 2010, 07:15:38 AM These are just junk bonds really. The way it was explained to me is that they took maybe a 199 mortgages and bundled them into a single "stripped pool" of income (stripped of that income's administration, and liens) and thus securitized them all as fractional portions of the pool's value in exchange for a quicker buck. So this way you can sell an interest in the repayment value (or losses) of parts of many different mortgages to many different buyers. (and trade futures - resell further derivatives of that) The key legality here is that the junk bond buyer has
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no direct interest in the mortgage. They (MBS holders) have bought shares in the administrator's business and the administrator has no interest in the loans or liens themselves, they are just a "collection agency". The secured part of the liens/loans remain the property/responsibility of the lender who sold bundles of his presumed "incomes" (presumably at an attractive discount for money now instead of later) to the fractional pool of money-now MBS "buyers". The thing is that most of those lenders are now bankrupt, bought-out and defunct closed banks in liquidation, but they had already liquidated their loans, and have thus already been paid by the MBS packagers or MBS buyers/repossessors.
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: agentbluescreen on October 27, 2010, 07:27:57 AM The question seems to be who pocketed the TARP money they bailed the MBS's out with? And it seems that while the few good ones have gone back into the black and payed early )or earlier than expected) premiums, the vast majority of the bad ones are still all up in the (legal resolution repo and resale) air. TARP may have merely been the first down payment on (the tip of the iceberg of) the early premiums of a huge mountain of bad PONZI debts, that the ship hasn't hit yet. It's like they duped Congress and the Treasury into tying up at "that iceberg (of theirs) over there", and now we are sailing directly in, to "dock" on it.
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: citizenx on October 27, 2010, 01:51:25 PM Wednesday, October 27, 2010
"The Fraud Perpetrated Upon Investors and Insurers Due to Multiple Pledges of Collateral Could Be Massive"
Christopher Whalen previously explained how the banks got away with pledging mortgages to multiple buyers. Today, Whalen provides further details:
The short answer is "innovation." In her column, "One Mess That Can't Be Papered Over," Gretchen Morgenson of the New York Times reveals the practice in FL and other jurisdictions of destroying the physical note. We really like the 4th from last paragraph, the one about the standard practice of Florida bankers to destroy the original note when an electronic form was created, to "avoid confusion." If you know anything about the checkered history of FL real estate over the past century, this one bites you in the leg. Is it just possible that creative Florida bankers discovered they could "sell" mortgages many times by conveniently delivering a "copy" of the electronic note for each subsequent sale? By delivering a "good" electronic note to each purchaser, the seller/servicer could kite the Ponzi scheme to the sky -- using the proceeds from each sale to pay interest to each new group of investors. As we told [Washington's Blog] in the failure of First National Bank of Keystone , management hid a Ponzi scheme in the loan servicing area for years, fooling regulators and internal auditors (See 'Audit Risk: Grant Thornton & The Keystone Saga', January 29, 2007) .
*** We know people in the servicing sector and related legal specialties who think that the fraud perpetrated upon investors and insurers due to multiple pledges of collateral could be massive. It is also, conveniently enough, another reason for the Obama White House and Fed to continue to prop up the top-three banks with significant GSE exposure -- and the mortgage insurers that help window dress the GSEs already horrible losses. http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2010/10/fraud-perpetrated-upon-investors-and.html
Brooklyn judge Arthur Schack is a local hero, decision casts light on fraudulent mortgage paperwork
Brooklyn State Supreme Court Judge Arthur Schack has done it again. The self-described little judge from Brooklyn has dismissed another foreclosure case, this time in favor of an East New York homeowner who did not even have a lawyer. Schack ruled Thursday that Californias OneWest, the last of several banks that relied on an admitted robo-signer to transfer the $492,000 mortgage on Covan Draytons Hemlock St. home among them, failed to prove it even owns the property in question. To prevent the waste of judicial resources, the instant foreclosure is dismissed without prejudice, Schack wrote. His startling, 37-page decision is the latest of several that have turned him into a hero of troubled homeowners
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across the nation. With 6 million homes nationwide in foreclosure or facing the imminent risk of foreclosure, the federal governments response has been shamefully slow. Only 475,000 homes are in some form of permanent modification. The Obama administration has spent more effort bailing out a few big lenders than millions of little borrowers. Shacks opinion, released by the courts Tuesday, is the most detailed picture yet of the shoddy or fraudulent mortgage paperwork too many of those lenders used. This is not just a matter of minor technicalities, as the banks and their spin masters want us the believe the same ones who told us the subprime crisis would blow over. At the heart of the Drayton case is an Austin, Tex., robo-signer named Erica Johnson-Seck. In July, Johnson-Seck admitted in a Florida deposition in another case that she executes 750 foreclosure documents a week; without a notary present; does not spend more than 30 seconds signing each document; [and] does not read the documents before signing them, Schack noted. Johnson-Secks signature appears repeatedly in documents connected to Draytons mortgage, and in several other foreclosure cases Schack dismissed in the past three years. At different times, she signed notarized documents assigning the loan, claiming to be a vice president of MERS (a private financial recording service for major banks), a vice president of INDYMAC, a vice president of Deutsche Bank and a vice president of OneWest. Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2010/10 /27/2010-10-27_bklyn_judges_stinging_rebuke_of_robosigners_halts_foreclosure_in_huge_slam_of_le.html#ixzz13a3FBjBo
NEW YORK -(Dow Jones)- Ambac Financial Group Inc. (ABK) sued Bank of America Corp. (BAC) over "false and misleading" information it says the bank's Countrywide unit provided to trick it into insuring mortgage-backed bonds.
Ambac filed suit after a review of 6,533 of the home loans -- just a fraction of the 268,000 loans included in 12 mortgagebacked securities it insured for Countrywide. The review found more than 97% of the loans didn't meet the guidelines Countrywide had said they'd followed in assembling the bonds, according to the complaint filed Tuesday in New York State Supreme Court. Under the agreement that Ambac and Countrywide reached as part of the original insurance contract, Ambac said, it has the right to demand that Countrywide fix the problem. Instead, the mortgage lender "implemented a delay-and-defer strategy ... requiring Ambac to engage in protracted deliberations" that have so far resulted in Countrywide repurchasing few loans. "Ambac has thus paid hundreds of millions of dollars in claims, but has been deprived of the benefit of the bargain by Countrywide's ongoing refusal to timely comply with its obligations," the company said in the suit. A spokesman for Bank of America's mortgage operations didn't immediately return a call seeking comment. Bank of America acquired Countrywide in 2008. The 12 mortgage securities at the center of the case were created from 2004 and 2006. They collectively contain more than 268,000 second-lien loans that serve as collateral for about $16.7 billion in securities, parts of which were insured by Ambac. Ambac rival MBIA Inc. (MBI) also sued Countrywide in New York State Supreme Court over 15 securitizations, alleging similar misrepresentations. Both bond insurers faced soaring claims on mortgage securities when the housing bubble collapsed. -By Erik Holm, Dow Jones Newswires; 212-416-2892; erik.holm@dowjones.com
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: citizenx on October 27, 2010, 02:18:36 PM Wow, 97%! Countrywide/B of A: the Robo-mortgage experts. Wow. Looks like 80% crap was a conservative estimate.
Why Did Banks Give Home Loans to People Who They KNEW Couldn't Pay?
Today, October 27, 2010, 28 minutes ago | noreply@blogger.com (George Washington)
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William K. Black - professor of economics and law, and the senior regulator during the S & L crisis - explained last month before to the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission why banks gave home loans to people who they knew couldn't repay. The whole piece is a must-read, but here are excerpts from the introduction:
The data demonstrate conclusively that most liars loans were fraudulent, which means that there were millions of fraudulent mortgage loans because liars loans became common (Credit Suisse estimates that they represented 49% of new originations by 2006). The data also demonstrate that even minimal underwriting of the loan files was sufficient to detect the overwhelming majority of such fraudulent liars loans. No honest, rational lender would make large numbers of liars loans. The epidemic of mortgage fraud was so large that it hyper-inflated the housing bubble, which allowed refinancing to further extend the life of the bubble (and the depth of the ultimate Great Recession. *** In the cases where there have been even minimal investigations (New Century, Aurora/Lehman, Citi, WaMu, Countrywide, and IndyMac) senior lender officials were aware that liars loans were typically fraudulent. The lenders could not make an honest business out of selling overwhelmingly fraudulent mortgages. Liars loans were done for the usual reason they optimized (fictional) short-term accounting income by creating a sure thing (Akerlof & Romer 1993). A fraudulent lender optimizes short-term fictional accounting income and longer term (real) losses by following a four-part recipe: A. Extreme Growth B. Making bad loans at a premium yield C. Extreme leverage D. Grossly inadequate loss reserves Note that this same recipe maximizes fictional profits and real losses. This destroys the lender, but it makes senior officers that control the lender wealthy. This explains Akerlof & Romers title Looting: The Economic Underworld of Bankruptcy for Profit. The failure of the firm is not a failure of the fraud scheme. (Modern bailouts may even recapitalize the looted bank and leave the looters in charge of it.) The first two ingredients are related. Home lending is a mature, reasonably competitive industry. A lender cannot grow extremely rapidly by making good loans. If he tried, hed have to cut his yield and his competitors would respond. His income would decline. But he can guarantee the ability to grow extremely rapidly by being indifferent to loan quality and charging weaker credit risks, or more nave borrowers, a premium yield. In order to become indifferent to loan quality the officers controlling the lender must eviscerate its underwriting. *** There is no honest reason for a secured lender to seek or permit inflated appraisal values. This is a sure marker of accounting control fraud a marker that juries easily understand.
In other words, banks made loans to borrowers who they knew couldn't really repay because the heads of the banks could make huge bonuses based on high volumes and fraudulent appraisals, and they didn't care if their own companies later failed. In short, they looted their companies and the economy as a whole. Professor Black brings us current to where we are today:
History demonstrates that if the control frauds get away with their frauds they will strike again. By allowing the banks to use their political power to gimmick the accounting rules to permit them to hide their massive losses on liars loans we have made it far harder to take effective administrative, civil, and criminal sanctions against the elite frauds that caused the Great Recession. Hiding the losses also adopts the dishonest Japanese approach that cripples economic recovery and public integrity. Prosecuting the elites control frauds can be done successfully. Create a new Top 100 priority list and appoint regulators that will make supporting the Justice Department a top agency priority. Thats how we obtained over 1000 priority felony convictions of elite S&L criminals. No controlling officer of a large, non-prime specialty lender has been convicted of running a control fraud. Only one has even been indicted. The FBI has written that any discussion of the crisis that ignores the role of mortgage fraud is irresponsible.
On a related note, Chris Whalen (co-founder of Institutional Risk Analytics, who has been hailed by Nouriel Roubini as one of the leading independent analysts of the U.S. banking system) told me that the collection of credit default swap payouts might also have played into the banks extending loans to borrowers who couldn't repay: There are some really bad incentive structures in this industry. Default increases servicing fees, etc. So yes, your example is not outlandish. And the wonder of CDS lets us all bet that the others home burns down. Speculative
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madness, but consistent for a culture that prizes sales about all else. Whalen also notes that Freddie and Fannie helped to create the epidemic of mortgage fraud, and - like Black - blasts the government for covering it up: The invidious cowards who inhabit Washington are unwilling to restructure the largest banks and GSEs. The reluctance comes partly from what truths restructuring will reveal. As a result, these same large zombie banks and the U.S. economy will continue to shrink under the weight of bad debt, public and private. Remember that the Dodd-Frank legislation was not so much about financial reform as protecting the housing GSEs. Because President Barack Obama and the leaders of both political parties are unwilling to address the housing crisis and the wasting effects on the largest banks, there will be no growth and no net job creation in the U.S. for the next several years. And because the Obama White House is content to ignore the crisis facing millions of American homeowners, who are deep underwater and will eventually default on their loans, the efforts by the Fed to reflate the U.S. economy and particularly consumer spending will be futile. As Alan Meltzer noted to Tom Keene on Bloomberg Radio earlier this year: "This is not a monetary problem."
ARGHHHHHHH.........WE WILL STAY HERE IN THIS DEPRESSION BECAUSE THESE ASSHOLES IN DC WORK FOR THE F*CKING BANKS!
*** The policy of the Fed and Treasury with respect to the large banks is state socialism writ large, without even the pretense of a greater public good. *** The fraud and obfuscation now underway in Washinton to protect the TBTF banks and GSEs totals into the trillions of dollars and rises to the level of treason. *** And in the case of the zombie banks, the GSEs and the MIs, the fraud is being actively concealed by Congress, the White House and agencies of the U.S. government led by the Federal Reserve Board. Is this not tyranny?
ForeclosureGate: Not just bungled paperwork, it is fraud (Part 4)

Posted by AzBlueMeanie: Theres been plenty of recent media attention to the prospect of investor lawsuits over fraudulent mortgages and mortgagebacked securities. But as Zach Carter writes at Truthout.org, The Elephant in the Foreclosure Fraud Room: Second Liens: The four largest banks hold nearly half a trillion dollars worth of second-lien mortgages on their booksloans that could be decimated if investors successfully target improper mortgage servicing operations. The result would be major trouble for the financial system. The result would be major trouble for too-big-to-fail behemoths. *** [T]he nations four largest banks also operate the four largest mortgage servicers. Bank of America, Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup service about half of all mortgages in the United States. They also have multi-trillion-dollar businesses whose interests often conflict with those of mortgage security investors. continued: http://www.blogforarizona.com/blog/2010/10/foreclosuregate-not-just-bungled-paperwork-it-is-fraudpart-4.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed& utm_campaign=Feed%3A+BlogForArizona+%28Blog+For+Arizona%29
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Katherine Porter to Senate: No Non-Judicial Sales While System Is In Doubt

Today, October 27, 2010, 52 minutes ago | Neil Garfield 10.27.2010 KATHERINE PORTER SENATE testimony-102710-porter see also http://livinglies.wordpress.com/2010/10/27/katherine-porter-to-senate-no-non-judicial-sales-while-system-is-indoubt/10-27-10-ohio-ag-robo-amicus-brief-parmaforeclosurebrief/ (http://livinglies.wordpress.com/2010/10/27/katherineporter-to-senate-no-non-judicial-sales-while-system-is-in-doubt/10-27-10-ohio-ag-robo-amicus-briefparmaforeclosurebrief/) Katherine Porter is a visiting law professor at Harvard. Her 2007 study was the seminal work on mortgage and foreclosure irregularities. She found that 40% of the notes had been lost or destroyed. The following is an excerpt from her testimony today before a Senate Committee. The entire transcript is in the link above. Due process does not disappear merely upon the assertion by one party that the other is clearly liable. The allegations of problems in mortgage servicing should, if anything, only heighten the due process requirements on consumers. For example, in light of the lack of verification procedures for affidavits to support requests for judgments in judicial foreclosures, it may be reasonable to be concerned that there is absolutely no verification of the facts in the non-judicial foreclosure context. Thus, we might argue that states or the federal government ought to increase the legal requirements for foreclosures across the board, at least for loans initiated in the last five to ten years when widespread allegations of paperwork and procedural problems have existed.
NEWS FLASH I BOUGHT MY HOME 9/10/2009 AND GUESS WHAT.... THE SYSTEM IS STILL F*CKED UP!!! The banks arguments that we can ignore
possible systemic wrongdoing by the banks because as a systemic matter, homeowners are in default on their loans, is unpersuasive. Indeed, it seems to reflect a fundamental misunderstanding of the obligations of any party wishing to invoke the aid of the law in enforcing its rights.
The most pressing issue is to assess the extent of the wrongful or problematic foreclosures. This assessment needs to have two fundamental parts. First, how many loans or foreclosures have any defect? Second, what kinds of defects do the troubled loans or foreclosures have? Without an answer to these questions, it is nearly impossible for anyone to do more than speculate about the key questions before this panel about the impact of these troubled loans or foreclosures on the governments foreclosure mitigation efforts and the well-being of financial institutions. The immediate need is to know the extent to which the problems in mortgage servicing occur sporadically or are endemic.
As a preliminary matter, I note that it is simply not credible to believe that the lenders have made no errors in their foreclosure procedure. Because they are being allowed to control the definition of error and are being allowed to audit themselves, we cannot have confidence in such reports. The question is then is whether the rate of troubled loans is nearly 100% as some have alleged, or rather
is a smaller fraction of loans, such as 5%.
ForeclosureGate: Not just bungled paperwork, it is fraud (Part 4)

nice article.... ...of course the banks would claim "paperwork" they know better than to come right out with the real truth... GSE's, Congress, the Senate, the White House, the President.... everybody is involved...this SHIT GOES STRAIGHT TO THE F*CKING TOP! IT'S GLOBAL..
Wells Fargo Finds Foreclosure Lapses in 55,000 Current Cases

Today, October 27, 2010, 5 minutes ago | Yves Smith We criticized Wells for falsely claiming in briefings in Washington DC that it did not have robo signers when there were already depositions in the public domain to the contrary. In these same presentations, Wells claimed to be a good operator, free of the sort of lapses at other servicers that were generating bad press. Wells was shown to be a liar on the first count, and amusingly prominently. In a weird bit of cosmic justice, the very next
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day, the Financial Times ran a first page story on the Wells use of robo signers. The second shoe dropping, the general lapses in Wells foreclosures, has taken more time to come to light, and this time, they are by the banks own admission. However, as has proven to be the pattern with all the major parties in the foreclosure process, Wells is claiming that needing to file additional documentation in 55,000 cases is no big deal and of course that nothing really is amiss. It will be interesting to see what local courts make of this. If any of these new filings contradict previously provided evidence (and by definition, a replacement of a robo signed affidavit is an admission the earlier submission was improper, hence a fraud on the court; the new affidavits may also change substantive information), they may encounter resistance from judges. My guess is that while few judges would dismiss cases with prejudice (meaning the parties to the case could not try to foreclose again), Wells could in some situations be required to file a new foreclosure action from scratch. From Bloomberg: Wells Fargo & Co., conceding that some foreclosure affidavits did not strictly adhere to the required procedures, said it will file supplemental statements to courts in about 55,000 proceedings.. The bank will begin filings in 23 states immediately and aims to complete them by mid-November, subject to local laws, according to the statement. The issues the company has identified do not relate in any way to the quality of the customer and loan data, the San Francisco-based lender said in the statement. Nor does the company believe that any of these instances led to foreclosures which should not have otherwise occurred.. The company has identified instances where a final step in its processes relating to the execution of the foreclosure affidavits (including a final review of the affidavit, as well as some aspects of the notarization process) did not strictly adhere to the required procedures, it said in the statement. Wells Fargo has assigned 160 employees in four offices to be part of the review, said Teri Schrettenbrunner, a spokeswoman for the company, in a phone interview.
F*CK WELLS FARGO.....

Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: citizenx on October 27, 2010, 08:01:14 PM "We Can Either Have a Rational Resolution to the Foreclosure Crisis or We Can Preserve the Capital Structure of the Banks. We Can't Do Both"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVTfsOPMcns&feature=sub -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------"Man is not a rational animal. He is an animal rationis capax." Jonathan Swift
Quote from: citizenx on October 25, 2010, 06:11:42 PM Title: The Run Author: Jonathan Swift
Upon The Bankers
The Run Upon the Bankers[1]
The bold encroachers on the deep Gain by degrees huge tracts of land, Till Neptune, with one general sweep, Turns all again to barren strand. The multitude's capricious pranks Are said to represent the seas, Breaking the bankers and the banks, Resume their own whene'er they please. Money, the life-blood of the nation, Corrupts and stagnates in the veins, Unless a proper circulation Its motion and its heat maintains. Because 'tis lordly not to pay, Quakers and aldermen in state, Like peers, have levees every day Of duns attending at their gate. We want our money on the nail; The banker's ruin'd if he pays: They seem to act an ancient tale; The birds are met to strip the jays. "Riches," the wisest monarch sings, "Make pinions for themselves to fly;"[2] They fly like bats on parchment wings, And geese their silver plumes supply. No money left for squandering heirs! Bills turn the lenders into debtors: The wish of Nero[3] now is theirs, "That they had never known their letters."
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Conceive the works of midnight hags, Tormenting fools behind their backs: Thus bankers, o'er their bills and bags, Sit squeezing images of wax. Conceive the whole enchantment broke; The witches left in open air, With power no more than other folk, Exposed with all their magic ware. So powerful are a banker's bills, Where creditors demand their due; They break up counters, doors, and tills, And leave the empty chests in view. Thus when an earthquake lets in light Upon the god of gold and hell, Unable to endure the sight, He hides within his darkest cell. As when a conjurer takes a lease From Satan for a term of years, The tenant's in a dismal case, Whene'er the bloody bond appears. A baited banker thus desponds, From his own hand foresees his fall, They have his soul, who have his bonds; 'Tis like the writing on the wall.[4] How will the caitiff wretch be scared, When first he finds himself awake At the last trumpet, unprepared, And all his grand account to make! For in that universal call, Few bankers will to heaven be mounters; They'll cry, "Ye shops, upon us fall! Conceal and cover us, ye counters!" When other hands the scales shall hold, And they, in men's and angels' sight Produced with all their bills and gold, "Weigh'd in the balance and found light!"
[Footnote 1: This poem was printed some years ago, and it should seem, by the late failure of two bankers, to be somewhat prophetic. It was therefore thought fit to be reprinted.--_Dublin Edition_, 1734.] [Footnote 2: Solomon, Proverbs, ch. xxiii, v. 5.] [Footnote 3: Who, in his early days of empire, having to sign the sentence of a condemned criminal, exclaimed: "Quam vellem nescire litteras!" Suetonius, 10; and Seneca, "De Clementia,", cited by Montaigne, "De l'inconstance de nos actions."--_W. E. B._] [Footnote 4: Daniel, ch. v, verses 25, 26, 27, 28.--_W. E. B._]
[The end] Jonathan Swift's poem: Run Upon The Bankers
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: citizenx on October 27, 2010, 08:38:11 PM I really recommend reading this whole piece by Mike River, but I will just pick up his history of the banking pyramid scheme and subversion of the U.S. gov't where CDO's and MERS come in:
16. MORTGAGES AS INVESTMENT DEVICES Let us start by looking at how Mortgage companies worked up into the mid 2000s.
Click for larger image In a normal mortgage, the lender, who is a member bank of the Federal Reserve system, prints up a bunch of cash (or enters the amount of the loan into a computerized bank account) to loan to the mortgage applicant. This is not a joke; the money the bank hands to you to buy a house, or car, or iPod, is created out of thin air the moment you sign the loan agreement, credit card slip, or mortgage papers.
Admit it; you thought the money for loans came from the bank's depositors, didn't you! Because after all, that's what you were taught in the state-controlled schools as a child! And they would never lie to you, would they?
"If the people understood the rank injustice of our money and banking system, there would be a revolution before morning" -- President Andrew Jackson The mortgage lender, who is allowed to print up the money they loan out (up to a legally defined limit), makes their profit from the borrower, who is not allowed to print up the money he or she hands back to the bank, but must trade their labor for money with which to pay the banker. Because of compound interest, the mortgage borrower actually repays the banker many times the original cost of the home! Let us say that you take out a $100,000 mortgage over 30 years at 8% interest. That works out to $733.76 per month, which does not seem too bad (until you start adding in insurance and property taxes, but that is another story). $733.76 per
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month is $8,805.12 per year. Over 30 years that comes out to $264,153.60 paid out to the banker! In other words, while the builder of the house earns $100,000 after buying the land. buying materials. and building the house, the banker earns $164,153.60 purely for having the right, granted by the US Government, to run a printing press! If you or I created money the same way, we would be thrown in jail for counterfeiting! Remember that from an investor's point of view, the value of a home is not the home itself, but the debt the home creates and shackled the homeowner to, worth many times the cost of the actual house! That debt, which is pure profit, is sold to Americans as the "American Dream"; to work 30 years to pay the bankers many times what the house actually cost! (Some dream). Fortunes were being made and the politicians were neck deep in the greed. But there was a new wrinkle.
Click for larger image Starting in 2006, Wall Street operators got the ideas of taking debt obligations, and collecting them together to sell to other investors. The mortgage lenders would take their mortgages and "bundle" them, then sell the entire bundle for a flat fee. The advantage was that the mortgage lender recovered his money in a single large lump, while the investor buying the bundled mortgages would accept their return on investment over the lifetime of the mortgages. For long-term investors such as investment banks and pension funds, this was an ideal investment so long as all the mortgages were paid on time every month. The investment looked sound as long as real-estate prices kept soaring, and nobody was taking too close a look at the individual mortgages. Because the banks and mortgage companies were passing the mortgages onto outside parties, there was little incentive to look too closely at the borrowers, while financial incentives encouraged the mortgage writers to over-inflate earnings and home values on the applications to push the deals through. The mortgage bundlers, drunk on the instant profits falling like manna from heaven, started taking some reckless steps. Mortgage analysis companies like Clayton Holdings were reporting to the clients at the big banks that many of the so-called sub prime mortgages did not meet basic underwriting requirements, either for the private banks or for the three "F"s, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and FHA. But the mortgage bundlers blended the sub prime with prime mortgages and sold off the bundles as "Mortgage Backed Securities" or "Collateralized Debt Obligations". In other words, the mortgage bundlers knew many of the mortgages in those bundles were not going to perform well, but did not tell the investors who bought them, the invested in "derivatives", basically betting those MBS and CDOs would fail! 17. IT ISN'T THE FORECLOSURES, IT'S THE FRAUD! "I suddenly realized I had joined the wrong mob." -- Lucky Luciano, comparing Wall Street to the Mafia
Click for larger image The problem is that some of the mortgage bundlers were greedy! They needed more mortgages to feed the giant mortgagebacked-security bubble they were inflating. So they started luring in borrowers with borderline credit into "sub-prime" mortgages. Since members of the US Congress were invested in the very companies that were reaping giant profits on those mortgage-backed-securities, Congress voted through an $8000 tax credit for first-time home buyers to bait them into the scheme! But still there were not enough new mortgages. Investors were clamoring for more mortgage-backed-securities to buy. Then the bankers had an inspiration. They realized that while you can only sell a house to one owner at a time, you can in theory sell the mortgage over and over, since it is a piece of easily copied paper or more likely a computer record in MERS, the Mortgage Electronic Registration System, a computer system created to evade title transfer fees and to speed up the churning of the mortgages as they shuffled from one investment company to another! MERS initially helped conceal the over-selling of mortgages, but eventually the scam became known, and numerous major banks have been exposed for selling the same mortgage into multiple mortgage-backed securities, generating vast profits for the bundlers. Now, from the point of view of the mortgage bundlers, they might not have seen this as a fraud. Nobody wants to see themselves as a villain, and the bundlers may have decided they were simply following the reserve system of banking to the next level. Under the reserve system of banking, for every real dollar in deposits you have in the vaults, you can create and loan out 8, or 10, or 30, depending on the current reserve requirement imposed by the top bank, the Federal Reserve System. The mortgage bundlers may have decided that for every real mortgage they held, they could create 3, or 4 , or in one case 20 out of thin air with which to collateralize the investment package. As long as everyone does not come in to get the actual mortgages at the same time, the system would work the way the reserve money supply does in the banks, in which only enough real money is on hand to cover expected transactions with customers, and the rest for the bankers to play with out in investment land. While this "reserve" approach to mortgages may have looked okay to the bankers, who saw the world through money-colored glasses, it is in fact a crime! In February 2009 CNBC broke the story that many of the mortgage bundlers had pledged individual mortgages as collateral over and over into different CDOs, when legally, they can be pledged as collateral only once.
Chris Whalen tells CNBC's Larry Kudlow that Bear Stearns will be exposed as having sold the same loan to different investors on numerous occasions. This is why many homes are being foreclosed on by more than one bank at a time.
Click for larger image But there is another problem with over-selling mortgages. For every copy of a mortgage bundled into an investment, there is an investor expecting a mortgage payment every month. Obviously the home buyer, who has signed only one mortgage, is
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making only one mortgage payment. For the extra copies of that mortgage there are no monthly payments coming in. As long as only a few mortgages in the bundle are underperforming, nobody noticed, but as the jobs left America and more and more home buyers started to fall behind, the risk that the over-selling scheme would be exposed to public scrutiny and condemnation (not to mention arrest and prosecution) began to be apparent! 18. MERS Because mortgages were changing hands so many times, the regulatory fees for a transfer became a major cost factor for the mortgage bundlers. To get around the fees and generally speed up the process, a system was created called the Mortgage Electronic Registration System, or MERS. All notes were transferred into MERS legal ownership and then could be assigned and reassigned willy-nilly all over the financial system without the usual paperwork and fees. By mid 2008 the wheels were starting to come off the boom times. The automatic interest rate increases on those adjustable-rate mortgages started kicking in, and due to the high prime-rate at the time, those increases in monthly payments were enormous, with no increases in salaries and wages to cover them! The US Government, at the same time it had taken the chains off of Wall Street had continued a policy of tax credits that encouraged American corporations to offshore high-paying manufacturing jobs. Caught between a rock and a hard place, between higher mortgage payments and declining wages and salaries, Americans started defaulting and the banks started foreclosing. 19. THE MELT-DOWN And here is where the system began to really break down. Because the mortgages and titles had been traded around in the creation of the mortgage-backed securities, the companies servicing the mortgages (i.e. collecting the payments) could not locate the actual mortgage note. In the cases where the same mortgage had been pledged as collateral on more than one mortgage-backed security, the paperwork trail led to more than one owner-of-record. By the end of the year, it had become apparent that a massive fraud had been committed by the mortgage bundlers, and that a great many of the mortgage-backed securities held by investors and pension funds were in fact without collateral. While the mortgages were being paid and returns on the investment paid, nobody noticed. But as homes started to default it became apparent that investors did not in fact have any collateral behind most of those collateralized debt obligations! Lawsuits followed by investors trying to recover money from the banks. In a telling move, the US Government has moved to protect the banks!
Click for larger image 20. TARP AND THE BAILOUTS Those mortgage-backed securities with multiply-assigned mortgages ARE the "Toxic Assets" Congress was screaming about when they forced the Troubled Asset Relief Program through Congress in the fall of 2008, despite overwhelming public opposition. The mortgage bundlers had stuck key financial institutions with fraudulent mortgage-backed securities, and Congress voted to loot the public to purchase the useless paper and hide it from public scrutiny. Why? Because the members of the US Congress had their own fortunes invested in those fraudulent mortgage-backed securities. Had the institutions collapsed, members of Congress would have been ruined as well. So they saved their own investments by dropping the losses on the American people! This is why, even though the public opposed TARP, members of Congress were so happy when the bill finally was forced through the Congress.
Commercial real estate was caught up in the mortgage-backed securities mania, and eventually the US Government used $3 trillion in taxpayer funds to deal with that growing catastrophe! In other cases, the Federal Government has been exposed as intentionally concealing the scale of the losses from the American taxpayer, even to the point of hiding billions in bailout payments, further fueling speculation that the major "Too Big To Fail" banks have indeed already failed and are technically insolvent. We are not talking about a few crooked bankers, but a system-wide culture of criminality that makes Bernie Madoffwith-the-loot, the NASDAQ founder who swindled his own investors for $65 billion, look like a choir boy! This brings us to the interesting sidebar of John McCain's candidacy for President. All seemed to be going well for him until in a move that surprised many political observes, McCain chose as his Vice President Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. McCain's claim that he needed a female Vice President seemed reasonable, but there were far more qualified women out there such as Hawaii's Governor Linda Lingle, who was not even contacted by McCain's campaign. In hindsight, it almost seemed McCain was intentionally destroying the credibility of his own campaign, and now a possible motive surfaces. If it was already known that the mortgage-back securities had become toxic assets, and that the taxpayer was going to be made to foot the bill, what better plan for the Republicans that had created the mess to drop the task of screwing the American people onto the Democrats, including a man willing to do anything to be America's first black President! And it appears to have worked as the same Republicans that created this financial mess appear poised for a mid-term return to control of the White House. 21. FORECLOSURE-GATE But while the US Government using taxpayer money was buying back the fraudulent uncollateralized mortgage bundles, the holders of the genuine mortgages were still faced with a problem. The trail of documents through MERS was a hopeless rats' nest! Mortgage Service companies were forced to go into court without all the required documents, and judges, failing to see the actual debt note or title before them,. were starting to throw foreclosure cases out! Representative Marcy Kaput got up in Congress advising homeowners to demand the foreclosers to prove they owned the actual loan!
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So a new creature came into being, the "Foreclosure Document Mill", small start-up companies which for a fee would "re-create" missing paperwork to allow the foreclosures to pass a judge's scrutiny. But the foreclosure mills were also faced with the confusion in the MERS system and under pressure to perform, were hiring virtually anybody willing to engage in a little "gray" paperwork, hiring Wall Mart floor walkers, former beauticians, factory workers, and putting them in offices with no formal training to process foreclosure paperwork. According to one whistle blower, workers who produced large amounts of "re-created" documents were rewarded with cars and jewelry! Computerized processing systems cranked out foreclosure lawsuit paperwork by the reams! The problem was that nobody was checking to see if the documents were actually correct or accurate, or if the people being foreclosed were actually behind in their payments.Even worse, lawyers were walking into court with foreclosure documents they knew were forged! The rush was on to file as quickly as possible ahead of the expected backlog of cases hitting the courts. In at least two known cases, foreclosure proceedings were started against home owners who did not even have mortgages! Companies that contracted to serve the legal papers on the homeowners never delivered those papers and many people were unaware they had been foreclosed on until the Sheriff showed up to change the locks! 22. INTENTIONAL FRAUD The corporate media is still trying to say this is all a bunch of simple errors for which nobody should be held accountable, but already testimony is surfacing that major banks like Citicorp knew exactly what they were doing and that very well the investments they were selling at huge profit were really junk! MERS itself has come under scrutiny, both because it is clearly a device to evade government fees and regulation, and secondly because no legislative body approved its creation and implementation into the home mortgage system. There has been no review of the system by any outside party. That massive fraud did take place is beyond doubt, and the US Government in connivance with the bankers, conspired both to conceal the true nature of the cause of the economic crash and to dump trillions in dollars in losses on the American taxpayer. And behind it all remains the core problem that lenders and home-owners often do not know where the notes and titles are to be found! But with individual mortgages being sold out as many as 20 different times, the mortgage bundlers faced a huge problem. Every home payment made has to be repaid to the investor in the MBS for every time that mortgage was resold, that is to say for every dollar paid by the home-owner, the mortgage bundler is on the hook for up to $20 owed to the holders of the mortgage backed securities. In that context, the banks have a huge motive to foreclose on homes to limit the losses on those oversubscribed mortgage backed securities! Once the home is foreclosed, payments on those over-subscribed mortgage backed securities stop and the criminals who over-sold those mortgages are off the hook. It is not unlike the Mel Brooks movie "The Producers" in which the producers intentionally choose what they think is a terrible script, "Springtime for Hitler", which they hope will close the first night. The producers then over-subscribe the investment in the play by 1000%. 100% is spent producing the show, with the other 900% to be pocketed after the show fails and the investors, unaware of the extra shares in the show, accept their losses and leave. In the film, the play is a surprise hit and the producers go to jail. Hopefully, the same thing will happen to the financial companies who played the same game. If the over-selling of mortgages into mortgage backed securities was intentional, and given how many different financial companies did it, this seems certain, then the same financial institutions that profited from the selling of mortgage backed securities intended to crash the housing market to cover their escape. They took mortgages and sold them as mortgage-back securities over and over again, then foreclosed the properties to end their obligations to the over-subscribed mortgage backed securities. This is why nobody cared whether home buyers were actually qualified for the mortgages, as the mortgages were never intended to be repaid, only foreclosed on! However, the investors and especially the foreign banks that bought those over-subscribed mortgage-backed-securities are not quietly accepting their losses! Bank of America is being sued by PIMCO, the New York Fed, and several European banks. Two class-action suits have been filed against the owners of MERS. Sooner or later the fraudulent over-selling of those bundled mortgages must come out. And the bankers will stand exposed as the criminals they really are. 23. SEARCHING FOR A WAY OUT So, how do we fix this mess? MERS is a Gordian Knot of trails between lender and borrower and holder of the titles. Sorting through the mess, even if possible, will take years both in the computer files and in the courts. The only solution I can think of (short of armed rebellion and guillotining the culprits) is rather drastic, and not even original with me. In Tom Clancy's book "Debt of Honor" a stock market crash is exacerbated when the computer systems used to track transactions are sabotaged. That seems a good metaphor for the runaway mortgage-backed Securities market compounded by MERS allowing (or fraudulent bankers causing) mortgages to be placed in multiple investment bundles. The inspiration in the book is a phrase heard often in science;"If you didn't write it down, it did not happen!" And in the book, the solution is to simply discard everything that happened after the last good record and restart the machinery at that point. The stock market re-opens with the last good trade before the computers were sabotaged and everybody goes home happy, eventually. Of course, real life will not be that simple. The mortgage bundlers have made fortunes off of these deals. If they can claim innocent victim of a computer error, then they will not be willing to surrender the fortunes they made; they will resist any solution that involves losing their profits, no matter how ill-gotten they may be. They are quite happy with the world as it is now. The Government will not, indeed cannot ever admit error, even though, like the Gulf Oil Disaster and the Bernie Madoff scandal, the government's job was to prevent this from happening, not bait more victims into the scam with a tax credit.But having swindled the American people out of trillions of dollars to buy back and conceal the fraudulent non-collateralized mortgage securities, the US Government is now clearly an accessory to the crime, if after-the-fact. The original fraud with the mortgage-backed securities was covered up ahead of the 2008 election, and it appears Obama is trying to do the same for the 2010 elections, announcing a Federal criminal investigation which will supposedly look into the bankers' possible
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illegal activity, but in reality is intended to block criminal investigations already underway in all 50 states. CNBC reports that Congress may simply retro-actively declare the fraud to be legal, ending all investigations and indemnifying the bankers from criminal prosecutions. That the relentless looting of the public treasury to cover-up this disaster has harmed the nation is beyond doubt. Trillions that might have paid for new schools and roads and hospitals has vanished into the black hole of Wall Street, to buy up bad paper and feed it to the shredder before the public finds out that once again, as is typical of a fascist economy, the poor are made to pay for all! People without mortgages, people who have never bought a home, are all harmed by this disaster. We are all victims of the rampant and reckless greed that consumes the money addicts in the halls of power. 43 million Americans are on food Stamps, and according to Barron's Magazine(October 11, 2010), unemployment is at 22%, which is depression levels. Meanwhile, Wall Street executives will collect bonuses this year totaling 8% of all the US cash in circulation! Ultimately, the homes taken by MERS must be restored to their rightful owners. The people who bought what they thought were honestly foreclosed homes in good faith must of course be compensated and provided with equivalent properties. Beyond that, it is time to take a close look at the true nature of banks, especially the Federal Reserve, and to understand that banks do not serve the public, they serve only themselves! "I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs." Thomas Jefferson, (Attributed) 3rd president of US (1743 - 1826) http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/wildbankers.php
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: kerrymti on October 27, 2010, 09:00:19 PM
Quote from: redeux on October 26, 2010, 09:41:42 PM Whether the mortgage was used as a derivative has no bearing on the fraudulent nature of these mortgages....... If the Note says the "at risk lender" and the security instrument says "MERS"... you have a fraudulent mortgage...most states that I have seen thus far do not afford a "Nominee" the "Power of Sale".....MERS cannot act as a fiduciary in regard to the note......
I see your point...done correctly, you would have a mortgage, the 'lender', as stated on the mortgage, would/could assign the mortgage to another party (recording the assignment at the courthouse), and then the other party would have the 'power of sale' as stated by the original mortgage. When a lender buys a mortgage from MERS (or usually a group of mortgages), there is no trail to follow in the court records. PLUS, when the other lender buys a specific mortgage from MERS, they do not receive the original note (or mortgage) because MERS does not have it, it is in some box, probably still with the original lender that conducted the closing. When we conduct a foreclosure, we have the original note and the original, recorded mortgage, thus giving us the authority (power) to foreclose, legally. Our office has just run across our first 'screw up' dealing with this mess. We work mainly for local credit unions. We were given a file where the credit union held a second mortgage, the first mortgage listed the lender as MERS for Citi. Then, a different bank (bank "X") foreclosed on the mortgage (having bought it from MERS, apparently). We come along and this foreclosure has already taken place, however, they have not recorded the foreclosure deed, as yet (going on 4 weeks). So, we have proceeded to begin foreclosure because our note and mortgage are not 'clouded'. I don't know why they are waiting to record the deed, as it is not legitimate until it is recorded, if it is legit at all.
Quote from: kerrymti on October 27, 2010, 09:00:19 PM I see your point...done correctly, you would have a mortgage, the 'lender', as stated on the mortgage, would/could assign the mortgage to another party (recording the assignment at the courthouse), and then the other party would have the 'power of sale' as stated by the original mortgage. When a lender buys a mortgage from MERS (or usually a group of mortgages), there is no trail to follow in the court records. PLUS, when the other lender buys a specific mortgage from MERS, they do not receive the original note (or mortgage) because MERS does not have it, it is in some box, probably still with the original lender that conducted the closing. When we conduct a foreclosure, we have the original note and the original, recorded mortgage, thus giving us the authority (power) to foreclose, legally. Our office has just run across our first 'screw up' dealing with this mess. We work mainly for local credit unions. We were given a file where the credit union held a second mortgage, the first mortgage listed the lender as MERS for Citi. Then, a different bank (bank "X") foreclosed on the mortgage (having bought it from MERS, apparently). We come along and this foreclosure has already taken place, however, they have not recorded the foreclosure deed, as yet (going on 4 weeks). So, we have proceeded to begin foreclosure because our note and mortgage are not 'clouded'. I don't know why they are waiting to record the deed, as it is not legitimate until it is recorded, if it is legit at all.
A deed recorded with MERS as the beneficiary with "power of sale" is not legit in any form, whether the note exists or not.... furthermore, as I discussed in an earlier post, according to US Supreme Court Cases dating all the way back to 1838, in particular 1872, CARPENTER V. LONGAN, 83 U. S. 271 (1872) the note and the deed are inseparable and to do so causes nullity, i.e. an unsecured debt i.e. a fraudulent security instrument..... traditionally the holder of the note, i.e. the "at risk" creditor, would also be the deed holder, with a lien or other instrument executed and recorded within the county courthouse under the supervision of the Clerk of the Superior Court in said county, this security instrument was placed on the property to ensure payment and to provide right of relief, i.e. foreclosure..... this has been deep 6'd so the zombie banks could create a new investment vehicle, the MBS bond and sell the shit throughout the world, without having to re-record the lien, MERS functioned as a data warehouse for the security instrument, again they have NO RIGHT to proceed in any relief and neither
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does the note holder because the two entities, that is the note and the deed, have been fatally separated..... this shit has back fired on them and I couldn't be happier....
Quote from: kerrymti on October 27, 2010, 09:00:19 PM When a lender buys a mortgage from MERS (or usually a group of mortgages), there is no trail to follow in the court records. PLUS, when the other lender buys a specific mortgage from MERS, they do not receive the original note (or mortgage) because MERS does not have it, it is in some box, probably still with the original lender that conducted the closing.
ABSOLUTELY, a great point.. in fact most originating lenders DESTROYED the WET INK NOTE and DEED, the WET INK is supposed to be mailed to the orginator, because traditionally they were not selling the F*CKING SHIT ON WALL STREET, to avoid confusion once the transaction took place through MERS........... this VIOLATES ALL KNOWN BLACK LETTER LAW...... to f*ck with this is to re-write property ownership in our Country..... ... the bigger picture here is the OBVIOUS ATTACK the zombie banks have made on PROPERTY RIGHTS.....
if 60 + million mortgages have breaks in the chain of title WHO THE F*CK OWNS THE PROPERTY??
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: redeux on October 28, 2010, 06:51:51 AM Judge Schack the Little Judge from Brooklyn
I posted this yesterday here is a more detailed look at the ruling...
The Court grants the request of plaintiffs counsel to withdraw the instant motion for an order of reference. However, to prevent the waste of judicial resources, the instant foreclosure action is dismissed without prejudice, with leave to renew the instant motion for an order of [*2]reference within sixty (60) days of this decision and order, by providing the Court with necessary and additional documentation. First, the Court requires proof of the grant of authority from the original mortgagee, CAMBRIDGE HOME CAPITAL, LLC (CAMBRIDGE), to its nominee, MORTGAGE ELECTRONIC REGISTRATION SYSTEMS, INC. (MERS), to assign the subject mortgage and note on March 16, 2009 to INDYMAC FEDERAL BANK, FSB (INDYMAC). INDYMAC subsequently assigned the subject mortgage and note to its successor, ONEWEST, on May 14, 2009. Right here the Judge is requiring the party seeking relief to prove the CHAIN OF TITLE.... which they will in all likelihood be unable to do....
Second, the Court requires an affidavit from Erica A. Johnson-Seck, a conflicted robosigner, explaining her employment status. A robo-signer is a person who quickly signs hundreds or thousands of foreclosure documents in a month, despite swearing that he or she has personally reviewed the mortgage documents and has not done so. Ms. Johnson-Seck, in a July 9, 2010 deposition taken in a Palm Beach County, Florida foreclosure case, admitted that she: is a robo-signer who executes about 750 mortgage documents a week, without a notary public present; does not spend more than 30 seconds signing each document; does not read the documents before signing them; and, did not provide me with affidavits about her employment in two prior cases. (See Stephanie Armour, Mistakes Widespread on Foreclosures, Lawyers Say, USA Today, Sept. 27, 2010; Ariana Eunjung Cha, OneWest Bank Employee: Not More Than 30 Seconds to Sign Each Foreclosure Document, Washington Post, Sept. 30, 2010). In the instant action, Ms. Johnson-Seck claims to be: a Vice President of MERS in the March 16, 2009 MERS to INDYMAC assignment; a Vice President of INDYMAC in the May 14, 2009 INDYMAC to ONEWEST assignment; and, a Vice President of ONEWEST in her June 30, 2009-affidavit of merit. Ms. Johnson-Seck must explain to the Court, in her affidavit: her employment history for the past three years; and, why a conflict of interest does not exist in the instant action with her acting as a Vice President of assignor MERS, a Vice President of assignee/assignor INDYMAC, and a Vice President of assignee/plaintiff ONEWEST. Further, Ms. Johnson-Seck must explain: why she was a Vice President of both assignor MERS and assignee DEUTSCHE BANK in a second case before me, Deutsche Bank v Maraj, 18 Misc 3d 1123 (A) (Sup Ct, Kings County 2008); why she was a Vice President of both assignor MERS and assignee INDYMAC in a third case before me, Indymac Bank, FSB, v Bethley, 22 Misc 3d 1119 (A) (Sup Ct, Kings County 2009); and, why she executed an affidavit of merit as a Vice President of DEUTSCHE BANK in a fourth case before me, Deutsche Bank v Harris (Sup Ct, Kings County, Feb. 5, 2008, Index No. 35549/07).
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: redeux on October 28, 2010, 07:02:00 AM
Mortgage Industry Defense is Flimsy, Congressional Oversight Panel Provides Counter-Evidence

