10-16-2010, 06:54 PM
Start fearing for the longevity of your nest egg(basic survival.) This is by far the simplest explanation for the current financial scandal(disaster) that is largely under reported by the fourth estate. Who do you make your underwater mortgage loan payments to? Think about that question and start educating yourself on this dire issue, for it will directly or indirectly affect your future financial well-being. Look at it this way, the too big to fail financial firms have really screwed themselves this time and unless the average working American takes notice and holds our Justice Department's feet to the fire, these losses will be born by the middle class taxpayer and succeeding generations. Do you really want to end up in life as a poor socialist apparatchik supporting the corporate and academic elites lifestyle? How did we end up under the control of these crooks anyway?
Are ALL Mortgage Backed Securities a Scam?
Submitted by George Washington on 10/16/2010 16:38 -0500
Cohen Fannie Mae Felix Salmon Freddie Mac Gonzalo Lira Mortgage Backed Securities Mortgage Loans ratings Ratings Agencies
â Washingtonâs Blog
Pensions and other large investors may sue the banks which sold them mortgage backed securities (mbs)based upon fraudulent misrepresentation.
Indeed, as William D. Cohen and Felix Salmon point out in must-read stories, the big banks hired a company called Clayton Holdings to sample the quality of mortgages being purchased.
Clayton found very high percentages of mortgages which did not meet minimal underwriting standards.
However, instead of disclosing to the investors purchasing mbs that many of the mortgages were bad - or even that there were samples and statistical analyzes performed by Clayton and the banks - the banks simply kept it to themselves, and used that inside information about poor mortgage quality to negotiate a discount of the price that the banks paid when purchasing the loan portfolios from the folks who originated the loans.
This is like buying a used car, but having a mechanic look it over first. Once the mechanic discovered a cracked engine block, the buyer negotiates the purchase price way down, but then turns around and sells the car for a higher price without ever disclosing that there was a cracked engine block or even that a mechanic had looked it over.
Indeed, its worse ... at least with the car, there is something physical to inspect. But because many of the underlying mortgage documents have gone missing, there is nothing for the mbs buyer to investigate even if he wanted to. For example, as I've previously noted, MERS - the holder of 60% of all U.S. residential mortgages (and many commercial mortgages) - is a shell company, and many mortgage documents were forged.
But Gonzalo Lira claims that the entire mbs sausage-making process is a scam:
The whole purpose of MBSâs was for different investors to have their different risk appetites satiated with different bonds. Some bond customers wanted super-safe bonds with low returns, some others wanted riskier bonds with therefore higher rates of return.
Therefore, as everyone knows, the loans were âbundledâ into REMICâs (Real-Estate Mortgage Investment Conduits, a special vehicle designed to hold the loans for tax purposes), and then âsliced & dicedââsplit up and put into tranches, according to their likelihood of default, their interest rates, and other characteristics.
This slicing and dicing created âsenior tranchesâ, where the loans would likely be paid in full, if past history of mortgage loan statistics was to be believed. And it also created âjunior tranchesâ, where the loans might well default, again according to past history and statistics. (A whole range of tranches were created, of course, but for purposes of this discussion, we can ignore all those countless other variations.)
These various tranches were sold to different investors, according to their risk appetite. Thatâs why some of the MBS bonds were rated as safe as Treasury bonds, and others were rated by the ratings agencies as risky as junk bonds.
But hereâs the key issue: When an MBS was first created, all the mortgages were pristineânone had defaulted yet, because they were all brand new loans. Statistically, some would default and some others would be paid back in fullâbut which ones specifically would default? No one knew, of course. If I toss a coin 1,000 times, statistically, 500 tosses the coin will land headsâbut what will the result be of, say, the 723rd toss specifically? I dunno.
Same with mortgages.
So in fact, it wasnât that the riskier loans were in junior tranches and the safer mortgage loans were in the senior tranches: Rather, all the loans were in all the tranches, and if and when a mortgage in a given bundle of mortgages defaulted, the junior tranche holders would take the losses first, and the senior tranche holder take the loss last.
But who was the owner of the junior tranche bond and the senior tranche bond? Two different people. Therefore, the mortgage note was not actually signed over to the bond holder. In fact, it couldnât be signed over. Because, again, since no one knew which mortgage would default first, it was impossible to assign a specific mortgage