Today, October 28, 2010, 5 hours ago | Yves Smith Reader MBSGuy wrote to express his disgust with the mortgage industrys efforts to pretend that nothing is rotten in
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Denmark. His object of contempt was an article in Bloomberg which dutifully recited the current talking points. The flacks have clearly been working full time: the headline, Mortgage Industry Bristles at Robin Hood Foreclosure Theories, is yet another example of creative phrase-mongering to try to discredit critics. And get a load of the assertions: The number of attorneys that signed off on the policies used when Wall Street firms packaged mortgages into bonds means its likely that the trusts used to hold the debt will be able to prove they own the loans in almost all cases, said Philip Seares, a managing director at Citigroup Inc. who run its trading of whole loans. The industry also has faith that loan assignments handled by the Mortgage Electronic Registration System, or MERS, cant be broadly contested, Seares and Mortgage Bankers Association President John Courson said at the groups annual conference. As we indicated in a post earlier tonight, judges ARE contesting the use of MERS, and in particular, the casual assignments made by parties who were not employees of the company that owned the note. In addition, all state supreme courts that have ruled on foreclosures in the name of MERS (admittedly a different issue than MERS assignments per se), save Minnesota, which passed MERS-friendly statutes, have ruled against it. . These decisions have often objected to the multiple and inconsistent roles MERS typically plays, which lays the foundation for other challenges. As MBSGuy noted: When confronted with countless examples of why there are problems, industry insiders say it cant be a problem because scores of attorneys signed off on the legal documents. It is almost embarrassing to see how feeble the industry sounds when confronted with evidence. The part that the industry boosters are missing is the fact that the legal opinions for mortgage securitizations were qualified (in general, lawyers craft opinion so as to provide the minimum degree of comfort necessary to get the deal done). They took an if-then form: if you did everything you said you would do, then all is fine. And as weve indicated repeatedly on this blog, the industry did NOT do what it promised in the pooling and servicing agreement. It appears in many cases starting roughly in 2004, the parties to the securitization failed to convey the notes as described in their own contracts, basically because it was too costly and time-consuming. The media has finally woken up and is reporting on a wide range and variety of bogus foreclosure actions, vitiating the industry claims that all foreclosure actions are correct. And before some readers try the argument that a few errors here and there are no big deal, try telling that to someone threatened with the loss of their home. This sort of thing was impossible in the pre-securitization era, and for good reason: the process of dealing with real property was cumbersome by design. It was fault intolerant because the consequences of error can be catastrophic to the participants. Any process that has a lot of safety features and checks is going to be inefficient. It was inevitable that a drive for efficiency at all costs would compromise the integrity of the system. The New York Times, in Homeowners Facing Foreclosure Demand Recourse, provides examples of erroneous foreclosure actions: Ricky Rought paid cash to the Deutsche Bank National Trust Company for a four-room cabin in Michigan with the intention of fixing it up for his daughter. Instead, the bank tried to foreclose on the property and the locks were changed, court records show. Sonya Robison is facing a foreclosure suit in Colorado after the company handling her mortgage encouraged her to skip a payment, she says, to square up for mistakenly changing the locks on her home, too. Thomas and Charlotte Sexton, of Kentucky, were successfully foreclosed upon by a mortgage trust that, according to court records, does not exist. The price is worth reading in full, because it gives the gory details of these cases, but it has some technical errors (its discussion of allonges is all wrong, and it also fails to note that the use of allonges in foreclosures is suspect; the ones that magically materialize in foreclosures are almost without exception in violation of the requirements of the Uniform Commercial Code). Even though more and more accounts like these are being reported daily, the denial in the industry remains high. I spoke to one expert who believes that the big white shoe law firms themselves do not understand how badly their clients failed to perform their contractual obligations. Thus lawyers may be offering their confident defenses based on ignorance of the relevant facts. (Before legally sophisticated readers point out that banks ought to tell their attorneys first about any legal problems, since the communication is confidential, remember, only a very few senior executives, plus members of the legal department, deal with outside counsel. An individual employee who was in a position to know what was really going on would be at a lower level. A general rule of corporate life is bearing news of serious problems is a career-limiting move). But even allowing for the possibility of remarkable ignorance, the industry defenses are remarkably weak. Back to the Bloomberg story: The American Securitization Forum trade group, JPMorgan Chase & Co. bond analysts and law firm SNR Denton have also dismissed such talk. In a commentary posted on its website, SNR Denton says that most attempts to question the validity of practices can be trumped by items such as the fact that all parties involved clearly intended for the trusts to take ownership. We dismembered the SNR Denton article earlier this week, and the intent argument is laughable, particularly given the detailed, specific requirements of the pooling and servicing agreement. Consider: if you paid your estimated income taxes on time and filed for an extension, but then failed to send in your tax return, how sympathetic do you think the IRS would be if you argued you clearly intended to submit your return by the deadline? A vastly more compelling analysis comes from law professor Katherine Porter, whose testimony to the Congressional Oversight Panel today is must reading. She is quite clear that current practices are not kosher: I describe the legal and economic issues involved in impermissible or flawed foreclosures and then set out the possible
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responses to such wrongdoing. Specifically, I consider the ways in which systemic foreclosure problems may set off extensive and complex litigation, destabilize the housing market, and result in regulatory interventions. I believe that the foreclosure process lacks integrity in an unacceptable number of ways and instances and that these problems undermine foreclosure mitigation efforts. She stresses that the problems with foreclosures are far more extensive than robo signers: Robo-signing is only one of a number of alleged deficiencies in foreclosure practices. Several courts have determined that there were serious deficiencies in the foreclosure process. At a website that I maintain with Tara Twomey, my co-investigator in the Mortgage Study, we make available a list of judicial decisions in which the court finds inappropriate foreclosure practices or misbehavior by mortgage servicers or their agents. Although we stopped updating the document over a year ago, at that time there were already more than fifty such cases. The problems in such cases range from the imposition and collection of improper fees, a lack of standing to foreclose in judicial foreclosure states, the pursuit of foreclosure without rights in the note and mortgage, mortgage origination fraud, or liability to investors for poor underwriting or improper servicing. The key point is that the vast majority of the alleged problems cannot accurately be described as technicalities. The flaws in the foreclosure systems go well beyond improper affidavits Twomey and Porter stopped updating their Mortgage Study document in 2009 because they were being flooded with the number of cases showing violations of servicing requirements and foreclosure standards. She also confirms our view that the failure to convey the borrower promissory note as described in the pooling and servicing agreement is a serious problem: The largest and most complex harm that may exist with the loans in default or foreclosure today is that the paperwork for the loans was not transferred correctly..The concern being raised is that during the securitization process that the transfers from originator to sponsor to depositor to trust (to generalize the parties in a typical process) were not performed or were not performed correctly. A related issue is whether the physical paperwork or electronic records can be located and are accurate. These records are needed to sort out whether the transfers were completed and valid. I believe the law is somewhat unsettled on what actually must be done via a securitization to complete the transfers correctly. The implications of problems with transfer are serious. If the trust does not have the loan, homeowners may have been making payments to the wrong party. If the trust does not have the note or mortgage, it may not have standing to foreclose or legal authority to negotiate a loan modification. To the extent that these transfers are being completed retroactively, it raises issues about honesty in creating and dating the assignments/transfers and about what parties can do, if anything, if an entity in the securitization chain, such as Lehman Brothers or New Century, is no longer in existence. Moreover, retroactive transfers may violate the terms of the trust, which often prohibit the addition of new assets, or may cause the trust to lose its REMIC status, a favorable treatment under the Internal Revenue Code. Chain of title problems have the potential to expose the banks to investor lawsuits and to hinder their legal authority to foreclose or even to do loss mitigation. This is a pretty damning list, needless to say. And there is another layer of problems this may create, that consumers may be able to sue the securitization trust (or whatever entity actually has the note now) for origination fraud: For over 10 years, there have been allegations about violations of consumer protection laws and poor/nonexistent underwriting at loan origination. While the law gives great finality to completed foreclosure sales, loans that are currently in default (which some estimate to be as many as 20 percent of mortgages underlying privately-backed securities) are at risk of being challenged for origination violations. These challenges could come in the form of investor suits trying to force banks to buy back loans that did not meet the representations of the securitization documents, e.g., they were not underwritten to the reported standard. Another type of lawsuit risk is that consumers are able to sue the current holder of their note for violations that occurred at origination. Normally, these complaints fail because the holder of the note is thought to be a holder in due course, a person that receives protection from most of the claims that someone could bring against the originator of the note. However, if the notes do not meet the requirements of negotiable instruments, there cannot be a holder in due course. The person with the note merely is the possessor bearer paper, and can be sued for all wrongs associated with that note contract. She also dismisses bank claims that their processes are fine: The banks have repeatedly tried to minimize perceptions about the materiality of their foreclosure deficienciesThe general thrust of the banks defense has been that because the homeowners did take on a mortgage obligation, and have in fact missed payments, then the foreclosure is proper. As I have explained recently: Just because the homeowner hasnt paid his mortgage doesnt mean anybody in the world can kick him out, She added that the banks argument was a little like saying that someone who committed a crime shouldnt receive a trial because hes so obviously guilty." Due process does not disappear merely upon the assertion by one party that the other is clearly liable. The allegations of problems in mortgage servicing should, if anything, only heighten the due process requirements on consumers. For example, in light of the lack of verification procedures for affidavits to support requests for judgments in judicial foreclosures, it may be reasonable to be concerned that there is absolutely no verification of the facts in the non-judicial foreclosure context. Thus, we might argue that states or the federal government ought to increase the legal requirements for foreclosures across the board, at least for loans initiated in the last five to ten years when widespread allegations of paperwork and procedural problems have existed. The banks arguments that we can ignore possible systemic wrongdoing by the banks because as a systemic matter, homeowners are in default on their loans, is unpersuasive. Indeed, it seems to reflect a fundamental misunderstanding of the obligations of any party wishing to invoke the aid of the law in enforcing its rights. [t]he lawyers that I have met over years of my research on mortgage servicingboth creditor lawyers and debtor lawyershave nearly universally expressed that they believe a very large number (perhaps virtually all) securitized loans made in the boom period in the mid-2000s contain serious paperwork flaws, did not meet underwriting or other requirements of the trust, and have not been serviced properly as to default and foreclosure.
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And the more consumers fight, which increases costs to banks and investors, the more investors will push for a resolution (indeed, theyve already started), and will go to court if need be. Its going to be hard for banks to maintain their no real problems here party line as litigation against them continues to snowball.
Quote from: redeux on October 27, 2010, 10:10:29 PM ABSOLUTELY, a great point.. in fact most originating lenders DESTROYED the WET INK NOTE and DEED, the WET INK is supposed to be mailed to the orginator, because traditionally they were not selling the F*CKING SHIT ON WALL STREET, to avoid confusion once the transaction took place through MERS........... this VIOLATES ALL KNOWN BLACK LETTER LAW...... to f*ck with this is to re-write property ownership in our Country..... ... the bigger picture here is the OBVIOUS ATTACK the zombie banks have made on PROPERTY RIGHTS.....
if 60 + million mortgages have breaks in the chain of title WHO THE F*CK OWNS THE PROPERTY??
Exactly, nobody knows for sure who owns anything at this point. There should be a national foreclosure moratorium until everything is properly sorted out -- if it all can be sorted out. Some local governments have already started to do this, all the states should be following suit. If the Feds won't inject some reason into all this, maybe at least the states can. It would be nice to start seeing some state attorney generals following Cook County's lead. Maybe, Illinois could be first. Do it, Illinois! It would also be great to see the "big four" guys be forced to eat some of their mistakes at this point, but I won't be surprised at all when the two-party Communist Federal state bails their asses out once again.
Quote from: citizenx on October 28, 2010, 07:04:15 AM It would also be great to see the "big four" guys be forced to eat some of their mistakes at this point, but I won't be surprised at all when the two-party Communist Federal state bails their asses out once again.
TRUTH!! They are complicit in the CRIME.........
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: citizenx on October 28, 2010, 07:27:00 AM Foreclosure Fiasco
I was a robo-signer
By Tami Luhby, senior writerOctober 28, 2010: 8:36 AM ET
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- It only took him a second to sign each foreclosure document. That's how good Tam Doan got at his job in Bank of America's pre-sale foreclosure department in Southern California. Of course, he didn't have time to actually read the paperwork he was signing, he said, and in some cases, he didn't even know what documents he was putting his pen to. "I had no idea what I was signing," said Doan. "Either you were in or you were out." continue: http://money.cnn.com/2010/10/28/real_estate/robosigner/index.htm?cnn=yes
The Stealth Coup D'Etat in the U.S. (called "The Quiet Coup" by Simon Johnson) was begun long ago, but the takeover reached fruition in the 2008-2010 timeframe.
Please read these brief excerpts from the 1968 classic Coup d'tat: A Practical Handbook (by Edward Luttwak) and see if they don't remind you of the United States, circa 2008-2010: Insurrection, the classic vehicle of revolution, is obsolete. The security apparatus of the modern state, with its professional personnel, with its diversified means of transport and communications, and with its extensive sources of information, cannot be defeated by civilian agitation, however intense and prolonged. (CHS note: Luttwak referred to the May 1968 general strike in France as an example; by coincidence, the failure of today's general strikes in France to change Central State policy offers a more current example from the same nation.
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Any attempt on the part of civilians to to use direct violence with improvised means will always be neutralized by the efficiency of modern automatic weapons; a general strike, ont he other hand, will temporarily swamp the system, but cannot permanently damage it, since in the modern economic setting, the civilians will run out of food and fuel well before the military, the police and allied organizations.
(CHS note: Napoleon famously dissipated a civilian uprising with "a whiff of grapeshot" long before modern automatic weaponry. Organized violence always has an advantage over informally organized violence.)
If a coup does not make use of the masses, or of warfare, what instrument of power will enable it to seize control of the state? The short answer is that the power will come from the state itself.
A coup consists of the infiltration of a small but critical segment of the state apparatus, which is then used to displace the government from its control of the remainder. Luttwak's first point about the futility of direct insurrection informed my ownSurvival+ critique, which concludes that the only effective means to weaken the Financial Power Elites who have partnered with State Elites is to opt out and assemblevoluntary non-privileged parallel structures which are independent of the Central State and its Power Elites.
As I have sharpened the Survival+ critique (with an eye on a future revision), I have come to see that the term coup d'etat is not cheap theatrics or an analogy for the capture of the Central State by Financial Power Elites, but the accurate description of a long, stealthy infiltration and dominance of the key ministries of the United States government.
In the popular view, a coup d'etat is a sudden event, over in a few hours or at most days, a drama played out in impoverished Third World nations. The stealth coup which has occurred in the U.S. is an entirely different kind of coup--one that has operated in stealth mode for the most part, a process of gradual infiltration and opportunistic grasping of key levers of dependence and control.
Simon Johnson, co-author of the recent book 13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown, also wrote the May 2009 article "The Quiet Coup". Here are a few key excerpts: But these various policies--lightweight regulation, cheap money, the unwritten Chinese-American economic alliance, the promotion of homeownership--had something in common. Even though some are traditionally associated with Democrats and some with Republicans, they all benefited the financial sector. Policy changes that might have forestalled the crisis but would have limited the financial sectors profits--such as Brooksley Borns now-famous attempts to regulate credit-default swaps at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, in 1998--were ignored or swept aside. The financial industry has not always enjoyed such favored treatment. But for the past 25 years or so, finance has boomed, becoming ever more powerful. The boom began with the Reagan years, and it only gained strength with the deregulatory policies of the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations. Several other factors helped fuel the financial industrys ascent. Paul Volckers monetary policy in the 1980s, and the increased volatility in interest rates that accompanied it, made bond trading much more lucrative.
The invention of securitization, interest-rate swaps, and credit-default swaps greatly increased the volume of transactions that bankers could make money on. And an aging and increasingly wealthy population invested more and more money in securities, helped by the invention of the IRA and the 401(k) plan. Together, these developments vastly increased the profit opportunities in financial services. Not surprisingly, Wall Street ran with these opportunities. From 1973 to 1985, the financial sector never earned more than 16 percent of domestic corporate profits. In 1986, that figure reached 19 percent. In the 1990s, it oscillated between 21 percent and 30 percent, higher than it had ever been in the postwar period. This decade, it reached 41 percent.
The great wealth that the financial sector created and concentrated gave bankers enormous political weighta weight not seen in the U.S. since the era of J.P. Morgan (the man). In that period, the banking panic of 1907 could be stopped only by coordination among private-sector bankers: no government entity was able to offer an effective response. But that first age of banking oligarchs came to an end with the passage of significant banking regulation in response to the Great Depression; the reemergence of an American financial oligarchy is quite recent.
Looking just at the financial crisis (and leaving aside some problems of the larger economy), we face at least two major, interrelated problems. The first is a desperately ill banking sector that threatens to choke off any incipient recovery that the fiscal stimulus might generate. The second is a political balance of power that gives the financial sector a veto over public policy, even as that sector loses popular support.
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Though incisive, Johnson's critique fails to grasp several critical features of the Stealth Coup D'Etat:
1. Once you have control of the financial powers of the U.S. via the tiny Elites of the Congress, the Executive Branch, the Federal Reserve and the U.S. Treasury, then the rest of the government will follow.
To the degree that ownership of the Healthcare cartels is in the hands of the same Financial Power Elite, then the passage of the 2,300 page "Healthcare Reform Bill" in 2010 was simply another way for the Power Elite to expand its share of the national income.
The health of the citizenry or healthcare per se had essentially nothing to do with the passage of this monstrosity. The entire purpose was to increase the Elites' share of the national income by siphoning off an ever-greater share to the "healthcare" cartels.
2. This is how the Stealth Coup D'Etat works: the machinery of governance grinds through a simulacrum of democracy, but it's all for show; the theoretical structures are now completely different from the political realities. The citizens were against the bailout of Wall Street and the money-center banks 600-to-1; they were rightly ignored as inconsequential.
The citizenry replaced the political party leadership of Congress and the Presidency; absolutely nothing changed except the flavor of PR, spin and propaganda. The Power Elites and their Stealth Coup are apolitical. They don't care about the color of your uniform; whether you wear a blue shirt or a red shirt is inconsequential.
Some readers complain I over-use the descriptive word simulacrum, and I have tried to leaven this overuse with synonyms such as facsimile. But the key point to understand (and the goal here is always to reach an integrated understanding) is that there is a difference between formal structures such as democracy and free markets and their political and financial representations.
In other words, the "democracy" that was visible in passing healthcare reform (i.e. the diversion of more national income to a specific set of cartels) was a facsimile of democracy, a shadow of the real thing, a mere representation of true democracy.
This substitution of representation for reality is the key mechanism of the Stealth Coup D'Etat. In the financial fiasco now playing out, actual deeds to notes and property have been replaced with digital representations in a registry owned by the banks: MERS.
"Liberating" Iraq as a laudable goal of an enlightened State was merely a public relations facade for the occupation of a key geopolitical piece of a larger puzzle. The entire war has two components: the actual war on the ground, as revealed by 400,000 "liberated" documents, and the representation of the war in the Corporate Cartel Media and as presented by the Central State ministries.
3. The Stealth Coup can be traced by a simple dictum: follow the money. Once you control the money--the money supply, the manipulation of yields and bond sales, the budgeting and borrowing--then you control everything.
This is how a small Financial Power Elite dominates the vast, sprawling American Empire.
4. I use the term politics of experience in Survival+ (with a credit to its originator, R.D. Laing) to describe the manner in which the apparently depoliticized context of our daily media-saturated lives are shaped by political forces we rarely recognize.
In my critique, I invoke the term parallel shadow structures of privilege to describe the formalized but masked structures of power which operate behind the facades of democracy, free markets, and all the other PR bilge drummed into the minds of the the citizenry by a media cartel which itself has been financialized into a Corporatocracy.
Over time, Americans have come to believe that the current state of governance is "democracy" rather than a mere facsimile
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of democracy. They have come to believe (those still covered by insurance they don't directly pay for) that the U.S. "healthcare" system is "the finest in the world" when by some metrics it is the worst, most profligate, illness-inducing system imaginable. And so on.
Thus "homeownership" was elevated to quasi-religious status as a means of stripmining assets and income from a larger pool of debt-serfs. Earlier this year I asked a simple question: how much of your household's net income flows to cartels? That would include banking cartels (mortgages, second mortgages, credit cards, etc.), Central State-banking cartels (student loans), agribusiness cartels (fast foods, packaged foods, Monsanto, etc.), energy cartels, sickcare cartels (healthcare insurance, hospital chains, Big Pharma) and so on.
If we consider that much of rent payments flow to the same banking cartels (which is why the commercial real estate sector is imploding--too much debt, etc.), then most of us would find that the majority (or perhaps as much as 90%) of our money goes to a handful of cartels dominated by Financial Elites via the steady financialization of the U.S. economy.
How much of your taxes flow to the same cartels via their partnership/control of State fiefdoms?
If you think the term Stealth Coup D'Etat is overwrought, I invite you to ponder the headline quote from the Freedom Guerrilla weblog: None are so hopelessly enslaved as those who falsely believe they are free.
From the point of view of a deconstructed politics of experience, then the events of 2008-2010 are simply the culmination of a Stealth Coup D'Etat which began with the overt financialization of the U.S. economy and indeed of its entire culture.
THIS IS THE MOST CRUCIAL ISSUE FACING US TODAY..... IF THE ZOMBIE BANKS ARE ALLOWED TO HAVE AN END AROUND ON THEIR ILLEGAL FORECLOSURE SCHEME THEN PROPERTY RIGHTS ARE OFFICIALLY GONE IN THIS COUNTRY...... IT WON'T MATTER THAT 9/11 WAS AN INSIDE JOB, IT WON'T MATTER IF THEY PLAN A FALSE FLAG ATTACK ON THE WEB, IT WON'T MATTER IF THERE IS GMO, IT WON'T MATTER THAT THEY ARE CHEM TRAILING US.........BECAUSE YOUR RIGHT TO FREEDOM DEPENDS ON THE RIGHT TO OWN PROPERTY!!!! ONCE ITS GONE YOUR F*CKING HOMELESS YOUR CREDIT IS WRECKED, AND WHEN THIS FINALLY DESTROYS THE ECONOMY WE ARE ALL F*CKED!!! YOU WILL WAKE UP IN A FEMA CAMP.... ... WE MUST RISE UP AND SPREAD THE INFORMATION TO EVERYONE REGARDING THIS..... RIGHT OR LEFT EVERYONE THAT IS SUFFERING AND HAVING THEIR PROPERTY TAKEN AWAY UNDERSTANDS THIS....... THEY ARE AWARE THAT SOMETHING IS NOT RIGHT.... WE DO NOT HAVE TO CONVINCE THEM...... THEN WE CAN SPRINGBOARD OFF OF THIS TO WAKE THEM UP FULLY TO THE TRUTH SURROUNDING THEM..... DON'T YOU SEE THIS IS OUR ONLY OFFENSE.... WE CAN TAKE THESE F*CKERS TO COURT..... JUDGES ARE SIDING WITH THE POPULOUS..... THIS IS OUR FIRST VICTORY..... BECAUSE THIS IS THE GLOBAL ELITE AND EVERYONE HATES THESE CROOKS NOW BECAUSE OF THIS!!
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THIS IS WHY PALIN GINGRICH AND ALL THE NEO-CONS ARE QUIET ON THIS....THIS IS WHY THE DEMOCRATS ARE QUIET, HELL DODD AND THAT FAIRY FRANK ARE BITCHES FOR THE BANKING CONSORTIUM.... WHY ARE THEY QUIET BECAUSE THIS IS THEM!!!
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: foreverfree on October 28, 2010, 10:43:20 AM this will happen before January. they will suddenly discover how great the problem really is, probably through a collapse of a very prominent bank like Bank of America, and be "forced" to sign a bill to bailout the mortgage industry asap. This will in effect, transfer all mortgages from public owned accounts to the elite private. You will make your payment directly to them, through a middle man bank of course. of course, a well timed cyber attack will prevent the populace from forming any meaningful revolt and you will lose any property rights you thought you had. welcome to Amerika 2.0
Quote from: foreverfree on October 28, 2010, 10:43:20 AM this will happen before January. they will suddenly discover how great the problem really is, probably through a collapse of a very prominent bank like Bank of America, and be "forced" to sign a bill to bailout the mortgage industry asap. This will in effect, transfer all mortgages from public owned accounts to the elite private. You will make your payment directly to them, through a middle man bank of course. of course, a well timed cyber attack will prevent the populace from forming any meaningful revolt and you will lose any property rights you thought you had. welcome to Amerika 2.0
regardless to as when, this is the main front..... the NWO has a centralized stronghold in the financial system... I suggest ANY homeowner that has a deed that is titled to MERS to IMMEDIATELY file suit.... with relief to quiet title.... we can at least push back for now........
Quote from: redeux on October 28, 2010, 09:36:39 AM
The Stealth Coup D'Etat in the U.S. (called "The Quiet Coup" by Simon Johnson) was begun long ago, but the takeover reached fruition in the 2008-2010 timeframe.
Please read these brief excerpts from the 1968 classic Coup d'tat: A Practical Handbook (by Edward Luttwak) and see if they don't remind you of the United States, circa 2008-2010: Insurrection, the classic vehicle of revolution, is obsolete. The security apparatus of the modern state, with its professional personnel, with its diversified means of transport and communications, and with its extensive sources of information, cannot be defeated by civilian agitation, however intense and prolonged. (CHS note: Luttwak referred to the May 1968 general strike in France as an example; by coincidence, the failure of today's general strikes in France to change Central State policy offers a more current example from the same nation. Any attempt on the part of civilians to to use direct violence with improvised means will always be neutralized by the efficiency of modern automatic weapons; a general strike, ont he other hand, will temporarily swamp the system, but cannot permanently damage it, since in the modern economic setting, the civilians will run out of food and fuel well before the military, the police and allied organizations.
Pardon me but this "Edward Luttwak" is a brainwashed ZioNAZI moron whack-job. ROTFLMAO!
The day any Americans are interred into a "FEMA Camp" is the day the game will be all over... All great tyrannies collapse from within. Consider the complete bankruptcy, total failure and inevitable total collapse of the insane postwar "Union of Zionist Socialist Republics" (Anglo-US-Israeli) own Pentagon Mafia-chosen model, the collapse of the old U.S.S.R. tyranny (the very exact same model it established it's own 'christian'-communist, unconstitutional "cold war" permanent standing army common-defense Pentagon/CIA Mafia corporate-national-socialist NAZI tyranny upon): A stagnant centrally planned imperial established-religious (Marxist religion) state-corporatist net-importer economy atrophies and self-destructs unable to support any foreign trade. Eventually it no longer produces anything of value that anyone else wants, just it's own (self-destructive and bankrupting) armaments. A "critical crisis of infrastructures" built during the brief period of peace-dividend prosperity after the war has atrophied and crumbled after years of neglect, abuse and corruptions designed solely to ever-concentrate , promote, protect and defend it's own elite's securities finally reaches societally destructive crisis levels. Unable to produce anything to promote it's own stock values, the corrupt regime seeks foolishly to extend it's hegemony to a horridly chosen, foolishly engineered false target, an impossible, diehard religious socialist tribal mafia graveyard and black market dope production fortress of solitudes called Afghanistan, supported by covert acts of itself and it's own too numerous competitors... A tiny sliver of new fax machine technology completely exposes and unhinges decades of criminal corruption in the highest
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places. the leadership finally cornered by ever-growing evidence it's own decades of corrupt, abject failures is suddenly forced to embrace openness The most invasive, repressive, omnipresently established murderous Marxist corrupt noble theocratic Marxist-religioussocialist tyranny ever known to mankind, supported by the most comprehensively invasive, introverted, repressive political police, sophisticated, redundant beyond extreme covert-criminal secret Mafia spyforce, technologically superior, rigidly conservatist propaganda matrix extended to every facet of all communications and advanced military terrorist repression network in human history becomes completely unable to even police itself and unable to even support it's own minions. The regime collapses of it's own weight within a matter of a few weeks in August 1991 beating it's Union of Zionist Socialist Republics enemy to the ultimate and inevitable "peacetime postwar rebooting of it's systems" by a good 20 years Excerpt:
Who Lost Russia?

Published on January 8, 1999 by Kim R. Holmes, Ph.D. , Hon. Caspar Weinberger , Hon. James Woolsey and Ariel Cohen, Ph.D.
Quote from: http://www.heritage.org/Research/Lecture/Who-Lost-Russia The debate over who lost Russia is now under way. It is perhaps premature to frame the issue in this way: Russia certainly is not yet lost entirely, but the country is in dire straits. There is plenty of blame to go around for Russia's troubles, and most of it, in my opinion, lies with Russia. As The New York Times columnist A. M. Rosenthal wrote recently: "Russia did this to Russia."
Quote from: agentbluescreen on October 28, 2010, 11:34:02 AM Pardon me but this "Edward Luttwak" is a brainwashed ZioNAZI moron whack-job. ROTFLMAO!
you're excused.... ...he is not the focus of the article, it is only a spring board.... the article only used a few excerpts from the book, and unfortunately the excerpts are practical and true.......... the fact remains the same that there is a shadow gov. ... there is a shadow banking system.... amerika has been taken over by the national corporate fascist's....... it is a debt ridden serf system of false freedom....
Quote from: redeux on October 28, 2010, 11:43:59 AM you're excused.... ...he is not the focus of the article, it is only a spring board.... the article only used a few excerpts from the book, and unfortunately the excerpts are practical and true.......... the fact remains the same that there is a shadow gov. ... there is a shadow banking system.... amerika has been taken over by the national corporate fascist's....... it is a debt ridden serf system of false freedom....
Well thanks! :) I'm just pointing out that his scenario will never play out. The Soviets also tried flooding their stagnant, black market drug and trade infested collapsing economy with ever more valueless Rubles (along with belated openness) in a hopelessly doomed last ditch effort to avert their own collapse. Thing is you cannot buy people's loyalty to established corruption (anymore) with now-worthless paper.
Quote from: agentbluescreen on October 28, 2010, 11:55:22 AM Well thanks! :) I'm just pointing out that his scenario will never play out. The Soviets also tried flooding their stagnant, black market drug and trade infested collapsing economy with ever more valueless Rubles (along with belated openness) in a hopelessly doomed last ditch effort to avert their own collapse. Thing is you cannot buy people's loyalty to established corruption (anymore) with now-worthless paper.
oh I don't disagree with you.... but if this thing comes down, its not like you or I could say I told you so..... when the dam blows we will all be swimming for our lives....
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: lamourlady on October 28, 2010, 12:51:54 PM I am so disgusted. I have no words.
Fidelity National Drops Nationwide Indemnity Requirement

Today, October 28, 2010, 3 hours ago | emptywheel
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This whole title insurance thing is getting confusing. Fidelity National Financial Inc., the largest U.S. title insurer, canceled a requirement for lenders to guarantee proper foreclosure procedures amid heightened review processes by banks. The company wont require an indemnity agreement before insuring individual foreclosed properties, according to a memorandum to employees yesterday. It will continue the arrangement with Bank of America Corp., the largest U.S. lender. Fidelity National reversed course from a requirement put in place a week ago after institutions took steps to police foreclosure paperwork, according to the memo. Failure of other insurers to follow its lead also put the Jacksonville, Florida- based company at a competitive disadvantage, said Peter Sadowski, executive vice president and chief legal officer. Although competition was a factor, we wouldnt take undue risk for competitive reasons, Sadowski said in an interview. We feel comfortable with the new process. But what I take it to mean is that, at least partly because other title insurers werent requiring Fannie and Freddie to indemnify their foreclosure sales, Fidelity National dropped the requirement that they (and other lenders) do so, too. But its not clear if, in lieu of this indemnity, Fidelity is going to require the lenders to actually prove they have standing to foreclosure. Whatever the case, Fidelity National seems to be saying that a risk that was there just week ago, no longer exists.
THEY ARE SAYING... HEY YOU HOMEOWNERS WHO LOST YOUR JOB BECAUSE OF WALL STREET AND ARE NOW BEING FORECLOSED ON, F*CK YOU!!!!
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: citizenx on October 28, 2010, 03:55:22 PM And now the (potentially) good news:
Foreclosuregate Explained: Big Banks on the Brink

Thursday 28 October 2010 by: Peter White, t r u t h o u t | Report excerpts:
Scandal is spreading across Wall St. like a very bad case of poison ivy. A rash of fraudulent home foreclosures has exposed some of the nation's biggest banks to an even worse condition ... bankruptcy.
If other states file similar lawsuits like those in Ohio, Kentucky and Mississippi, it could mean billions of dollars in damages and fines, criminal perjury prosecutions of "robo-signers" and disbarment for the lawyers who filed the fraudulent papers. Some analysts say the potential liability of major banks is so large, another financial crisis is a real possibility.
One foreclosure expert estimates that just 6 to 7 percent of the loans made in the last three years can produce properly recorded title transfers from borrower to final lender. Legally assigning, or recording title transfers was much too slow and cumbersome for the fast-paced trade in MBS, so most banks just ignored those requirements, according to testimony, analysts and consumer advocates like Hackett. On many mortgages, the loan owner's name
Banks are in a big pickle. If they can prove they own the title to properties they want to foreclose on, they are liable to the IRS for unpaid taxes and penalties. If they don't, the are liable to be sued by bond holders for lack of due diligence in the bundled mortgages they sold to investors.
Both Bank of America and GMAC got billions in federal bailouts, so playing hardball with borrowers when the Obama administration put up an additional $75 billion to persuade banks to refinance troubled loans may jeopardize their "too big to fail" status in Washington.
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Meanwhile, investigations are underway not only by the states' attorneys general, but also by federal banking regulators, the US Justice Department and the Securities Exchange Commission. A number of lawsuits have been filed in Ohio, Kentucky, Mississippi, and other states, and all this attention may force banks to renegotiate their loans with more affordable terms for borrowers.
But banks are not heading down that path, instead, they are redoing questionable foreclosure papers they hope will pass muster in court.
Reporting assistance by Ellen Brown. link: http://www.truth-out.org/foreclosuregate-explained-big-banks-brink64621
Quote from: citizenx on October 28, 2010, 03:55:22 PM And now the (potentially) good news: If other states file similar lawsuits like those in Ohio, Kentucky and Mississippi, it could mean billions of dollars in damages and fines, criminal perjury prosecutions of "robosigners" and disbarment for the lawyers who filed the fraudulent papers. Some analysts say the potential liability of major banks is so large,
another
financial crisis is a real possibility.
Another? Where the HELL did the first one go?? SHIT HAS ONLY GOTTEN WORSE FOR ME, AND MILLIONS OF OTHER AMERICANS!!
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: lamourlady on October 28, 2010, 04:13:35 PM
Quote
Banks are in a big pickle. If they can prove they own the title to properties they want to foreclose on, they are liable to the IRS for unpaid taxes and penalties. If they don't, the are liable to be sued by bond holders for lack of due diligence in the bundled mortgages they sold to investors. HA! HA! Let's see what happens.
Quote from: redeux on October 28, 2010, 03:58:11 PM
Another? Where the HELL did the first one go?? SHIT HAS ONLY GOTTEN WORSE FOR ME, AND MILLIONS OF OTHER AMERICANS!!
Agreed. I think this whole can of worms will mean a worsening of the economic situation, unfortunately. They will try to patch it up, but it's more finger-in-dike crap at this point. Those were the author's words, not mine. Still the author made many other salient points, IMO.
Quote from: citizenx on October 28, 2010, 04:17:55 PM Agreed. I think this whole can of worms will mean a worsening of the economic situation, unfortunately. They will try to patch it up, but it's more finger-in-dike crap at this point. Those were the author's words, not mine. Still the author made many other salient points, IMO.
Oh I know you didn't say it.... I think this will be the strategic defense of the Zombie banks... that is threaten to need another stimulus, to try and cull the resistance.... the old "your hurting the taxpayer by suing the shit outta us"...
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: citizenx on October 28, 2010, 04:32:57 PM Thursday, October 28, 2010
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"The Fraud Perpetrated Upon Investors and Insurers Due to Multiple Pledges of Collateral Could Be Massive"
WASHINGTONSBLOG.COM Christopher Whalen previously explained how the banks got away with pledging mortgages to multiple buyers. Today, Whalen provides further details: The short answer is "innovation." In her column, "One Mess That Can't Be Papered Over," Gretchen Morgenson of the New York Times reveals the practice in FL and other jurisdictions of destroying the physical note. We really like the 4th from last paragraph, the one about the standard practice of Florida bankers to destroy the original note when an electronic form was created, to "avoid confusion." If you know anything about the checkered history of FL real estate over the past century, this one bites you in the leg. Is it just possible that creative Florida bankers discovered they could "sell" mortgages many times by conveniently delivering a "copy" of the electronic note for each subsequent sale? By delivering a "good" electronic note to each purchaser, the seller/servicer could kite the Ponzi scheme to the sky -- using the proceeds from each sale to pay interest to each new group of investors. As we told [Washington's Blog] in the failure of First National Bank of Keystone , management hid a Ponzi scheme in the loan servicing area for years, fooling regulators and internal auditors (See 'Audit Risk: Grant Thornton & The Keystone Saga', January 29, 2007) . *** We know people in the servicing sector and related legal specialties who think that the fraud perpetrated upon investors and insurers due to multiple pledges of collateral could be massive. It is also, conveniently enough, another reason for the Obama White House and Fed to continue to prop up the top-three banks with significant GSE exposure -- and the mortgage insurers that help window dress the GSEs already horrible losses.
http://poorrichards-blog.blogspot.com/2010/10/fraud-perpetrated-upon-investors-and.html -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------How does the MSM manage to keep this shit out of the headlines? Amazing.
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: citizenx on October 28, 2010, 04:40:38 PM (http://i1010.photobucket.com/albums/af223/dacitizen/bailout-tarp-protest.jpg) (http://i1010.photobucket.com/albums/af223/dacitizen/tarp-bailout-protest2.jpg) The Daily Bail National Debt & Deficit Portal. Bailout News. QE - The New American Bloodsport. Oct282010
When The Big Banks Come Crawling Back, Screw 'Em! Talking Points for the Anti-Bank Bailout Revolution
When The Big Banks Come Crawling Back, Screw 'Em! Punish The Bondholders Mercilessly, Sack Management Teams, And Prosecute For Fraud! Talking Points for the Anti-Bank Bailout Revolution Don't get slapped in the face by the irony. As you find yourself rooting against the banks, be prepared when the too-big-to-fails come begging for taxpayer help, because as we've been warning, a hastened request for TARP v. 2.0 is on the way. So let's see if we can get everyone following the same playbook before it happens. This is the issue we need to remain aware of - the more banks suffer from mortgage putbacks and foreclosure fraud, the more likely it becomes that a second round of taxpayer assistance is requested next year by Geithner's replacement at Treasury. Chris Whalen has been warning for weeks -- here, here, and here -- that 2011 will bring another round of bank bailouts. The strategy is simple, and we've been screaming along these lines since we launched. Punish the bondholders, sack managements, turn operations over to the FDIC, investigate fraud and prosecute. Bill Black argued -- here and here -- that even our largest banks, that's you Citigroup (nyse:C), and Bank of America (nyse:BAC), could be successfully placed into government receivership, the same as Sheila Bair does for a half-dozen smaller banks every weekend. Bill Black says that the FASB 157 Hour Of Power, and delusion, is over. Banks are still insolvent, and the Federal Reserve is complicit in the delusion due to massive MBS holdings. Put the banks with the most fraud into government receivership. "Foreclosure fraud is the only thing standing between banks and Armageddon. The financial media treats Bank of America as if it were a legitimate bank rather than a "vector" spreading the mortgage fraud epidemic throughout much of the Western world." Speaking of Sheila, she laid out a proposal just last week calling for bank bondholders to be punished in future bailouts. Bair Proposes New Rules for Failed Banks Requiring Bondholders To Suffer Losses (Finally!) And Janet Tavakoli made the argument in detail, before anyone else:
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An Alternative Bailout -- One that aggressively hurts Bank Bondholders, and Doesn't VIOLATE the Spirit of Democracy Joe Nocera recognized the irony earlier this week in the NYT: I admit it: I want to see the banks feel some pain. Most people do, I think. Banks did terrible things during the subprime bubble, and they still havent paid any real price. I find myself rooting for judges to rule against banks in foreclosure cases. I would love to see these big investors put the serious hurt on Bank of America, which will encourage other investors to pile on. I know this colors my thinking. I cant help it. Yet I also know the flip side. If the foreclosure lawyers start winning a lot of cases, if judges halt foreclosures on a widespread basis, if investors start to extract billions upon billions of dollars from the banks and if banks become seriously weakened as a result well be right back where we were two years ago. The banks will need to be saved for the good of the economy. The taxpayers will have to come to the rescue. Thats an appalling prospect too. Here's more evidence: William Buiter says bank bondholders must be held accountable - CNBC interview. Not sure how he feels now that he works at Citigroup. And Arthur Levitt says: Former SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt: Ban SIVs, Use Mark-To-Market Accounting, & Force Bank Bondholders To Take Losses So the choice is simple - wait for the inevitable and get another Wall Street bailout jammed down your throat, or prepare wisely by circulating these basic talking points: Punish the bondholders, sack managements, turn operations over to the FDIC, investigate fraud, find the balance-sheet bombs, then prosecute. ## More proof that another bailout mind warp is on its way...
Watch this. Clip runs 30 seconds. Seminal quote. "We can either have a rational resolution to the foreclosure crisis or we can preserve the capital structure of the banks. We can't do both." Let me repeat myself from above: So the choice is simple - wait for the inevitable and get another Wall Street bailout jammed down your throat, or prepare wisely by circulating these basic talking points: Punish the bondholders, sack managements, turn operations over to the FDIC, investigate fraud, find the balance-sheet bombs, then prosecute. Repeat it over and over. It's even kinda catchy. http://dailybail.com/home/when-the-big-banks-come-crawling-back-screw-em-talking-point.html
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: Kilika on October 28, 2010, 04:44:38 PM And these banker clowns are now saying that it's no big deal, they'll just refile some paperwork and it's all fixed! UH NO! Fraud was committed, and therefore by "refiling", your tampering with evidence of a crime. Besides, once the process is violated the title is free and clear, as I believe it, with no one owning it but the homeowner. Even the originator is out of the deal having already made a deal and received compensation for the note when they pawned it off on the mortage market. If you don't own a title, you have no legal right to refile anything on said title. It's not yours, period. Dont' like it, take it to a judge and we'll see how it goes! How it will go, unless the courts go on the take and cut a deal, is the homeowner will have no mortgage on the home. The only one in the mix that financially has an interest in the deal is the last one that got caught holding a title they don't actually own as a servicer, and are now not able to resell the note to unload it. Unless the government steps in as they did with Freddy and Fanny and bought all those "bad notes" with money we don't have. So we get hung with a bad note, and debt we used to buy those notes that we can't pay back, and paying interest on that money we borrowed to the Federal Reserve bank, the very banking system that is guilty of this mess. A scam of epic proportions!
Quote from: LeftyLeo on October 28, 2010, 04:44:38 PM And these banker clowns are now saying that it's no big deal, they'll just refile some paperwork and it's all fixed! UH NO! Fraud was committed, and therefore by "refiling", your tampering with evidence of a crime. Besides, once the process is violated the title is free and clear, as I believe it, with no one owning it but the homeowner. Even the originator is out of the deal having already made a deal and received compensation for the note when they pawned it off on the mortage market. If you don't own a title, you have no legal right to refile anything on said title. It's not yours, period. Dont' like it, take it to a judge and we'll see how it goes! How it will go, unless the courts go on the take and cut a deal, is the homeowner will have no mortgage on the home. The only one in the mix that financially has an interest in the deal is the last one that got caught holding a title they don't actually own as a servicer, and are now not able to resell the note to unload it. Unless the government steps in as they did with Freddy and Fanny and bought all those "bad notes" with money we don't have. So we get hung with a bad note, and debt we used to buy those notes that we can't pay back, and paying interest on that money we borrowed to the Federal Reserve bank, the very banking system that is guilty of this mess. A scam of epic
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proportions!
Yep.... once the Promissory Note and Security Instrument are split the loan is considered NULL........ they don't have a legal leg to stand on, that is not to say they don't have judges in the pocket but nevertheless the WHOLE THING IS FRAUDULENT.........
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: Kilika on October 28, 2010, 05:25:56 PM Fraudulent indeed!
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: Rebelitarian on October 28, 2010, 05:29:22 PM Until fractional-reserve-banking becomes an issue like it was for the Constitution Party and Ron Paul America will continue to suffer. The Money Masters. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-515319560256183936&q=The+money+changers& ei=Zd4QSMjvB47YqAKQtJmzBA Make it viral folks.
Quote from: redeux on October 27, 2010, 10:04:11 PM this shit has back fired on them and I couldn't be happier....
I couldn't agree more!
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: citizenx on October 28, 2010, 06:40:15 PM Karma - at least that is what it should be. There should be no more market intervention. There shouldn't have been any in the first place. It merely bring "moral hazard" into play, time and time again. Reverse socialism doesn't work any better than the regular kind (really there is no socialism, it's all been various branches of Reverse Socialism Inc. (Corporatist Fascism). And it is high time that Corporatist Fascism got its comeuppance. Time for the books to be opened, once and for all. If "Foreclosuregate" is a prybar to open up more mischief, it will be a very good thing. Audit the Fed! (It will be ended five minutes after a proper audit is complete anyway.)
Quote from: citizenx on October 28, 2010, 06:40:15 PM Karma - at least that is what it should be. There should be no more market intervention. There shouldn't have been any in the first place. It merely bring "moral hazard" into play, time and time again. Reverse socialism doesn't work any better than the regular kind (really there is no socialism, it's all been various branches of Reverse Socialism Inc. (Corporatist Fascism). And it is high time that Corporatist Fascism got its comeuppance. Time for the books to be opened, once and for all. If "Foreclosuregate" is a prybar to open up more mischief, it will be a very good thing. Audit the Fed! (It will be ended five minutes after a proper audit is complete anyway.)
+1^1,000,000,000,000
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: citizenx on October 28, 2010, 08:33:22 PM Foreclosuregate: playing with systemic fire? Posted by Colin Barr October 26, 2010 2:08 pm Don't underestimate the risk foreclosuregate poses to the financial system. So say Robert Shiller, the Yale professor who was a leading skeptic of the financial bubbles of the past decade, and New York City Comptroller John Liu. They spoke Tuesday at The Economist magazine's annual Buttonwood conference, where they discussed how to manage systemic risk under the new world of regulatory reform. Much of the discussion focused on how to spot asset bubbles and the effectiveness of new rules such as July's Dodd- Frank Act. There was, inevitably, talk about whether the banks are undercapitalized even now, as Bank of England governor
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Mervyn King suggested yesterday, and about the risks posed by the massive side bets on markets through derivatives. But the latest twist in the United States' long-running housing crisis got special attention. Shiller said the danger of foreclosuregate -- the scandal in which it has come to light that the biggest banks have routinely mishandled homeownership documents, putting the legality of foreclosures and related sales in doubt -- is a replay of the 1930s, when Americans lost faith that institutions such as business and government were dealing fairly. continued:
http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/2sR54R/finance.fortune.cnn.com/2010/10/26/foreclosuregate-playing-with-systemicfire/?section=money_topstories
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: foreverfree on October 28, 2010, 09:29:43 PM
Quote from: redeux on October 28, 2010, 11:32:36 AM .. I suggest ANY homeowner that has a deed that is titled to MERS to IMMEDIATELY file suit.... with relief to quiet title.... we can at least push back for now........
I have found that my deed is listed to MERS. I purchased my home at the end of 2006 and have been current ever since. what would filing a lawsuit to quiet the title accomplish for me? would this just be a means from heading off any potential foreclosure notice in the future? could I EVER actually get a clean title out of this? Does this basically mean that I have a valid debt owed, but it is unenforceable against my home? basically I'm on the front end of this problem. I'm sitting on a bomb waiting to go off and wondering how I cut the fuse? Just sell now and let someone else deal with it?
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: citizenx on October 28, 2010, 10:49:46 PM So before the big banks ask for another handout to get them through their own self-created foreclosure fiasco, maybe we can get some answers about how the last bank bailouts (through the Fed discount window) were distributed and spent? Or not.
UPDATE: Banking Group Asks US Supreme Court To Hear Federal Reserve Bailout Case
This is not the same case as Mark Pittman's FOIA request to the Treasury for Citigroup asset-guarantee details. The issue here is much larger in scope and would require the Federal Reserve to disclose information on all emergency programs and recipients. This is the real transparency test. And it's incredibly infuriating. Few even care about the bailout details any more. We're just pissed off that the Federal Reserve won't tell us what they did. It's an affront to an open Democracy, but also proof that all along we've never had an open Democracy. Jefferson rots in his grave. And count me as one of the few who still cares about the details. I want to know what's been stuffed inside Maiden Lane I, II and III, and what type of toxic assets the Fed took as collateral. We already know they own Red Roof Inns. Let's see what else is in there. Story inside. Plus legal briefs. And 2 videos - one new, one classic. Very classic. --By Brent Kendall Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES WASHINGTON -(Dow Jones)- An association of large commercial banks on Tuesday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review a ruling that ordered the Federal Reserve to disclose information about the banks that borrowed from its discount window and other emergency lending programs during the financial crisis. In its petition to the high court, the Clearing House Association said disclosure of the information "threatens to harm the borrowing banks by allowing the public to observe their borrowing patterns during the recent financial crisis and draw inferences--whether justified or not--about their current financial conditions." Justice Department spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler said the U.S. solicitor general, the government's lawyer at the high court, would not be seeking Supreme Court review on behalf of the Fed. But since the banking group is pressing forward with the case, the Supreme Court will later have the option to invite the federal government to file a brief expressing its views on the case. Bloomberg LP's Bloomberg News sought the Fed disclosures under the Freedom of Information Act and sued the Fed when it denied their requests. The news organization sought the names of the borrowing banks, loan amounts, origination dates and the collateral involved. The New York-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in March that the Fed was required to disclose documents about bank borrowing from its last-resort lending programs. The Fed's Board of Governors and the Clearing House Association have argued that the ruling could severely undermine the
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Fed's ability to implement lending programs critical to the economy and monetary policy. After the 2nd Circuit refused in August to reconsider the case, it stayed its ruling for 60 days to give the parties the opportunity to petition the high court. source - dow jones ##
Legal trail of links provided by reader 'Cheyenne': The district court decision ordering the Fed to comply with Pittman's FOIA request... http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=595858462510045956&q=federal+reserve+bloomberg+freedom+preska& hl=en&as_sdt=400002 The 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals' decision affirming the district court's order... http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=3477959921372842887&q=federal+reserve+bloomberg+freedom+preska& hl=en&as_sdt=400002 Related: the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals' decision reversing another district court judge who ruled against Fox in its FOIA case against the Fed... http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=16783570369097718250&q=federal+reserve+bloomberg+freedom+preska& hl=en&as_sdt=400002 ---
Video: Dylan Ratigan with TARP Inpsector General Neil Barofsky - Oct. 26, 2010 Ratigan starts out hot, though Barofsky won't take the bait. Fed transparency, Mark Pittman, the Citigroup asset guarantee, lies from Obama -- it's all in here. "Keep printing Mr. Ben." ---
Video: The Federal Reserve owns the bankrupt Red Roof Inns All the detail on this clip and story ---
The historic battle for FED transparency - complete story background: MUST READ: Some bailout questions FED Czar 'Bernanke The Magnificent' STILL hasn't answered - WSJ Beatdown
Bloomberg Accuses The Fed Of Fear-Mongering & Hyperbolic Speculation In Fighting Transparency (Update On FOIA Appeal)
Fed Under Fire: Dorgan, Grassley Push Amendment Requiring Fed Compliance With Federal Court Orders
Who Sues the Fed And Wins? One Reporter On The Planet," Bloomberg's Mark Pittman Dies At 52
Mark Pittman 1, Bernanke 0 (FED Loses Latest Appeal To Limit Bailout Disclosure -- Supreme Court Is Next)
What Secret Is Tim Geithner Hiding About The Citigroup Bailout? The U.S. Treasury Spits On Transparency And The Grave Of Mark Pittman
Congratulations America! You Own Bankrupt Red Roof Inns (MUST SEE)
What An Audit Of The Fed Might Reveal About Maiden Lane I, II, III
Bernanke Feels The Heat: Maiden Lane Asset Disclosure Reveals Truth In Bailout Farce
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Did The Fed Lie About The Bear Stearns Bailout? Bloomberg & Congress Scrutinize Maiden Lane Assets
link: http://dailybail.com/home/update-banking-group-asks-us-supreme-court-to-hear-federal-r.html -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Will the next Fed bank bailouts be without strings as well? Unless we take steps to audit the Fed, undoubtedly. But why shouldn' the big banks use their private consortium (the Fed) to print of some more money for themselves by watering down our own -- if they can do it with impunity any time they want?
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: citizenx on October 28, 2010, 10:57:29 PM The Daily Bail National Debt & Deficit Portal. Bailout News. QE - The New American Bloodsport. Oct262010
'How To Forge A Client's Signature' And Other Lessons From Inside The Ameriquest Sub-Prime Sweatshop
Excerpt from the book The Monster, by Michael W. Hudson. Bait and Switch A few weeks after he started working at Ameriquest Mortgage, Mark Glover looked up from his cubicle and saw a coworker do something odd. The guy stood at his desk on the twenty-third floor of downtown Los Angeles's Union Bank Building. He placed two sheets of paper against the window. Then he used the light streaming through the window to trace something from one piece of paper to another. Somebody's signature. Glover was new to the mortgage business. He was twenty-nine and hadn't held a steady job in years. But he wasn't stupid. He knew about financial sleight of handat that time, he had a check-fraud charge hanging over his head in the L.A. courthouse a few blocks away. Watching his coworker, Glover's first thought was: How can I get away with that? As a loan officer at Ameriquest, Glover worked on commission. He knew the only way to earn the six-figure income Ameriquest had promised him was to come up with tricks for pushing deals through the mortgage-financing pipeline that began with Ameriquest and extended through Wall Street's most respected investment houses. Glover and the other twentysomethings who filled the sales force at the downtown L.A. branch worked the phones hour after hour, calling strangers and trying to talk them into refinancing their homes with high-priced "subprime" mortgages. It was 2003, subprime was on the rise, and Ameriquest was leading the way. The company's owner, Roland Arnall, had in many ways been the founding father of subprime, the business of lending money to home owners with modest incomes or blemished credit histories. He had pioneered this risky segment of the mortgage market amid the wreckage of the savings and loan disaster and helped transform his company's headquarters, Orange County, California, into the capital of the subprime industry. Now, with the housing market booming and Wall Street clamoring to invest in subprime, Ameriquest was growing with startling velocity. Up and down the line, from loan officers to regional managers and vice presidents, Ameriquest's employees scrambled at the end of each month to push through as many loans as possible, to pad their monthly production numbers, boost their commissions, and meet Roland Arnall's expectations. Arnall was a man "obsessed with loan volume," former aides recalled, a mortgage entrepreneur who believed "volume solved all problems." Whenever an underling suggested a goal for loan production over a particular time span, Arnall's favorite reply was: "We can do twice that." Close to midnight Pacific time on the last business day of each month, the phone would ring at Arnall's home in Los Angeles's exclusive Holmby Hills neighborhood, a $30 million estate that once had been home to Sonny and Cher.On the other end of the telephone line, a vice president in Orange County would report the month's production numbers for his lending empire. Even as the totals grew to $3 billion or $6 billion or $7 billion a monthfigures never before imagined in the subprime businessArnall wasn't satisfied. He wanted more. "He would just try to make you stretch beyond what you thought possible," one former Ameriquest executive recalled. "Whatever you did, no matter how good you did, it wasn't good enough." Inside Glover's branch, loan officers kept up with the demand to produce by guzzling Red Bull energy drinks, a favorite caffeine pick-me-up for hardworking salesmen throughout the mortgage industry. Government investigators would later joke that they could gauge how dirty a home-loan location was by the number of empty Red Bull cans in the Dumpster out back. Some of the crew in the L.A. branch, Glover said, also relied on cocaine to keep themselves going, snorting lines in washrooms and, on occasion, in their cubicles. The wayward behavior didn't stop with drugs. Glover learned that his colleague's art work wasn't a matter of saving a borrower the hassle of coming in to supply a missed signature. The guy was forging borrowers' signatures on governmentrequired disclosure forms, the ones that were supposed to help consumers understand how much cash they'd be getting out of the loan and how much they'd be paying in interest and fees. Ameriquest's deals were so overpriced and loaded with nasty surprises that getting customers to sign often required an elaborate web of psychological ploys, outright lies, and falsified papers. "Every closing that we had really was a bait and switch," a loan officer who worked for Ameriquest in Tampa, Florida, recalled. " 'Cause you could never get them to the table if you were honest." At companywide gatherings, Ameriquest's managers and sales reps loosened up with free alcohol and swapped tips for fooling borrowers and cooking up phony paperwork. What if a customer insisted he wanted a fixed-rate loan, but you could make more money by selling him an adjustable-rate one? No problem. Many Ameriquest salespeople learned to position a few fixed-rate loan documents at the top of the stack of paperwork to be signed by the borrower. They buried the real documentsthe ones indicating the loan had an adjustable rate that would rocket upward in two or three yearsnear the bottom of the pile. Then, after the borrower had flipped from signature line to signature line, scribbling his consent across the entire stack, and gone home, it was easy
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enough to peel the fixed-rate documents off the top and throw them in the trash. At the downtown L.A. branch, some of Glover's coworkers had a flair for creative documentation. They used scissors, tape, Wite-Out, and a photocopier to fabricate W-2s, the tax forms that indicate how much a wage earner makes each year. It was easy: Paste the name of a low-earning borrower onto a W-2 belonging to a higher-earning borrower and, like magic, a bad loan prospect suddenly looked much better. Workers in the branch equipped the office's break room with all the tools they needed to manufacture and manipulate official documents. They dubbed it the "Art Department." At first, Glover thought the branch might be a rogue office struggling to keep up with the goals set by Ameriquest's headquarters. He discovered that wasn't the case when he transferred to the company's Santa Monica branch. A few of his new colleagues invited him on a field trip to Staples, where everyone chipped in their own money to buy a state-of-the-art scanner-printer, a trusty piece of equipment that would allow them to do a better job of creating phony paperwork and trapping American home owners in a cycle of crushing debt. Carolyn Pittman was an easy target. She'd dropped out of high school to go to work, and had never learned to read or write very well. She worked for decades as a nursing assistant. Her husband, Charlie, was a longshoreman.In 1993 she and Charlie borrowed $58,850 to buy a one-story, concrete block house on Irex Street in a working-class neighborhood of Atlantic Beach, a community of thirteen thousand near Jacksonville, Florida. Their mortgage was government-insured by the Federal Housing Administration, so they got a good deal on the loan. They paid about $500 a month on the FHA loan, including the money to cover their home insurance and property taxes. Even after Charlie died in 1998, Pittman kept up with her house payments. But things were tough for her. Financial matters weren't something she knew much about. Charlie had always handled what little money they had. Her health wasn't good either. She had a heart attack in 2001, and was back and forth to hospitals with congestive heart failure and kidney problems. Like many older black women who owned their homes but had modest incomes, Pittman was deluged almost every day, by mail and by phone, with sales pitches offering money to fix up her house or pay off her bills. A few months after her heart attack, a salesman from Ameriquest Mortgage's Coral Springs office caught her on the phone and assured her he could ease her worries. He said Ameriquest would help her out by lowering her interest rate and her monthly payments. She signed the papers in August 2001. Only later did she discover that the loan wasn't what she'd been promised. Her interest rate jumped from a fixed 8.43 percent on the FHA loan to a variable rate that started at nearly 11 percent and could climb much higher. The loan was also packed with more than $7,000 in up-front fees, roughly 10 percent of the loan amount. Pittman's mortgage payment climbed to $644 a month. Even worse, the new mortgage didn't include an escrow for real-estate taxes and insurance. Most mortgage agreements require home owners to pay a bit extraoften about $100 to $300 a monthwhich is set aside in an escrow account to cover these expenses. But many subprime lenders obscured the true costs of their loans by excluding the escrow from their deals, which made the monthly payments appear lower. Many borrowers didn't learn they had been tricked until they got a big bill for unpaid taxes or insurance a year down the road. That was just the start of Pittman's mortgage problems. Her new mortgage was a matter of public record, and by taking out a loan from Ameriquest, she'd signaled to other subprime lenders that she was vulnerablethat she was financially unsophisticated and was struggling to pay an unaffordable loan. In 2003, she heard from one of Ameriquest's competitors, Long Beach Mortgage Company. Pittman had no idea that Long Beach and Ameriquest shared the same corporate DNA. Roland Arnall's first subprime lender had been Long Beach Savings and Loan, a company he had morphed into Long Beach Mortgage. He had sold off most of Long Beach Mortgage in 1997, but hung on to a portion of the company that he rechristened Ameriquest. Though Long Beach and Ameriquest were no longer connected, both were still staffed with employees who had learned the business under Arnall. A salesman from Long Beach Mortgage, Pittman said, told her that he could help her solve the problems created by her Ameriquest loan. Once again, she signed the papers. The new loan from Long Beach cost her thousands in up-front fees and boosted her mortgage payments to $672 a month. Ameriquest reclaimed her as a customer less than a year later. A salesman from Ameriquest's Jacksonville branch got her on the phone in the spring of 2004. He promised, once again, that refinancing would lower her interest rate and her monthly payments. Pittman wasn't sure what to do. She knew she'd been burned before, but she desperately wanted to find a way to pay off the Long Beach loan and regain her financial bearings. She was still pondering whether to take the loan when two Ameriquest representatives appeared at the house on Irex Street. They brought a stack of documents with them. They told her, she later recalled, that it was preliminary paperwork, simply to get the process started. She could make up her mind later. The men said, "sign here," "sign here," "sign here," as they flipped through the stack. Pittman didn't understand these were final loan papers and her signatures were binding her to Ameriquest. "They just said sign some papers and we'll help you," she recalled. To push the deal through and make it look better to investors on Wall Street, consumer attorneys later alleged, someone at Ameriquest falsified Pittman's income on the mortgage application. At best, she had an income of $1,600 a monthroughly $1,000 from Social Security and, when he could afford to pay, another $600 a month in rent from her son. Ameriquest's paperwork claimed she brought in more than twice that much$3,700 a month. The new deal left her with a house payment of $1,069 a monthnearly all of her monthly income and twice what she'd been paying on the FHA loan before Ameriquest and Long Beach hustled her through the series of refinancings. She was shocked when she realized she was required to pay more than $1,000 a month on her mortgage. "That broke my heart," she said. For Ameriquest, the fact that Pittman couldn't afford the payments was of little consequence. Her loan was quickly pooled, with more than fifteen thousand other Ameriquest loans from around the country, into a $2.4 billion "mortgage-backed securities" deal known as Ameriquest Mortgage Securities, Inc. Mortgage Pass-Through Certificates 2004-R7. The deal had been put together by a trio of the world's largest investment banks: UBS, JPMorgan, and Citigroup. These banks oversaw the accounting wizardry that transformed Pittman's mortgage and thousands of other subprime loans into investments sought
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after by some of the world's biggest investors. Slices of 2004-R7 got snapped up by giants such as the insurer MassMutual and Legg Mason, a mutual fund manager with clients in more than seventy-five countries. Also among the buyers was the investment bank Morgan Stanley, which purchased some of the securities and placed them in its Limited Duration Investment Fund, mixing them with investments in General Mills, FedEx, JC Penney, Harley-Davidson, and other household names. It was the new way of Wall Street. The loan on Carolyn Pittman's one-story house in Atlantic Beach was now part of the great global mortgage machine. It helped swell the portfolios of big-time speculators and middle-class investors looking to build a nest egg for retirement. And, in doing so, it helped fuel the mortgage empire that in 2004 produced $1.3 billion in profits for Roland Arnall. In the first years of the twenty-first century, Ameriquest Mortgage unleashed an army of salespeople on America. They numbered in the thousands. They were young, hungry, and relentless in their drive to sell loans and earn big commissions. One Ameriquest manager summed things up in an e-mail to his sales force: "We are all here to make as much f**king money as possible. Bottom line. Nothing else matters." Home owners like Carolyn Pittman were caught up in Ameriquest's push to become the nation's biggest subprime lender. The pressure to produce an ever-growing volume of loans came from the top. Executives at Ameriquest's home office in Orange County leaned on the regional and area managers; the regional and area managers leaned on the branch managers. And the branch managers leaned on the salesmen who worked the phones and hunted for borrowers willing to sign on to Ameriquest loans. Men usually ran things, and a frat-house mentality ruled, with plenty of partying and testosterone-fueled swagger. "It was like college, but with lots of money and power," Travis Paules, a former Ameriquest executive, said. Paules liked to hire strippers to reward his sales reps for working well after midnight to get loan deals processed during the end-ofthe-month rush. At Ameriquest branches around the nation, loan officers worked ten- and twelve-hour days punctuated by "Power Hours"do-or-die telemarketing sessions aimed at sniffing out borrowers and separating the real salesmen from the washouts. At the branch where Mark Bomchill worked in suburban Minneapolis, management expected Bomchill and other loan officers to make one hundred to two hundred sales calls a day. One manager, Bomchill said, prowled the aisles between desks like "a little Hitler," hounding salesmen to make more calls and sell more loans and bragging he hired and fired people so fast that one peon would be cleaning out his desk as his replacement came through the door.As with Mark Glover in Los Angeles, experience in the mortgage business wasn't a prerequisite for getting hired. Former employees said the company preferred to hire younger, inexperienced workers because it was easier to train them to do things the Ameriquest way. A former loan officer who worked for Ameriquest in Michigan described the company's business model this way: "People entrusting their entire home and everything they've worked for in their life to people who have just walked in off the street and don't know anything about mortgages and are trying to do anything they can to take advantage of them." Ameriquest was not alone. Other companies, eager to get a piece of the market for high-profit loans, copied its methods, setting up shop in Orange County and helping to transform the county into the Silicon Valley of subprime lending. With big investors willing to pay top dollar for assets backed by this new breed of mortgages, the push to make more and more loans reached a frenzy among the county's subprime loan shops. "The atmosphere was like this giant cocaine party you see on TV," said Sylvia Vega-Sutfin, who worked as an account executive at BNC Mortgage, a fast-growing operation headquartered in Orange County just down the Costa Mesa Freeway from Ameriquest's headquarters. "It was like this giant rush of urgency." One manager told Vega-Sutfin and her coworkers that there was no turning back; he had no choice but to push for mind-blowing production numbers. "I have to close thirty loans a month," he said, "because that's what my family's lifestyle demands." Michelle Seymour, one of Vega-Sutfin's colleagues, spotted her first suspect loan days after she began working as a mortgage underwriter at BNC's Sacramento branch in early 2005. The documents in the file indicated the borrower was making a six-figure salary coordinating dances at a Mexican restaurant. All the numbers on the borrower's W-2 tax form ended in zerosan unlikely happenstanceand the Social Security and tax bite didn't match the borrower's income. When Seymour complained to a manager, she said, he was blas, telling her, "It takes a lot to have a loan declined." BNC was no fly-by-night operation. It was owned by one of Wall Street's most storied investment banks, Lehman Brothers. The bank had made a big bet on housing and mortgages, styling itself as a player in commercial real estate and, especially, subprime lending. "In the mortgage business, we used to say, 'All roads lead to Lehman,' " one industry veteran recalled.Lehman had bought a stake in BNC in 2000 and had taken full ownership in 2004, figuring it could earn even more money in the subprime business by cutting out the middleman. Wall Street bankers and investors flocked to the loans produced by BNC, Ameriquest, and other subprime operators; the steep fees and interest rates extracted from borrowers allowed the bankers to charge fat commissions for packaging the securities and provided generous yields for investors who purchased them. Up-front fees on subprime loans totaled thousands of dollars. Interest rates often started out deceptively lowperhaps at 7 or 8 percentbut they almost always adjusted upward, rising to 10 percent, 12 percent, and beyond. When their rates spiked, borrowers' monthly payments increased, too, often climbing by hundreds of dollars. Borrowers who tried to escape overpriced loans by refinancing into another mortgage usually found themselves paying thousands of dollars more in backend fees"prepayment penalties" that punished them for paying off their loans early. Millions of these loanstied to modest homes in places like Atlantic Beach, Florida; Saginaw, Michigan; and East San Jose, Californiahelped generate great fortunes for financiers and investors. They also helped lay America's economy low and sparked a worldwide financial crisis. The subprime market did not cause the U.S. and global financial meltdowns by itself. Other varieties of home loans and a host of arcane financial innovationssuch as collateralized debt obligations and credit default swapsalso came into play. Nevertheless, subprime played a central role in the debacle. It served as an early proving ground for financial engineers who sold investors and regulators alike on the idea that it was possible, through accounting alchemy, to turn risky assets into "Triple-A-rated" securities that were nearly as safe as government bonds. In turn, financial wizards making bets with CDOs and credit default swaps used subprime mortgages as the raw material for their speculations. Subprime, as one market watcher said, was "the leading edge of a financial hurricane." This book tells the story of the rise and fall of subprime by chronicling the rise and fall of two corporate empires: Ameriquest and Lehman Brothers. It is a story about the melding of two financial cultures separated by a continent: Orange County and Wall Street. Ameriquest and its strongest competitors in subprime had their roots in Orange County, a sunny land of beauty and wealth that has a history as a breeding ground for white-collar crime: boiler rooms, S&L frauds, real-estate swindles. That history
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made it an ideal setting for launching the subprime industry, which grew in large measure thanks to bait-and-switch salesmanship and garden-variety deception. By the height of the nation's mortgage boom, Orange County was home to four of the nation's six biggest subprime lenders. Together, these four lendersAmeriquest, Option One, Fremont Investment & Loan, and New Centuryaccounted for nearly a third of the subprime market. Other subprime shops, too, sprung up throughout the county, many of them started by former employees of Ameriquest and its corporate forebears, Long Beach Savings and Long Beach Mortgage. Lehman Brothers was, of course, one of the most important institutions on Wall Street, a firm with a rich history dating to before the Civil War. Under its pugnacious CEO, Richard Fuld, Lehman helped bankroll many of the nation's shadiest subprime lenders, including Ameriquest. "Lehman never saw a subprime lender they didn't like," one consumer lawyer who fought the industry's abuses said.Lehman and other Wall Street powers provided the financial backing and sheen of respectability that transformed subprime from a tiny corner of the mortgage market into an economic behemoth capable of triggering the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. A long list of mortgage entrepreneurs and Wall Street bankers cultivated the tactics that fueled subprime's growth and its collapse, and a succession of politicians and regulators looked the other way as abuses flourished and the nation lurched toward disaster: Angelo Mozilo and Countrywide Financial; Bear Stearns, Washington Mutual, Wells Fargo; Alan Greenspan and the Federal Reserve; and many more. Still, no Wall Street firm did more than Lehman to create the subprime monster. And no figure or institution did more to bring subprime's abuses to life across the nation than Roland Arnall and Ameriquest. Among his employees, subprime's founding father was feared and admired. He was a figure of rumor and speculation, a mysterious billionaire with a rags-to-riches backstory, a hardscrabble street vendor who reinvented himself as a big-time real-estate developer, a corporate titan, a friend to many of the nation's most powerful elected leaders. He was a man driven, according to some who knew him, by a desire to conquer and dominate. "Roland could be the biggest bastard in the world and the most charming guy in the world," said one executive who worked for Arnall in subprime's early days. "And it could be minutes apart."He displayed his charm to people who had the power to help him or hurt him. He cultivated friendships with politicians as well as civil rights advocates and antipoverty crusaders who might be hostile to the unconventional loans his companies sold in minority and working-class neighborhoods. Many people who knew him saw him as a visionary, a humanitarian, a friend to the needy. "Roland was one of the most generous people I have ever met," a former business partner said.He also left behind, as another former associate put it, "a trail of bodies"a succession of employees, friends, relatives, and business partners who said he had betrayed them. In summing up his own split with Arnall, his best friend and longtime business partner said, "I was screwed."Another former colleague, a man who helped Arnall give birth to the modern subprime mortgage industry, said: "Deep down inside he was a good man. But he had an evil side. When he pulled that out, it was bad. He could be extremely cruel." When they parted ways, he said, Arnall hadn't paid him all the money he was owed. But, he noted, Arnall hadn't cheated him as badly as he could have. "He f**ked me. But within reason." Roland Arnall built a company that became a household name, but shunned the limelight for himself. The business partner who said Arnall had "screwed" him recalled that Arnall fancied himself a puppet master who manipulated great wealth and controlled a network of confederates to perform his bidding. Another former business associate, an underling who admired him, explained that Arnall worked to ingratiate himself to fair-lending activists for a simple reason: "You can take that straight out of The Godfather: 'Keep your enemies close.' " Michael W. Hudson is a staff writer at the Center for Public Integrity, a non-profit journalism organization. He previously worked as a reporter for the Wall Street Journal and as an investigator for the Center for Responsible Lending. The winner of a George Polk Award, Hudson has also written for Forbes, The Big Money, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and Mother Jones. He edited the award-winning book Merchants of Misery and appeared in the documentary film Maxed Out. He lives in Brooklyn, New York. The above is excerpted from THE MONSTER: How a Gang of Predatory Lenders and Wall Street Bankers Fleeced America--and Spawned a Global Crisis by Michael W. Hudson, just published by Times Books, an imprint of Henry Holt and Company, LLC. Copyright (c) 2010 by Michael W. Hudson. All rights reserved. http://dailybail.com/home/how-to-forge-a-clients-signature-and-other-lessons-from-insi.html ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------I almost went to work for those guys, too in LA. I worked in mortgages briefly in 06' -- I did one quick short-term re-fi for a friend and got out, but I learned a lot about the business in a short amount of time. I didn't wind up selling my soul, though. But, I probably came very close once again. Bunch of scamsters. Mortgage boiler-room.
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: citizenx on October 28, 2010, 11:02:10 PM Oh, and re. equal justice in America. The gov't doesn't want Goldman Sachs "revictimized". ???
U.S. wants courtroom sealed for Goldman trial

By Reuters Posted yesterday at 9:59 a.m. U.S. prosecutors asked a federal judge to seal the courtroom for part of the upcoming criminal trial of a former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. computer programmer, an effort to protect the secrecy of the banks high-frequency trading platform. Prosecutors said in a court filing that there is a compelling interest in favor of privacy for Goldman in the trial of the former
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employee, Sergey Aleynikov. They cited a federal law to protect owners of trade secrets and a desire not to cause the investment bank to be re-victimized through the release of confidential, proprietary trading secrets. Any public disclosure of a trade secret poses the substantial risk that the trade secrets value to its owner will be significantly diminished, if not destroyed outright, Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Facciponti wrote. continued: http://chicagobreakingbusiness.com/2010/10/u-s-asks-to-seal-courtroom-to-guard-goldman-secrets.html ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Goldman Sachs "revictimized"? WTF??????????????????????????
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: citizenx on October 28, 2010, 11:51:00 PM Banks Tumble As Next Collapse Begins - Foreclosuregate http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxwhWIb0VYQ&feature=share -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
U.S. Stocks Retreat as Banks Tumble on Foreclosure Concerns

By Elizabeth Stanton and Tara Lachapelle - Oct 15, 2010 5:28 AM GMT+0900 U.S. stocks declined, dragging benchmark indexes down from five-month highs, as financial companies slumped amid concern over growing legal scrutiny of home foreclosure practices. Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc. and Wells Fargo & Co. slid more than 4 percent to lead financial stocks in the Standard & Poors 500 Index to a 1.8 percent drop, the biggest among 10 industry groups. Apollo Group Inc. sparked a plunge in education stocks after withdrawing its forecast for fiscal 2011. Yahoo! Inc. gained 4.5 percent and EMC Corp. rose 4.5 percent on reports they may be takeover targets. The S&P 500 fell 0.4 percent to 1,173.81 at 4 p.m. in New York, paring its rebound from this years low on July 2 to 15 percent. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 1.51 points, or less than 0.1 percent, to 11,094.57. Investors are afraid of how much mortgage debt could actually come back onto banks balance sheets, said Anton Schutz, who manages $250 million of financial stocks at Mendon Capital Advisors Corp. in Rochester. People are really questioning the way these banks underwrote mortgages, their entire process. continued: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-14/u-s-stock-index-futures-advance-yahoo-chevron-climb-as-apollo-tumbles.html
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: citizenx on October 29, 2010, 03:16:48 AM (http://i1010.photobucket.com/albums/af223/dacitizen/oct282010_1.jpg) excerpt:
BIG BANKS VULNERABLE AGAIN

The next QE2 is a done deal but with the details missing. The next TARP-2 bailout package is having its justification and foundation fashioned from the building blocks of need and desperation, along with the cement provided by banking lobbies. The two initiatives will likely meld paths. A disorderly condition comes. An armada of lawyers is on the job ready to challenge mortgage securities, foreclosure orders, and much more. Class action lawsuits are on the docket. The US financial platforms are unraveling. The USDollar will follow a path to oblivion, locked in a destructive spiral. The Competing Currency War assures that other major nations will undermine, debase, and devalue their currencies rather than seek out, plan, and establish a new monetary system. The investment in a broken system will soon be realized as infinite, with unchecked spew, even $trillions tossed in Black Holes. The sound money experts have always argued that accelerated funds are required to maintain an asset bubble. That was vividly true with the housing bubble, which required a fleet of unqualified buyers to sustain the bubble in its final chapter. Gold will therefore skyrocket in price, as the monetary system will be actively ruined from unbridled growth in money creation. The silver price gains will be at least double the gold gains. Markets are beginning to take control, and kick aside the heavy handed control levers. The horizon features a big US bank on death watch. The ripple effects would be shocking even to those who expect it. Other big banks would be dragged down in a chain reaction, while illicit control in certain key markets would be stripped away. Control would be lost by the Powerz. The risk is for confusion to rein with rising chaos. The bank stock index BKX signals an imminent breakdown.
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The pressured bank stock index breakdown is led by Bank of America, HSBC, and Wells Fargo. The Wall Street firms remain protected bastions. The comprehensive improprieties and malfeasance in a chain link, from home loan origination to bond securitization to debt ratings to ultimate foreclosure, reveals a protected broken bankrupt system with a foul stench. Its financial status will be clearly broken soon in full view. Further accounting fraud sanctioned by the FASB might come about, but the date with the destiny of failure is assured. My best source from the banking world believes the wheels are coming off the renegade wagon. Pursuit of a fair gold price follows when HSBC fails, and that event is imminent. That wagon train has trademarks bearing the name USGovt and Wall Street nameplates, a merged enterprise. Great risk comes since HSBC manages the SPDR gold exchange traded fund for its gold bullion inventory (symbol GLD). To those who were shocked by the mortgage fraud, even more shock is assured by the gold market. The biggest banks have sanctioned outsized uneconomical short positions in the gold futures contract arena with notional value over $2 trillion. My expectation is for GLD fund lawsuits to line up by investors, since most of their gold has been leased by the COMEX and LBMA, since many of its shares have been used to cover short gold contracts.
http://www.kitco.com/ind/willie/oct282010.html
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: Kilika on October 29, 2010, 04:21:31 AM
Quote from: foreverfree on October 28, 2010, 09:29:43 PM I have found that my deed is listed to MERS. I purchased my home at the end of 2006 and have been current ever since. what would filing a lawsuit to quiet the title accomplish for me? would this just be a means from heading off any potential foreclosure notice in the future? could I EVER actually get a clean title out of this? Does this basically mean that I have a valid debt owed, but it is unenforceable against my home? basically I'm on the front end of this problem. I'm sitting on a bomb waiting to go off and wondering how I cut the fuse? Just sell now and let someone else deal with it?
I am not a lawyer, nor do I pretend to be one. Reader beware... The problem is if the note is in the MERS, there is a great chance that the note was not legally transfered in the process of the original note holder to the next. Just like a car, when you buy it, your name must be placed on the title with the motor vehicle department, right? The person who buys the car from you must do the same thing, or they don't own the car legally, you do, regardless of how much money the buyer gave you. That money ends up a civil suit isssue between the two of you if the buyer wants his money back when he learns he doesn't own the car because of improper title transfer when you sold the car to him. The buyer is out his money to you, unless he can sue you in civil court in a whole seperate case. Why would you sue the servicer before any late payments and your making payments on time? I personally believe from a legal standpoint, it makes sense because you would reverse the deal and question why you are making payments to the current servicer if the servicer doesn't legally own the title? So your challeging the servicer to prove they have the right to receive payment on the mortgage from you. It's a legal way to make them prove their part of the deal is legal due to recent new information and evidence, which you would cite as a reason for the challenge of title ownership. I think the big point people are missing is that this is all a contract law issue. It's all about the legal transfer of title, and what the law says about those kinds of contracts when all terms are not met legally. It is my understanding that in the case of a title transfer of ownership, if not done legally, that voids the claim to any legal claims in relation to the title. They are not legal owners of the note, so they have no legal right to any apsect of the title, period, including any payments on the mortgage. The reason being is because once the deal is done fraudulently, that voids the whole deal, but previous parties that thought(or not) they held the title when they sold it have already legally removed themselves from any claim to the title. the last servicer to buy the note is the one stuck holding the bag, money wise, and ownership of title now has no legal owner, and thus reverts back to the legal homeowner. You made a deal with the original mortage people, and they made a deal to back out of holding you to the note and "sold" the note to somebody else. They gave up legal claim to the note, and now have no claim. It's gone for them, because they already got money on it from the people they sold it to, and so it goes down the line, all the while ownership of title was not being legally transfered to each servicer along the way. That nullifies the mortgage, because regardless of what the homeowner does, the other side of the mortgage, the servicer must also abide by the terms of the mortgage. At issue most is the process these thugs were following. They were knowingly committing fraud by submitting paperwork they knew was not done as contract law demands, and that means they submitted fraudulent paperwork through the court system. They have been knowingly defrauding both homeowners and the government. You can go to jail for filing a false police report, but this is much more than that. The whole point is false claims in a court of law, and failure to abide by the terms of the mortgage process. You would sue because there is serious legal doubts as to who legally owns your mortgage. Going to court proactively is simply asking if the servicer really owns the note. If they cannot prove they do, you now own your home free and clear because the mortage is legally null and void. No one else has any legal claim to the note. You did your part, but they haven't done theirs, and that violates the terms they agreed to abide by. That is not your fault. Suing makes them prove they have a valid claim to the monthly payments you've been making. If they can't prove it, that means they have been stealing your money every month. I would go so far as to say the homeowner may have legal claim to demand any previous payments be paid back to the homeowner as the servicer would not have had claim at any point, so they shouldn't have gotten any payments at all. If the current servicer wants their money back, they can't get it from the homeowner legally because they have no legal ownership of the title, so, their only option is to sue the people they bought the note from. That is a civil matter they must deal with, not the homeowner.
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Quote from: LeftyLeo on October 29, 2010, 04:21:31 AM I am not a lawyer, nor do I pretend to be one. Reader beware...
LOL.....great post..... I will add the following....
If you are current;

I would send a "produce the note" letter to the servicing agent on your mortgage, by law they 20 days to acknowledge receipt of your letter, then have 60 days to produce the note.... that is a secured lien chaining back to the promissory note, moreover they must posses the Promissory Note and it must indicate they are the
it WILL NOT, AND THEREFORE IT IS NOT LEGAL BECAUSE THE COURTHOUSE IN CO. HAS THE SECURITY INSTRUMENT SHOWING MERS AS SOLE BENEFICIARY WITH THE POWER OF SALE, BUT THEY ARE NOT A LENDER!!! MOREOVER YOU WILL HAVE IN YOUR CLOSING DOCUMENTS A PROMISSORY NOTE CHAINING BACK TO THE ORIGINAL LENDER, MERS STEPPED IN SUPPOSEDLY ELECTRONICALLY SCANNED THAT AND THEN FACILITATED THE LIEN SUCH THAT THE "NOTE" COULD BE SOLD, BUT AGAIN THE LIEN IN THE COURTHOUSE SHOWS WHO THE BENEFICIARY IS!!!! AND IT IS NOT THE CURRENT SERVICER, BECAUSE THE ORIGINAL "NOTE" HOLDER GAVE AWAY IT'S RIGHTS TO FORECLOSE ON YOUR PROPERTY.....SO THE QUESTION BEG'S WHO THE F*CK "OWNS" THE NOTE, AND WHO DO I MAKE MY PAYMENT TO, IN FACT THE ENTITY THAT YOU OR I ARE CURRENTLY MAKING PAYMENT TO ARE THEY THE LAWFUL BENEFICIARY, I.E. SECURED PARTY IN THE ARRANGEMENT..... THEY ARE NOT, AND IF THEY DON'T PRODUCE A LEGAL NOTE, YOU SUE THEM... HERE IS THE PROCESS
"HOLDER IN DUE COURSE", The lender Must prove according to The Uniform Commercial Code or UCC (Section 3-309) which states that a person can enforce a promissory note without having the original, BUT only under certain limited circumstances. All of the following must be proven:
The plaintiff has to claim that it no longer has the original note; The plaintiff has to prove that it was properly in possession of the note and had standing to enforce it WHEN they lost possession of the note; The Plaintiff has to prove it didnt lose the Note simply because it transferred it to someone else; The Plaintiff has to prove that it cannot produce the original note, because the instrument was destroyed, or its whereabouts cannot be determined, or it was stolen by someone who had no right to it.
It is up to the Court to determine whether the lender has satisfactorily explained why it no longer can produce the original note. The Court also has to be satisfied that when the original note was lost, the person trying to foreclose on the property had possession of the note at the time it was lost. Until the Court has been satisfied of all of this, they can not foreclose on you! The Courts are really starting to understand that this is not merely a technicality, and the judge should not be satisfied with anything less than full proof of Holder in Due Course. Even still you will be "AT RISK", so seek a motion to QUIET TITLE.... If the Court has found that the original note was lost and the foreclosure sale is finalized, then later an entity shows up with the original note and proves that it is the Holder in Due Courseof the note, You are STILL LIABLE, but if you seek the QUIET TITLE they are SHIT OUTTA LUCK!!!
take my case (I live in Ga); My original loan promissory note was to a mortgage broker LLP, inc. in Delaware, operating in TX, who received funds from one of two listed "warehouse" banks. 1. Wachovia Bank, NA 2. BOA The note was then issued to the mortgage broker. Then the security deed was issued. The Lender (it is that LLP that is organized under Delaware law, but addressed in TX) WHO HOLDS THE NOTE, then presents MERS as nominee and surrendered its rights to MERS...... then it within 1 month sold the "Note" to BOA, who had BAC Home Loan Servicing LLP formerly COUNTRYWIDE service the note..... NOW MY CASE IS THIS.....
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A. IF THE ORIGINAL NOTE HOLDER GAVE ITS RIGHTS TO MERS, THE RIGHT SPECIFICALLY TO FORECLOSE, AND BOA BOUGHT THE NOTE AND HAS BAC SERVICE THE LOAN, WHO CAN FORECLOSE? WHO HAS THE SECURITY INSTRUMENT TO FORECLOSE? MERS...... CAN MERS HOLD POWER OF SALE AS STATED IN THE SECURITY DEED? NO... SO EVEN IF BOA HAS THE ORIGINAL NOTE I SIGNED TO THE MORTGAGE BROKER IN THEIR POSESSION.... IS IT SECURE? HOW COULD IT BE SECURE IF MERS HOLDS THE POWER OF SALE....... THAT IS WHY I BROUGHT UP CARPENTER V. LONGAN, 83 U. S. 271 (1872)..... THE JUSTICE RULED THAT;
The note and mortgage are inseparable; the former as essential, the latter as an incident. An assignment of the note carries the mortgage with it, while an assignment of the latter alone is a nullity.
TO SUGGEST THAT BOA OR ITS SERVICER BAC HAVE THE POWER OF SALE WITHOUT POSSESSING THE LIEN THAT GRANTS THE RIGHT TO FORECLOSE VIOLATES OVER 100 YRS OF PRECEDENT... FURTHERMORE.... TO ABSOLUTELY BEAT THE SHIT OUTTA THIS DEAD HORSE..... GA. SUPREME COURT HAD THIS RULING;
Finally, because we construe the trial court's grant of partial summary judgment as enjoining the foreclosure sale based solely on the foregoing two grounds, the trial court, on remand, may address issues such as the appropriate relief to be granted against MERS on the default judgment and such as whether MERS, as a nominee for the original lender and its successors, has the power to foreclose on an existing security deed either with or without the participation of the existing note holder.
FROM THE FEDERAL COURT RULING IN THE BOYKO CASE
http://commercialforeclosureblog.typepad.com/indiana_commercial_forecl/files/BoykoOpinion.pdf (http://commercialforeclosureblog.typepad.com/indiana_commercial_forecl/files/BoykoOpinion.pdf)
In each of the above-captioned Complaints, the named Plaintiff alleges it is the holder and owner of the Note and Mortgage. However, the attached Note and Mortgage identify the mortgagee and promisee as the original lending institution one other than the named Plaintiff. BOOM GOTTA YOU DIRTY F*CKERS!!!!!!! Further, the Preliminary Judicial Report attached as an exhibit to the Complaint makes no reference to the named Plaintiff in the recorded chain of title/interest. The Courts Amended General Order No. 2006-16 requires Plaintiff to submit an affidavit along with the Complaint, which identifies Plaintiff either as the original mortgage holder, or as an assignee, Case 1:07-cv-02282-CAB Document 11 Filed 10/31/2007 Page 2 of 6 -3- trustee or successor-in-interest. Once again, the affidavits submitted in all these cases recite the averment that Plaintiff is the owner of the Note and Mortgage, without any mention of an assignment or trust or successor interest. Consequently, the very filings and submissions of the Plaintiff create a conflict. I COULD GO ON AND ON..... SORRY FOR THE CAPS BUT I AM SCREAMING HERE AT MY COMPUTER......
Goldman Sachs "revictimized"? WTF??????????????????????????
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X 10^100,000,000,000,000,000
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: open your eyes on October 29, 2010, 09:33:59 AM
Quote from: redeux on October 28, 2010, 05:19:09 PM Yep.... once the Promissory Note and Security Instrument are split the loan is considered NULL........ they don't have a legal leg to stand on, that is not to say they don't have judges in the pocket but nevertheless the WHOLE THING IS FRAUDULENT.........
Redeux, I appreciate your contributions to the thread. What do you mean by the promissory note being split from the security instrument? Is that referring to the chain of title? I'm not a homeowner but I'm tryin to explain all this. Right now, its like 1 question is leading to 4 more, appreciate any response
Quote from: open your eyes on October 29, 2010, 09:33:59 AM Redeux, I appreciate your contributions to the thread. What do you mean by the promissory note being split from the security instrument? Is that referring to the chain of title? I'm not a homeowner but I'm tryin to explain all this. Right now, its like 1 question is leading to 4 more, appreciate any response
These formerly secured mortgages (not technically a mere "unsecured loan") where (fully) paid to the mortgagers (lien holders) by bundling them up and selling them in bulk (at bulk-discount rates) to a (unknown number of) third party "bond packager(s)" income assignees, who are little more than bulk-diluted collection agencies in sheep's clothing. The security liens of each (actual mortgage asset-management-interest parts) where then also illegally transferred (thus-assigned without lawful official mortgage transfer title-transference fees) to this fourth party MERS operation. The buyers of the Mortgage Backed Security (MBS) junk bonds thus merely bought "equity"-shares in some particularly bundled-pool of debt-collection troubled-asset "Bond Packager's Op" collection business, not any genuine traceable-interest in any particular specific individual "mortgage-backed" debt. The "Bond Packager's Op" collection businesses only have recourse to the their shares in the "MERS operation's" repo-business losses/profits, not the mortgages assets themselves, and MERS has no official, clear, genuinely registered lien-claim on any specific registered land title or titles. Furthermore it seems that multiple claims on the same titles have been illegally parted-off and/or illegally re-sold by Mortgagers to multiple income-bond packagers, holus-bolus in outright frauds due to the destruction of physical mortgage documents under the guess of "going paperless" within the MERS bundling-agglomeration-scams. In short, the original Mortgagers have been paid (prepaid to them at an agreed discount by other means) and thus their once-registered liens on the real estate "security" are thus no longer valid upon the Mortgagees. The third and fourth party MBS rackets thus only hold interest in plain confidence-game loans.
Quote from: open your eyes on October 29, 2010, 09:33:59 AM Redeux, I appreciate your contributions to the thread. What do you mean by the promissory note being split from the security instrument? Is that referring to the chain of title? I'm not a homeowner but I'm tryin to explain all this. Right now, its like 1 question is leading to 4 more, appreciate any response
yes... NOW I AM NOT A LAWYER, I AM ENGINEER, SO CHANCES ARE I AM MORE QUALIFIED THAN MOST LAWYERS BECAUSE I KNOW HOW TO SOLVE PROBLEMS...LOL
The promissory note was signed by the actual lender, then the actual lender forfeited its rights to be the beneficiary of the loan, with the power to sale to MERS, to have and to hold until the terms of the loan are met...... this is the split, by law the loan is unsecured, the party at risk is operating through proxy to secure the loan, but legally the entity securing the loan has no right to the loan....... the traditional method is the lender is both the deed holder and the note holder......
If you have a car loan, and you default, who repossesses the vehicle? The title holder.... which is the at risk party.... Homes>Cars.... so why are they so different now in securitization of the asset?
Quote from: agentbluescreen on October 29, 2010, 10:26:40 AM These formerly secured mortgages (not technically a mere "unsecured loan") where (fully) paid to the mortgagers (lien holders) by bundling them up and selling them in bulk (at bulk-discount rates) to a (unknown number of) third party "bond packager(s)" income assignees, who are little more than bulk-diluted collection agencies in sheep's clothing. The security liens of each (actual mortgage asset-management-interest parts) where then also illegally transferred (thus-assigned without lawful official mortgage transfer title-transference fees) to this fourth party MERS operation. The buyers of the Mortgage Backed Security (MBS) junk bonds thus merely bought "equity"-shares in some particularly bundled-pool of debt-collection troubled-asset "Bond Packager's Op" collection business, not any genuine traceable-interest in any particular specific individual "mortgage-backed" debt. The "Bond Packager's Op" collection businesses only have recourse to the their shares in the "MERS operation's" repo-business losses/profits, not the mortgages assets themselves, and MERS has no official, clear, genuinely registered lien-claim on any specific registered land title or titles. Furthermore it seems that multiple claims on the same titles have been illegally parted-off and/or illegally re-sold by Mortgagers to multiple income-bond packagers, holus-bolus in outright frauds due to the destruction of physical mortgage documents under the guess of "going paperless" within the MERS bundling-agglomeration-scams.
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In short, the original Mortgagers have been paid (prepaid to them at an agreed discount by other means) and thus their once-registered liens on the real estate "security" are thus no longer valid upon the Mortgagees. The third and fourth party MBS rackets thus only hold interest in plain confidence-game loans.
absolutely these crooks made money going and coming on this ponzi scheme....... all because of fractional reserve banking and the invention of limitless worthless dollars......
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: Kilika on October 29, 2010, 12:06:26 PM Don't forget OPM! "Why spend your own worthless cash when you can get the government to give you the public's worthless cash" seems to be their SOP. Fractional banking allows them to float what they don't have long enough that they can close the back end of the deal and take their profits before the bills come due, thereby never spending any of their own cash. All they have to do is pledge a given amount of credit for that given loan which might expire in say 30 days, but do a deal with that cash in 2 weeks or 2 days. They all know how it's done and work with each other in pulling off the floating of deals. Everybody wins, at least those that are in on these deals. I think legally it's called collusion with intent to defraud. The whole chain of the deal has to land somewhere, and it usually is at the point when the payments stop, so then the servicer does it's robo threats with foreclosure, and if payments resume, nobody is the wiser. It's when the title is challenged and the servicer's right to seek forclosure that things unravel. So long as home owners weren't even aware of what's been going on, they could shuffle thousands of mortages all over the place, and nobody knew any different. I don't know if this was all a planned effort but it seems it was, and if it was, I sure hope they knew full well it would unravel at some point rather soon. Otherwise that would make them complete idiots if they actually thought they could get away with it by shortcutting legal requirements to be able to sell bundled notes as an asset. That's outright criminal.
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: foreverfree on October 29, 2010, 12:12:33 PM thanks for the replies. I have found further fraud in mys mortgage documents and have contacted a lawyer in my state, Tennessee. Under my note, we agreed to pay a certain price at a certain interest rate. Listed under the Truth-in-lending disclosure statement, it has listed a "financed amount" that is about $3,000 SMALLER than what the note says, but the interest rate charged is almost a full point HIGHER than what the note says! This means I'm overpaying and after 30 years could equal $40,000+ in overpayments!!!
Now, what I'm wondering is how much sueing the lender over this MERS crap could potentially cost? Attorney fees rack up quick and the house isn't worth but maybe $130k
Quote from: foreverfree on October 29, 2010, 12:12:33 PM thanks for the replies. I have found further fraud in mys mortgage documents and have contacted a lawyer in my state, Tennessee. Under my note, we agreed to pay a certain price at a certain interest rate. Listed under the Truth-in-lending disclosure statement, it has listed a "financed amount" that is about $3,000 SMALLER than what the note says, but the interest rate charged is almost a full point HIGHER than what the note says! This means I'm overpaying and after 30 years could equal $40,000+ in overpayments!!!
...don't just file for quiet on the title sue them for the amortized amount that extra point added over 30 yrs..... lets say the $130 k loan at 5.5% 30 yrs = $265,725.25 now if they charged you a full point more you pay $295,807.83 so sue them for $295,807.83... plus quiet on the title with them to pay your lawyer fees as well........
Quote from: LeftyLeo on October 29, 2010, 12:06:26 PM Otherwise that would make them complete idiots if they actually thought they could get away with it by shortcutting legal requirements to be able to sell bundled notes as an asset. That's outright criminal.
^^^^^^^^^^^^this
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: foreverfree on October 29, 2010, 02:24:39 PM
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Quote from: redeux on October 29, 2010, 12:52:55 PM
...don't just file for quiet on the title sue them for the amortized amount that extra point added over 30 yrs..... lets say the $130 k loan at 5.5% 30 yrs = $265,725.25 now if they charged you a full point more you pay $295,807.83 so sue them for $295,807.83... plus quiet on the title with them to pay your lawyer fees as well........
(http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y75/bearvomit/WHAT-1.gif)
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: open your eyes on October 29, 2010, 03:24:29 PM
Quote from: redeux on October 29, 2010, 10:35:23 AM yes... NOW I AM NOT A LAWYER, I AM ENGINEER, SO CHANCES ARE I AM MORE QUALIFIED THAN MOST LAWYERS BECAUSE I KNOW HOW TO SOLVE PROBLEMS...LOL
The promissory note was signed by the actual lender, then the actual lender forfeited its rights to be the beneficiary of the loan, with the power to sale to MERS, to have and to hold until the terms of the loan are met...... this is the split, by law the loan is unsecured, the party at risk is operating through proxy to secure the loan, but legally the entity securing the loan has no right to the loan....... the traditional method is the lender is both the deed holder and the note holder...... If you have a car loan, and you default, who repossesses the vehicle? The title holder.... which is the at risk party.... Homes>Cars.... so why are they so different now in securitization of the asset?
thank you so much. So, as MERS attempts to securitize the loan, Are the banks makin $$$ on that transaction(s) as well?
The Fed Bought Fraud

Greg Hunter USAWatchdog.com October 29, 2020 In the wake of the financial meltdown of 2008, the Federal Reserve announced it would buy mortgage-backed securities, or MBS. The January announcement by the Fed said it would buy MBS from failed mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the amount of $1.25 trillion. At the time, the Fed said in a press release, The goal of the program was to provide support to mortgage and housing markets and to foster improved conditions in financial markets more generally. (Click here for the full Fed statement.) It did provide support to the mortgage market, but did it also buy fraud and cover the banks that sold it? The evidence shows, at the very least, it bought massive amounts of fraud. We now know the Fed definitely bought valueless MBS because it has joined other ripped-off investors to demand Bank of America buy back billions in sour home debt. A Bloomberg story from just last week, featuring Philadelphia Fed President Charles Plosser, reports, The New York Fed, which acquired mortgage debt in the 2008 rescues of Bear Stearns Cos. and American International Group Inc., has joined a bondholder group that aims to force Bank of America Corp.to buy back some bad home loans packaged into $47 billion of securities. On the one hand, the Fed has a duty to the taxpayer to try to collect on behalf of the taxpayer on these mortgages, Plosser said today at an event in Philadelphia.
Mr. Plosser lamented the difficult spot the central bank is in because it is both bank regulator and plaintiff. He said, Should we be in the business of suing the financial institutions that we are in fact responsible for supervising? (Click here to read the complete Bloomberg story.) To that question, I ask shouldnt the Fed have done a much better job of supervising the big banks in the first place? The whole financial and mortgage crisis from sour securities to foreclosure fraud is in the process of blowing sky high. The entire mess is clearly the biggest financial fraud in history! It looks to me like the regulators were just supervising their pay checks being deposited into the bank. for link to entire article see: http://www.infowars.com/the-fed-bought-fraud/
Quote from: open your eyes on October 29, 2010, 03:24:29 PM thank you so much. So, as MERS attempts to securitize the loan, Are the banks makin $$$ on that transaction(s) as well?
yes they SAVE money by not having to re-record the Deed every f*cking time the damn thing is sold..... MERS only purpose is to streamline/facilitate the MBS bond trade....$$$$$
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: citizenx on October 29, 2010, 08:39:57 PM From Time Magazine:
Will Bankers go to Jail for Foreclosure-gate?
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Posted by Stephen Gandel Tuesday, October 19, 2010 at 11:37 pm 13 Comments Related Topics: foreclosures
Foreclosure-gate is getting uglier by the day (Carlos Barria/REUTERS) More and more, Foreclosure-gate is looking like the housing bust's Enron. One of the amazing developments of the unraveling of the financial crisis has been the fact that there have been so few people we can actually point to and say without a doubt that guy or gal is a crook. Yes, Bernie Madoff and his fellow ponziers, but they were only flushed out by the financial crisis. They didn't really cause it. The Bear Stearns hedgies beat their case. The mastermind of AIG's demise Joe Cassano looks to have made a clean getaway. Lehman's Dick Fuld is still in the clear. Goldman and just last week Countrywide's executives had to pay out large fines. But none of them are headed to jail. John Paulson and other hedge funds that help construct CDO debt bombs and bet against them, haven't even been forced to give some of their winnings back. I can't think of anyone of any real consequence who is facing hard time. Thanks to foreclosure-gate that may soon change.
Read more: http://curiouscapitalist.blogs.time.com/2010/10/19/will-bankers-go-to-jail-for-foreclosure-gate/#ixzz13o1pfeaG -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Don't pay any attention to MERS/Foreclosuregate right now, though. We got toner bombs! ::)
Land Titles Are FOOKED - In Their Own Words

Watch the spin machine on this one.... Three major title insurance companies - First American Financial, Old Republic International and Stewart Information Services - told Wall Street analysts in conference calls Thursday that they had decided not to demand written indemnifications from lenders re-selling foreclosed homes. Combined, the three companies account for 52 percent of the title insurance market. "Decided"? Uh, no. Here's the truth, in the same article: "It's our understanding that in the marketplace, some servicers have indicated under no circumstances will they provide an indemnification," Gilmore said. Got it? Why would you not provide an indemnity agreement if you know your processes are ok? Remember, the banks have said that all the chain of title issues and their foreclosure process is substantively ok, and contains only "procedural errors." My response: Nobody is bothered providing an indemnity against something that carries no actual risk. When I negotiated the sale of MCSNet there were various representations and warranties ("indemnities") that were provided to the purchasing firm related to the veracity of what I had provided to them during their diligence process, most-particularly the state of the firm's finances (e.g. cash, receivables, payables and debts, etc.) Why would I refuse to provide an indemnity on that material unless I know I'm lying? My conclusion: The servicers - the big banks - are lying and the chain of title on all these properties is severely damaged and might be completely trashed. Govern yourself accordingly. http://market-ticker.org/post=170691
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: citizenx on October 29, 2010, 08:50:09 PM Friday, October 29, 2010 Fraud Caused the 1930s Depression and the Current Financial Crisis
Robert Shiller - one of the top housing experts in the United States - says that the mortgage fraud is a lot like the fraud which occurred during the Great Depression. As Fortune notes:
Shiller said the danger of foreclosuregate -- the scandal in which it has come to light that the biggest banks have routinely mishandled homeownership documents, putting the legality of foreclosures and related sales in doubt -- is a replay of the
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1930s, when Americans lost faith that institutions such as business and government were dealing fairly. The former chief accountant of the S.E.C., Lynn Turner, told the New York Times that fraud helped cause the Great Depression:
The amount of gimmickry and outright fraud dwarfs any period since the early 1970's, when major accounting scams like Equity Funding surfaced, and the 1920's, when rampant fraud helped cause the crash of 1929 and led to the creation of the S.E.C. Economist Robert Kuttner writes: In 1932 through 1934 the Senate Banking Committee, led by its Chief Counsel Ferdinand Pecora, ferreted out the deeper fraud and corruption that led to the Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression. Similarly, Tom Borgers refers to: The 1930s Pecora Commission, which investigated the fraud that led to the Great Depression .... Professor William K. Black writes: The original Pecora investigation documented the causes of the economic collapse that led to the Great Depression. It ... established that conflicts of interest and fraud were common among elite finance and government officials. The Pecora investigations provided the factual basis that produced a consensus that the financial system and political allies were corrupt. Moreover, the Glass Steagall Act was passed because of the fraudulent use of normal bank deposits for speculative invesments. As the Congressional Research Service notes: In the Great Depression after 1929, Congress examined the mixing of the commercial and investment banking industries that occurred in the 1920s. Hearings revealed conflicts of interest and fraud in some banking institutions securities activities. A formidable barrier to the mixing of these activities was then set up by the Glass Steagall Act. Economist James K. Galbraith wrote in the introduction to his father, John Kenneth Galbraith's, definitive study of the Great Depression, The Great Crash, 1929: The main relevance of The Great Crash, 1929 to the great crisis of 2008 is surely here. In both cases, the government knew what it should do. Both times, it declined to do it. In the summer of 1929 a few stern words from on high, a rise in the discount rate, a tough investigation into the pyramid schemes of the day, and the house of cards on Wall Street would have tumbled before its fall destroyed the whole economy. In 2004, the FBI warned publicly of "an epidemic of mortgage fraud." But the government did nothing, and less than nothing, delivering instead low interest rates, deregulation and clear signals that laws would not be enforced. The signals were not subtle: on one occasion the director of the Office of Thrift Supervision came to a conference with copies of the Federal Register and a chainsaw. There followed every manner of scheme to fleece the unsuspecting ....
This was fraud, perpetrated in the first instance by the government on the population, and by the rich on the poor.
***
The government that permits this to happen is complicit in a vast crime. As the Great Crash, 1929 documents, there were many fraudulent schemes which occurred in the 1920s and which helped cause the Great Depression. Here's one example of a pyramid scheme in Florida real estate: (http://i1010.photobucket.com/albums/af223/dacitizen/ponzi2.jpg) (http://i1010.photobucket.com/albums/af223/dacitizen/ponzi1.jpg) Mr. Ponzi An enterprising Bostonian, Mr. Charles Ponzi, developed a subdivision near Jacksonville. It was approximately sixty-five miles west of the city. (In other respects Ponzi believed in good, compact neighborhoods ; he sold twenty-three lots to the acre.) In instances where the subdivision was close to town, as in the case of Manhattan Estates, which were not more than three fourths of a mile from the prosperous and fast-growing city of Nettie, the city, as was so of Nettie, did not exist. The congestion of traffic into the state became so severe that in the autumn of 1925 the railroads were forced to proclaim an embargo on less essential freight, which included building materials for developing the subdivisions. Values rose wonderfully. Within forty miles of Miami inside lots sold at from $8,000 to $20,000; waterfront lots brought from $15,000 to $25,000, and more or less bona fide seashore sites brought $20,000 to $75,000. As DoctorHousingBubble notes: This Mr. Ponzi of course is the man who gave name to the Ponzi scheme that many use today. He laid the groundwork for many of the criminals today in the housing industry. Yet during the boom he wasnt seen as a criminal but a player in the Florida real estate bubble. Heres a nice picture of the gentleman:
James Galbraith recently said that "at the root of the crisis we find the largest financial swindle in world history", where "counterfeit" mortgages were "laundered" by the banks. As he has repeatedly noted, the economy will not recover until the perpetrators of the frauds which caused our current
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economic crisis are held accountable, so that trust can be restored. See this, this and this. No wonder James Galbraith has said economists should move into the background, and "criminologists to the forefront." Notes: The Austrian economists point out that it is bubbles which cause crashes. I agree. But as William Black points out, fraud is one of the main things which causes bubbles. Of course other factors, such as excess leverage, also contributed to the 1930s and current crises. http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2010/10/fraud-caused-great-depression-and-this.html
BofA hawked risky deals to customers

By KAJA WHITEHOUSE Last Updated: 4:39 AM, October 29, 2010 Posted: 11:59 PM, October 28, 2010 Bank of America aggressively pushed complex derivatives products on customers in the midst of the financial meltdown without warning them of the substantial risks associated with them -- and even told investors the products were "extremely conservative" -- a former employee claims in a letter delivered to Securities and Exchange Commission chief Mary Schapiro. Sales of so-called structured notes were so critical to the profitability of BofA's brokerage unit during the crisis that BofA threatened to fire workers if they didn't meet quotas or if they warned investors against the products, the anonymous whistleblower said in the letter, a copy of which has been obtained by The Post. "Our client was personally instructed on multiple occasions. . .that his job could be in jeopardy if he did not have his underlings 'produce more' in such category," the August letter, written by New York securities lawyer Stuart Meissner, who's representing the former employee, reads. A separate BofA employee "had his job threatened" when he advised clients to liquidate their notes out of fear BofA "could be nationalized," making the notes worthless, the letter said.
Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/business /informer_bofa_hawked_risky_deals_9AR9iRb1nf2ndz6F4nMO0O#ixzz13o8r0kal
Land Titles Are FOOKED - In Their Own Words
NOW IS THE TIME TO FILE SUIT BEFORE OBAMA AND THE OTHER CRONIES DO AN END AROUND AND BASICALLY JUST SAY F*CK BLACK LETTER LAW, EVERYTHING IS OK.....
Guest Post: The Tipping Point has Arrived

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 10/28/2010 10:24 -0500 Bill Gross Federal Reserve Fresh Start Guest Post PIMCO SWIFT Turkey
Submitted by Mike Krieger of KAM LP The Tipping Point has Arrived Our age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchres of the fathers. It writes biographies, histories, and criticism. The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have the a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs? Embosomed for a season in nature, whose floods of life stream around and through us, and invite us, by the powers they supply, to action proportioned to nature, why should we grope among the dry bones of the past, or put the living generation into masquerade out of its faded wardrobe? The sun shines today also. There is more wool and flax in the fields. There are new lands, new men, new thoughts. Let us demand out own works and laws and worship.
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- Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature I believe we have finally breached the tipping point in the socio-political landscape of the United States of America. There will be no going back from here. Everyone on all levels of society including the elites must make a choice. Will you stand for real reform and an end of the feudalistic rule of the oligarchs and their paid-off puppets that line the streets of Washington D.C., or will you keep your mouth shut and play the old and dying game in the context of a completely different cultural environment? While many will disagree with what I am about to say, I believe the oligarchs and the Federal Reserve have already lost. This will not be clear to the vast majority at this time because the powerful institutions that dominate and rob us will continue to fight for survival but the wind is already blowing in a different direction and cannot be reversed. The smart elites are starting to see this and are hedging their bets. The dumb or stubborn ones may want to start looking at countries with non-extradition treaties or start blowing the whistle on someone above them and fast. The window of opportunity to make the choice is closely quickly. I was just following orders will not cut it when the dollar collapses and Disneyland shuts down. There have not been any major arrests and people have seemingly gotten away with all their frauds and crimes. This too will change and 2011 will represent a change in trend in this regard. We have entered the terminal phase of this ponzi scheme economy and those responsible for its creation and its continued support at the expense of the vast majority of the populace will see their foul deeds rise to the surface. Earlier this year I wrote two piece that I think are worth re-reading and I have attached links to them. The first was A Time to Speak Out http://www.zerohedge.com/article/time-speak-out and the second was the The Elites Have Lost the Right to Rule http://www.zerohedge.com/article/elites-have-lost-right-rule. When I wrote these articles many of the themes addressed were completely out of the mainstream, yet in an amazingly brief period of time many of the frustrations I voiced are now popping up everywhere I look. Its strange and rewarding to see the topics I and countless others have been discussing on the fringe break into the light of day. Now that these concepts are out there is no stopping the avalanche that is about to hit the oligarchs smack in the face. As Gandhi said An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it. This brings me to discuss what I think is one of the most important letters from an elite I have seen in 2010. I am referring to Bill Gross most recent piece. Now when I say he is an elite I am not saying he is part of some vast conspiracy to turn us further into serfs. What I mean is he is one of the most fabulously wealthy people in America. He also happens to have made his fortune in the financial services industry and runs the countrys largest bond fund. This is a person that has every reason and incentive to play nice with the other elites and their corrupt institutions at the top of which lies the Federal Reserve banking cartel. What he did in his latest letter was far from playing ball. Here are some of the notable quotes and the entire letter can be found here http://www.pimco.com/Pages/RunTurkeyRun.aspx. Was it relevant in 2004 that John Kerry was or was not an admirable swift boat commander? Will the absence of a mosque within several hundred yards of Ground Zero solve our deficit crisis? Is Christine ODonnell really a witch? Did Meg Whitman employ an illegal maid? Who cares! We are being conned, folks; Democrats and Republicans alike. Perhaps, as a vocal contingent suggests, our paper-based foundation of wealth deserves to be buried, making a fresh start from admittedly lower levels. The Fed, on Wednesday, however, will decide that it is better to keep the patient on life support with an adrenaline injection and a following morphine drip than to risk its demise and ultimate rebirth in another form. Check writing in the trillions is not a bondholders friend; it is in fact inflationary, and, if truth be told, somewhat of a Ponzi scheme. Public debt, actually, has always had a Ponzi-like characteristic. The Fed, in effect, is telling the markets not to worry about our fiscal deficits, it will be the buyer of first and perhaps last resort. There is no need as with Charles Ponzi to find an increasing amount of future gullibles, they will just write the check themselves. I ask you: Has there ever been a Ponzi scheme so brazen? There has not. Ok, so what is Bill Gross up to you ask? I will give you my two cents. This guy is not as fabulously wealthy as he is for being a dope (although this cannot be said for a lot of people in this industry that are merely financial engineers that would become extinct overnight without 0% interest rates but thats another story). Bill Gross sees the writing on the wall. He see the winds of change and is hedging his bets. He is throwing out a carrot to those that criticize the completely corrupt and ponzi scheme economy and financial system we have today which benefits only those that speculate on the taxpayers dime. We could end this fake and destructive economy by ending the Fed in its current form (at the very least everything they do must be transparent) and restoring the rule of law. He attacks the false left/right paradigm and rightly points out that both the Democrat and Republican establishment have sold out the people to line their own pockets. In the second quote he actually explores the notion that our paper-based foundation of wealth deserves to be buried. Then finally he points out what many others have but almost no one is the mainstream ever admits. The U.S. government is running a giant ponzi scheme with regard to its debt. Hmmm do you want to own gold or treasuries? Truth be told, what Bill Gross did in this letter is to create the ultimate hedge for himself. He didnt say these things earlier when they were just as true as they are today and certainly must have been clear to someone of his intelligence. He said it now. He said it now because he can see the writing on the wall. The important thing is not that he ultimately defends what the Fed is doing (which he unfortunately does) but that he felt the need to hedge himself and distance himself from the system. As he writes in the final paragraph, We havent been around for 35+ years and not figured out a way to avoid the November axe. We are a survivor and our clients are not going to be Turkeys on a platter. Indeed, the axe is going to fall on the oligarchs and if you dont want to be a turkey on a platter you had better choose sides and fast. As the great Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote in his 1836 essay Nature, There are new lands, new men, new thoughts. Let us demand out own works and laws and worship. Well said sir, well said. All the best, Mike http://www.zerohedge.com/article/guest-post-tipping-point-has-arrived
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Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: citizenx on October 29, 2010, 10:16:47 PM OHIO AG: BANKS OPERATING ON A BUSINESS MODEL BUILT ON FRAUD 10-28-2010 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGWUzOKCQ5w
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: citizenx on October 29, 2010, 11:06:08 PM BTW, forgot to thank letsbereal for that last vid. Good catch. That is what I would really like to see -- 50 state AG's skewering the banks, Fed, and if necessary Feds. Again, way to go, OHIO.
Quote from: foreverfree on October 29, 2010, 12:12:33 PM thanks for the replies. I have found further fraud in mys mortgage documents and have contacted a lawyer in my state, Tennessee. Under my note, we agreed to pay a certain price at a certain interest rate. Listed under the Truth-in-lending disclosure statement, it has listed a "financed amount" that is about $3,000 SMALLER than what the note says, but the interest rate charged is almost a full point HIGHER than what the note says! This means I'm overpaying and after 30 years could equal $40,000+ in overpayments!!!
Wait a minute! Just because your TIL (truth in lending) statement shows a higher percentage rate than the note is not necessarily fraud. The TIL must include any origination fees, overnight fees, etc. in it's calculations. In other words, these fees that you pay at closing are considered by RESPA to be 'prepaid finance charges'. These amounts are deducted from the loan amount (on the TIL form) and added to the interest, so you are not financing the whole amount because you are paying part of the finance charge at closing. Thus, it appears that the interest rate is different and the loan amount is different on the TIL form.
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: citizenx on October 31, 2010, 03:13:57 AM William Black/Huffington Post: Put B of A in receivership. William K. Black and L. Randall Wray Posted: October 22, 2010 02:08 PM
Foreclose on the Foreclosure Fraudsters, Part 1: Put Bank of America in Receivership

After a quick review of its procedures, Bank of America this week announced that it will resume its foreclosures in 23 lucky states next Monday. While the evidence is overwhelming that the entire foreclosure process is riddled with fraud, President Obama refuses to support a national moratorium. Indeed, his spokesmen on the issue told reporters three key things. As the Los Angeles Times reported: A government review of botched foreclosure paperwork so far has found that the problems do not pose a "systemic" threat to the financial system, a top Obama administration official said Wednesday. Yes, that's right. HUD reviewed the "paperwork" problem to see whether it threatened the banks -- not the homeowners who were the victims of foreclosure fraud. But it got worse, for the second point was how the government would respond to the epidemic of foreclosure fraud. The Justice Department is leading an investigation of possible crimes involving mortgage fraud. That language was carefully chosen to sound reassuring. But the fact is that despite our pleas the FBI has continued its "partnership" with the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA). The MBA is the trade association of the "perps." It created a ridiculous on its face definition of "mortgage fraud." Under that definition the lenders -- who led the mortgage frauds -- are the victims. The FBI still parrots this long discredited "definition." That is one of the primary reasons why -- in complete contrast to prior financial crises -- the Justice Department has not convicted a single senior officer of the large nonprime lenders who directed, committed, and profited enormously from the frauds. Note that the Justice Department is not investigating foreclosure fraud. HUD Secretary Donovan's statement shows why: "We will not tolerate business as usual in the mortgage market," he said. "Where there have been mistakes made or errors, we will hold those entities, those institutions, accountable to stop those processes, review them and fix them as quickly as possible." Note the language: "mistakes", "errors", "processes" (following the initial use of "paperwork"). No mention of "fraud", "felony", "criminal investigations", or "prosecutions" for the tens of thousands of felonies that representatives of the entities
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foreclosing on homes have admitted that they committed. Note that Donovan does not even demand that the felons remedy the harm caused by their past fraudulent foreclosures. Donovan wants them to "fix" "processes" -- not repair the harm their frauds caused to their victims. The fraudulent CEOs looted with impunity, were left in power, and were granted their fondest wish when Congress, at the behest of the Chamber of Commerce, Chairman Bernanke, and the bankers' trade associations, successfully extorted the professional Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) to turn the accounting rules into a farce. The FASB's new rules allowed the banks (and the Fed, which has taken over a trillion dollars in toxic mortgages as wholly inadequate collateral) to refuse to recognize hundreds of billions of dollars of losses. This accounting scam produces enormous fictional "income" and "capital" at the banks. The fictional income produces real bonuses to the CEOs that make them even wealthier. The fictional bank capital allows the regulators to evade their statutory duties under the Prompt Corrective Action (PCA) law to close the insolvent and failing banks. The inflated asset values allow the Fed and the administration to ignore the Fed's massive loss exposure and allow Treasury to spread propaganda claiming that TARP resolved all the problems -- at virtually no cost. Donovan claims that we have held the elite frauds accountable -- but we have done the opposite. We have made the CEOs of the largest financial firms -typically already among the 500 wealthiest Americans -- even wealthier. We have rewarded fraud, incompetence, and venality by our most powerful elites. If the government does not hold the fraudulent CEOs responsible, who is supposed to stop the epidemic of elite financial fraud? The Obama administration's answer is the fraudulent CEOs themselves, at a time of their choosing. You can't make this stuff up. But ultimately resolving the problems is not the government's responsibility, said Michael Barr, assistant Treasury secretary for financial institutions. "Fundamentally, this is up to the banks and the servicers to fix," he said. "They can fix it as fast as they feel like."
So who is Michael Barr and why is saying things on behalf of the Obama administration that make it appear to be a wholly-owned subsidiary of the fraudulent lenders and servicers? He's a Robert Rubin protg and he's the senior Treasury official for banking policy. We have a different policy view. We believe that only the government can stop fraud from growing to catastrophic levels and that among the government's highest responsibilities is to provide the regulatory "cops on the beat" with the competence, resources, courage, and integrity to take on our most elite frauds. We believe that anything less is a travesty that causes tens of millions of Americans to be defrauded and poses a grave threat to our economy and democracy.
Prompt Corrective Action First, it is time to stop the foreclosures until the banks and servicers adopt corrective steps, certified as adequate by FDIC, that will prevent all future foreclosure fraud. They must also adopt plans to remedy the injuries their foreclosure frauds have already caused, and assist the FBI, Department of Justice, and legal ethics officials investigations of their officers' and attorneys' frauds and ethical violations. Second, it is time to place the financial institutions that committed widespread fraud in receivership. We should remove the senior leadership of the banks and replace them with experienced bankers with a reputation for integrity and competence, i.e., the honest officers that quit or were fired because they refused to engage in fraud. We should prioritize the receiverships to deal with the worst known "control frauds" among the "systemically dangerous institutions" (SDIs). The SDIs' frauds and fraudulent leaders endanger the global economy. We propose Bank of America for the first receivership. In the last few weeks, the SEC has obtained a large (albeit grossly inadequate) settlement of its civil fraud charges against the former senior leaders of Countrywide. (Bank of America acquired Countrywide and is responsible for its frauds.) Fannie and Freddie's investigations -- with their findings reviewed by their regulator, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) -- have identified many billions of dollars of fraudulent loans originated by Countrywide that were sold fraudulently to Fannie and Freddie through false representations and warranties. The Fed, BlackRock, and Pimco's investigations have identified many billions of dollars of fraudulent loans provided by Countrywide under false reps and warranties. Ambac's investigation found that 97% of the Countrywide loans reviewed by Ambac were had false reps and warranties. Countrywide also engaged in widespread foreclosure fraud. This is not surprising, for every aspect of Countrywide's nonprime mortgage operations that has been examined by a truly independent body has found widespread fraud -- in loan origination, loan sales, appraisals, and foreclosures. Fraud begets fraud. Lenders that are control frauds create criminogenic environments that produce "echo" epidemics of control fraud in other professions and industries. We have been amazed that, as one financially sophisticated entity after another found widespread fraud by Countrywide in the entire gamut of its operations, the administration, the industry, and the financial media act as if this is acceptable. Countrywide made hundreds of thousands of fraudulent loans. It fraudulently sold hundreds of thousands of loans through false reps and warranties. It fraudulently foreclosed on large numbers of loans. It victimized hundreds of thousands of people and hundreds of financial institutions, causing hundreds of billions of dollars of losses. It has defrauded more people, at a greater cost, than any entity in history. Bank of America chose to purchase Countrywide at a point when it -- and its senior leaders -- were infamous. Bank of America made some of these Countrywide leaders its senior leaders. Yet, Bank of America is not treated as a criminal entity. President Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder, Donovan, and Barr cannot even bring themselves to use the "f" word -fraud. They substitute euphemisms designed to trivialize elite criminality. The administration officials do not call for Bank of America to be the subject of a criminal investigation. They do not demand that Fannie, Freddie, Ambac, the FHFA, and Pimco file criminal referrals about Countrywide's frauds. They do not demand that Fannie, Freddie, and the Fed refuse to purchase or take as collateral any mortgage instrument from Bank of America. No one at the Harvard Club in New York moves to kick Bank of America's officers out of their club! The financial media treats Bank of America as if it were a legitimate bank rather
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than a "vector" spreading the mortgage fraud epidemic throughout much of the Western world. For the sake of our (and the global) economy, our democracy, and our souls this willingness to allow elite control frauds to loot with impunity must end immediately. The control frauds must be taken down and their officers removed promptly. Receivership is the way to begin to reclaim our souls, our economy, and our democracy and Bank of America has the track record that makes it a good place to start. It is sufficiently large and powerful that its receivership will send the credible signal that America is restoring the rule of law and that even the most elite frauds will be held accountable. Next we need to remove the rest of the "too big to fail" institutions -- we call them systemically dangerous institutions, or SDIs -- to reduce the global systemic risks that they pose. We are rolling the dice with disaster every day. The SDIs are inefficient, so shrinking them will reduce risk and increase efficiency. We need to follow three types of policies with respect to SDIs. They cannot grow larger and compound the systemic risk they pose. They must create an enforceable plan to shrink to a level and functions such that they no longer pose a systemic risk within five years. Until they shrink to the point that they no longer pose systemic risks they must be regulated with far greater intensity than other banks. In particular, control fraud poses so severe a risk of triggering another global financial crisis that there must be no regulatory tolerance for control frauds at the SDIs. One of the best ways to reduce their risks is to mandate that high levels of executive compensation be paid only after sustained and superior performance (at least five years), and with "claw back" provisions if compensation was obtained by fraudulent reported income or seriously inadequate loss reserves. Appointing a receiver for an SDI will be a major undertaking for the FDIC, but it is also well within its capabilities. Contrary to the scare mongering about "nationalizing" banks, receivers are used to returning failed banks to private ownership. Receiverships are managed by experienced bankers with records of competence and integrity rather than the dread "bureaucrats." We appointed roughly a thousand receivers during the S&L and banking crises of the 1980s and early 1990s under Presidents Reagan and Bush. Here is how it works. A receiver is appointed on Friday. The bank opens for business as normal (from the bank's customers' perspective) on Monday. The checks clear, the ATMs work, and the branches all open. The receiver's managers direct the business operations, find the true facts about the bank's operations, senior managers, and financial condition, recognize the real losses, and make the appropriate referrals to the FBI and the SEC so that the frauds can be investigated and prosecuted. The receiver is also a well-proven device for splitting up banks that are too large and incoherent by selling units of the business to different bidders who most value the operations. Dealing with the "Dirty Dozen" Control Frauds Simultaneously, we should put in place a system to replace the existing cover up of the condition of other banks with vigorous investigations and honest accounting. The priority for these investigations should be the "Dirty Dozen" -- the twelve largest banks. The Fed cannot conduct a credible investigation. It has taken so many fraudulent nonprime loans and securities as collateral that it is the leading proponent of covering up these losses. The FDIC should lead the investigations (it has "backup" regulatory authority over all banks), but it should hire investigative experts to add expertise to its Dirty Dozen examination teams. The priorities of the teams will be identifying existing losses and requiring their immediate recognition (the regulatory authorities have the authority to "classify" assets that can trump the accounting scams that Congress extorted from FASB). The FDIC should prioritize the order of its examinations of the largest SDIs on the basis of known indicia of fraud. For example, Citi's senior credit manager for mortgages testified under oath that 80% of the loans it sold to Fannie and Freddie were made under false reps and warranties. The Senate investigation has documented endemic fraud at WaMu (acquired by Wells Fargo). The FDIC should sample nonprime loans and securities held by Fannie, Freddie, the Federal Home Loan Banks, and the Fed to determine which nonprime mortgage players originated and sold the most fraudulent loans. This will allow the FDIC to prioritize which SDIs it examines first. We should also create a strong incentive for financial entities to voluntarily disclose to the regulators, the SEC, and the FBI their frauds, their unrecognized losses, and the officers that led the frauds -- and to fire any officer (VP level and above) who committed (or knew about and did not report) financial fraud. Any SDI that originated or sold more than $2 billion in fraudulent nonprime loans or securities should be placed in receivership unless it has conducted a thorough investigation and made the voluntary disclosures discussed above prior to the commencement of the FDIC examination, and developed a plan that will promptly recompense fully all victims that suffered losses from mortgages that were fraudulently originated, sold, or serviced. We make three propositions concerning what we believe to be institutions that are run as "control frauds". To date, this situation has been ignored in the policy debates about how to respond to the crisis. The propositions rest on a firm (but ignored) empirical and theoretical foundation developed and confirmed by white-collar criminologists, economists, and effective financial regulators. The key facts are that there was massive fraud by nonprime lenders and packagers of fraudulent nonprime loans at the direction of their controlling officers. By "massive" we mean that lenders made millions of fraudulent loans annually and that packagers turned most of these fraudulent loans into fraudulent securities. These fraudulent loans and securities made the senior officers (and corrupted professionals that blessed their frauds) rich, hyperinflated the bubble, devastated millions of working class borrowers and middle class home owners, and contributed significantly to the Great Recession -- by far the worst economic collapse since the 1930s. Our first proposition is this: The entities that made and securitized large numbers of fraudulent loans must be sanctioned before they produce the next, larger crisis. Second: The officers and professionals that directed, participated in, and profited from the frauds should be sanctioned before they cause the next crisis. Third: The lenders, officers, and professional that directed, participated in, and profited from the fraudulent loans and securities should be prevented from causing further damage to the victims of their frauds, e.g., through fraudulent foreclosures. Foreclosure fraud is an inevitable consequence of the underlying "epidemic" of mortgage fraud by nonprime lenders, not a new, unrelated epidemic of fraud by mortgage servicers with flawed processes. We propose a policy response designed to achieve these propositions. S&L regulators, criminologists, and economists recognize that the same recipe that produced guaranteed, record (fictional) accounting income (and executive compensation) until 2007 produced another guarantee: massive (real) losses, particularly
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if the frauds hyper-inflated a bubble. CEOs who loot "their" banks do so by perverting the bank into a wealth destroying monster -- a control fraud. What could be worse than deliberately growing massively by making loans likely to default, converting large amounts of bank assets to the personal benefit of the senior officers looting the bank and to those the CEO suborns to assist his looting (appraisers, auditors, attorneys, economists, rating agencies, and politicians), while simultaneously providing minimal capital (extreme leverage) and only grossly inadequate loss reserves, and causing bubbles to hyper-inflate? This nation's most elite bankers originated and packaged fraudulent nonprime loans that destroyed wealth -- and working class families' savings -- at a prodigious rate never seen before in the history of white-collar crime. They created the worst bubble in financial history, echo epidemics of fraud among elite professionals, loan brokers, and loan servicers, and would (if left to their own devices) have caused the Second Great Depression. Nothing short of removing all senior officers who directed, committed, or acquiesced in fraud can be effective against control fraud. We repeat: Foreclosure fraud is the necessary outcome of the epidemic of mortgage fraud that began early this decade. The banks that are foreclosing on fraudulently originated mortgages frequently cannot produce legitimate documents and have committed "fraud in the inducement." Now, only fraud will let them take the homes. Many of the required documents do not exist, and those that do exist would provide proof of the fraud that was involved in loan origination, securitization, and marketing. This in turn would allow investors to force the banks to buy-back the fraudulent securities. In other words, to keep the investors at bay the foreclosing banks must manufacture fake documents. If the original documents do not exist the securities might be ruled no good. If the original docs do exist they will demonstrate that proper underwriting was not done -- so the securities might be no good. Foreclosure fraud is the only thing standing between the banks and Armageddon. We will deal with objections to our proposal in the next piece. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/william-k-black/foreclose-on-the-foreclos_b_772434.html?page=2
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: Kilika on October 31, 2010, 04:19:37 AM
Quote "We will not tolerate business as usual in the mortgage market," he said. "Where there have been mistakes made or errors, we will hold those entities, those institutions, accountable to stop those processes, review them and fix them as quickly as possible." Note the language: "mistakes", "errors", "processes" (following the initial use of "paperwork"). No mention of "fraud", "felony", "criminal investigations", or "prosecutions" for the tens of thousands of felonies that representatives of the entities foreclosing on homes have admitted that they committed. Note that Donovan does not even demand that the felons remedy the harm caused by their past fraudulent foreclosures. Donovan wants them to "fix" "processes" -- not repair the harm their frauds caused to their victims.
What a joke! You can't go back and fix fraud. That's a crime in itself. "Resubmitting paperwork" ain't going to cut it legally. Once the fraudulent paperwork is submitted to the courts, the crime is committed. It can't be fixed. But they are crafty in saying to fix the "processes"(covers future actions), without addressing the damage already done(past crimes). All they are saying is fix it from here on out, and basically ignore the crimes committed already. The old "lets' move on" attitude.
Quote "Fundamentally, this is up to the banks and the servicers to fix," he said. "They can fix it as fast as they feel like."
Oh, so by that logic, I guess it's up to a murderer to "fix" their murdering ways for the future, but pay no attention to the murders already committed. ::) I really think many of these clowns are criminally insane without a drop of empathy.
Quote from: LeftyLeo on October 31, 2010, 04:19:37 AM What a joke! You can't go back and fix fraud. That's a crime in itself.
Precisely. What the gov't. wants to do is just that: fix the fraud, i.e. commit further fraud. It is up to others, the states and state AG's, perhaps, to make sure this is not allowed to happen. When it gets to SCOTUS, as it might, the fix might be in, though. That branch is also completely corrupted at this point, favoring state power over the letter of the law.
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: Kilika on October 31, 2010, 04:43:10 AM "We the People" can override the Supreme Court, and even replace it if need be, at least that's what the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence says.
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: citizenx on October 31, 2010, 04:49:05 AM When the government (all three branches -- as they stand) makes it clear to all the people that it has no respect for the law, it may very well be writing it's own epitaph. That is quite possible. That may force a popular do-over of some sort. How that would manifest, I cannot say. I'm no Nostradamus, but I'd like to think if we need it, we do have one more good revolution left in us somewhere.
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In other words, I certainly hope you are right, Lefty.
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: kerrymti on October 31, 2010, 09:12:00 AM
Quote from: kerrymti on October 30, 2010, 05:29:30 PM These amounts are deducted from the loan amount (on the TIL form) and added to the interest, so you are not financing the whole amount because you are paying part of the finance charge at closing. Thus, it appears that the interest rate is different and the loan amount is different on the TIL form.
FYI - http://www.fdic.gov/regulations/laws/rules/6500-1400.html#fdic65002264 and http://www.hud.gov/offices/hsg/rmra/res/respa_hm.cfm Settlement Statement that must be used on any real estate closing that involves a mortgage, with the exception of home equity lines of credit. Supposedly, HUD has been working on this new form for about 10 years, they wanted to get it right I guess. Anyway, we have been using this new form for almost a year now (we do real estate closings, but mainly for credit unions). The new form was supposedly going to make it easier for the consumer/borrower to understand the charges they are paying at closing. I have been doing closings for 10 years and this form is not even easy for me to understand much less the consumer! They have successfully made it to where title companies and closing agents can pretty much charge what they want and it is all just 'lumped' together with no one the wiser. They do split out the premium that the title agent receives and the premium that the underwriter makes, but this is a small portion of the closing costs. With this new form came a new GFE form (Good Faith Estimate). This form is also much harder to explain to someone than the previous form which listed each item by itself, this one, again, lumps stuff together. All this to say, this is just my opinion, but I have spoken to many others that believe as I do that there had to be another reason for implementing these two new forms, who wrote them? I am going to research a little further. But the timing of this coming out and the MERS mess also makes my eyebrow raise...
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: jofortruth on October 31, 2010, 11:06:05 AM PUBLIC NOTICE CONCERNING LAWSUITS BEING COMMENCED UNDER THE NAME MORTGAGE ELECTRONIC REGISTRATION SYSTEMS INC. (MERS) AND SUGGESTED DISCOVERY REQUESTS AND DEMAND FOR DOCUMENTS IF YOU ARE SERVED WITH A LAWSUIT BY LAWYERS CLAIMING TO REPRESENT MERS. http://www.scribd.com/doc/21413004/MERS-In...Interrogatories (http://www.scribd.com/doc/21413004/MERSInfo-Discovery-Submissions-Interrogatories) SOME GREAT INFO! PLEASE PASS THIS ON TO PEOPLE AFFECTED BY THE SCAM ARTISTS!
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: citizenx on October 31, 2010, 12:54:02 PM Op-Ed Contributor
How the Banks Put the Economy Underwater

By YVES SMITH Published: October 30, 2010 IN Congressional hearings last week, Obama administration officials acknowledged that uncertainty over foreclosures could delay the recovery of the housing market. The implications for the economy are serious. For instance, the International Monetary Fund found that the persistently high unemployment in the United States is largely the result of foreclosures and underwater mortgages, rather than widely cited causes like mismatches between job requirements and worker skills. This chapter of the financial crisis is a self-inflicted wound. The major banks and their agents have for years taken shortcuts with their mortgage securitization documents and not due to a momentary lack of attention, but as part of a systematic approach to save money and increase profits. The result can be seen in the stream of reports of colossal foreclosure mistakes: multiple banks foreclosing on the same borrower; banks trying to seize the homes of people who never had a mortgage or who had already entered into a refinancing program. Banks are claiming that these are just accidents. But suppose that while absent-mindedly paying a bill, you wrote a check from a bank account that you had already closed. No one would have much sympathy with excuses that you were in a hurry and didnt mean to do it, and it really was just a technicality. continued: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/31/opinion/31smith.html
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: citizenx on November 01, 2010, 04:19:18 AM And this is how far the banks are willign to go to carry on witht their frauds:
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Team 4: Debt Collectors Accused Of Fake Courtroom, Judge

Pa. Attorney General Sues Unicredit In Erie POSTED: 5:23 pm EDT October 29, 2010 UPDATED: 9:36 pm EDT October 29, 2010 ERIE, Pa. -- A sign in the front of a building on West 39th Street tells visitors that it's the Unicredit Debt Resolution Center in Erie. Once debtors got inside, they were fooled into believing they were in a courtroom with a judge, but the whole thing was a fake, according to a lawsuit filed by the Pennsylvania attorney general. Team 4's Jim Parsons reported that Unicredit America is accused in the lawsuit of deceiving, misleading and coercing hundreds of consumers into paying off their debts. http://www.thepittsburghchannel.com/r/25569199/detail.html
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: Kilika on November 01, 2010, 04:27:44 AM
Quote from: citizenx on November 01, 2010, 04:19:18 AM And this is how far the banks are willign to go to carry on witht their frauds:
Team 4: Debt Collectors Accused Of Fake Courtroom, Judge

Pa. Attorney General Sues Unicredit In Erie POSTED: 5:23 pm EDT October 29, 2010 UPDATED: 9:36 pm EDT October 29, 2010 ERIE, Pa. -- A sign in the front of a building on West 39th Street tells visitors that it's the Unicredit Debt Resolution Center in Erie. Once debtors got inside, they were fooled into believing they were in a courtroom with a judge, but the whole thing was a fake, according to a lawsuit filed by the Pennsylvania attorney general. Team 4's Jim Parsons reported that Unicredit America is accused in the lawsuit of deceiving, misleading and coercing hundreds of consumers into paying off their debts. http://www.thepittsburghchannel.com/r/25569199/detail.html
That's not a bank doing that. That's one of their contract collectors that they sell their bad debts to. The bankers at that point have already unloaded their notes to collectors like these slugs. But it is a sign the industry is way out of control.
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: citizenx on November 01, 2010, 05:51:10 AM You are right , this could be bad debt that was sold off. My first impression was that they were acting on behalf of the bank, but you are probably right. If they had been acting on behalf of the banks, I imagine they might have been named in the suit (hopefully).
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: citizenx on November 01, 2010, 05:59:59 AM NY Times printed this comment from Mike Rivero: Michael Rivero Honolulu, HI October 31st, 2010 6:51 pm The foreclosures are only a symptom. The real core of the scandal are the mortgage-backed securities, many of them fraudulent, as the same mortgages were pledged as collateral into multiple offerings. In a way, the MBS fraud is not unlike the Mel Brooks movie "The Producers" in which the producers intentionally choose what they think is a terrible script, "Springtime for Hitler", which they hope will close the first night. The producers then sell 1000% of the show to unwary investors. 100% is spent producing the show, with the other 900% to be pocketed after the show fails and the investors, unaware of the extra shares in the show, accept their losses and leave. But like the fraud behind "The Producers", the MBS scheme only works if the investment is caused to fail, ending demands for repayment by investors. That means foreclosing the over-sold mortgages to erase the criminal trail. Where foreclosure does not work, the fraudulent Mortgage-Backed Securities must be bought back. That is what TARP did. Congress, many of them personally invested in the financial companies that bought the fraudulent mortgage-backed securities, voted through TARP against overwhelming public opposition. The phrase "Toxic assets" is Congress-speak for the bad paper Wall Street has been selling since 2006; paper to be redeemed at taxpayer expense to keep the bankers out of jail! http://community.nytimes.com/comments/dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/29/dealbook-debate-is-the-foreclosurescandal-overblown/?permid=2#comment2 Once again, well put IMO.
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Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: citizenx on November 01, 2010, 06:37:52 AM Speaking of those debt buyers though -- here's how it is related to the whole fiasco in a big way:
Debt Collectors Face a Hazard: Writers Cramp

By DAVID SEGAL Published: October 31, 2010
When Michael Gazzarato took a job that required him to sign hundreds of affidavits in a single day, he had one demand for his employer: a much better pen.
In July, the Federal Trade Commission, led by Jon Leibowitz, issued a report critical of the debt-collection system, saying banks were selling account information that can be riddled with errors. They tried to get me to do it with a Bic, and I wasnt going I wasnt having it, he said. It was bad when I had to use the plastic Papermate-type pen. It was a nightmare. ...
...His job was to sign affidavits, swearing that he had personally reviewed and verified the records of debtors a time-consuming task when done correctly. Continued: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/01/business/01debt.html?_r=1&hp
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: redeux on November 01, 2010, 08:42:34 AM
Quote from: citizenx on October 31, 2010, 03:13:57 AM William Black/Huffington Post: Put B of A in receivership. William K. Black and L. Randall Wray Posted: October 22, 2010 02:08 PM
Foreclose on the Foreclosure Fraudsters, Part 1: Put Bank of America in Receivership

After a quick review of its procedures, Bank of America this week announced that it will resume its foreclosures in 23 lucky states next Monday.
I HOPE my state is one of the lucky ones.... I have been unable to join a very LARGE class action suit just filed here in GA. but if they go ahead and send me doc's from a trustee.... I am jumping right in there....
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: redeux on November 01, 2010, 11:45:48 AM I received a letter back from BOA regarding my request to see the note; Here is what I sent:
Quote
To whom it may concern: This is a qualified written request under Section 6 of the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act (RESPA). I own the property at the address listed above, and your bank services my mortgage. Over the last several weeks there have been many stories documenting the problem that banks are foreclosing on homes without proof that they own the loan. I have learned that in many cases, banks like yours do not even know who owns the loans you service. Employees at several leading banks have admitted to rubber stamping tens of thousands of foreclosures every month, without even checking to make sure that the bank had a legal right to proceed with foreclosure. In some cases, banks allegedly falsified mortgage documents to cover up their mistakes. There have been reports of two banks trying to foreclose on the same home, banks foreclosing on homeowners who were current on their payments, and even of a bank foreclosing on a home where the homeowner had never taken out a mortgage to begin with. This is not merely a "technical problem"--it is the difference between having a warm bed at night and being out on the street.
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As a homeowner and a customer of your bank, I am horrified. I had always believed that if I played by the rules, I would be protected, but now I know that banks like yours think the rules don't apply to them.
To protect myself and my family, I need to know who owns my mortgage. Within sixty days, I would like to know the name, address, and phone number of the bank or investor that owns my mortgage. Furthermore, in light of the recent allegations of foreclosure fraud, I demand to see the original mortgage note proving ownership over my home loan. If you fail to produce a mortgage note proving that you have a right to collect my mortgage payments, I will be forced to consider all options available to me to ensure that my family and my home are protected. I ask that I receive my response in writing. I understand that under Section 6 of RESPA you are legally required to acknowledge my request within twenty business days and must try to resolve the issue within sixty days. Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Their response;
You cite no legal authority that supports your claim that you are entitled to view the original Note, and we are not aware of the existence of any such authority. Accordingly, BAC Home Loans respectfully declines this request. If you wish to pursue this matter further, please provide such legal authority.
....they then say.....
In lieu of allowing inspection of the original copy of the Note, we have enclosed herewith a true and correct copy of the original Note......
....the "COPY" they supplied does has my signature, but states as I have in my records the ORIGINAL lender as the beneficiary..... further there is no signature of the ORIGINAL LENDER on the "Pay to Order of" which should signed by someone with appropriate authority on the original copy........ furthermore there is no Notary Seal on this document..... why because MERS has the rights as Nominee to be the beneficiary of this Note..... if what they sent was a "COPY" of the original Note..... they don't have the original COMPLETE note, only what I signed at closing but with NO signatures of the Lender ENDORSING THIS NOTE....... I will be filing suit..... the promissory note says that all the "Payments" for the life of the LOAN shall be "PAY TO THE ORDER OF"...... THE ORIGINAL LENDER.... NOT BOA..... SO WHERE IS THE CHAIN OF TITLE SHOWING THAT BOA HAS NOW ASSUMED THE ROLE OF THE ORIGINAL LENDER???? THE SECURITY DEED STATES THAT ENTITY THAT HOLDS THE PROPERTY IN PERPETUITY UNTIL THE NOTE HAS BEEN SATISFIED IS MERS....................
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: redeux on November 01, 2010, 11:55:53 AM WHAT IN THAT NOTE SAYS OR SHOWS BOA OWNS MY LOAN? THE TITLE HAS NOT CHANGED... OH WAIT, I FORGOT, MERS HAS ELECTRONICALLY KEPT TRACK OF THE CHANGES..... OHHHHH I SEE, AND THIS INFORMATION AVAILABLE TO THE PUBLIC INQUIRING ABOUT SAID PROPERTY? WAIT IT ISN'T AVAILABLE TO THE PUBLIC..... BUT THE LAW SAYS THAT TITLE TO THE PROPERTY IS A PUBLIC DOCUMENT..... OHHHHHHH SO WHAT MERS HAS IS BASICALLY A PILE OF ELECTRONIC SHIT THAT HAS NO LEGAL BEARING IN SECURING THE NOTE..... I.E. TRANSFERRING THE NOTE FROM THE ORIGINAL LENDER TO BOA........
GET F*CKED BOA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: citizenx on November 01, 2010, 06:08:14 PM So, basically they are not denying you have a right to see the original note -- only that you didn't say the magic words. Interesting -- and supremely arrogant as ususal. I hate to say it my friend, but if you haven't already, it may be time to hire yourself a lawyer if you can. Either that or you are going to have to do a little digging to find laws or decisions or what-not that support your right to see your original note. Again, I wish you luck with that, and If I find anything relevant, I'll either post it her or PM it.
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: agentbluescreen on November 01, 2010, 07:01:12 PM If it's not registered on title it is illegal, BOA has an unsecured loan, and if MERS registered no land transfer it has no claim on title. The title in the land registry is the last word. If the lender sold or was repaid for it's note then their lien on title is
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expired, nullified and void. You have a contract to repay them (the original Mortgagor), they have a contract to hold their lien on your (as the Mortgagee's) property. They may assign the payments (to a third party) but they cannot "reassign the lien" without doing a land transfer (and paying land transfer taxes). Both the Mortgagee and the Mortgagor must be registered on the title. That is why many Mortgagors demand and pay the property taxes, so they won't loose their lien on the property, (and/or it, itself) to the municipality if you default on the taxes. This is what is exactly going to happen, now, to most of these now-stalled in reposession, delinquent MBS-dumped mortgages and abandoned properties, BTW.
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: redeux on November 01, 2010, 07:36:25 PM
Quote from: citizenx on November 01, 2010, 06:08:14 PM So, basically they are not denying you have a right to see the original note -- only that you didn't say the magic words. Interesting -- and supremely arrogant as ususal. I hate to say it my friend, but if you haven't already, it may be time to hire yourself a lawyer if you can. Either that or you are going to have to do a little digging to find laws or decisions or what-not that support your right to see your original note. Again, I wish you luck with that, and If I find anything relevant, I'll either post it her or PM it.
Thanx.... yeah I got a lawyer... here is an article detailing his class action against MERS.... In a state-court lawsuit filed in Georgia last week seeking class-action status, lawyer David Ates says MERS isnt a secured creditor, meaning it lacks the power to foreclose on behalf of lenders, mortgage servicers or other parties. Mr. Ates said he is seeking to have all Georgia foreclosures by the company be declared invalid and the title be returned to the debtor. Listen to this BULLSHIT..... Mr. Arnold said the companys role in foreclosing on a mortgage is unquestionable because every time a loan is registered with MERS, the borrower must sign a document saying the company assumes all rights and responsibilities on behalf of the creditor or lender. The legal concept is as sound as any concept in America: You made a loan to a homeowner, Mr. Arnold said in an interview. They granted you a mortgage, and thats recorded in the land records, and the company that has the mortgage and can foreclose is MERS.
Quote from: agentbluescreen on November 01, 2010, 07:01:12 PM If it's not registered on title it is illegal, BOA has an unsecured loan, and if MERS registered no land transfer it has no claim on title. The title in the land registry is the last word. If the lender sold or was repaid for it's note then their lien on title is expired, nullified and void. You have a contract to repay them (the original Mortgagor), they have a contract to hold their lien on your (as the Mortgagee's) property. They may assign the payments (to a third party) but they cannot "reassign the lien" without doing a land transfer (and paying land transfer taxes). Both the Mortgagee and the Mortgagor must be registered on the title. That is why many Mortgagors demand and pay the property taxes, so they won't loose their lien on the property, (and/or it, itself) to the municipality if you default on the taxes. This is what is exactly going to happen, now, to most of these now-stalled in reposession, delinquent MBS-dumped mortgages and abandoned properties, BTW.
EXACTLY!!!!
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: redeux on November 02, 2010, 07:40:05 AM I strongly suggest that any one on this board in the false jeopardy of a pending fraudulent foreclosure write your State's AG immediately........ I know they are the SEIU, but use them to help yourself........ http://action.seiu.org/page/s/investigate (http://action.seiu.org/page/s/investigate)
Quote
To the Office of the Attorney General: I own the property at the address listed above. Recently, I contacted my bank with a request to see my original mortgage note. I made this request as outlined under Section 6 of the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act (RESPA). The response I received from my bank was troubling. They failed to produce my original note as requested - and I am now growing concerned that I may be a victim of mortgage fraud. The name of the bank I contacted is XXX. They informed me that I had no legal right to see my original mortgage, it is my understanding that I have every legal right. In addition to my original mortgage note, I also asked to know the name, address, and phone number of the bank or investor that owns my mortgage. The bank also failed to provide this information. (You are encouraged to add more information about your situation here)
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I understand that your office is investigating mortgage fraud and I ask that you include my mortgage in your investigation. Thank you for your immediate attention to this matter. This is of the utmost importance to me and my family.
Bernanke Running a Bigger Ponzi Scheme than Charles Ponzi

http://www.pimco.com/Pages/RunTurkeyRun.aspx (http://www.pimco.com/Pages/RunTurkeyRun.aspx)
Quote
Bill Gross writes today: Check writing in the trillions is not a bondholders friend; it is in fact inflationary, and, if truth be told, somewhat of a Ponzi scheme. Public debt, actually, has always had a Ponzi-like characteristic. Granted, the U.S. has, at times, paid down its national debt, but there was always the assumption that as long as creditors could be found to roll over existing loans and buy new ones the game could keep going forever. Sovereign countries have always implicitly acknowledged that the existing debt would never be paid off because they would grow their way out of the apparent predicament, allowing futures prosperity to continually pay for todays finance. Now, however, with growth in doubt, it seems that the Fed has taken Charles Ponzi one step further. Instead of simply paying for maturing debt with receipts from financial sector creditors banks, insurance companies, surplus reserve nations and investment managers, to name the most significant the Fed has joined the party itself. Rather than orchestrating the game from on high, it has jumped into the pond with the other swimmers. One and one-half trillion in checks were written in 2009, and trillions more lie ahead. The Fed, in effect, is telling the markets not to worry about our fiscal deficits, it will be the buyer of first and perhaps last resort. There is no need as with Charles Ponzi to find an increasing amount of future gullibles, they will just write the check themselves. I ask you: Has there ever been a Ponzi scheme so brazen? There has not. This isn't the first time Gross has called the U.S. economy a Ponzi scheme. He did so in January 2009. People are waking up naturally, but.............
I HATE TO TELL THIS GUY, BUT AS WE KNOW, THE FED RES BUILT THE F*CKING POOL, FILLED IT WITH WATER, SAID IT WAS THE LIFEGUARD, MADE EVERYONE JUMP IN AND THEN FLUSHED EVERY ONE RIGHT DOWN THE SHITTER!!!!!!!!
MO Attorney General gives homeowners tool kit to fight foreclosure

ST. LOUIS(KMOX)Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster is offering consumers facing foreclosure a way to fight back. Koster has compiled a tool kit of information on his website including a form letter consumers can send to their bank demanding proof of proper paperwork for the foreclosure to proceed. Im very interested to see how the banking community deals with this written request, Koster said, because it is not an insubstantial document. It is making some serious requests for them to prove up what has become the central question of this mortgage crisis, as to who owns the mortgages that have been subdivided and sold at a pell mell pace through the bubble of the last decade. In the midst of a 50-state foreclosure investigation by attorneys general, Koster says after one month he has uncovered about a hundred complaints from Missouri consumers saying banks are giving them the run around, and claiming to have lost paperwork related to foreclosure actions. http://www.ago.mo.gov/ (http://www.ago.mo.gov/)
Kosters advice for anyone wanting to increase their chances of staying in their home get a lawyer and make sure your bank is playing by the rules.
FULL DEPOSITION TRANSCRIPT OF NATIONWIDE TITLE CLEARING ERICA LANCE / BRYAN BLY
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Excerpts: 9 Q Okay. So in this particular instance, 10 CitiMortgage was NTCs client? 11 A Uh-huh. 12 Q And they contacted you to prepare an Assignment 13 of Mortgage; is that correct? 14 A They contacted us to prepare a group of 15 Assignments. It wasnt just one. 16 Q How many is let me start all over with that 17 one. 18 In this instance, how many did they ask you or 19 did they send over at one time? 20 A I dont have that number. 21 Q Would it be and Im not asking you to guess, 22 but if you do have a ballpark, would it have been dozens or 23 hundreds? 24 A Hundreds to thousands but I dont know in this 25 particular case how many. 1 Q So Im sorry. 2 A I was going to say weve done over a hundred 3 thousand Assignments so. . . 4 Q So anywhere from a hundred from hundreds to a 5 hundred thousand, they would send a request? 6 A They send them in groupings. 7 Q And when you say they send them in groupings, 8 thats requests for Assignments of Mortgages 9 A Yes. 10 Q in groupings? Okay. 11 Right underneath the portion we just read, 12 theres a a CMI L number. <SNIP> 7 Q And then we have CitiMortgage as successor in 8 interest by merger to CitiFinancial Mortgage Company, Inc., 9 whose address is 1000 Technology Drive in OFallon, 10 Missouri 11 A Uh-huh. 12 Q assigning a mortgage together with a note to 13 Bayview Loan Services; is that correct? 14 A Yes. 15 Q Is this typically how Assignments of or 16 transfer of notes occur through Assignment of Mortgage? 17 MS. PARSONS: Objection. You still have to 18 answer. 19 THE WITNESS: I still have to answer? 20 MS. PARSONS: If you know the answer. 21 THE WITNESS: Yeah. Im sorry. Sorry. 22 MS. PARSONS: I just do it for the record, just 23 so you know. 24 THE WITNESS: Okay. Got it. 25 A To answer your question, on this particular case, 1 I dont know what occurred on it because I was not part of 2 the the sale or of the agreement between Bayview and 3 Citi. We were hired specifically to do Assignments. 4 Normally, this is an action recording at the 5 county to indicate a sale has taken place or a transfer of 6 loans has taken place from one entity to another. 7 Q (By Ms. Drysdale) So Im not sure that that 8 answered the question that I was asking. 9 This document is apparently assigning a note? 10 A Yes. 11 Q Is that correct? 12 A Yes. 13 Q And is it your understanding that thats 14 generally how notes are transferred through Assignments? 15 A Im trying to figure out how to answer this 16 question. It is my understanding that notes are transferred 17 through a sale agreement between mortgage entities. They 18 record Assignments to put on the record who the current 19 beneficiary is for that note and loan, that mortgage. 20 The the Assignment itself is not the, to my 21 understanding, the actual sale of the loan. Does that make 22 sense? 23 Q Yes, maam. 24 A Okay. So thats why Im saying this is to 25 indicate that that event occurred and to record it at the 1 county recorders office as having occurred. 2 Q And you said that you were not part of these or 3 privy to the details of the sale from CitiMortgage to 4 Bayview; is that correct?
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5 A Correct. 6 Q That you were just asked to prepare a document? 7 A Prepare Assignments, yes. 8 Q Okay. Further down, still on the left hand side, 9 we see the signature of Bryan Bly as vice president? 10 A Yes. 11 Q And is Bryan Bly someone who you supervise? 12 A Directly, no. 13 Q But he is an employee of Nationwide Title 14 Clearing? 15 A Correct. 16 Q Who is his supervisor? 17 A Elsa McKinnon. 18 Q Could you spell that, please? 19 A E-L-S-A M-C-K-I-N-N-O-N. 20 Q When you and I spoke earlier, you indicated 21 that that you might be a better person to provide 22 information about this Assignment than Mr. Bly; do you 23 recall that? 24 A Yes. 25 Q And and why did you think that you rather than 1 his supervisor could be explain what 2 A Because the questions that you were asking in 3 your affidavit did not just have to do with him signing the 4 direct document. You the questions pertained also to our 5 overall procedure and our connection with CitiMortgage, 6 which are questions that he cant answer. 7 Q So then lets talk a little about what Mr. Bly 8 what he actually does in executing an Assignment of 9 Mortgage. Can you go through that process with me? 10 A Yeah. He is what we refer to as a signer. He is 11 somebody at Nationwide who is designated to execute 12 documents. 13 Q So just can you give me a general idea of what 14 his his day-to-day activities would be? 15 A He signs and notarizes documents. 16 Q So when he comes in in the morning, he sat he 17 sits at his desk, and thats pretty much all he does all 18 day? 19 A Yes. 20 Q Is sign and notarize documents? 21 A Yes. 22 Q Assignments of Mortgage? 23 A Assignments of Mortgage, Lien Releases. 24 Q Does he actually research any of the information 25 contained in the Assignment of Mortgage? 1 A No. 2 Q No? 3 A No. 4 Q About how many documents, including Assignments 5 of Mortgage, would he sign in the average day? 6 A A couple thousand. 7 Q And and this is he permanently employed? 8 Well, let me ask that question in a different way. 9 Is his his employer his present employer 10 and business address is Nationwide Title at 2100 Alt. 19 11 North; is that correct? 12 A Yeah. Hes presently a full-time employee with 13 Nationwide Title Clearing. 14 Q Okay. In the assign the Corey Assignment of 15 Mortgage, he lists his address as 10000 [sic] Technology 16 Drive, OFallon, Missouri. 17 Why is that particular address used? 18 A That has to do with the question on how Bryan Bly 19 can sign as a vice president as well. 20 Q Okay. 21 A So the answer to that question has to do with a 22 corporate resolution. 23 Q Do you have that document with you? 24 A Yes. 25 Q May I take a look at that? <SNIP> 8 Q Do you have a copy of the indemnity agreement? 9 A No. I did not bring that with me. 10 Q But thats something that is in possession of 11 Nationwide? 12 A Yes. 13 Q And so when Mr. Bly is executing the couple 14 thousand of Assignments a day, that is the extent of his 15 thats the extent of his duties as vice president?
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16 A Uh-huh yes, sorry, or assistant secretary. It 17 just depends on whats required at the county. He could be 18 listed as either or. 19 Q So does Nationwide have a chart of all the 20 counties in Florida to know whether or not Mr. Bly is 21 supposed to be a vice president or assistant secretary? 22 A We have a list of all the counties in the entire 23 United States that tells us that. 24 Q So Mr. Bly executes Assignments of Mortgage to be 25 recorded all over the United States? 1 A And Lien Releases. 2 Q And Lien Releases. 3 Does he hold that position as vice president for 4 any other companies other than CitiMortgage? 5 A Yes. 6 Q What other companies? 7 A There are many, and I dont know if I can just 8 release all of the names of them. 9 Q Okay. 10 A But for all of our clients where we sign, he is 11 listed as one of the signers. 12 Q Previously you said that the consent of the 13 executive committee was the reason for the the address 14 being listed as a 1000 Technology Drive. 15 Could you expound upon that? 16 A Yeah. Hes acting as the capacity as the vice 17 president for that company, and that is the address of that 18 company. 19 Q So hes not physically located in Missouri? He 20 just 21 A No. Hes physically located in Florida. 22 Q He just lists that as his address for purposes of 23 this Assignment of Mortgage? 24 A Correct. 25 Q And who is Christopher Jones? 1 A Christopher Jones is an employee of Nationwide 2 Title Clearing. 3 Q And what are his day-to-day duties? 4 A He also works in the processing area. One of the 5 duties he has is he is one of our signers and one of our 6 notaries. 7 Q Does Mr. Bly also work in the processing 8 department? 9 A Thats the department, yeah. 10 Q Is Mr. Bly also a notary? 11 A Yes. 12 Q Down at the bottom of the Corey Assignment it 13 says that the document was prepared by Jessica Fretwell? 14 A Yes. 15 Q Do you know Ms. Fretwell? 16 A Yes. 17 Q And is she also an employee of Nationwide? 18 A Yes, she is. 19 Q And what is her job description? 20 A She works in our quality control division. 21 Q What are her day-to-day responsibilities? 22 A How to do with the establishment of the forms and 23 the county requirements. 24 Q When you say the establishment of the forms, 25 what do you mean by that? <SNIP> 15 Q Okay. So Mr. Bly didnt actually sign the Corey 16 Assignment; is that correct? 17 A Well, he didnt physically sign it, but he 18 that meets with the standards for electronic document 19 recording. 20 Q Okay. Are you referring to a specific state or 21 federal law? 22 A This no. Specific counties across the nation 23 have started setting it up, so part of like going more green 24 and not having as much paperwork that you can electronically 25 record documents. They have different settings anywhere 1 from just feeding them information to feeding them like a 2 PDF or TIF version of the document that gets recorded, that 3 they record in their imaging bank, stamped electronically, 4 and then send back to us as having been recorded once its 5 verified on their side. That document was one of those. 6 Q Yes, maam. I understand how it was recorded 7 electronically. Im just trying to to determine whether 8 or not Mr. Bly actually signed a physical document or if
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9 a his signature was created by Planat Press. 10 A The signature was included by Planat Press 11 because that document was never printed out. 12 Q So did Mr. Bly review the document before it was 13 sent for electronic recording? 14 A No. 15 Q So and Im now I continue to refer to the 16 Corey Assignment. 17 Mr. Bly never saw the Corey Assignment prior to 18 it being recorded; is that correct? 19 A Correct. <SNIP> Q What about Crystal Moore? She is she also a 7 signer? 8 A She is also a signer and a notary. 9 Q And a notary. 10 And her practices are the same as youve 11 described with Mr. Bly as far as how she what her daily 12 duties are in executing documents? 13 A Yes. 14 Can I ask why youre asking about Crystal Moore 15 because her names not on any of the documentation regarding 16 this. 17 Q I just saw her name on the Consent of the 18 Executive Committee we marked as 3. 19 A Uh-huh. 20 Q So are all of the names on Exhibit 3, the Joint 21 Consent, are they all signers? 22 A You mean is their job duty? 23 Q Yes, maam.
The Fed bought mortgage fraud

http://foreclosureblues.wordpress.com/2010/11/01/the-fed-bought-mortgage-fraud/ (http://foreclosureblues.wordpress.com /2010/11/01/the-fed-bought-mortgage-fraud/) In the wake of the financial meltdown of 2008, the Federal Reserve announced it would buy mortgage-backed securities, or MBS. The January announcement by the Fed said it would buy MBS from failed mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the amount of $1.25 trillion. At the time, the Fed said in a press release, The goal of the program was to provide support to mortgage and housing markets and to foster improved conditions in financial markets more generally. (Click here for the full Fed statement.)It did provide support to the mortgage market, but did it also buy fraud and cover the banks that sold it? The evidence shows, at the very least, it bought massive amounts of fraud. We now know the Fed definitely bought valueless MBS because it has joined other ripped-off investors to demand Bank of America buy back billions in sour home debt. A Bloomberg story from just last week, featuring Philadelphia Fed President Charles Plosser, reports, The New York Fed, which acquired mortgage debt in the 2008 rescues of Bear Stearns Cos. and American International Group Inc., has joined a bondholder group that aims to force Bank of America Corp.to buy back some bad home loans packaged into $47 billion of securities. On the one hand, the Fed has a duty to the taxpayer to try to collect on behalf of the taxpayer on these mortgages, Plosser said today at an event in Philadelphia. Mr. Plosser lamented the difficult spot the central bank is in because it is both bank regulator and plaintiff. He said, Should we be in the business of suing the financial institutions that we are in fact responsible for supervising? (Click here to read the complete Bloomberg story.) To that question, I ask shouldnt the Fed have done a much better job of supervising the big banks in the first place? The whole financial and mortgage crisis from sour securities to foreclosure fraud is in the process of blowing sky high. The entire mess is clearly the biggest financial fraud in history! It looks to me like the regulators were just supervising their pay checks being deposited into the bank. And remember, the $1.25 trillion of mortgage-backed securities the Fed bought from Fannie and Freddie? How much of that is fraud? William Black, the outspoken Professor of Economics from the University of Missouri KC, says all the big banks were committing major fraudsin the mortgage-backed security market. Black says, at Citicorp, for example, . . . 80% of the mortgage loans it sold to Fannie and Freddie were sold under false representations and warranties. Black claims the frauds increased at some banks, and it is sill going on today! (I admit I used this same video in a recent post. I use it again, because it is the single most important and damning indictment of the big banks out there. Professor Black defines the size of the entire fraudulent mortgage mess.) If hes right, and I think he is, that means the Fed just spent the last 20 months (the program ended in August 2010) buying a trillion dollars in mortgage fraud! That is a staggering amount even for the most powerful central bank in the world. Could the Federal Reserve have bought that amount of fraudulent MBS and not have known it? Could the Fed have been buying that amount of rotten worthless debt to cover the banksters in the syndicate? Who knows if we will ever find that out because the Federal Reserve cannot be independently audited. And who knows what else it bought in sour debt to bail out their banking syndicate buddies because the Federal Reserve cannot be independently audited! It has never been audited in its 97 year history. I know one thing, if the Fed is going to keep its banking cartel alive, it is going to be forced to print massive amounts of money out of thin air to buy a heck of a lot more fraudulent mortgage-backed securities. Thats what worries and scares me the most.
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SEC Investigating Magnetar, JP Morgan Dealings on Subprime CDONAKED CAPITALISM

http://foreclosureblues.wordpress.com/2010/11/01/sec-investigating-magnetar-jp-morgan-dealings-on-subprime-cdo-nakedcapitalism/ (http://foreclosureblues.wordpress.com/2010/11/01/sec-investigating-magnetar-jp-morgan-dealingson-subprime-cdo-naked-capitalism/) ProPublica reports that the SEC has taken interest in Magnetars role in a JP Morgan underwritten CDO. We discussed Magntar at length in our book ECONNED, which broke that story six weeks before ProPublica launched its report, and remains the definitive account of how those transactions were structured. (Our continuing beef with the ProPublica account is that it missed what we discussed at length in ECONNED: the systemic impact of the Magnetar trade. It isnt simply that Magnetar was a bad actor; its Constellation CDO program played a direct and substantial role in increasing the severity and damage of the toxic phase of the subprime bubble). Per ProPublicas update: The Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating whether JPMorgan Chase allowed a hedge fund to improperly select assets for a $1.1 billion deal backed by subprime mortgages, according to people familiar with the probe. Called Squared and completed in May 2007, the deal was a collateralized debt obligation, or CDO, made up of pieces of other CDOs. The hedge fund, Magnetar Capital, based in Evanston, Ill., purchased the riskiest slice of Squared as part of a strategy to bet against the mortgage market. The issue is similar to the one that came up in the SEC suit against Goldman in April over a 2007 Abacus trade (this was one deal in a much larger Goldman program called Abacus): did subprime short John Paulson, who did take a short position in that trade, act as a Trojan horse long for a small percentage of the deal (the equity tranche) so as to gain influence over what bonds went into the deal? With the Paulson involvement, it was harder to argue impropriety, since he had made the fact that he was shorting subprime public, and the CDO manager, ACA, (who was nominally responsible for picking the exposures and clearly was negotiating with Paulson what was in and out of the deal) was part of one of the major investors in the long side of the deal (in other words, if one hand didnt know what the other at ACA was doing, you could hardly blame the failure to communicate on Paulson and Goldman). The trick was that firms like Magnetar and Paulson were sponsors of synthetic or heavily synthetic CDOs (note in the Abacus trade, weirdly, Paulson merely acted as if he was legitimately at the table negotiating the exposures;, remarkably, he didnt act as the deal sponsor). The equity tranche was normally the most difficult to place, and in return for taking that risk, the sponsor typically got the right to influence the deal, in theory to reduce the risk for all investors. The minimum right was being able to nix particular exposures, but as the Paulson/Abacus example indicates, some investors went further and actually presented lists of desired assets (previous reports on Magnetar in the Wall Street Journal also indicate that Magnetar selected particular bonds). But the equity position was a sham; both Paulson and Magnetar took short positions well in excess of their equity tranche position, making them net short.. As we noted in ECONNED: Anyone involved in these transactions probably understood the implicit logic, even if no one acknowledged it. But there is a remarkable absence of anyone who could be pinned with liability. Magnetar officially had no legal relationship to these deals. The investment bank packager/structurer was off the hook as long as he made reasonable disclosure (and remember, the standards are much lower here than for instruments that fall in the SECs purview). The rating agencies get off scot-free, thanks to their First Amendment exemption (discussed in chapter 6). The lawyers involved in the deal are responsible only to their clients, meaning the structurer/packager, and cannot be sued by unhappy investors. The only party on whom liability could be pinned is the CDO manager, who does have a fiduciary responsibility to all investors, not just the sponsor. But the fact that the party who in theory had the most to lose, Magnetar, approved their investments, would seem to exculpate the CDO manager. The ruse of diffusing responsibility, and of having the party most clearly liable, the CDO manager, be an economically weak party (CDO managers typically were very small shops, sometimes with as few as a couple of professional staff), means these cases are hard to prove, even if the nature of the chicanery seems obvious now. The JP Morgan transaction was called Squared because it was a CDO squared, meaning a CDO made from (typically) the riskier tranches of unsold CDOs, with a bit of other types of credit exposures thrown into the mix to make it look slightly less unsavory. The rather peculiar thing about Squared is it consisted heavily of exposures from other Magnetar CDOs, which strongly suggests Magnetar had a hand in this deal (as in dealers were choking on the unsold exposures, and Magnetar needed them placed to launch new first gen CDOs). But Mr. Market does seem to be taking this announcement seriously; the averages started moving down when this story broke today, and Bloomberg attributes the decline to this suit. Although JP Morgan was much less heavily involved in synthetic and heavily synthetic CDOs than Goldman, if the SEC makes a case that sticks against a Magnetar trade, every major firm in the subprime business will be at risk. This could get interesting, in a good way for a change.
Failure To Dismiss 100s Of Faulty Foreclosures Involving

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Robosigners Will Lead To Huge Problem w/ Crappy Home Titles, Says MD Non-Profit In Lawsuits
In Maryland, The Baltimore Sun reports: Attorneys for Maryland homeowners are asking the courts to dismiss hundreds of foreclosure cases that depended on paperwork submitted by so-called robo-signers on behalf of mortgage servicers. Civil Justice, a Baltimore nonprofit that specializes in foreclosure issues, made the request in motions filed last week in two cases. One motion asks that all Maryland foreclosure cases with documents signed by Jeffrey Stephan of GMAC Mortgage including the Baltimore case in question be tossed out. The other asks for the same treatment of all Maryland cases with documents signed by Xee Moua of Wells Fargo. *** Phillip Robinson, an attorney and executive director of Civil Justice, believes the two employees from GMAC and Wells Fargo are each responsible for documents in hundreds of pending foreclosure cases in Maryland. If the courts allowed the mortgage servicers to repossess these homes and resell them, true ownership of the properties would be thrown into question because the cases were filed with "defective" paperwork, he said. The motions contend that failing to dismiss the cases "would further harm our housing recovery by allowing years and years of litigation concerning the title to properties." "We have a huge title problem that needs to be solved," Robinson said. "The only way to clear title is to dismiss cases and make [mortgage servicers] do it the right way." For the story, see Attorneys ask courts to toss out foreclosure cases (Motions focus on 'robo-signers' with GMAC, Wells Fargo). posted by Home Equity Theft Reporter
FIGHTING THE UNLAWFUL DETAINER - What Discovery Can You Do?

Posted by Katherine Gallo on October 13, 2010 Geoffrey Hutchinson from the law firm of Branson, Brinkop, Griffith and Strong brings us these words of wisdom after fighting an uphill battle to save his clients house in a questionable UD. Conducting discovery in unlawful detainer actions can be challenging given the speed at which these summary proceedings are heard. Unlawful detainer is an area of law dealing with the right to possession of real property. Typically, the plaintiff is a landlord trying to eject a tenant or a bank trying to evict a homeowner after a foreclosure sale. Normally, the plaintiff will have all the documents he or she needs (the Trust Deed and Trustees Declaration of Default and Foreclosure) before commencing the action. A lawyer representing a defendant must know what information is needed and must immediately serve discovery on those points, otherwise the case will almost certainly be lost. To say that unlawful detainer is a summary proceeding is an understatement. The answer to a complaint is due in five (5) days. (C.C.P. 1167.3 (pdf)) Thereafter, the plaintiff may request trial to be set, and trial shall be held no later than 20 days following that request. (C.C.P. 1170.5 (pdf)) Discovery responses are due within five (5) days of service. (C.C.P. 2030.260 (pdf)) Motions for summary judgment are heard on five days notice. (C.C.P. 1170.7 (pdf); C.C.P. 1170.8 (pdf)) Unlawful detainer actions are also limited in scope. The sole question to be decided is the plaintiffs right to immediate possession. A defendant may not attack validity of a trust deed or of an unlawful detainer plaintiffs title to the real property. However, a defendant may attack a defective notice of default and defective notice of the foreclosure sale. (Altman v. McCollum (1951) 107 CA2d Supp. 847 (pdf), 854-855) A plaintiff foreclosing on a parcel of real property must follow certain strict procedures regarding notice of default and notice of the sale. Civil Code 2924 (pdf), which will be repealed on 1/1/2011 and replaced with a new version of Civil Code 2924 (2011) (pdf) with the exact same text, provides that the trust deed holder must file a notice of default and record the same in the county in which the real property is located. The notice of default must include a statement regarding the nature of the breach, an election to sell, and a statement of what it will take for the tenant to cure the default. Civil Code 2924(c) (pdf) further provides that contrary to typical acceleration clauses found in mortgages, the trustee must give the trustor, (i.e., the homeowner) an opportunity to cure the default by paying the amount in default other than the portion of principal as would not then be due had no default occurred. (Civil Code 2924(c)(a)(1).) As to the manner of service, Civil Code 2924(f) provides that the tenant must be notified of the foreclosure sale by mail, by posting the notice on their residence, and by publication. A defect in any of these particulars may be raised as a defense in an unlawful detainer action. (Altman, 107 Cal. App. 2d Supp. at 854; Bledsoe v. Pacific Ready Cut Homes (1928) 92 CA 641 (pdf)) Therefore, the plaintiffs compliance with each one of these requirements should be the central focus of the discovery. Note, however, that unlawful detainer actions are typically brought as limited civil cases. Although the unlawful detainer plaintiff may claim deficiency damages (that is the difference between what the tenant owes on the property versus what the bank can sell it for), usually that aspect of
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damages are waived. A right to possession of property is distinct from the value of that property, thus, the monetary amount in dispute is typically lower than $25,000, and discovery in the case is limited by Civil Procedure 94 to any combination of 35 interrogatories, demands for production of documents, and/or requests for admission; along with one (1) oral or written deposition. Finally, note that foreclosure sales to bona fide purchasers are final despite any defect in the default and notice procedures. (Civil Code 2924c(b)(2).) A bona fide purchaser is a true third party to the events leading up to the foreclosure and who pays value for the property without notice of any adverse interest or of any irregularity in the sale proceedings. (Melendrez v. D & I Investment, Inc. (2005) 127 CA4th 1238 (pdf), 1250.) However, more often than not the bank that holds the mortgage is the party that buys the property at foreclosure. In many instances, the foreclosure sale is never advertised publicly, but rather, the bank is notified directly by the trustee. In order to avoid the plaintiffs assertion of bona fide purchaser status, the defendant should also conduct discovery on the relationship between the trustee and the bank, as well as the banks involvement in and knowledge of the foreclosure process. Therefore, the defendants discovery should be focused on: 1.The notice of default, whether it provides the information that Civil Code 2924 et seq. requires, and proof that it was served on the tenant or homeowner, 2.The notice of the foreclosure sale and proof of service upon the defendant, and 3.The relationship between the trustee and the purchaser and the purchasers involvement in the foreclosure process. Remember, unlawful detainer actions are summary proceedings with an emphasis on summary. Do not delay in responding to the complaint and in conducting focused discovery, because time is definitely of the essence.
South Florida man gets his property back after judge reverses Chase foreclosure
A South Florida man had his foreclosure reversed Tuesday based on a motion arguing the bank was wrong to take the property back at auction while at the same time negotiating a loan modification on the home. Attorney Scott Haft, of the Palm Beach Gardens-based firm LaBovick & LaBovick, made the motion to vacate the foreclosure judgment based on fraud, misrepresentation and misconduct by JP Morgan Chase, which Haft said had promised a trial loan modification to his client in February. Haft said Chase was still sending loan modification papers to his client even after the condominium overlooking Miamis Biscayne Bay was auctioned Aug. 24. The bank kept saying, Yeah, were sending it, were sending it, Haft said about the loan modification papers. But they were still going ahead and having all of the hearings while my client didnt know what was going on. A rising complaint among homeowners is that banks continue foreclosure proceedings while completing loan modifications. Lenders sometimes establish a two-track system to deal with delinquent mortgages, ensuring foreclosures are ready to go if a modification doesnt work out. Foreclosure defense attorneys said Tuesdays order paves the way for more homeowners to challenge foreclosure sales made while they were working on a modification. While the order doesnt prevent Chase from re-filing foreclosure paperwork, it will delay the process for at least a year, Haft said. The order comes at a time when Chase is asking homeowners in foreclosure to sign waivers swearing they wont file suit against the lender if their property is sold at auction while a solution is being negotiated, such as a short sale, deed in lieu of foreclosure or a loan modification. Foreclosure defense attorney Thomas Ice, of Ice Legal in Royal Palm Beach, said a client received the waiver Oct. 23. Ice fears people may sign it not knowing what the letter says. Hes also concerned its an attempt to circumvent attorneys so that motions such as Hafts are shut down. What Chase is doing is shameful, Ice said. Chase could not immediately comment on the case Tuesday afternoon.
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: Kilika on November 03, 2010, 11:43:13 AM Amazing. Clearly these bankers are living up to the stereotype of having "Guido" and his boys to come collect. Not only are they not working with their customers, but are actively trying to do to the homeowners the worst thing that could happen as a borrower by aggressively foreclosing and putting people on the street. You definately can tell what kind of fruit they are producing, and it definately ain't good fruit.
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System
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Post by: Geolibertarian on November 03, 2010, 11:57:03 AM If anyone actually thinks the newly-elected Republicans will try to "change" this in a way that benefits We the People instead of ruling-class parasites (http://forum.prisonplanet.com/index.php?topic=162212.msg967898#msg967898), then that person is in for the same rude awakening that slogan-parroting Obama cultists got. And frankly, he or she will deserve that rude awakening, because it's not like it's a mystery as to whose interests the pro-war/pro-police state/pro-debt money (http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/ponzi.php) Republican Party truly serves.
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: Geolibertarian on November 03, 2010, 12:10:32 PM
Quote from: LeftyLeo on November 03, 2010, 11:43:13 AM Amazing. Clearly these bankers are living up to the stereotype of having "Guido" and his boys to come collect. Not only are they not working with their customers, but are actively trying to do to the homeowners the worst thing that could happen as a borrower by aggressively foreclosing and putting people on the street.
In many right-wing circles, this is known as (euphemism (http://globalgulag.freesmfhosting.com/index.php/topic,401.0.html) alert!) letting the banker-engineered depression "run its course (http://www.google.com/#sclient=psy&hl=en& q=%22Austrian+School%22+recession+%22run+its+course%22&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=&pbx=1& fp=b2da8a77dcd93603)," or letting the almighty god of "market forces" impose a just and necessary "correction" on our economy. (Sound familiar?) And I assure everyone reading this that that is precisely what most -- if not all -- of the newly-elected, Austrian School (http://globalgulag.freesmfhosting.com/index.php/topic,395.0.html)-influenced Republicans intend on doing. Then the Democrats will be back posing as our saviors again like they did in '06 and '08, "lesser evil (http://forum.prisonplanet.com/index.php?topic=81509.msg959150#msg959150)" voters will fall hook, line and sinker for it like they always do, and the vicious, self-perpetuating cycle will continue ad nauseum.
(http://invisiblepatriots.com/Gifs/2Wings1BirdNew.gif)
MERS affirms track record of title transfer in response to Virginia accusation

Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems is disputing claims made by a Virginian delegate that the company's mortgage registration system violates state law. In an official statement given to HousingWire Wednesday, MERS said it "does not eliminate, omit or otherwise fail to report land ownership information from public records." The firm said when MERS becomes the mortgagee of record for a lender, it notifies parties involved of the transfer. Mortgages and deeds of trust still get recorded in the land records, MERS said. On Oct. 26, Republican state delegate of Virginia, Bob Marshall, asked his state's attorney general to investigate the practices of property title transfer in Virginia. More specifically, with regard to Mortgage Electronic Registration System, which has been in at the epicenter of scrutiny since foreclosures started being recalled. In a letter to Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, Marshall asked whether the fact that MERS did not pay a fee when transferring the property title into the parent company's ownership was a violation of state law. MERS allows lenders to track individual mortgages through an electronic tracking and holding system. Through that system, MERS holds legal title to a mortgage as the loan owner's agent and is sometimes granted the authority to enforce foreclosure. In Marshall's opinion, paying the title registration fee is a validation of creditability; a security made by the state to guarantee ownership of a loan. However, lenders are not required by by state or federal law to pay the fee. "If you have any brains at all and you are the person who is the note holder, you want an official record that says you're the person to do the transfer," Marshall told HousingWire in an interview. The reason Marshall said he is bringing this issue to light is to restore the U.S. property laws that have been developed and sustained over centuries. He believes the people on Wall Street are taking advantage of consumers to make a quick buck. "The law signed in December that makes credit default swaps exempt from state gambling laws, coupled with MERS have basically unleashed a system of complete chaos in the authoritative transfer of ownership of real property," Marshall said. "To undo the system so a few people on Wall Street can make some money is an insult to the constitution." As originally reported by The Wall Street Journal, Marshall is currently working with other law makers to draft a bill that would require lenders to pay a fee to be allowed to proceed with a foreclosure. He calls it "a practical way to address the issue and say, if no one files here (Virginia), the the courts aren't going to recognize your right to file on the property." Marshall was elected as a Virginia delegate in 1991 and is an active lawmaker. However, he said he sought official comment from the state AG on the subject because he is not authorized to make distinctive judgment on whether MERS has violated the law. But Marshall makes his message clear. "There are rules that Wall Street needs to play by," he said. "MERS, unaddressed, will completely eviscerate trust among real
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estate buyers, homes, land and possibly commercial real estate. And nothing, I mean nothing, the Fed will do can change that uncertainty."
Another Nobel Economist Says We Have to Prosecute Fraud Or Else the Economy Won't Recover
http://foreclosureblues.wordpress.com/2010/11/04/another-nobel-economist-says-we-have-to-prosecute-fraud-or-elsethe-economy-wont-recover/ (http://foreclosureblues.wordpress.com/2010/11/04/another-nobel-economist-says-we-have-toprosecute-fraud-or-else-the-economy-wont-recover/)
Yesterday, November 03, 2010, 11:47:05 PM | noreply@blogger.com (George Washington)
As economists such as William Black and James Galbraith have repeatedly said, we cannot solve the economic crisis unless we throw the criminals who committed fraud in jail. And Nobel prize winning economist George Akerlof has demonstrated that failure to punish white collar criminals - and instead bailing them out- creates incentives for more economic crimes and further destruction of the economy in the future. Nobel prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz just agreed. As Stiglitz told Yahoo's Daily Finance on October 2oth:
This is a really important point to understand from the point of view of our society. The legal system is supposed to be the codification of our norms and beliefs, things that we need to make our system work. If the legal system is seen as exploitative, then confidence in our whole system starts eroding. And that's really the problem that's going on. *** A lot of the predatory practices in automobile loans are going to be able to be continued. Why is it OK to engage in bad lending in automobiles and not in the mortgage market? Is there any principle? We all know the answer to that. No, there's no principle. It's money. It's campaign contributions, lobbying, revolving door, all of those kinds of things ***
The system is designed to actually encourage that kind of thing, even with the fines [referring to former Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozillo, who recently paid tens of millions of dollars in fines, a small fraction of what he actually earned, because he earned hundreds of millions.]. *** . I know so many people who say it's an outrage that we had more accountability in the '80's with the S&L crisis than we are having today. Yeah, we fine them, and what is the big lesson? Behave badly, and the government might take 5% or 10% of what you got in your ill-gotten gains, but you're still sitting home pretty with your several hundred million dollars that you have left over after paying fines that look very large by ordinary standards but look small compared to the amount that you've been able to cash in. So the system is set so that even if you're caught, the penalty is just a small number relative to what you walk home with. The fine is just a cost of doing business. It's like a parking fine. Sometimes you make a decision to park knowing that you might get a fine because going around the corner to the parking lot takes you too much time. *** I think we ought to go do what we did in the S&L [crisis] and actually put many of these guys in prison. Absolutely. These are not just white-collar crimes or little accidents. There were victims. That's the point. There were victims all over the world. *** So do we have any confidence that these guys who got us into the mess have really changed their minds? Actually we have pretty [good] confidence that they have not. I've seen some speeches where they said, "Nothing was really wrong. We didn't get things quite right. But our understanding of the issues is pretty sound." If they think that, then we really are in a sorry mess. *** There are many aspects of [deterring people from committing crime]. Economists focus on the whole notion of incentives. People have an incentive sometimes to behave badly, because they can make more money if they can cheat. If our economic system is going to work then we have to make sure that what they gain when they cheat is offset by a system of penalties.
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And that's why, for instance, in our antitrust law, we often don't catch people when they behave badly, but when we do we say there are treble damages. You pay three times the amount of the damage that you do. That's a strong deterrent. Unfortunately, what we've been doing now, and more recently in these financial crimes, is settling for fractions fractions! of the direct damage, and even a smaller fraction of the total societal damage. That is to say, the financial sector really brought down the global economy and if you include all of that collateral damage, it's really already in the trillions of dollars. But there's a broader sense of collateral damage that I think that has not really been taken on board. And that is confidence in our legal system, in our rule of law, in our system of justice. When you say the Pledge of Allegiance you say, with "justice for all." People aren't sure that we have justice for all. Somebody is caught for a minor drug offense, they are sent to prison for a very long time. And yet, these so-called white-collar crimes, which are not victimless, almost none of these guys, almost none of them, go to prison. *** Let me give you another example of where the legal system has gotten very much out of whack, and which contributed to the financial crisis. In 2005, we passed a bankruptcy reform. It was a reform pushed by the banks. It was designed to allow them to make bad loans to people to who didn't understand what was going on, and then basically choke them. Squeeze them dry. And we should have called it, "the new indentured servitude law." Because that's what it did. Let me just tell you how bad it is. I don't think Americans understand how bad it is. It becomes really very difficult for individuals to discharge their debt. The basic principle in the past in America was people should have the right for a fresh start. People make mistakes. Especially when they're preyed upon. And so you should be able to start afresh again. Get a clean slate. Pay what you can and start again. Now if you do it over and over again that's a different thing. But at least when there are these lenders preying on you should be able to get a fresh start. But they [the banks] said, "No, no, you can't discharge your debt," or you can't discharge it very easily. *** This is indentured servitude. And we criticize other countries for having indentured servitude of this kind, bonded labor. But in America we instituted this in 2005 with almost no discussion of the consequences. But what it did was encourage the banks to engage in even worse lending practices. *** The banks want to pretend that they did not make bad loans. They don't want to come into reality. The fact that they were very instrumental in changing the accounting standards, so that loans that are impaired where people are not paying back what they owe, are treated as if they are just as good as a well-performing mortgage. So the whole strategy of the banks has been to hide the losses, muddle through and get the government to keep interest rates really low. *** The result of this is, as long as we keep up this strategy, it's going to be a long time before the economy recovers ....
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: citizenx on November 03, 2010, 11:44:02 PM At least one of our Nobel-winning economist is talking some sense. Krugman wants ten trillion in QEII. I'm starting to think Nobel prizes in Economics are becoming as easy to come by as their Peace Prizes (Kissinger and Obama, being prime examples). Pretty soon, you will be able to get one in a box of Cracker Jacks -- if you can afford them. I assume someone somewhere still makes Cracker Jacks. Is it China, now? "Now with less Melamine!"
Quote from: citizenx on November 03, 2010, 11:44:02 PM At least one of our Nobel-winning economist is talking some sense. Krugman wants ten trillion in QEII. I'm starting to think Nobel prizes in Economics are becoming as easy to come by as their Peace Prizes (Kissinger and Obama, being prime examples). Pretty soon, you will be able to get one in a box of Cracker Jacks -- if you can afford them. I assume someone somewhere still makes Cracker Jacks. Is it China, now? "Now with less Melamine!"
when the cracker jacks are recalled for lead content, they will just hand the Prizes out at a some random street corner....
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: citizenx on November 04, 2010, 05:25:57 AM
ForeclosureGate
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The banks want you to think that this is just a document crisis. Foreclosuregate is more about the mortgages and the transfer of ownership paperwork, than whether a robo signer signed the foreclosure documents. It turns out that the mortgage industry has pledged the same home mortgage for multiple mortgage backed securities. That means that there are multiple owners of the same mortgage. Bank of America has already filed court documents showing that is reality not fiction. Funny thing, if the homeowner pledged the same house as collateral for multiple loans this is considered fraud, yet when the mortgage industry does the same thing it is a paperwork problem? What we have here is a mortgage industry generated Ponzi scheme that is about to come crumbing down. The law requires that the actual owner of the mortgage is the only person or entity that can foreclosure upon a mortgage. So, who really owns these home mortgages? Think about it. The days of one bank owing your home mortgage are long gone. Your mortgage was divided into 50 billion pieces. In many cases, each piece was used to back a different mortgage backed securities and in many cases that same piece was used to back up many mortgage backed securities. So do all the holders who hold your home as collateral to the mortgage, don't they all have to show up at once to the court to foreclose? Problem is that no one even knows which homes are backing up which securities. There is no database where you can type in a home address or mortgage number and find out if a home is part of one or multiple mortgage backed securities. Next question, who is going to pay the bill for the mortgage industries Ponzi scheme. Most banks have already started the process of ensuring that the American taxpayer will foot this bill as well. Too big to fail means that there is no option of bankruptcy and therefore the taxpayer will once again take the brunt of the housing crisis created by the mortgage industry. What does this mean for the average family? First this problem will make the foreclosure process harder and take more time, making now the perfect opportunity for families to determine if walking away is a good financial decision. Should you walkawayok? Second, buying a foreclosed property now became almost impossible; no title insurance company will insure these houses because title is in question. Finally, those who purchased foreclosed houses may be stuck with a house they cannot sell, a house they may not even legally own?
Read more: http://www.articlesbase.com/mortgage-articles/foreclosuregate-3532766.html#ixzz14JMg7fTB Under Creative Commons License: Attribution -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Personally, I think this is what QE II is really all about, the banks (together as the Fed) print out a trillion dollars and buy a trillion dollars worth of "treasuries" so that the gov't. can later turn around and fork out that trillion to the banks in the form of bailouts for "Foreclosuregate" ("Fraudclosuregate"). We pay for it twice. Once in the form of inflation caused by the devaluation of our currency. We pay for it again in the form of taxes by which we pay back the principal and interest. For their part the banks hand out big bonuses to the geniuses that run their ponzi schemes. And what do we do? Heretofore, nothing at all but pay.
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: jerryweaver on November 04, 2010, 06:10:06 AM I drafted this letter the other day and sent it to a few friends. Does this paint a accurate picture? Fractional reserve banking at it finest?
Hi Roy, The mortgage industry is getting ready to be exposed as fraudulent . What happened is the mortgages and deeds of trust went off paper records and were coverted to digital records. This happened in the 1995-2000. Now every digital mortgage that has been sold has probably been resold a few times. That is called a Ponzi Scheme. Once that starts it has to continue as the investors want a return and start crying to the courts if they get ripped off. So the organizers of the ponzi have to continue committing fraud or they get caught. Well the bailout scheme foisted on the taxpayer in 2008 couldn't cover it up and only delayed the truth getting out. The mortgage backed securities asset is going to be exposed as simply much bad accounting. What this has to do with you is you need to check and see if your mortgage is MERS or Mortgage Electronic Recording Service. If it is it was more than likely resold to more than one investor. Any of these investors can bring you to foreclosure for nonperformance. There is a remedy. I'm still trying to get the straight story on that, but, it is probably as simple as taking the originator of the loan to court and demanding to see the paperwork that you signed. If they digitalized it and resold it more than once , then the contract is null and void and you own your house free and clear. i know this sounds kooky but, that is in fact how the currency and stocks system has been run by these fraudsters for about a century now. It has got out of hand and is imploding. P.S. Do some research on this as it is being reported on the corporate financial media. They can't give the straight story without getting in jail. 5th Ammendment allows they don't have to testify against themselves.
Quote from: jerryweaver on November 04, 2010, 06:10:06 AM I drafted this letter the other day and sent it to a few friends. Does this paint a accurate picture? Fractional reserve banking at it finest?
Hi Roy,
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The mortgage industry is getting ready to be exposed as fraudulent . What happened is the mortgages and deeds of trust went off paper records and were coverted to digital records. This happened in the 1995-2000. Now every digital mortgage that has been sold has probably been resold a few times. That is called a Ponzi Scheme. Once that starts it has to continue as the investors want a return and start crying to the courts if they get ripped off. So the organizers of the ponzi have to continue committing fraud or they get caught. Well the bailout scheme foisted on the taxpayer in 2008 couldn't cover it up and only delayed the truth getting out. The mortgage backed securities asset is going to be exposed as simply much bad accounting. What this has to do with you is you need to check and see if your mortgage is MERS or Mortgage Electronic Recording Service. If it is it was more than likely resold to more than one investor. Any of these investors can bring you to foreclosure for nonperformance. There is a remedy. I'm still trying to get the straight story on that, but, it is probably as simple as taking the originator of the loan to court and demanding to see the paperwork that you signed. If they digitalized it and resold it more than once , then the contract is null and void and you own your house free and clear. i know this sounds kooky but, that is in fact how the currency and stocks system has been run by these fraudsters for about a century now. It has got out of hand and is imploding. P.S. Do some research on this as it is being reported on the corporate financial media. They can't give the straight story without getting in jail. 5th Ammendment allows they don't have to testify against themselves.
yes except they are still electronically filing deeds with MERS.... I bought my home in 2009 and it is a MERS.....
Quote from: citizenx on November 04, 2010, 05:25:57 AM
Personally, I think this is what QE II is really all about, the banks (together as the Fed) print out a trillion dollars and buy a trillion dollars worth of "treasuries" so that the gov't. can later turn around and fork out that trillion to the banks in the form of bailouts for "Foreclosuregate" ("Fraudclosuregate"). We pay for it twice. Once in the form of inflation caused by the devaluation of our currency. We pay for it again in the form of taxes by which we pay back the principal and interest. For their part the banks hand out big bonuses to the geniuses that run their ponzi schemes. And what do we do? Heretofore, nothing at all but pay.
I think you are on to something there..... that would be a very "easy" way to implement another bailout..... under the guise of, "we are buying up the debt"........
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: jerryweaver on November 04, 2010, 08:58:06 AM I am hoping the american consumer will revolt and we can use the free house carrot as incentive. If the mortgage meltdown takes out the Federal Reserve and cripples the Illuminati we will have won another major battle. The Art of War The sage commander starts with himself. Thus his first question is not what to do but how to be. Simply being oneself brings about a power often lost in the rush to be something else. A rock is just a rock, and a tree just a tree. But the text tells us that: As for the nature of trees and rocks When still, they are at rest. When agitated, they move. When square, they stop. When round, they go. Thus the shih [force] of one skilled at setting people to battle is like rolling round rocks from a mountain one thousand jen high. http://www.yesmagazine.org/new-economy/homeowners-rebellion-could-62-million-homes-be-foreclosure-proof (http://www.yesmagazine.org/new-economy/homeowners-rebellion-could-62-million-homes-be-foreclosure-proof) That means hordes of victims of predatory lending could end up owning their homes free and clearwhile the financial industry could end up skewered on its own sword.
Eliminating Foreclosure Fraud: Setting the Record Straight on Bank of America, Part 2:
We have explained in prior posts and interviews that there are two foreclosure-related crises. Our first two-part post called on the U.S. to begin "foreclosing on the foreclosure fraudsters." We concentrated on how the underlying epidemic of mortgage fraud by lenders inevitably produced endemic foreclosure fraud. We wrote to urge government policymakers to get Bank of America and other lenders and servicers to clean up the massive fraud. We obviously cannot on rely solely on Bank of America assessing its own culpability. Note also that while we have supported a moratorium on foreclosures, this is only to stop the foreclosure frauds the illegal seizure of homes by fraudulent means. We do not suppose that financial institutions can afford to maintain toxic assets on their books. The experience of the thrift crisis of the 1980s demonstrates the inherent problems created by forbearance in the case of institutions that are run as control frauds. All of the incentives of a control fraud bank are worsened with forbearance. Our posts on the Prompt Corrective Action (PCA) law (which mandates that the regulators place insolvent banks in receivership) have focused on the banks failure to foreclose as a deliberate strategy to avoid recognizing their massive losses in order to escape receivership and to allow their managers to further loot the banks through huge bonuses based on fictional income (which ignores real losses). We have previously noted the massive rise in the "shadow inventory" of loans that have received no payments for years, yet have not led to foreclosure: As of September, banks owned nearly a million homes, up 21 percent from a year earlier. That alone would take 17
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months to unload at the most recent pace of sales, and doesnt include the 5.2 million homes still in the foreclosure process or those whose owners have already missed at least two payments. Bank of Americas response admits how massive its contribution to the shadow inventory has been. Mairone implies that the bank delays its foreclosures for years out of a desire to help homeowners, but common sense, and their own data show that the explanation that makes most sense is that the bank is hiding losses and maximizing the senior officers bonuses by postponing the day that the bank is finally put into receivership. We did not call for a long-term foreclosure moratorium. Our proposal created an incentive for honest lenders to clean up their act quickly by eliminating foreclosure fraud. We will devote a future post to our proposals for dealing with the millions of homes that the fraudulent lenders induced borrowers to purchase even though they could not afford to repay the loans. Bank of Americas data add to our argument that hundreds of thousands of its customers were induced by their lenders to purchase homes they could not afford. The overwhelming bulk of the lender fraud at Bank of America probably did come from Countrywide, which was already infamous for its toxic loans at the time that Bank of America chose to acquire it (and also most of Countrywides managers who had perpetrated the frauds). The data also support our position that fraudulent lenders are delaying foreclosures and the sales of foreclosed homes primarily in order to delay enormous loss recognition. The fraud scheme inherently strips homeowners of their life savings and finally their homes. It is inevitable that the homeowners would become delinquent; that was the inherent consequence of inducing those who could not repay their loans to borrow large sums and purchase homes at grossly inflated prices supported by fraudulent inflated appraisals. This was not an accident, but rather the product of those who designed the "exploding rate" mortgages. Those mortgages initial "teaser rates" induce unsophisticated borrowers to purchase homes whose values were inflated by appraisal fraud (which is generated by the lenders and their agents) and those initial teaser rates delay the inevitable defaults (allowing the banks senior managers to obtain massive bonuses for many years based on the fictional income). Soon after the bubble stalls, however, the interest rate the purchasers must pay explodes and the inevitable wave of defaults strikes. Delinquency, default, foreclosure, and the destruction of entire neighborhoods are the four horsemen that always ride together to wreak havoc in the wake of epidemics of mortgage fraud by lenders. Out of these millions of fraudulent mortgages, Bank of America claims to have modified 700,000; of these, 85,000 are under HAMP. Still, the Treasury says that the bank has another 375,000 mortgages that already meet HAMP terms. In other words, Bank of America has been shockingly negligent in its efforts to modify mortgages. The Treasury reports that the banks performance is far worse than that of the other large banks. Alternatively, Treasury could be wrong about the mortgages; Bank of America may be refusing to modify mortgages for homeowners who appear to qualify for the HAMP terms because it knows the data Treasury relied upon is false. Their unusually low rate of HAMP modifications could be the result of the extraordinarily high rate of mortgage fraud at Countrywide. Bank of America has admitted that HAMPs "implicit" purpose is to help the banks that made the fraudulent loans not the borrowers. That goal was the same goal underlying the decision to extort FASB to gimmick the accounting rules delaying loss recognition. For example, as reported by Jon Prior BofA Merrill Lynch analysts said critics of the program arent yet vindicated on their calls that HAMP is a failure. "While the increased re-default rates will provide more fodder to those in the camp that regards HAMP as a failure, we do not think the story is so simple," according to the report. The analysts said the revised re-default rates are in line with what they expected. While the "explicit goal" of HAMP to help 3m to 4m homeowners "appears unattainable at this point," its "implicit goal" to stall the foreclosure process and provide some order to the flow of properties into REO status has been achieved, according to the report. "In our view, the implicit goal has been one of the key reasons for the stabilization in home prices," according to the BofA Merrill Lynch report. HAMPs parallel goal is funneling more money to the banks that induced the fraudulent loans. Data indicate that neither the HAMP modifications nor those undertaken independently by the banks actually benefit homeowners. Most debtors eventually default even on the modified mortgage and end up in foreclosure. Further, many reports indicate that banks encourage homeowners to miss payments so that they can qualify for HAMP, then use the delinquencies as an excuse to evict homeowners. Most importantly, as we reported, half of all homeowners are already underwater in their mortgages, or nearly so. Bank of America representative Rebecca Mairone does not report how many of these mortgages undergoing mods are underwater, but given the massive lender fraud that included overvaluation during the property appraisal process (in other words, even before property values fell these mortgages were probably underwater), it is likely that most are. Since the modification merely lowers the monthly payment but leaves the balance unchanged, the homeowners remain underwater. What this means is that homeowners are left with a terrible investment, paying a mortgage that is far larger than the value of the home. Because most modifications will lead to eventual default, all they do is to allow the bank to squeeze more life savings out of the homeowner before taking the home. Bank of America wants to be congratulated for such activity. Meanwhile, Bank of America expects to receive billions of dollars for its participation in HAMP. The top three banks (JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo being the others) will share $17 billion because HAMP pays servicers, investors and lenders for restructuring. These top 3 banks service $5.4 trillion in mortgages, or half of all outstanding home mortgage loans. Yet, as Phyllis Caldwell, Treasurys housing rescue chief has testified,
there is no proof that these banks have any legal title to the loans they are modifying and foreclosing. In Bank of America representative Rebecca Mairones response to us, she does not respond to, let
alone contest, the fact that her bank, as well as other banks, has been illegally foreclosing on properties illegally removing people from their homes. Instead, she lists characteristics of those homeowners on which Bank of America might be illegally foreclosing: they are unemployed, they have not made payments in many months, a third no longer occupy their homes, and so on. It is interesting that she completely ignores all the important issues at hand with respect to the "deadbeat" homeowners. How many of these homeowners were illegally removed from their homes so that they became vacant?
Does Bank of America hold the "wet ink" notes on any of these homes, as required by 45 states? How many of these homeowners were unemployed or
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otherwise financially distressed when the loans were originally made? How many of the mortgages were fraudulent from the very beginning: low docs, no docs, liar loans, NINJAs (all specialties of Countrywide)? Without addressing these questions, Bank of America cannot claim to have demonstrated that the foreclosures were appropriate, no matter how many years borrowers might have been delinquent.
Unfortunately, the non-response to the crises caused by Bank of Americas frauds exemplifies their response to our reporting. It does not engage the points we made. It is a pure PR exercise. Bank of America also wants praise for having "stepped up" to purchase Countrywide, and asserts that if it had not done so, the "failure of [Countrywide] would have been devastating to the economy, the markets, and millions of homeowners." We have explained why this was not true of Countrywide or Bank of America. Receiverships of fraudulent banks preserve, not destroy, assets. Countrywide and its fellow fraudulent lenders and sellers of toxic mortgages "devastat[ed] the economy, the markets, and millions of homeowners," as Citicorps response put it. A receiver would have fired Countrywides fraudulent senior leaders. Bank of America, by contrast, put them in leadership roles in major operations, including foreclosures, where they could commit continuing frauds. Bank of America did not purchase Countrywide for the good of the public. It purchased a notorious lender to feed the ego of their CEO, who wanted to run the biggest bank in America rather than the best bank in America. They certainly knew at the time of the purchase that is was buying an institution whose business model was based on fraud, and it had to have known that a substantial portion of Countrywides assets were toxic and fraudulent (since Bank of Americas own balance sheet contained similar assets and it could reasonably expect that Countrywides own standards were even worse). The response does not contest the depth of the banks insolvency problems should it be required to recognize its liability for losses caused by its frauds. Here is how current CEO explained the decision to acquire Countrywide: The Countrywide acquisition has positioned the bank in the mortgage business on a scale it had not previously achieved. There have been losses, and lawsuits, from the legacy Countrywide operation, but we are looking forward. We acquired the best mortgage servicing platform in the country, and a terrific sales force. Bank of Americas response to our articles ignores its foreclosure fraud, which we detailed in our articles. News reports claim that the bank sent a 60 person "due diligence" team into Countrywide for at least four weeks. The Countrywide sales staff were notorious, having prompted multiple fraud investigations by the SEC and various State attorneys general. The SEC fraud complaint against Countrywide emphasized the games it played with the computer system. Countrywide had a terrible reputation for its nonprime lending. Nonprime loans were already collapsing at the time of the due diligence, the FBI had warned about the epidemic of mortgage fraud, and the lending professions anti-fraud firm had warned that liars loans were endemically fraudulent. Is it really possible that Bank of Americas due diligence team missed all of this and that the CEO thought even months later that the Countrywide lending personnel and Countrywides computer systems were exceptionally desirable assets? The obvious questions we have for Bank of America about the due diligence are: How did you determine the losses in Countrywides assets? How large were the market value losses at that time? How large are the market value losses now? Which members of the due diligence team were assigned to determine the incidence of fraud in various loan categories? What did they find? What actions did BofA take in response to finding the incidence of mortgage and accounting/securities fraud? Even Bank of America now acknowledges that Countrywides computer system and personnel were defective: After buying Countrywide, Bank of America decided to adopt the Calabasas, Calif., companys homegrown mortgage-servicing technology. For more than a year, though, the combined company used two core systems that didnt communicate with each other. The companys resources were strained by the integration, the need to roll out new loan-modification programs and rising delinquencies. "We knew it would be challenging," says one executive involved in the integration. Bank of America soon discovered that information was missing from many Countrywide loan files, making it more difficult to communicate effectively with borrowers. "You would shake your head and say: How can that be?" this executive says. It didnt help that many Countrywide executives were let go during the integration, with Bank of America installing its own employees in key posts. Such moves are routine in corporate acquisitions. Former Countrywide executives ran the servicing operation until recently, says Dan Frahm, a company spokesman. Bank of America says no home-loan servicer could have anticipated the crushing workload caused by economic turmoil, falling home prices and the foreclosure epidemic. The bank did its "best" in "difficult and an unforeseen set of circumstances," says Mr. Mahoney, the head of public policy. We explained in our initial posts why accounting control frauds typically have very poor record keeping. They are wrong to claim that no "servicer" could anticipate that making fraudulent loans would cause severe losses. Countrywide was perfectly poised to know how extensive fraud was in nonprime lending and the sale of nonprime paper. Indeed, its CEO predicted disaster.
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Bank of Americas computer problems aligned with its senior officers interest in hiding its losses, as reported by Michael Powell: The bank instructs real estate agents to use its computer program to evaluate short sales. But in three cases observed by The New York Times in collaboration with two real estate agents, the banks system repeatedly asked for and lost the same information and generated inaccurate responses. In half a dozen more cases examined by The New York Times, Bank of America rejected short sale offers, foreclosed and auctioned off houses at lower prices. But less obvious financial incentives can push toward a foreclosure rather than a short sale. Servicers can reap high fees from foreclosures. And lenders can try to collect on private mortgage insurance. Some advocates and real estate agents also point to an April 2009 regulatory change in an obscure federal accounting law. The change, in effect, allowed banks to foreclose on a home without having to write down a loss until that home was sold. By contrast, if a bank agrees to a short sale, it must mark the loss immediately. Any competent due diligence team would have seen obvious warning signs within hours of entering Countrywides offices. Countrywide openly violated the law on record keeping with impunity. Gretchen Morgenson reported on such practices on August 26, 2007: Independent brokers who have worked with Countrywide also say the company does not provide records of their compensation to the Internal Revenue Service on a Form 1099, as the law requires. These brokers say that all other home lenders they have worked with submitted 1099s disclosing income earned from their associations. One broker who worked with Countrywide for seven years said she never got a 1099. "When I got ready to do my first years taxes I had received 1099s from everybody but Countrywide," she said. "I called my rep and he said, Were too big. Theres too many. We dont do it. " A different broker supplied an e-mail message from a Countrywide official stating that it was not company practice to submit 1099s. It is unclear why Countrywide apparently chooses not to provide the documents. More than 85% of the banks 1.3 million mortgage customers now at least 60 days behind on their payments got their loans through Countrywide. The $4 billion deal also saddled Bank of America with technology problems, paperwork glitches and cultural tension. The servicing unit now has its fourth leader in roughly two years. Is it too much to expect of Bank of Americas due diligence team that it might have looked at publicly available reports? As we explained, fraud begets fraud. Bank of America created over $4 billion in "goodwill" and placed it on its books as an asset when it paid money to acquire Countrywide at a time when it was deeply insolvent on a market value basis. Instead of acquiring an asset, they got thousands of fraudulent employees and officers, a failed computer system and catastrophic losses. So, we have a question for Bank of America, its auditors, and the SEC: why havent you written off that entire goodwill account? Given the fact that we have obtained B of As attention (and that of the some administration officials), we ask the following questions that the public needs to make intelligent policy decisions. Has Bank of America conducted a review of the banks assets that AMBAC reviewed and found a 97 percent rate of false reps and warranties? If so, who conducted the review, and what rate of false reps and warranties did they find? Does Bank of America agree that liars loans have extremely high fraud rates? Does Bank of America agree that an honest secured lender would never seek to inflate an appraisal? Does Bank of America agree that a competent, honest secured lender would prevent others from frequently inflating appraised values? Does Bank of America agree that appropriate home mortgage underwriting can minimize adverse selection and produce a positive expected value to home lending? How many fraudulent mortgage loans made by Countrywide has Bank of America identified? What is Bank of Americas procedure when it finds suspicious evidence of a fraudulent loan? How many fraudulent mortgage loans, by year, since 2000, have Countrywide and Bank of America identified. How many suspicious activity reports (SARs) did Bank of America file concerning mortgage fraud, by year, for the period 2000-to date? What are the position titles of the three most senior Bank of America managers that were a subject of the SARs filed by the bank? How many SARs did Countrywide file, by year, for the period 2000 on? How many mortgage loans or securities did Countrywide and Bank of America sell under false reps and warranties? What was the allowance for loan and lease losses (ALLL) (aggregate amount and relevant ratios) provided by Countrywide and by Bank of America, each year from 2000 on for mortgages and mortgage securities? If it varied by type of mortgage provide the ALLL for each type. Which years does Bank of America consider Countrywides ALLL to be adequate? Has Bank of America reviewed Countrywides nonprime loans for fraud incidence, fraud losses, and the incidence of lender fraud and fraud by the lenders agents? Please provide the results. What has Bank of America done to remedy the injuries that borrowers suffered through loan or foreclosure fraud by them or Countrywide?
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Does Bank of America agree that Countrywides nonprime lending was often conducted in a manner that was unsafe and unsound? Does Bank of America agree that Countrywides record keeping was not adequate and required substantial improvement? At current market value of its assets, just how insolvent is Bank of America? How much can the bank sell its toxic assets for in todays market? What is the value of mortgages and mortgage backed securities held by Bank of America for which it has no clear title? How many MBSs has the bank sold to investors for which it does not hold the notes that are required? What is the banks current estimate of losses it will suffer in court due to lawsuits by investors? The top four banks are holding434 billion in second liens (good only if the first lien the mortgage is paid), and carrying these on their books at 90% of face value. What are Bank of Americas reasonably expected losses on second liens against properties that are delinquent, in foreclosure, or likely to go into foreclosure? < mortgage of incidence the identifying purpose for loans liar?s and subprime sample a reviewing to assigned were assets Countrywide?s reviewed that team diligence due BofA?s members many> How large a sample of subprime and liars loans did BofAs due diligence team review? What likely mortgage fraud incidence did BofAs due diligence team discover? What did they report to BofA with regard to fraud incidence? What changes in lending and personnel did BofA implement in response to these findings? Bank of America has not responded to Bill Blacks prior requests that it terminate the services of its openly racist chief advisor in Germany: Hans-Olaf Henkel. We request a response.
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: redeux on November 08, 2010, 01:29:07 PM It appears if you request to see the note from BoA they will place a credit block on your credit file, deny your request to see the original document, send you only a copy of the note that only has your signature, then wait another week to send a separate letter disclosing who owns your loan.... they then proceed to inform you that as of the date on the letter the credit block was removed but the negative credit reporting on your file is not removed..........
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: citizenx on November 08, 2010, 05:15:43 PM
Quote from: citizenx on November 08, 2010, 12:34:40 AM
Bank of America Edges Closer to Tipping Point: Jonathan Weil

By Jonathan Weil - Nov 4, 2010 10:00 AM GMT+0900 Bloomberg Opinion
It was only last April that Bank of America Corp. was making fools out of the doomsayers who had called for its nationalization a year earlier. Taxpayers had gotten their bailout cash back. Investors who bought its shares at the bottom were making a killing. Government leaders lauded the companys rescues, both of them, as a great success. Now the bank may be on the verge of trouble again. Its stock has fallen 41 percent since April 15. Mortgage-bond investors are demanding untold billions of dollars in refunds. The foreclosure fiasco is metastasizing. A member of the Troubled Asset Relief Programs oversight panel, AFL-CIO attorney Damon Silvers, openly worried at a hearing last week about the risk that Bank of America might need another bailout. A few more months like the last one, and we may be wishing Bank of America had never returned its $45 billion of TARP money. continued: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-11-04/bank-of-america-edges-closer-to-tipping-point-commentary-by-jonathan-weil.html -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Judging by its shrinking stock price, though, investors are acting as if Bank of America is near a tipping point. Its market capitalization stands at $115.6 billion, or 54 percent of book value. Thats the second-lowest price-to-book ratio among the 24 companies in the KBW Bank Index, and well below the 76 percent ratio the company was at in October 2008 when it landed its first round of TARP dough. Put another way, the market is saying theres a $96.8 billion hole in Bank of Americas balance sheet. When I asked Jerry Dubrowski, a Bank of America spokesman, about the disparity, he said: Im not going to comment on the book value and the stock price. http://whatreallyhappened.com/ -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Funny things going on with ATM's this weekend, too, according to posters here at PPF. Is another banking crisis brewing? Are banks or regulators trying to head off bank-runs and collapses? Is this another reason all the big-wigs got out of Dodge? Has the MERS/mortgage/Foreclosuregate (Fraudclosuregate) crisis hit the fan?
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Post by: redeux on November 08, 2010, 05:40:31 PM
Bank of America May Pay Bonuses in Stock Due to TARP-Related Shortfall

http://www.dailyfinance.com/story/real-estate/bank-of-america-may-pay-bonuses-in-stock-due-to-tarp-relatedsho/19708003/ Today, November 08, 2010, 3 hours ago | Danny King As Bank of America continues to cope with fallout from the housing and mortgage crisis, the financial institution may have to pay some year-end employee bonuses in the form of stock because of a possible cash shortfall related to its buy-back of stock from the federal government.
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: citizenx on November 08, 2010, 05:46:18 PM Tragic. Who would want their worthless stock at this point. P/E? My heart just bleeds for those BoA execs. Not.
Quote from: citizenx on November 08, 2010, 05:46:18 PM Tragic. Who would want their worthless stock at this point. P/E? My heart just bleeds for those BoA execs. Not.
exactly....
Rocket Docket Breakdown: Will borrowers get due process?

http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1202474521608&rss=newswire Adolfo Pesquera Daily Business Review November 08, 2010
Last October, attorney Josh Bleil was being threatened with fines by a Miami-Dade circuit judge for presenting general defense motions on behalf of a client going through foreclosure. Judge Ronald Friedman struck all defense motions, handed the house back to the lender and told Bleil, Tell your client the free ride is over. Bleils firm, Ticktin Law Group, raised issues on appeal, mostly regarding a lack of due process. Homeowner Martha Y. Gonzalez claimed legitimate defenses were ignored, and her foreclosed house was sold last December. On appeal, Jessica Ticktin found that the 3rd District Court of Appeals unsigned decision, simply stating affirmed, was especially troubling. The trial judge agreed we had not had time to take depositions, Ticktin said. He said you can have 30 days; the very next week, he entered summary judgment anyway. The 3rd DCA turned our appeal down without explaining how that was OK. The appellate court denial without explanation gives the defense no way to appeal to the Florida Supreme Court, she said. One year later, a national foreclosure controversy has exposed shoddy and allegedly illegal practices by lenders, services and their law firms, and has also raised questions about the role of the judiciary and Bar groups. There are signs that consumer defenses are holding ground: ? Two October opinions from the 4th District Court of Appeal reversed trial judges, insisting affirmative defenses must be
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considered and a copy of the mortgage note must be produced by the lender. The appellate opinions permitted access to documents and testimony needed to refine homeowners defenses. ? The American Civil Liberties Union requested records from Florida courts to see if procedures for so-called rocket dockets violate due process. ? Lawsuits filed against three major lenders seek class action status, demanding titles be returned to ousted homeowners on properties taken by wrongful foreclosure. ? The 50 state attorneys general have stepped in to exercise their roles as consumer advocates and investigate foreclosure processing in response to claims of doctored and backdated documents. Lawyers with the Ticktin firm in Deerfield Beach see this as a significant shift on the issue of due process for borrowers that had been moving at a glacier-like pace. At the same time, individual foreclosure cases were gaining speed with judges under pressure to clear backlogs. A year ago, Florida judges in general favored sentiments Friedman expressed homeowners should not get away with living in houses where they werent making payments, said senior managing partner Peter Ticktin. Defenses Ignored Most judges dont believe institutions like JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo commit fraud or use underhanded practices. At this point, I think the judiciary is now realizing the truth, Peter Ticktin said. There are viable defenses to mortgage foreclosure. Some judges took a little bit longer, but they seem to be catching on. Foreclosure defense attorneys have been crying over a lack of due process as their defenses were repeatedly ignored. But the Gonzalez case perhaps exemplifies why. Miami attorney Gaspar Forteza, advocating for Eastern Financial Federal Credit Union, noted in exasperating detail how defense delaying tactics kept Gonzalez in a house even though she had not made a payment in more than two years. Demands for depositions might have been relevant had the note been assigned to a pool in the secondary market, the Blaxberg Grayson & Kukoff attorney said. A huge population of the homeowner defenses question the ownership of notes that migrated into mortgage-backed securities. But Eastern Financial never sold the note to another institution. Clearly, Gonzalez did not read the complaint, the two motions for summary judgment or the affidavit all of which establish that Eastern Financial originated the loan, still owned the loan, Forteza told the appeals court. The Gonzalez case, however, was about more than just the ownership of the note; in addition, her attorneys raised issues about the lenders practices. Eastern Financial still owned the loan, Peter Ticktin said, because the terms were so onerous that Gonzalez stopped paying within three months. On appeal, Jessica Ticktin accused the lender of violating lending laws. Her brief said the appraisal was ordered and certified by the lender, not a third party. The loan officer falsified facts to avoid the 55 percent debt-to-income ratio; Gonzalezs ratio was 61 percent. The subprime loan increased her monthly payments by $479. When she was asked to come to the closing with $969, she told the lender all she had in her bank account was $155. The lender knew the loan was risky and predatory, but cared only about collecting its fee, he said. Other lender practices have come to light involving questionable and allegedly false documentation filed in foreclosure cases. If lender arguments always persuaded judges, Ticktin said, the public would not know today that robo-signers processed thousands of affidavits monthly without reading them. Unless we actually dig in and see how this transpired were not able to defend our client, he said. Critics of Floridas judicial system question whether extra funding for foreclosure courts starting in July hurt or preserved consumer rights. Senior judges were recruited to clear a backlog of cases choking the courts. On Oct. 19, the ACLU of Florida teamed up with the national office to request records from all judicial circuits, and the Office of State Court Administrator advocating on behalf of minority homeowners it contends have been disproportionately affected by the foreclosure crisis. We have not filed records requests in any other state, said Larry Schwartztol, staff attorney with the ACLU Racial Justice Program in New York. Florida caught our attention because of its auxiliary court system. Were concerned that the procedures in place in Florida are less rigorous than in a regular court proceeding. The ACLU is seeking all documents that would shed light on how Florida judges set up procedures to clear away the foreclosure pileup. We know that the foreclosure system is permeated with disarray and fraud, Schwartztol said. We think this is a situation where the need for rigorous procedures is more important than usual. The concern is that rather than ramp up oversight, the Florida courts went in the other direction, he said. Minimal Due Process
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Expedited dockets are not necessarily a bad thing, said Greenberg Traurig shareholder Arthur England Jr., former chief justice of the Florida Supreme Court. Municipal traffic courts typically dispose of a case every few minutes, he said. One wouldnt argue there was no due process even though disposition was quick, he said. People dont generally question the honesty of the traffic officer. But from what I read in the papers, something in the foreclosure process is different from that. Different enough that Bank of America, Deutsche Bank and U.S. Bank were sued Oct. 28 in Miami federal court by three law firms representing homeowners seeking class certification. They accuse the banks of abuse of process and are demanding the return of property titles on wrongfully foreclosed homes. Due process violations in the 23 states with judicial review raise a red flag that points to a fundamental defect in foreclosure courts, said Geoffrey Walsh, a foreclosure defense attorney at Bostons National Consumer Law Center. Theres a problem with the dependency of courts in trusting foreclosure mills, he said. These law firms are designed to expedite foreclosures with utmost speed. Judges realized courts would break down completely if they had to scrutinize every mortgage, given the volume of documents in each case. Walsh suggested the fix the courts needed may be something completely out of their hands a revamp of foreclosure mill operations. Its completely wrong for servicers to say well just continue these foreclosures as we did before, he said. To the extent these pressures affect homeowners due process right, Walsh concluded, Florida probably meets some very minimal due process standard. Keep in mind in other states you dont even go to court. Seven states have some limited judicial access, but 20 states including California and Texas have nonjudicial foreclosures. Since a lender in California need not enter a courtroom to enforce a foreclosure, homeowners challenging foreclosure must hire a lawyer, prepare a case and file a lawsuit to overcome state laws on nonjudicial foreclosures, said Aidan Butler, a Los Angeles foreclosure defense attorney. Im envious of lawyers who get to practice in states where you have judicial foreclosure, he said. Im meeting a lot of judicial resistance. Virtually every judge is a former (state prosecutor), and they tend to be conservative. Its such an uphill battle. Judges have the misconception that if the consumer is here making these arguments, they must have defaulted and therefore are not worthy of help. Fraud Claims California judges will insist owners get current on their mortgages to halt a foreclosure, disregarding arguments that the amount owed is in dispute or that the lender may have committed fraud on the original loan, during servicing or in court filings, Butler said. Judges looking for an easy out may dispose of cases by ruling that the statute of limitations has expired, Butler said. The great majority of consumers dont have the resources to fight back, he added. They give up at the start, even if they have meritorious claims. A few national banks adopted self-imposed foreclosure moratoriums in states with judicial review but have resumed their cases. Homeowners in all states got an assist last month when the 50 state attorneys general aligned to get equitable treatment for homeowners. Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray, who has taken a lead role, demanded banks vacate any court orders or motions based on improper paperwork and advised them to modify loans and work out payments. But banks threatened with new costs from homeowner lawsuits and buyouts in the secondary mortgage-backed securities market have said they will vigorously defend their foreclosure rights. Risks to bank solvency are real, with estimates of refunds to investors reaching a potential $200 billion. The Obama administration sees no systemic problem with bank practices, but contradictory testimony before the Congressional Oversight Panel on the TARP foreclosure mitigation program has been compelling. Robo-signing is only one of a number of alleged deficiencies, explained Katherine Porter, a Harvard Law School professor who testified before the panel Oct. 27. Systemic Flaws Other common occurrences reported by defense attorneys around the nation include collection of improper fees, a lack of standing to foreclose, pursuit of foreclosure without rights in the note, mortgage origination fraud, liability to investors for poor underwriting and improper servicing. The key point is the vast majority of the alleged problems cannot accurately be described as technicalities. The flaws in foreclosure systems go well beyond improper affidavits, Porter said. In the year since attorney Bleil was scolded by Judge Friedman, consumers have dented the bankers armor. But given where they started, the proper allegory might be Indians in canoes flinging arrows at battleships. When Bleil met Friedman on Oct. 7, 2009, he was fighting for the right to put up general defenses such as unclean hands and usury because he couldnt get the evidence he needed to be more specific. This is a standard procedure lawyers use to
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protect their right to discovery. Friedman saw it all as frivolous delay tactics. On the motion on unclean hands, Friedman said: Its not going to happen again, is it? Because Im hitting you with $1,000 on that one alone. Friedman then looked at a defense barring the lender because of usury and said: Guess what? Thats no good, either. Im not going to deal with crap like this, and that is what it is. Thats $1,000. Maybe it was just theater on Friedmans part, but at the end of the day, the judge did not issue a sanctions order. For whatever reason, Bleil said the judge didnt force him to pay. One year later, Friedman is preparing to leave the bench, in part he told the Daily Business Review due to job dissatisfaction based on foreclosures.
Bank of America Fires Off Response to BlackRock and PIMCO Demand Letter, Accuses Lawyer of "Ulterior Agenda"
http://subprimeshakeout.blogspot.com/2010/11/bank-of-america-fires-off-response-to.html
In a response that can only be described as indignant, Bank of America fired back on November 4 at the group of investors that demanded that Countrywide/BofA repurchase loans in connection with $47 billion worth of private-label mortgage backed securities. In the strongly-worded letter, a full copy of which is embedded below, BofA attorneys Theodore Mirvis of Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz; Brian Pastuszenski of Goodwin Proctor and Marc Dworsky of Munger, Tolles and Olsen railed against the allegations contained in the October 18 letter authored by attorney Kathy Patrick of Gibbs & Bruns, stating that Patrick's letter contained "misleading statements," alleged claims that were "utterly baseless," and appeared to have been "written for an improper purpose, or in furtherance of a [sic] ulterior agenda." Much has made of Patrick's October 18 letter, which was signed by such major institutional investors as BlackRock, PIMCO, MetLife, the New York Fed and Freddie Mac, making it the the most high-profile investor repurchase demand to date as to non-conforming mortgages. In fact, BAC's stock slid nearly 5% when news of the letter first emerged. Yet, as I noted when I first posted about this letter and when I posted a copy of the letter a few days later, this first high-profile investor putback effort featured some serious deficiencies that might prevent it from succeeding - namely, that it failed to identify specific breaches of reps and warranties with respect to specific loan files or provide any evidence supporting those specific breaches. Indeed, this turns out to be the very first point BofA's attorneys make in responding to the letter. In pointing out some of the "glaringly evident" deficiencies in the letter, BofA's attorneys state: Your letter fails to set forth a single fact in support of any of your allegations, but rather relies solely on conclusory and often misleading statements. (emphasis in original) The BofA letter goes on to demand that the investors provide "sufficient factual basis for their allegations" and "identify the specific provisions of the specific PSA that is alleged to have been breached." Pursuant to the procedural roadmap from Judge Kapnick's opinion dismissing the plaintiffs' case in Greenwich Financial v. Countrywide, I would agree that Kathy Patrick's investors will have to make this showing to survive a motion to dismiss for lack of standing if they eventually file suit against BofA/Countrywide. However, the BofA letter also makes a number of points that are far less grounded in fact and appear designed to place political pressure on investors hoping to recover a portion of their MBS losses. For example, BofA characterizes Patrick's letter as demanding that Countrywide hasten foreclosures and reduce loan modifications. The letter even accuses Freddie Mac's involvement with Patrick's group as "patently inconsistent" with the GSEs and federal government's stated goal of helping troubled borrowers stay in their homes. While this has historically been a hot button political subject, BofA's statements are not an accurate representation of what the investors are seeking. In fact, the Patrick letter specifically states that investors "do not seek to halt bona fide modifications of troubled loans for borrowers who need them." Instead, investors take issue with the Countrywide settlement with state Attorneys General in which, in exchange for the AGs dropping claims of predatory lending against Countrywide, Countrywide agreed to modify 400,000 loans, the large majority of which it no longer held on its books. Patrick's group seeks simply to hold Countrywide to its contractual agreement to repurchase loans that it modifies as a cure for predatory lending. Similarly, Patrick's letter does not demand that Countrywide force borrowers out of their homes. To the contrary, the investors are simply demanding compliance with the Countrywide pooling and servicing agreement provision (Section 3.11(a)) that states that the Master Servicer must, use reasonable efforts to foreclose upon or otherwise comparably convert the ownership of properties securing such of the Mortgage Loans as come into and continue in default and as to which no satisfactory arrangements can be made for collection of delinquent payments. (emphasis mine) In other words, Patrick's letter simply asks that Countrywide modify where it is reasonable to do so (and where it is not a remedy for Countrywide's own predatory lending) and foreclose promptly where it is apparent that no satisfactory modification is to be had. Patrick's letter is thus better characterized as a demand that Countrywide perform its fundamental role as servicer, rather than as a heartless demand that Countrywide start kicking people out of their homes. Finally, BofA's letter sets forth a plethora of additional information from investors that it demands be provided prior to Countrywide taking any action. Included in this is a demand that Patrick provide, for each bondholder who signed onto the letter, the names of the individuals who authorized that signature, whether the bondholder's board of directors authorized that letter, and whether any of the bondholder's controlling shareholders authorized the letter. I'm not sure from where
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BofA derives the authority to demand this information, but it clearly suggests that BofA is not convinced that the internal management within each of the signing entities was unanimous in support of the Patrick letter. BofA may also be trying to dissuade others from authorizing similar letters in the future for fear of their names being publicly revealed, something that institutional investors and their managers have thus far been reluctant to do. Ultimately, though the BofA letter contains a lot of bark, the only bite that I can discern is the demand for more specific information. Everything else is, well, politics as usual.
Bank of America Foreclosing Fraudulently In its own name as holder

http://foreclosureblues.wordpress.com/2010/11/11/bank-of-america-allegedly-foreclosing-fraudulently-in-its-own-nameas-holder/ (http://foreclosureblues.wordpress.com/2010/11/11/bank-of-america-allegedly-foreclosing-fraudulently-in-itsown-name-as-holder/) Today, November 11, 2010, 4 hours ago | Yves Smith If you were to believe the banks, the concern over foreclosure improprieties is way overdone. They claim that the robo signers really werent doing anything seriously wrong, the banks just need to redo some paperwork, and everything else about foreclosures is just fine. Yet Bank of America, having made the implausible claim that it had reviewed 102,000 cases in a few weeks and nothing was amiss, was forced to retreat and acknowledge that its review hadnt been comprehensive, and it was finding errors at a rate that could exceed 5%.. The bank position so far has been that problems so far are mere mistakes and sloppiness. But as weve described repeatedly, the problems with securitzations run much deeper than that. It appears that the parties to the deal often failed to take the time consuming steps necessary to convey the note (the borrower IOU) to the trust as stipulated in the contract governing the deal, the pooling and servicing agreement. The PSA required that each note in the deal had to be signed by multiple intermediary parties before it got to its supposed final resting place, a trust. And that had to take place by closing or at most 90 days thereafter. Many foreclosures show this process was not observed on a widespread basis: the notes were assigned (as in transferred) to the trust right before closing, a violation of the PSA, the New York trust statutes that govern virtually all mortgage securitization trusts, and IRS rules for these trusts (REMIC). When foreclosure defense attorneys started contesting these assignments, suddenly a new ruse started to show up: allonges, which are sheets of paper that contained the needed endorsements, would magically appear out of nowhere. The problem is that an allonge is supposed to be used only when there is no space left on the note for endorsements, including margins and the reverse side, and when it is used, it is supposed to be so firmly attached to the original as to be inseparable. But these ta da allonges were always somehow discovered at the custodian, quite separate from the note. Bank of America appears to have improved the state of the art in the creative foreclosure procedures department. I started hearing a few months ago about a sudden and suspicious increase in the number of foreclosures Bank of America was making in its own name. BofA was in effect saying that it owned these loans and had never securitized them. That seemed questionable, since the bulk of Bank of Americas mortgages had been originated by Countrywide, and Countrywide has said in its SEC filings that it securitized 96% of them. Why would the courts see such an explosion in foreclosures in the relatively small proportion of mortgage that BofA had kept on its books? Lawyers suspected that BofA was falsely claiming that it owned the loan to circumvent questions about standing (if the note had not been conveyed to the trust properly, then the trust might not be able to foreclose). We now have some evidence that these suspicions are correct. A bankruptcy attorney in Kentucky has been working with clients who have lost their homes in foreclosures in the name of Bank of America. After taking the house, the bank has been filing deficiency judgments for the remaining mortgage balance. The attorney files a Chapter 13 bankruptcy. In the example we have here, Bank of America next files an objection to the bankruptcy plan. The attorney for Bank of America makes a response to the objection. Before the confirmation hearing, the same attorney files a second objection to the plan in the name of a Countrywide trust. The attorney for the borrower, needless to say, raises all kinds of hell in the hearing, and wants an explanation of how two creditors, each representing the same debt obligation, can each object to the plan, when neither has yet filed a Proof of Claim. Here is the juicy part. A Proof of Claim is filed later that day. It shows a series of assignments that were executed after the judgment (meaning after the house was taken by BofA) and after the borrowers attorney filed the bankruptcy petition. The assignment is from MERS to Bank of America executed on September 29. The second assignment is from Bank of America to trust CWABS 2003-B6. This assignment has not been recorded in the land office as of November 10. And even more fun, the allonges look odd. I spoke many posts ago about the lack of allonge...experience shows that under a RESPA request for the wet ink note, first banks are denying the right to see the wet ink copy, because it doesn't exist, second they are sending official copies that have no allonge to the current holder, no endorsements by the original lender, etc. etc.
SEC filings show the loan as asset of CWABS 2003-BC6.
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So we have: 1. Either Countrywide lied in its 2003 SEC filings or the loan was never on Bank of Americas books. Which would you believe? 2. Even though Countrywide appears to have intended to convey the loan to its CWABS 2003-BC6 trust, it appears never to have completed the steps. The assignments are legally void by virtue of being out of time and by being inconsistent with conveyance chain stipulated in the PSA (which would have been from Countrywide through at least one intermediary entity to the trust. So the trust does not now own the note either. This means the odds are awfully high that Bank of America committed multiple frauds on the court, first on the state court in the foreclosures process, and now on the Federal bankruptcy court. Bank of Americ Proof of Claim Suedkamp This sort of abuse is far more serious than robo signing. As much as the likely misconduct here and robo signing would both be considered frauds on the court, the robo signing is arguably cost cutting gone mad and riding roughshod over proper legal procedures. By contrast, this practice has all the appearances of multiple coverups of the fact that Countrywide trust did not have standing to foreclose on the house. The steps undertaken here look to be a deliberate, concerted effort for the bank to get its way, the law be damned. And this clearly took more parties and more thought than the robo signing abuses. At a minimum, the attorneys at the law firm and the parties at the servicer had to be aware of this device. And if our reading of this document is correct, this is fraud, pure and simple. Its high time we see some attorneys disbarred
and some law firms go out of business as a result of foreclosure chicanery, as well as serious investigations of the people involved in foreclosure litigation at the servicers and the banks general counsels office.
If you have followed this thread I have repeatedly warned about a Congress sponsored end around that would essentially pardon MERS and legitimize the crimes they have committed.... Please call your REPRESENTATIVES IMMEDIATELY!!!!!!!!! PARDON! LIVINGLIES OBTAINS WALL STREET PLAYBOOK: MERS TO BE LEGITIMIZED BY ACT OF CONGRESS
Today, November 11, 2010, 1 hour ago | Neil Garfield After years of negative judicial decisions about the use of a straw-man on mortgages, MERS was about to lose its existence as well as its credibility. But now all of that is set to change as Wall Street money is pouring into the coffers of those who are receptive (i.e., almost everyone in Congress). The legislation is already being drafted under the interstate commerce clause to ratify MERS and everything it did retroactively. It appears that the Obama administration is ready to pardon all the securitization deviants by signing this bill into law. This information is corroborated by several people who are in sensitive positions persons who would be the first to know such proposals. Fortunately, there are some people in Washington who have a conscience and do not want to see this happen. Besides the obvious seediness of this maneuver, it runs roughshod over state property laws, and the rights of investors, homeowners and borrowers. It amounts to a permanent installation of a Federal system that supersedes the county records for recording property rights. Off-record comments Ive heard from people in power are outraged at this assault on states rights. But these people are not legislators, who are getting promises larger than anything in your imagination, if they will support such a bill. It might be couched as a uniform law to be adopted by the states to get around the states rights issues, but it will permanently remove some of the power over property that lies solely within the jurisdiction of the states and place it preemptively within federal jurisdiction. All of this is scheduled to happen during the lame duck session of congress between now and the end of the this year, 2010. That means in a manner of days, some bill that may look like it has nothing to do with property, mortgages or foreclosures is going to have attached to it a provision whose effect will go even further than the notarization bill that went through Congress like St through a goose and almost got signed by the President. We caught that one AFTER it was passed by Congress unanimously but before Obama signed it. We announced it as an attempt at a presidential pardon to all those who committed crimes in the notarization of documents that were fabricated and forged, all those who committed forgery and perjury and all those who created counterfeit documentation that was presented to courts as original documents. This time we got the information, we think, before it was stitched into some innocuous looking bill. If we dont find it and block it, the plight of homeowners will get that much worse.
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: citizenx on November 11, 2010, 02:44:41 PM redeux,
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Thanks again for your doggedness. Do you have a link on that last one?
Quote from: citizenx on November 11, 2010, 05:49:47 PM
BILL IN WORKS TO MAKE ALL FRAUD OF BANKS LEGAL RETROACTIVELY!

After years of negative judicial decisions about the use of a straw-man on mortgages, MERS was about to lose its existence as well as its credibility. But now all of that is set to change as Wall Street money is pouring into the coffers of those who are receptive (i.e., almost everyone in Congress). The legislation is already being drafted under the interstate commerce clause to ratify MERS and everything it did retroactively. It appears that the Obama administration is ready to pardon all the securitization deviants by signing this bill into law. This information is corroborated by several people who are in sensitive positions persons who would be the first to know such proposals. http://whatreallyhappened.com --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Original article: http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=171940
ALERT: Casus Belli - Ex-Post-Facto Law!

The Market Ticker - Commentary on The Capital Markets Posted 2010-11-11 10:22 by Karl Denninger in Foreclosuregate ALERT: Casus Belli - Ex-Post-Facto Law! Now from The Garfield Continuum comes the following warning: After years of negative judicial decisions about the use of a straw-man on mortgages, MERS was about to lose its existence as well as its credibility. But now all of that is set to change as Wall Street money is pouring into the coffers of those who are receptive (i.e., almost everyone in Congress). The legislation is already being drafted under the interstate commerce clause to ratify MERS and everything it did retroactively. It appears that the Obama administration is ready to pardon all the securitization deviants by signing this bill into law. This information is corroborated by several people who are in sensitive positions persons who would be the first to know such proposals. Fortunately, there are some people in Washington who have a conscience and do not want to see this happen. Besides the obvious seediness of this maneuver, it runs roughshod over state property laws, and the rights of investors, homeowners and borrowers. It amounts to a permanent installation of a Federal system that supersedes the county records for recording property rights. Off-record comments Ive heard from people in power are outraged at this assault on states rights. But these people are not legislators, who are getting promises larger than anything in your imagination, if they will support such a bill. It might be couched as a uniform law to be adopted by the states to get around the states rights issues, but it will permanently remove some of the power over property that lies solely within the jurisdiction of the states and place it preemptively within federal jurisdiction. All of this is scheduled to happen during the lame duck session of congress between now and the end of the this year, 2010. That means in a manner of days, some bill that may look like it has nothing to do with property, mortgages or foreclosures is going to have attached to it a provision whose effect will go even further than the notarization bill that went through Congress like St through a goose and almost got signed by the President. We caught that one AFTER it was passed by Congress unanimously but before Obama signed it. We announced it as an attempt at a presidential pardon to all those who committed crimes in the notarization of documents that were fabricated and forged, all those who committed forgery and perjury and all those who created counterfeit documentation that was presented to courts as original documents. This time we got the information, we think, before it was stitched into some innocuous looking bill. If we dont find it and block it, the plight of homeowners will get that much worse. That would be an ex-post-facto law, and is explicitly barred by The Constitution. Such a bill, were it to be promulgated, would be an act of intentional subversion of The Constitution and a violation of the oath of office of every Congressperson who votes or argues for it. If such a law is in fact introduced it would turn the rule of law on its ear and make clear that we now live in a nation where literal theft will be made legal retroactively by the Congress and President in an explicit form and with the impact of literally stealing millions of privately-held homes. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------BTW, casus belli="cause of war". This bill is an instigation of the highest order.
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: Kilika on November 12, 2010, 02:17:23 AM Bush and company did the same thing by passing a law(forget which one) that made them immune legally for their actions.
Quote from: citizenx on November 11, 2010, 02:44:41 PM redeux, Thanks again for your doggedness. Do you have a link on that last one?
Yes http://foreclosureblues.wordpress.com/2010/11/11/mers-to-be-ratified-retroactively-by-lame-duck-congress/ (http://foreclosureblues.wordpress.com/2010/11/11/mers-to-be-ratified-retroactively-by-lame-duck-congress/)
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: WAKETHEWORLD on November 12, 2010, 06:25:13 AM [BILL IN WORKS TO MAKE ALL FRAUD OF BANKS LEGAL RETROACTIVELY! After years of negative judicial decisions about the use of a straw-man on mortgages, MERS was about to lose its existence as well as its credibility. But now all of that is set to change as Wall Street money is pouring into the coffers of those who are receptive (i.e., almost everyone in Congress). The legislation is already being drafted under the interstate commerce clause to ratify MERS and everything it did retroactively. It appears that the Obama administration is ready to pardon all the securitization deviants by signing this bill into law. This information is corroborated by several people who are in sensitive
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positions persons who would be the first to know such proposals. http://whatreallyhappened.com --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Original article: http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=171940 ALERT: Casus Belli - Ex-Post-Facto Law! The Market Ticker - Commentary on The Capital Markets Posted 2010-11-11 10:22 by Karl Denninger in Foreclosuregate ALERT: Casus Belli - Ex-Post-Facto Law! Now from The Garfield Continuum comes the following warning: After years of negative judicial decisions about the use of a straw-man on mortgages, MERS was about to lose its existence as well as its credibility. But now all of that is set to change as Wall Street money is pouring into the coffers of those who are receptive (i.e., almost everyone in Congress). The legislation is already being drafted under the interstate commerce clause to ratify MERS and everything it did retroactively. It appears that the Obama administration is ready to pardon all the securitization deviants by signing this bill into law. This information is corroborated by several people who are in sensitive positions persons who would be the first to know such proposals. Fortunately, there are some people in Washington who have a conscience and do not want to see this happen. Besides the obvious seediness of this maneuver, it runs roughshod over state property laws, and the rights of investors, homeowners and borrowers. It amounts to a permanent installation of a Federal system that supersedes the county records for recording property rights. Off-record comments Ive heard from people in power are outraged at this assault on states rights. But these people are not legislators, who are getting promises larger than anything in your imagination, if they will support such a bill. It might be couched as a uniform law to be adopted by the states to get around the states rights issues, but it will permanently remove some of the power over property that lies solely within the jurisdiction of the states and place it preemptively within federal jurisdiction. All of this is scheduled to happen during the lame duck session of congress between now and the end of the this year, 2010. That means in a manner of days, some bill that may look like it has nothing to do with property, mortgages or foreclosures is going to have attached to it a provision whose effect will go even further than the notarization bill that went through Congress like St through a goose and almost got signed by the President. We caught that one AFTER it was passed by Congress unanimously but before Obama signed it. We announced it as an attempt at a presidential pardon to all those who committed crimes in the notarization of documents that were fabricated and forged, all those who committed forgery and perjury and all those who created counterfeit documentation that was presented to courts as original documents. This time we got the information, we think, before it was stitched into some innocuous looking bill. If we dont find it and block it, the plight of homeowners will get that much worse. That would be an ex-post-facto law, and is explicitly barred by The Constitution. Such a bill, were it to be promulgated, would be an act of intentional subversion of The Constitution and a violation of the oath of office of every Congressperson who votes or argues for it. If such a law is in fact introduced it would turn the rule of law on its ear and make clear that we now live in a nation where literal theft will be made legal retroactively by the Congress and President in an explicit form and with the impact of literally stealing millions of privately-held homes.
THE FACT IS Article I, Section 8, clauses 17 and 18 of the CONstitution gives CONgress two ways to Legislate. Clauses 17 and 18 reads: "To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings; And To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof."
Clause 17 means that CONgress can make any law, without constraint, for the "Ten Mile Square District." Law made under this clause have specific jurisdiction to this District! THEY DO NOT HAVE EFFECT ON YOU AND I BECAUSE THEY ARE NOT SUBJECT TO CONSTITUTIONAL CONSTRAINT!
For any "Law" to have effect on you and it must have been Legislated under clause 18. CONgress MUST HAVE SPECIFIC AUTHORITY UNDER CLAUSUS 1 THRU 16 AND OTHER SPECIFIC AUTHORITIES THROUGHOUT THE CONSTITUTION. Furthermore this Legislation MUST HAVE BEEN ENACTED AS POSITIVE LAW AND MUST SO STATE IN THE LEGISLATION!!
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In the article above, CONgress has no authority to act (jurisdiction) to enforce any such "law" on the People!
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: redeux on November 12, 2010, 07:08:13 AM I have been communicating with a very credible lawyer, and I detailed out my arguments that I have expressed here; ...allonge problems, separation of the Note from the Security Instrument, black letter law regarding property rights etc. etc.... ...he responded that my analysis was absolutely correct, but the "powers that be" i.e. judges, might be inclined to rule against these arguments for fear that this would halt commerce within their State..... ...we know that this is the modus operandi of this corrupt system, that they try to paralyze us, as with 9-11, war on terror, naked body scanner et al...... ...my response was I will file Pro Se, and could I hire him to review and assist in preparing my brief, so if these judges rule against me for quiet on my title, I can have recourse within the law and indict the judge for his actions..... so I am waiting on his response.....
...like a hunting dog I have locked on to that sent trail and I will chase these crooks to the moon........
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: Kilika on November 12, 2010, 09:59:49 AM The more trials there are, the more 'splainin they have to do, and that can't be a bad thing.
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: redeux on November 13, 2010, 06:12:46 AM (http://lh5.ggpht.com/_wkgIzuqJM0w/TN46hZvdCCI/AAAAAAAAHKk/pjIyZU9IB4o/s800/Toxic.jpg)
"GET READY FOR THE GREAT MERS WHITEWASH BILL"

http://foreclosureblues.wordpress.com/2010/11/13/mers-attack-zero-hedge/ (http://foreclosureblues.wordpress.com /2010/11/13/mers-attack-zero-hedge/)
"Wall Street money is pouring into the coffers of those who are receptive (i.e., almost everyone in Congress). The legislation is already being drafted under the interstate commerce clause to ratify MERS and everything it did retroactively. It appears that the Obama administration is ready to pardon all the securitization deviants by signing this bill into law. This information is corroborated by several people who are in sensitive positions persons who would be the first to know such proposals. Fortunately, there are some people in Washington who have a conscience and do not want to see this happen." John Carney, CNBC--"When Congress comes back into session next week, it may consider measures intended to bolster the legal status of a controversial bank owned electronic mortgage registration system that contains three out of every five mortgages in the country. The system is known as MERS, the acronym for a private company called Mortgage Electronic Registry Systems. Set up by banks in the 1997, MERS is a system for tracking ownership of home loans as they move from mortgage originator through the financial pipeline to the trusts set up when mortgage securities are sold. The system has come under scrutiny by critics who charge MERS with facilitating slipshod practices. Recently, lawyers have filed lawsuits claiming that banks owe states billions of dollars for mortgage recording fees they avoided by using MERS... Now it appears that Congress may attempt to prevent any MERS meltdown from occurring. MERS is owned by all the biggest banks, and they certainly do not want it to be sunk by huge fines. Investors in mortgage-backed securities also do not want to see the value of their bonds sink because of doubts about the ownership of the underlying mortgages. So it looks like the stage may be set for Congress to pass a bill that would limit MERS exposure on the recording fee issue and perhaps retroactively legitimate mortgage transfers conducted through MERS private database...."
YOU MUST CONTACT YOUR REPRESENTATIVE NOW AND LET THEM KNOW YOU
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WILL NOT SUPPORT ANY BILL THAT GIVES THE BIG BANKS AND MERS A BREAK.... MERS IS ILLEGAL AND THE BANKS DID THIS FULL KNOWLEDGE THAT IT WAS ILLEGAL.........
https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml (https://writerep.house.gov /writerep/welcome.shtml)
Financial Times: "The real danger here for banks is that 'show me the note' becomes widespread"
An except is printed below. It's worth reading the whole piece. Just a reminder: Demand To See Your Mortgage Note! -- Brand New Website Makes It Simple
--The MBS mess from the beginning the deal docs By Tracy Alloway at FT Alphaville (free article -- no sub required) If the mortgage notes werent correctly shifted from the originators to the depositors to the trustees, with the corresponding assignments, the foreclosure process could be held up should anyone actually stop to ask where the mortgage note is, or who holds it. Likewise, if MERS authority to foreclose is challenged (more on that here). There are potentially more insidious reasons behind documentation slips. Fixing the chain of title if a break is discovered can be a lengthy and expensive exercise. Fudging over a missing mortgage assignment may be be quicker and cheaper. For a real life paperwork story, check out mortgage-blogger Tantas experience back in 2007 which leads rather nicely to the next point. Improper documentation has existed for as long as the originate-to-distribute system. Katherine Porter at the Ohio University estimated back in 2007 that a majority of US foreclosures are made without the right paperwork. And youll notice the 2006-date on the Florida case cited in the GSAMP prospectus above. The danger here is that show me the note becomes widespread. Savvy lawyers start demanding the docs (which of course they are legally entitled to do) foreclosures freeze, lawsuits fly, the RMBS market stagnates, the big banks get hit, and so on. As a structured finance footnote (because securitisation has a tendency toward irony) well add that GSAMP Trust 2006-FM1s sister deal FM2 was included as a reference entity in the now-infamous Goldman Sachs offering the Abacus CDO.
--New details from the latest lawsuit: Banks 'Robo-Signers' Were Hair Stylists, Teens, Walmart Workers
--And Felix Salmon has a must-read nightmare scenario: The enormous mortgage-bond scandal You thought the foreclosure mess was bad? Youre right about that. But it gets so much worse once you start adding in a whole bunch of parallel messes in the world of mortgage bonds. For instance, as Tracy Alloway says, mortgage-bond documentation generally says that if more than a minuscule proportion of notes in a mortgage pool werent properly transferred, then the trustee for the bondholders can force the investment bank who put the deal together to repurchase the mortgages. And its looking very much as though none of the notes were properly transferred. But thats not even the biggest potential problem facing the investment banks who put these deals together. It also turns out that theres a pretty strong case that they lied to the investors in many if not most of these deals. I mentioned this back in September, and Ive been doing a bit more digging since then. And Im increasingly convinced that the risk to investment banks isnt only one of dodgy paperwork; theres also a serious risk of massive lawsuits from the SEC or other prosecutors, as well as suits from individual mortgage investors. The key firm here is Clayton Holdings, a company which was hired by various investment banks Goldman Sachs, Bear Stearns, Citigroup, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank, everyone to taste-test the mortgage
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pools they were buying from originators. original article with comments and other links: http://dailybail.com/home/financial-times-the-real-danger-here-for-banks-is-that-show.html
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: citizenx on November 15, 2010, 02:52:56 PM (http://i1010.photobucket.com/albums/af223/dacitizen/foreclosure-fraud-banks-titanic.jpg) "...And I shall laugh at their destruction." God, The Old Testament
Demand To See Your Mortgage Note! -- Brand New Website Makes It Simple
Where's your note? Has it been lost somewhere along the way? Make the bank prove it owns your mortgage You can also verify your loan servicer with MERS online -- takes about 45 seconds: Look Up Your Mortgage at MERS https://www.mers-servicerid.org/sis/
Using Taylor v. Deutsche Bank To Win a Foreclosure Defense Case

http://foreclosureblues.wordpress.com/2010/11/15/using-taylor-v-deutsche-bank-to-win-a-foreclosure-defense-case/ (http://foreclosureblues.wordpress.com/2010/11/15/using-taylor-v-deutsche-bank-to-win-a-foreclosure-defense-case/) Today, November 15, 2010, 32 minutes ago | Matthew D. Weidner, Esq. When the appellate decision in Taylor v. Deutsche Bank was published out of Floridas 5th District Court of Appeals a few months ago, it seemed like an absolute disaster, an utter failure for all of us in the defense community. Well, like some especially sweet failures, when this failure is understood and studied properly, you can turn it into a slam dunk, knock out punch in your cases. Heres the deal. The decision is absolutely absurd. It represents a dramatic departure from not just a long history of property and the law governing negotiable instruments. It also represents a profound and dramatic expansion of the entire purpose and function of MERS. To me it represents a court desperately struggling to fix an industrys problems through judicial decision. The decision grants to MERS rights and abilities that it never intended to have and never before asserted. Especially in light of the depositions that have been released and the widespread abuses of the foreclosure mills, we can all see just how absurd this decision is. The decision stands for the proposition that MERS can assign both the Mortgage and the Promissory Note, two separate and distinct legal documents that carry with them two separate and distinct sets of laws and rules (at least until this decision which improperly blended and blurred all of these). Anywhoo, the Plaintiffs attorneys cheered and the foreclosure mills and the document mills have gone to work, just assigning away mortgages. (I guess they just abandoned all their endorsement stamps.) Well heres where things get good for us. What happens when the Plaintiff has endorsed the note to one party, then they concoct or fabricate a MERS assignment to another party? That folks is s fundamental and unresolvable conflict that they cannot work their way out of. So heres how you use it in your caseswhen youve got a note endorsed to one party and a MERS assignment to another, their case is over and youve got a great case for summary judgment.
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: Dig on November 15, 2010, 10:08:31 PM With grassroots efforts, local sherriffs standing by the people, local legislators defending the American homeowner, and the new crop of congressmen obeying their oath of office, these foreign banking interests can be stopped in their tracks. They thought that people would never be as awake as they are now. Their smart grids are 10 years away at least and the people are finding out about 9/11 and the Nazi body scanners. But, the homeowners and the local defenders of liberty can force congress to listen. Just as the PA legislator forced the world to understand how treasonous it was for the now disgraced PA head of DHS to conduct Nazi surveillance on politicians on behalf of offshore interests.
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BofA Blames Investors for Lack of Loan Modifications, But Evidence Points Elsewhere
http://foreclosureblues.wordpress.com/2010/11/16/bofa-blames-investors-for-lack-of-loan-modifications-but-evidencepoints-elsewhere/ (http://foreclosureblues.wordpress.com/2010/11/16/bofa-blames-investors-for-lack-of-loan-modificationsbut-evidence-points-elsewhere/) In prepared Congressional testimony coming today, Bank of Americas top mortgage official, Barbara Desoer, says its Wall Street investors, not the bank, that are making it hard to help homeowners. Bank of America is constrained by our duties to investors, she says. Many investors limit Bank of Americas discretion to take certain actions. (You can read her prepared testimony and watch the live webcast once the hearing starts later this afternoon. And definitely watch to see if she uses that line, and how she explains it.) Desoers testimony echoes what homeowners have long heard, that investors are frequently denying them help from federal program created to foster loan modifications. But as ProPublica has reported, that's simply not the case. Investors rarely have a say in loan modifications or block such modifications. Banks and other companies service mortgages on behalf of investors who bought bundles of loans sold on Wall Street. Bank of America and others say that the contracts they sign with investors frequently limit their ability to make modifications. But a recent study looked at the contracts covering subprime deals from 2006at the height of the boomand found that only 8 percent actually prohibited modifications. The contracts sometimes had some limitations on modifications, like saying the servicer couldnt extend the term of the loan, but almost two-thirds of the contracts explicitly gave servicers the authority to make modifications, particularly for homeowners who had defaulted or would likely default soon. The rest of the contracts did not address modifications. (Here are some tips for digging up the contracts yourself.) Though they point fingers in public, servicers almost never blame investors in their monthly reports on the modification program, according to data Treasury gave to the Congressional Oversight Panel. Today the Association of Mortgage Investors released a statement saying, mortgage investors share many of the frustrations that homeowners and state Attorneys General are experiencing when dealing with mortgage servicers. Many investors want more modifications and have been putting legal pressure on mortgage servicers to improve their operations. As we wrote in July: This is one of those rare alliances where investors and borrowers are on the same page, according to Laurie Goodman, senior managing director at Amherst Securities, a brokerage firm that specializes in mortgage securities. She says investors have zero vote in determining individual loan modifications and, instead of foreclosures, prefer sustainable modifications that lower homeowners total debt. Our story focused on Arthur and Alberta Bailey, a couple trying to prevent foreclosure on their home near New Orleans. Litton, the subsidiary of Goldman Sachs that serviced their loan, told the Baileys that investors didnt allow any modifications. But Littons contract with investors had no clear language banning modifications, and data Litton provided to investors showed that over 115 other mortgages from the same investment pool had already been modified. We first looked at this issue last summer, soon after the Obama administration launched its loan modification efforts. We flagged the complex web of interests as a potential problem. You can listen to that story, which was co-produced with Marketplace, to learn more.
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: citizenx on November 16, 2010, 06:53:38 PM Congress begins to face the obvious:
Report: Foreclosure mess could threaten banks

By MARCY GORDON, AP Business Writer Marcy Gordon, Ap Business Writer Tue Nov 16, 10:14 am ET WASHINGTON The disarray stemming from flawed foreclosure documents could threaten major banks with billions of dollars in losses, deepen the disruption in the housing market and hurt the government's effort to keep people in their homes, according to a new report from a congressional watchdog. Revelations that several big mortgage issuers sped through thousands of home foreclosures without properly checking paperwork already has raised alarm in Washington. If the irregularities are widespread, the consequences could be severe, the Congressional Oversight Panel said in a report issued Tuesday. The full impact is still is unclear, the report cautions. Employees or contractors of several major banks have testified in court cases that they signed, and in some cases backdated, thousands of certifying documents for home seizures. Financial firms that service a total $6.4 trillion in mortgages are involved, according to the new report. Big banks including Bank of America Corp., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Ally Financial Inc.'s GMAC Mortgage have suspended foreclosures at some point because of flawed documents. continued: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101116/ap_on_bi_ge/us_foreclosure_mess_watchdog
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TOMORROW Congress Will Try - By Secret Vote - to Retroactively Legalize Foreclosure Fraud and Forgery By the Big Banks ... Call Congress and Say NO
http://georgewashington2.blogspot.com/2010/11/tomorrow-congress-will-try-by-secret.html (http://georgewashington2.blogspot.com/2010/11/tomorrow-congress-will-try-by-secret.html) Tomorrow, Congress will try - by secret vote - to retroactively legalize foreclosure fraud and forgery by the big banks. Specifically, as 4ClosureFraud reports: From the LEGISLATIVE DAY OF NOVEMBER 15, 2010 111TH CONGRESS SECOND SESSION *** H.R. 3808: to require any Federal or State court to recognize any notarization made by a notary public licensed by a State other than the State where the court is located when such notarization occurs in or affects interstate commerce http://www.scribd.com/doc/42776222/H-R-3808-Veto-Override-Procedure-in-the-House-and-Senate (http://www.scribd.com /doc/42776222/H-R-3808-Veto-Override-Procedure-in-the-House-and-Senate) 2:14 P.M. VETO MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT The Chair laid before the House the veto message from the President on H.R. 3808. *** 2:13 P.M. Mr. Scott (VA) asked unanimous consent That, when a veto message on H.R. 3808 is laid before the House on the legislative day of today, then after the message is read and the objections of the President are spread at large upon the Journal, further consideration of the veto message and the bill shall be postponed until the legislative day of Wednesday, Nov. 17, 2010; and that on that legislative day, the House shall proceed to the constitutional question of reconsideration and dispose of such question without intervening motion. Agreed to without objection. Looks like it is time for another crash course on how this works Veto Override Procedure in the House and Senate Summary A bill or joint resolution that has been vetoed by the President can become law if two-thirds of the Members voting in the House and the Senate each agree to pass it over the Presidents objection. The chambers act sequentially on vetoed measures; the House acts first on House-originated measures (H.R. and H.J. Res.) and the Senate acts first on Senateoriginated measures (S. and S.J. Res.). If the first-acting chamber fails to override the veto, the measure dies and the other chamber does not consider it. The House typically considers the question of overriding a presidential veto under the hour rule, with time customarily controlled and allocated by the chair and ranking member of the committee with jurisdiction over the bill. The Senate usually considers the question of overriding a veto under the terms of a unanimous consent agreement. Voting in the House To override a veto, two-thirds of the Members voting, a quorum being present, must agree to repass the bill over the Presidents objections. The Constitution requires that the vote be by the yeas and nays, which in the modern House means that Members votes will be recorded through the electronic voting system. The vote on the veto override is final because, in contrast to votes on most other questions in the House, a motion to reconsider the vote on the question of overriding a veto is not in order.
UPDATE: JUST CONFIRMED WITH THE BILLS SPONSOR STAFF IN WASHINGTON DC AND THERE WILL BE A VOTE TO OVERRIDE OR UPHOLD THE PRESIDENTS VETO WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 17, 2010. GET ON THE PHONES AND CALL YOUR REPRESENTATIVES NOW AND TELL THEM TO UPHOLD THE PRESIDENTS VETO!
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: citizenx on November 16, 2010, 09:36:46 PM Yes, now we see why they are beginning to face the obvious -- to usher in this legal obscenity.
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Quote from: redeux on November 13, 2010, 06:19:19 AM
YOU MUST CONTACT YOUR REPRESENTATIVE NOW AND LET THEM KNOW YOU WILL NOT SUPPORT ANY BILL THAT GIVES THE BIG BANKS AND MERS A BREAK.... MERS IS ILLEGAL AND THE BANKS DID THIS FULL KNOWLEDGE THAT IT WAS ILLEGAL.........
https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml (https://writerep.house.gov /writerep/welcome.shtml)
Here's what I wrote: I understand by secret vote as early as tomorrow congress may vote whether to make certain fraudulent banking practices legal ex post facto. This is a serious violation of our legal tradition and our constitution. If banks have defrauded borrowers or investors, they should be held responsible. This is tanatamount to making bank robbery legal after the fact. It can be no more legal for banks to rob people than for people to rob banks. I trust you will defend the constitution of the United States of America which I and many others have taken solemn oaths to protect. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------I think at the very least each of us should be contacting our rep.'s right now for sure. CX
Quote from: citizenx on November 16, 2010, 09:47:20 PM Here's what I wrote: I understand by secret vote as early as tomorrow congress may vote whether to make certain fraudulent banking practices legal ex post facto. This is a serious violation of our legal tradition and our constitution. If banks have defrauded borrowers or investors, they should be held responsible. This is tanatamount to making bank robbery legal after the fact. It can be no more legal for banks to rob people than for people to rob banks. I trust you will defend the constitution of the United States of America which I and many others have taken solemn oaths to protect. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------I think at the very least each of us should be contacting our rep.'s right now for sure. CX
hear! hear! excellent.... my letter was like 3 paragraphs I went overboard..... yours is straight to the point........
RED ALERT! HR-3808 Veto Override Attempt

They really are going to try to override the Presidential Veto tomorrow (11/17/2010) GET ON THE PHONE TO YOUR REP AND SENATORS RIGHT NOW! From 4closurefraud.com: 2:15 P.M. ONE MINUTE SPEECHES The House proceeded with one minute speeches. H.R. 3808: to require any Federal or State court to recognize any notarization made by a notary public licensed by a State other than the State where the court is located when such notarization occurs in or affects interstate commerce 2:14 P.M. VETO MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT The Chair laid before the House the veto message from the President on H.R. 3808. The objections of the President were spread at large upon the Journal, and the veto message was ordered to be printed as a House Document No. 111-152. Pursuant to the order of the House of earlier today, further consideration of the veto message and the bill are postponed until the legislative day of Wednesday, Nov. 17, 2010, and that on that legislative day, the House shall proceed to the constitutional question of reconsideration and dispose of such question without intervening motion. 2:13 P.M. The House received a message from the Clerk. Pursuant to the permission granted in Clause 2(h) of Rule II of the Rules of the U.S. House of Representatives, the Clerk transmitted H.R. 3808, the Interstate Recognition of Notarization Act of 2010, and a Memorandum of Disapproval thereon received from the White House on October 8, 2010, at 12:55 p.m.
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Mr. Scott (VA) asked unanimous consent That, when the House adjourns on Monday, November 15, 2010, it adjourn to meet at 12:30 p.m. on Tuesday, November 16, 2010, for Morning-Hour Debate. Agreed to without objection. Mr. Scott (VA) asked unanimous consent That, when a veto message on H.R. 3808 is laid before the House on the legislative day of today, then after the message is read and the objections of the President are spread at large upon the Journal, further consideration of the veto message and the bill shall be postponed until the legislative day of Wednesday, Nov. 17, 2010; and that on that legislative day, the House shall proceed to the constitutional question of reconsideration and dispose of such question without intervening motion. Agreed to without objection. These damn snakes have not yet had their heads cut off! http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=172452
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: citizenx on November 18, 2010, 05:19:52 AM (http://i1010.photobucket.com/albums/af223/dacitizen/Edstrom_MortgageSecuritization_POSTER_17_x_22_v4_1.jpg)
Just When You Thought You Knew Something About Mortgage Securitizations
Submitted by williambanzai7 on 11/15/2010 15:59 -0500
Dan Edstrom is a guy who is in the right place at the right time. His profession? He performs securitization audits (Reverse Engineering and Failure Analysis) for a company called DTC-Systems. The typical audit includes numerous diagrams including the following: Transaction Parties and Flow (similar to the chart below, but much easier to understand) Note exchanged for a bond Foreclosure parties Priority of Payments from the Security Instrument (Mortgage, Deed of Trust, Security Deed or Mortgage Deed) Priority of Payments from the Pooling and Servicing Agreement This diagram shows that they are not following the borrowers instructions in the security instrument Source of Payments for Distributions--This diagram is extremely complex and shows that the miscellaneous proceeds specified in the security instrument (and in the SEC Filings) should be applied to the sums secured by the obligation upon the event of a loss in value of the property, whether or not then due, with the remainder, if any, returned to the borrower. This document combines UCC 3-602(a), UCC 9-315, UCC 9-336, UCC 2-609, and UCC 3-501 together with NY Code Section 4545 and the SEC Filings to show that the miscellaneous proceeds can be applied to the borrowers obligation. The following flow chart reverse engineers the mortgage on the Ekstrom family residence. It took Dan over one year to take it this far and it clearly demonstrates what happens when there are too many lawyers being manufactured. Take a look at this chart and then decide how long you think it will take for Barney Frank and Eric Holder to sort everything out. There is a link to an expandable version at the end of this post.
Dan will be lecturing on this subject on December 11, 2010 if you are interested in learning more about who is the holder of your mortgage note. Here is the link to the Seminar: Securitization Seminar http://securedocumentresearch.eventbrite.com/ and here is a link to a LARGE VERSION of the Chart: CHART http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_wkgIzuqJM0w/TOGZGyYLc3I/AAAAAAAAHMo/wfC5uoj-D-w/s1600 /Edstrom_MortgageSecuritization_POSTER_17_x_22_v4_1.jpg from: http://www.zerohedge.com/article/just-when-you-thought-you-knew-something-about-mortgage-securitizations
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Post by: citizenx on November 18, 2010, 02:44:26 PM Looks like this story jumped from Zero Hedge to the HuffPo and hence to the Yahoo headline (MSM).
Man Makes Ridiculously Complicated Chart To Find Out Who Owns His Mortgage
Thu Nov 18, 10:09 am ET We all know the mortgage securitization process is complicated. But just how complicated? The chart below from Zero Hedge shows the convoluted journey a mortgage takes as it morphs into a security. Dan Edstrom, of DTC Systems, who performs securitization audits, spent a year putting together a diagram that traces the path of his own house's mortgage. "Just When You Thought You Knew Something About Mortgage Securitizations," says Zero Hedge, you are presented with this almost hilariously complicated chart. continued: http://news.yahoo.com/s/huffpost/20101118/cm_huffpost/785315 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------Mr. Edstrom, you are like the anti_illuminati of the financial industry. Kudos. If you look at the chart, try to find the "black hole"!
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: Rebelitarian on November 19, 2010, 03:06:11 PM
END the FED Already !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: kerrymti on November 21, 2010, 10:03:24 PM Ok, I just wanted to review for those who are not familiar with some of the intricacies of foreclosures. Our office is well versed in conducting foreclosures correctly. Foreclosure laws are State laws (obviously, there are federal laws, but for the most part, foreclosures are governed by state law). Anyway, I cannot speak for any other state besides Alabama. We have mortgages in AL, vs. Deeds of Trust...not going into that right now. The first step is for one of our clients (usually Credit Unions) to refer a file to our office for foreclosure. Granted, with our clients, this is after they have exhausted tremendous efforts to assist the homeowner in 'reworking' their loan, refinancing, etc. But, after it gets to our office, we send a 'demand letter' to the borrower, giving them 30 days to respond, we also enclose a copy of their note, mortgage (because our clients actually have both!) and a draft of the foreclosure notice that will begin running in the newspaper after the 30 days. We run the ad in the local paper for three consecutive weeks and then we conduct the foreclosure on the steps of the courthouse. I want to stress that the smaller banks/credit unions DO NOT wish to foreclose and remove people from their homes, they want to do whatever it takes to help the homeowner 'get back on track', it does not help their bottom line to foreclose because they do not do the volume of business that the mega banks do and they do not sell the loans and they do not purchase insurance on all their loans, so they actually lose money when they have to foreclose. PEOPLE, IF YOU ARE STRUGGLING WITH YOUR MORTGAGE, PLEASE, BEFORE YOU JUST GIVE UP CONTACT THE BANK AND DETERMINE IF THEY ARE WILLING AND WANTING TO HELP YOU. Taadaa
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: Kilika on November 22, 2010, 02:39:15 AM
Quote from: kerrymti on November 21, 2010, 10:03:24 PM Ok, I just wanted to review for those who are not familiar with some of the intricacies of foreclosures. Our office is well versed in conducting foreclosures correctly. Foreclosure laws are State laws (obviously, there are federal laws, but for the most part, foreclosures are governed by state law). Anyway, I cannot speak for any other state besides Alabama. We have mortgages in AL, vs. Deeds of Trust...not going into that right now. The first step is for one of our clients (usually Credit Unions) to refer a file to our office for foreclosure. Granted, with our clients, this is after they have exhausted tremendous efforts to assist the homeowner in 'reworking' their loan, refinancing, etc. But, after it gets to our office, we send a 'demand letter' to the borrower, giving them 30 days to respond, we also enclose a copy of their note, mortgage (because our clients actually have both!) and a draft of the foreclosure notice that will begin running in the newspaper after the 30 days. We run the ad in the local paper for three consecutive weeks and then we conduct the foreclosure on the steps of the courthouse.
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I want to stress that the smaller banks/credit unions DO NOT wish to foreclose and remove people from their homes, they want to do whatever it takes to help the homeowner 'get back on track', it does not help their bottom line to foreclose because they do not do the volume of business that the mega banks do and they do not sell the loans and they do not purchase insurance on all their loans, so they actually lose money when they have to foreclose. PEOPLE, IF YOU ARE STRUGGLING WITH YOUR MORTGAGE, PLEASE, BEFORE YOU JUST GIVE UP CONTACT THE BANK AND DETERMINE IF THEY ARE WILLING AND WANTING TO HELP YOU. Taadaa
I hope your well-paid because that was one of the most incredible attempts at a whitewash as I've seen yet on this topic. The scary part would be if you actually believe what you just said. Besides, seeing you admitted to being a part of the overall process, I'd have to say your position is tainted. And proof of that is found right there in your post. You literally have a vested interest in foreclosing so that kind of makes you a hostile witness. But this little dropping of lies needs repeating...
Quote I want to stress that the smaller banks/credit unions DO NOT wish to foreclose and remove people from their homes, they want to do whatever it takes to help the homeowner 'get back on track', it does not help their bottom line to foreclose
You really believe that banker propaganda? Just how naive can you be? If they are not being paid on the mortgage, foreclosure is exactly what they want to do. Besides, how in the world could you possibly know what all the various institutions want? And your logic is flawed, because they are not doing "whatever" to help homeowners that got shafted. If they were, the foreclosures would have completely stopped and the servicers would be accepting whatever they can get on the note instead of foreclosing. But alas, foreclosures continue in record numbers. So who's lying? Who's a part of the problem? It appears you. By the way, it does indeed help their "bottom line" financially speaking. It clears off their books a bad debt, and also allows them to get cash out of a note they don't even have a right to foreclose on. A very young note that is foreclosed on still has alot of cash value to them in that they can sell that note before they have really put out any cash to service it. It's a money game. Buy low sell high. Same thing as how remodellers will fix up a house and flip it as quick as possible. It's so they can pull their profit out of the house before too many payments are made on the mortage they just got on the house when they bought it to flip. It's called "OPM", a classic financial strategy. Banks are actually making more money up front from flipping notes and houses. It gives them the cash out of those deals upfront rather than dispersed over 20-30 years of the note. Think about it. It's simple math. Cash is king when doing short term deals. Long term you need steady constant payments, but there's still no guarantee you'll get it all over a long time. As far as the servicer is concerned, why wait for 20 years for the profit when it can be had now? And thus the greedy have turned the whole mortgage industry into nothing more than day-trading of notes.
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: kerrymti on November 22, 2010, 06:07:47 PM
Quote from: LeftyLeo on November 22, 2010, 02:39:15 AM I hope your well-paid because that was one of the most incredible attempts at a whitewash as I've seen yet on this topic. The scary part would be if you actually believe what you just said. Besides, seeing you admitted to being a part of the overall process, I'd have to say your position is tainted. And proof of that is found right there in your post. You literally have a vested interest in foreclosing so that kind of makes you a hostile witness. But this little dropping of lies needs repeating... You really believe that banker propaganda? Just how naive can you be? If they are not being paid on the mortgage, foreclosure is exactly what they want to do. Besides, how in the world could you possibly know what all the various institutions want? And your logic is flawed, because they are not doing "whatever" to help homeowners that got shafted. If they were, the foreclosures would have completely stopped and the servicers would be accepting whatever they can get on the note instead of foreclosing. But alas, foreclosures continue in record numbers. So who's lying? Who's a part of the problem? It appears you. By the way, it does indeed help their "bottom line" financially speaking. It clears off their books a bad debt, and also allows them to get cash out of a note they don't even have a right to foreclose on. A very young note that is foreclosed on still has alot of cash value to them in that they can sell that note before they have really put out any cash to service it. It's a money game. Buy low sell high. Same thing as how remodellers will fix up a house and flip it as quick as possible. It's so they can pull their profit out of the house before too many payments are made on the mortage they just got on the house when they bought it to flip. It's called "OPM", a classic financial strategy. Banks are actually making more money up front from flipping notes and houses. It gives them the cash out of those deals upfront rather than dispersed over 20-30 years of the note. Think about it. It's simple math. Cash is king when doing short term deals. Long term you need steady constant payments, but there's still no guarantee you'll get it all over a long time. As far as the servicer is concerned, why wait for 20 years for the profit when it can be had now? And thus the greedy have turned the whole mortgage industry into nothing more than day-trading of notes.
No, actually, Leftyleo, I believe you have misinterpreted my meaning or do not understand real estate law. I was trying to get across that the big mega banks are indeed doing things that are illegal. I was trying to point out the differences in procedures with deeds of trust versus mortgages AND that not all lending institutions are hell bent on taking people's property. We are a very small law firm, two attorneys and four support staff, not that I have to explain to you, but, foreclosures are a small part of our business, not enough to make a difference in income to the office. We work closely with several Credit Unions in our area, we assist them with refinances, closings and compliance with state and federal law. Thus, I personally know the people that work in the collection departments and the Managers of the CU's and speaking only for the ones we work with, they are not the predators that have ruined our economy, they truly do want to help their members. Are you familiar with the way a credit union is set up? They are owned by the members, who hold shares in the credit union. What are 'shares'? Shares are what ever amount of money you have in your account, monies 'on deposit'. It is not like owning shares in a corporation, doesn't work that way. You can't go cash in your stock, when you withdrawl money, that is cashing in. These particular lending institutions are member owned and are NON-PROFIT. Therefore, their interest is not in obtaining wealth for the CEO, their board of directors are voluntary and receive no compensation. When I stated, "it does not help their bottom line to foreclose", that is what I was referring to. Plus, there are no servicers, they do not sell the loans, all notes and mortgages are kept 'in house'. You obviously do not understand the differences between the predatory lenders and those that are lending money legally, within the law, as it was intended. In Alabama, we are required, by law, to attempt to get the most money for the properties as possible. IF the property sells, after foreclosure, for more than the amount that was owed by the borrower, they are required to turn that money back over
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to the borrower, or the second mortgagee, if there are any. So, your theory of them making money on selling the property for more than was owed on the loan, doesn't work. It is basic math, the CU's do not charge much in the way of closing costs, we do closings for CU's and other banks too. The CU's generally charge 1/2% origination charge (a prepaid finance charge), other than that they do not charge anything, no 'tax service fee', no 'discount points', 'servicing fee', etc. The time vested in getting the loan together, credit reports, appraisals, etc. does not add up, if they were in it just to make money, they would charge more at the closing table. With other banks, your closing costs are going to be in the thousands, with the CU's that we do business with, you are talking less than 1,000 (depending on the loan amount), with some less than 500. If you would like to discuss further, please let me know. But, please do not be confrontational, I am not spouting 'propaganda' and I am not part of the system. I just have alot of experience in dealing with banks and credit unions and I am sold on credit unions. Most of us, as Americans, at least at this time, are forced to deal with one of the two, I choose credit unions.
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: Kilika on November 23, 2010, 04:47:54 AM Fair enough, and my apologies for being confrontational. Though it is no excuse, I do tend to get excited a bit on this topic because I went through it in part with my mother's home back in 2006/2007. Thank God I was able by the grace of God to keep her from getting taken, and we ended up actually selling the house for more than we listed. And that was in the Phoenix market. Miracles do happen! Credit Unions. That is a point I failed to recognize. Indeed they operate quite differently. And yes, I do know a bit about how they operate. I was in the military and had Navy Federal accounts. So that said, I have no doubt things are as you say, because I do know they generally operate more on a local level direct with it's "members". If one must use a bank, I'd recommend a credit union! ;) In my zeal, I didn't make it clear that I wasn't accusing all institutions as hell-bent on taking homes, but I do stand by my post. While you took it as a generalization, I do believe I am correct when it comes to banks and how many are handling foreclosures. They are literally scrambling now to cover their tracks. Surely you can admit that much. You(lawyer?) and your firm are indeed part of the real estate system, you just operate under different rules under different circumstances, but it's still a part of the real estate industry, even as a hired contractor in the deal. I mean come on, you know the deal. I'm no lawyer, but I have learned about law as a result of searching the scriptures and the Levitical Law in the bible and comparing life with God to life without God in the world. The world I believe lives "under the law" in the form of all kinds of secular rules, regulations, and laws, so it has been my desire to learn a bit about law seeing people tend to be legalistic. Jesus said for us to be "wise as serpents and harmless as doves".
Quote from: LeftyLeo on November 23, 2010, 04:47:54 AM In my zeal, I didn't make it clear that I wasn't accusing all institutions as hell-bent on taking homes, but I do stand by my post. While you took it as a generalization, I do believe I am correct when it comes to banks and how many are handling foreclosures. They are literally scrambling now to cover their tracks. Surely you can admit that much. You(lawyer?) and your firm are indeed part of the real estate system, you just operate under different rules under different circumstances, but it's still a part of the real estate industry, even as a hired contractor in the deal. I mean come on, you know the deal. I'm no lawyer, but I have learned about law as a result of searching the scriptures and the Levitical Law in the bible and comparing life with God to life without God in the world. The world I believe lives "under the law" in the form of all kinds of secular rules, regulations, and laws, so it has been my desire to learn a bit about law seeing people tend to be legalistic. Jesus said for us to be "wise as serpents and harmless as doves".
Thank you for your remarks. It has been a very busy, long week and I may have been a little terse. It was unintentional. Anyway, I agree that our system is not perfect. But, if we were to conduct business in the manner set out by the Constitution, it would work and has worked...right up until the time the Fed started allowing banks to loan more than they had 'on deposit'. No, I am not a lawyer, I am a paralegal. I have been working in the real estate industry for about ten years. I conduct title searches and our office writes title insurance for real estate closings. I KNOW a lot of banks are involved in practices, concerning foreclosures and mortgages, that are not only unethical, but illegal. I do admit that I work in the system, however, that does not mean I am 'worked by the system', in other words, our office follows the law and we do not waiver. I think because we also write title insurance, we are more conscious of real estate law and cannot deviate, that would endanger our status as a title agent. From a title viewpoint, the MERS situation has created extreme havoc on the system. Even before the issues were 'discovered' we have been dealing with them for years. The paperwork is shotty, at best, and the way in which they pursue foreclosure is just evil. Smaller banks, and even some of the larger ones (i.e. SunTrust, for example) do endeavour to do the right paperwork. But, when you start looking at some of the large banks (Citi group), they give me the shivers. When I come across a Citi mortgage that we have to get a payoff on or that should have been released years ago...it is a nightmare! Nobody knows what is going on, when you call, you always get the 'run around'. Thanks for your post!
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: Kilika on November 24, 2010, 02:59:29 AM Your welcome.
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Ah, paralegal. I actually considered that profession once upon a time. A very interesting type of job, legally speaking. Kind of a legal "tweener". Your not a lawyer, but your not common folk either, legally speaking! ;) I can only imagine the things you see in your position and industry. While I have religious reasons, I also didn't pursue law in some way because I really didn't think I could maintain my composure around all the heartless things that go on in law. I think evil is indeed the appropriate word. I believe that if one is going to live in a world of law, then follow that law or get out. It defeats the whole purpose of the rule of law. I realize that some consider "legal wrangling" as some kind of sick sport, but come on. The hard part to swallow is the reality that it isn't about guilt or innocence, but which side can win their case. A prosecutor may brag about not having lost a single case, but the real question is how many guily people did he actually get convicted? The flip side being of all those cases won, how many were actually innocent? People need to take a look at the Innocence Project by Barry Scheck to get a gut-wrenching taste of reality in our legal system. http://www.innocenceproject.org/ (http://www.innocenceproject.org/) I recently saw a show about the PhenFen diet lawyers and how they ripped off the members of their class action for over $100 million. And the thing is, the court had approved them to be paid $60 million! But that wasn't enough for those thugs, so they lied and cheated for more. Interesting you mention Suntrust. I've had accounts with them years ago. Can't say that I have any memories of bad dealings with them(though back then I didn't know any better), but they are still a bank, so by definition as a Fed buddy, they are an enemy to the public as much as any bank.
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: redeux on November 24, 2010, 10:56:53 AM The fact of the matter is,
THAT LARGE ZOMBIE BANKS THROUGH GREED OF PARAMOUNT PROPORTIONS HAVE CONTRIVED AN ILLEGAL SYSTEM SET UP TO STEAL HOMES, AND MAKE BOOKOOS OF MONEY COMING AND GOING..........
Quote from: LeftyLeo on November 24, 2010, 02:59:29 AM . Interesting you mention Suntrust. I've had accounts with them years ago. Can't say that I have any memories of bad dealings with them(though back then I didn't know any better), but they are still a bank, so by definition as a Fed buddy, they are an enemy to the public as much as any bank.
SunTrust some time ago was found to have algorithms that would delay the depositing of funds before a pending transaction that would cause a negative balance and result in egregious fees....... I actually confronted the manager of the local branch that I banked at, some yrs ago, that I had detected irregularities in how my transactions were processed.... he had no explanation, yet I had determined mathematically what they were up to, and attempted to explain it to this undereducated goon... while these assholes were studying Finance, aka highway robbery, I learned problem solving skills as an engineer....
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: Geolibertarian on November 24, 2010, 11:10:42 AM
Quote from: redeux on November 24, 2010, 10:56:53 AM The fact of the matter is, THAT LARGE ZOMBIE BANKS THROUGH GREED OF PARAMOUNT PROPORTIONS HAVE CONTRIVED AN ILLEGAL SYSTEM SET UP TO STEAL HOMES, AND MAKE BOOKOOS OF MONEY COMING AND GOING..........
And one of the reasons they're having such a ridiculously easy time economically ass-raping the masses is that the latter have been conditioned almost from birth to blindly and mindlessly "dismiss the idea that powerful people might get together and actually plan anything (http://www.prisonplanet.com/george-carlin-%E2%80%93-conspiracy-theorists.html)." http://forum.prisonplanet.com/index.php?topic=161407.0 (http://forum.prisonplanet.com/index.php?topic=161407.0) Isn't that right, coincidence theorists (http://911debunkers.blogspot.com/2008/12/coincidence-theorists-guideto-911.html)? ::)
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: freedom_commonsense on November 24, 2010, 11:26:16 AM
Quote from: Geolibertarian on November 24, 2010, 11:10:42 AM And one of the reasons they're having such a ridiculously easy time economically ass-raping the masses is that the latter have been conditioned almost from birth to blindly and mindlessly "dismiss the idea that powerful people might get together and actually plan anything (http://www.prisonplanet.com/george-carlin-%E2%80 %93-conspiracy-theorists.html)." http://forum.prisonplanet.com/index.php?topic=161407.0 (http://forum.prisonplanet.com/index.php?topic=161407.0) Isn't that right, coincidence theorists (http://911debunkers.blogspot.com/2008/12/coincidence-theorists-guide-to-911.html)? ::)
Even as I watch students tangle with the riot police here in London, austerity supporters are whining that "they already get too much and waste the money on alcohol". ::) If that isn't wilful ignorance then I don't know what is.
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Quote from: redeux on November 24, 2010, 11:03:51 AM SunTrust some time ago was found to have algorithms that would delay the depositing of funds before a pending transaction that would cause a negative balance and result in egregious fees....... I actually confronted the manager of the local branch that I banked at, some yrs ago, that I had detected irregularities in how my transactions were processed.... he had no explanation, yet I had determined mathematically what they were up to, and attempted to explain it to this undereducated goon... while these assholes were studying Finance, aka highway robbery, I learned problem solving skills as an engineer....
You are right about the delay in depositing funds. We currently have our real estate trust account with them (I would love to change it). As our office handles real estate closings...we receive the certified funds from the purchaser and it has to run through our trust account and we cut a check to the seller...all in one day. Last year SunTrust decided that the funds we deposit are no longer available for at least 24 hours! When I contacted them to explain that this is a 'trust account', we are bonded and have E&O insurance (errors and omissions) and our transactions must be completed in the same day, he suggested that we 'float' the money in our account to cover it. I stated that it was against RESPA law for us to do so. He didn't seem to care. I did check around with numerous other banks and they all now have the same policy. This means that we have to use wire transfers for almost all transactions because they are the only ones that are available the same day. As you said, this practice is only to make money on the fees. Another way to 'gouge' you, since sending AND receiving a wire costs us between 40-55 dollars.
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: Kilika on November 25, 2010, 04:02:59 AM Typical banker attitude. The question then is since a bank has policy that is intended to either save or make money, how much do they make by holding funds for 24 hours? If they are profiting from holding deposits, by what authority can they use other people's money in that manner without compensating the depositor? And if they are not making money on it, just how is that money handled and why? Fair questions for an institution that is regulated by the federal govern...oh wait, the Federal Reserve is a private company that has Congress in their back pocket so they do what they want seeing they regulate themselves now.
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: kerrymti on November 25, 2010, 08:57:43 AM
Quote from: LeftyLeo on November 25, 2010, 04:02:59 AM Typical banker attitude. The question then is since a bank has policy that is intended to either save or make money, how much do they make by holding funds for 24 hours?
Let's think about this for a minute...on one million dollars, at 6%, if my calculations are right, they would make approx. 165 dollars...multiply that out by the millions and millions that they 'hold' for 24 hours, each day...builds in a hurry! Creates a hell of a 'float' for them!
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: citizenx on December 01, 2010, 04:51:18 PM
Foreclosuregate and The Great MERS Whitewash Bill

by Mark on November 30, 2010 0 comments in Economy,Freedom,Government,Housing To boil down Foreclosuregate into one sentence, it is the transfer of mortgages between financial institutions and investors, while securitizing loans into bonds, without the proper paperwork and signatures required to legally document ownership. And this has resulted in numerous lawsuits filed on behalf of homeowners in foreclosure. The company that tracks who owns what is a private company named Mortgage Electronic Registration System (MERS). Sixty-six million mortgages are registered in the MERS system. Lobbyists are now on Capital Hill pushing legislation to affirm MERS as the standard for tracking mortgages. If this were to happen, the industry could get rid of all the Foreclosuregate lawsuits with congress implicit approval, Americans would be left with weakened property rights, and banks would be affirmed as Americas largest real estate holding companies. Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur (D-OH), on the Oversight Government Reform Committee, isnt keen on letting this happen, as she questions the efficiency and loyalties of the MERS mortgage system and associated issues. On MSNBC with host Dylan Ratigan, she says, [MERS] was invented by the most powerful financial players in the country while regulators were asleep at the wheel. There is some great information in this video, beyond MERS, and its a definite Must See. Let us leave you with this great quote from Thomas Jefferson that Ratigan pulled up for this segment: I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs. http://www.economiccollapse.net/foreclosuregate-and-the-great-mers-whitewash-bill -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Lest we forget: this thing is probably like Dracula. For all I know it is gettign ready to rear its ugly head again. Good idea
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to keep an eye on this. Get ready for Round 3, maybe.
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: redeux on December 01, 2010, 08:28:33 PM
Quote from: citizenx on December 01, 2010, 04:51:18 PM
Foreclosuregate and The Great MERS Whitewash Bill

by Mark on November 30, 2010 0 comments in Economy,Freedom,Government,Housing To boil down Foreclosuregate into one sentence, it is the transfer of mortgages between financial institutions and investors, while securitizing loans into bonds, without the proper paperwork and signatures required to legally document ownership. And this has resulted in numerous lawsuits filed on behalf of homeowners in foreclosure. The company that tracks who owns what is a private company named Mortgage Electronic Registration System (MERS). Sixty-six million mortgages are registered in the MERS system. Lobbyists are now on Capital Hill pushing legislation to affirm MERS as the standard for tracking mortgages. If this were to happen, the industry could get rid of all the Foreclosuregate lawsuits with congress implicit approval, Americans would be left with weakened property rights, and banks would be affirmed as Americas largest real estate holding companies. Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur (D-OH), on the Oversight Government Reform Committee, isnt keen on letting this happen, as she questions the efficiency and loyalties of the MERS mortgage system and associated issues. On MSNBC with host Dylan Ratigan, she says, [MERS] was invented by the most powerful financial players in the country while regulators were asleep at the wheel. There is some great information in this video, beyond MERS, and its a definite Must See. Let us leave you with this great quote from Thomas Jefferson that Ratigan pulled up for this segment: I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs. http://www.economiccollapse.net/foreclosuregate-and-the-great-mers-whitewash-bill -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Lest we forget: this thing is probably like Dracula. For all I know it is gettign ready to rear its ugly head again. Good idea to keep an eye on this. Get ready for Round 3, maybe.
To HELL with them ALL...............
Title: Re: Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System Post by: redeux on December 06, 2010, 06:07:23 PM Classic dis-info psyop piece... be prepared to throw your laptop....
MERS PREVAILS IN THE SHOW ME STATE ACCORDING TO FORECLOSURE MILL ATTORNEY

http://foreclosureblues.wordpress.com/2010/12/06/mers-prevails-in-the-show-me-state-according-to-foreclosuremill-attorney/ (http://foreclosureblues.wordpress.com/2010/12/06/mers-prevails-in-the-show-me-state-accordingto-foreclosure-mill-attorney/)
Early decisions were disappointing for both lenders and MERS. The problem has escalated to the point that, in some jurisdictions, if a borrower articulates a defense that begins, "This is a MERS loan," courts throw out the fundamental legal concepts that support a mortgage foreclosure. However, recent key victories discussed below may finally put an end to the attacks against MERS. Round one to Bellistri In Bellistri v. Ocwen Loan Servicing, Bellistri, a tax-sale purchaser, brought a quiet title action against the taxpayer and deed-of-trust assignee. The court granted judgment for Bellistri. On appeal, the lender argued that Bellistri failed to comply with the statutory requirements for notice of redemption. The lender also argued it had standing to make the challenge, because it was the assignee of a deed of trust from MERS as nominee for the original lender. The court decided that whether a lender has an interest in real property for purposes of standing hinges on evidence of who holds the promissory note. The only evidence of note ownership was the MERS assignment of the deed of trust, which purported to assign the deed of trust "together with any and all notes." The court found this insufficient due to the lack of evidence that MERS had authority to transfer the note. Without any separate evidence that the lender held the promissory note, the court held the lender did not have standing to challenge the quiet title aciton. The Box-ing continues Cases that followed and cited Bellistri were equally disappointing. The Western District of Missouri Bankruptcy Court weighed in on MERS and the issues of standing for motions for relief from the automatic stay in In re Box. Box arose out of a lenders motion for relief from an automatic stay. The lender that sought relief was not the original lender on the note or deed of trust, and accordingly, the trustee objected to the lenders standing to bring the motion. Despite an assignment of the deed of trust from MERS to the lender and a promissory note endorsed in blank, the trustee
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alleged there was not enough evidence to prove the lender had standing. The court relied on Bellistri in finding that the case turned on whether the lender had possession of the original promissory note. The court decided that the copy of the endorsed note in blank with an affidavit that simply recited that the lender was the holder of the original note was insufficient proof of actual possession of the note. As such, the court denied the motion for relief. Box imposes an extremely burdensome requirement: the production of original promissory notes. Such an imposition is contrary to the requirements set forth for a motion for relief in 11 USC 362(g)(1). However, Box is more important for the road map created by the court for future litigation in the jurisdiction regarding MERS. Foreclosure counsel practicing in this jurisdiction should take heed of the following excerpt from the decision, as the court has yet to take up whether a MERS mortgage is split from the promissory note: This Order does not go further than necessary, and specifically does not decide whether the structure of MERS is fatally flawed under Missouri law, because it splits the note and deed of trust between different entities. I am well aware that there would be far-reaching consequences from such a determination on creditors holding what they believed were mortgage loans, and also on debtors, who may or may not be able to obtain new financing in order to purchase their homes from the estate at current value. Therefore, I would hope to decide those issues in a proceeding in which the promissory note is produced and in which evidence is offered as to the relationship between MERS and lenders for whom it purports to act, as well as the powers granted to it by them. Such evidence might include, for example, an agency agreement, if one exists. Cases outside the jurisdiction also caught on to Bellistri. Landmark National Bank v. Kesler (Kansas, 2009), which gained national attention for its discussion of MERS, owes some of its reasoning to Bellistri. Landmark cites Bellistri for the proposition that a MERS mortgage may be split from the underlying promissory note, thus making both the note and mortgage unenforceable. While the citation to Bellistri was secondary and irrelevant to the ultimate holding of Landmark, that portion of the opinion is frequently cited as a defense against foreclosures and bankruptcy actions. Moreover, Landmark left unclear whether MERS needed to be named as a defendant and served with notice in foreclosure proceedings. This uncertainty threatened a fundamental aspect of MERS business model, in that when MERS is served with a legal proceeding, MERS accesses its system to locate the current lender and notify it of the lawsuit. MERS KOs Bellistri The momentum against MERS picked up after the Bellistri and Box cases. Counsel for borrowers considered MERS to be on the ropes. These decisions were particularly frustrating, because MERS was not a party to the litigation; however, the decisions had a significant impact on MERS business. In an effort to resolve the troubles caused by Bellistri, MERS filed a complaint in the Eastern District of Missouri against Bellistri, seeking to set aside the tax deed. MERS asserted that Bellistri violated MERS due-process rights by failing to give MERS notice of its redemption rights. Both parties filed motions for summary judgment. On July 1, the court entered judgment for MERS, finding that (1) Bellistri violated state law by failing to notify MERS of its right to redeem the property, (2) Bellistris failure to provide MERS with notice of its redemption rights also violated MERS rights of procedural due process under the Fifth and 14th amendments to the U.S. Constitution, and (3) the collectors deed issued to Bellistri is null and void. The 29-page judgment elaborates extensively on the development and business model of MERS. The MERS-friendly set of facts appears to be due - in part, at least - to a procedural error by Bellistri in failing to controvert MERS summary judgment facts, thus deeming all to be admitted and uncontroverted. Is MERS turning the corner? The victory over Bellistri is not the only cause for celebration as of late. MERS efforts are paying off and may secure its critical role in the servicing industry. In Kansas, due to the uncertainty left by the Landmark v. Kesler decision, MERS focused its efforts on passing legislation to amend the Kansas Rules of Civil Procedure. House Bill 2656, which became effective July 1, amended the rule regarding contingently necessary parties to a civil proceeding. Kansas Statute 60-217 now makes it clear that, in any action that would determine title or affect a mortgage on real property, MERS must be named as a party and served with process. In Arizona, a borrower brought suit against the original lenders successor and MERS, alleging that by identifying MERS as the nominee on the deed of trust, the deed of trust had been split from the note, rendering both fatally defective (Ciardi v. Lending Co. Inc. (Arizona, 2010)). In dismissing the suit, the court noted that the borrower alleged no facts to support its splitting theory and that the plain language of the deed of trust appoints MERS as the nominee for the lender and its successors and assigns. Even when pitted against the third-party bankruptcy trustee, MERS has prevailed as of late. In In re Jessup (Eastern District of Kentucky Bankruptcy Court), the bankruptcy trustee attempted to avoid a mortgage lien based on a similar theory as in the Ciardi case. In Jessup, the trustee argued invalidity of the mortgage, because the lender offered no proof of a written nomination of MERS to act as mortgagee. In granting the lenders motion for summary judgment, the Eastern District of Kentucky found that extrinsic evidence of MERS mortgagee status was not necessary because the language in the mortgage was clear in defining MERS role. The court also upheld an assignment of the mortgage from MERS to the current lender, despite a question as to the authority of the signee who had been inadvertently left off the corporate resolution for signing authority. Although the boxing is over in Missouri, MERS is sure to go several more rounds throughout the country. In order to stay on the winning side, lenders need to continue to adapt their procedures and policies to timely provide foreclosure counsel with documents and information. Likewise, foreclosure counsel must continue to update their archive of case law with favorable decisions, such as the ones cited in this article. With a united front in defending these challenges, MERS will knock out claims left and right, eventually finding itself in a permanent place of victory.
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Post by: Kilika on December 07, 2010, 02:43:45 AM No need to throw anything. Just take a deep breath and read that article again. Everything about it is negative, in favor of MERS and the industry as a whole. But when you look closer at each case cited, it's not the victory they'd like to claim. All of those cases were "won" out of basically proceedural mistakes by the other parties. I don't see any of those cases setting any kind of solid presedence for this whole mess. Consider that it is a right to know about litigation on something that your legally bound to, so Bellistri did indeed deny MERS by his action of not notifying MERS of the action on the deed he was taking. Notification swings all ways. That was Bellistri's mistake and should have known better. Who knows, maybe Bellistri took a legal dump, seeing that was really a silly mistake. It's not the disaster that the article trys to make it sound. And the changing of the law in Kansas so that MERS is notified isn't a loss either. That's just clarifying what should already be a part of aboveboard business. Now if your looking to take advantage of somebody, then you might not like the new law. Now it still remains questionable as to whether MERS even has any legal place to begin with due to "splitting" of note and deed questions, but obviously they are involved, and their claims would have to be challenged in court anyway, most likely case-by-case, which I suspect MERS wouldn't want, so like MERS has already done, I think they'll go after politicians and the changing of the rules angle while trying to keep from loosing their backsides in court. Besides, what's missing in the article? There is nothing positive for the homeowner. It's all doom and gloom, and the industry is presented as the victor. Bull. This whole deal is FAR from over, yet has a quite simple basis that needs to be determined in each foreclosure case; did the parties involved take legal shortcuts in their handling of the mortgage? Does MERS or anybody else have legal claim to the deed? Was the original note transfered each time legally? Bottom line, who has legal claim to foreclose?
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Prison Planet Dorum The Shadow Banking System

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Prison Planet Dorum The Shadow Banking System

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Print Page - Welcome to the Machine: MERS and The Shadow Banking System http://forum.prisonplanet.com/index.php?action=printpage;topic=189928.

Foreclosuregate Fallout: How Bad Can It Get For Wall Street?

When Banks Are the Robbers

When Banks Are the Robbers

When Banks Are the Robbers

When Banks Are the Robbers

Thursday, October 21, 2010

Total Cost To Taxpayers Of Fannie, Freddie Bailout Could Reach $1 Trillion

Fannie and Freddie May Need Infusion

The Mortgage-Backed Securities Mess

80% of Citi Mortgages Defective

That gives you some idea.

Thursday, October 21, 2010

The MERS Edifice Quavers....

Is ForeclosureGate Sloppy Paperwork or Push Button Financial Fraud?

Fannie, Freddie May Draw $363 Billion, FHFA Says

The MERS Edifice Quavers....

Hey banks, buy back these crappy loans

We'd like to return these bad loans, please

Another Wells Fargo robo-signer

for entire (blog) article (highly recommended and funny!): http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2010/10/real-danger-in-foreclosure-crisis.html

There are some 60 million Americans with this problem, unfortunately!

IN THE SUPERIOR COURT OF FULTON COUNTY STATE OF GEORGIA DUSTIN ROLLINS v.

continued (including PDF of Georgia suit): http://dailybail.com/home/mers-death-zone-double-class-action-lawsuits-filed-against-m.html

The Perfect No-Prosecution Crime

ForeclosureGate: Not just bungled paperwork, it is fraud (Part 4)

Katherine Porter to Senate: No Non-Judicial Sales While System Is In Doubt

ForeclosureGate: Not just bungled paperwork, it is fraud (Part 4)

Wells Fargo Finds Foreclosure Lapses in 55,000 Current Cases

F*CK WELLS FARGO.....

Upon The Bankers

The Run Upon the Bankers[1]

[The end] Jonathan Swift's poem: Run Upon The Bankers

I posted this yesterday here is a more detailed look at the ruling...

Mortgage Industry Defense is Flimsy, Congressional Oversight Panel Provides Counter-Evidence

TRUTH!! They are complicit in the CRIME.........

Who Lost Russia?

Fidelity National Drops Nationwide Indemnity Requirement

Foreclosuregate Explained: Big Banks on the Brink

Reporting assistance by Ellen Brown. link: http://www.truth-out.org/foreclosuregate-explained-big-banks-brink64621

financial crisis is a real possibility.

I couldn't agree more!

U.S. wants courtroom sealed for Goldman trial

U.S. Stocks Retreat as Banks Tumble on Foreclosure Concerns

BIG BANKS VULNERABLE AGAIN

LOL.....great post..... I will add the following....

If you are current;

Goldman Sachs "revictimized"? WTF??????????????????????????

Quote from: redeux on October 29, 2010, 12:52:55 PM

The Fed Bought Fraud

Will Bankers go to Jail for Foreclosure-gate?

Land Titles Are FOOKED - In Their Own Words

BofA hawked risky deals to customers

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/business /informer_bofa_hawked_risky_deals_9AR9iRb1nf2ndz6F4nMO0O#ixzz13o8r0kal

Land Titles Are FOOKED - In Their Own Words

Guest Post: The Tipping Point has Arrived

Foreclose on the Foreclosure Fraudsters, Part 1: Put Bank of America in Receivership

In other words, I certainly hope you are right, Lefty.

How the Banks Put the Economy Underwater

Team 4: Debt Collectors Accused Of Fake Courtroom, Judge

Team 4: Debt Collectors Accused Of Fake Courtroom, Judge

Debt Collectors Face a Hazard: Writers Cramp

Foreclose on the Foreclosure Fraudsters, Part 1: Put Bank of America in Receivership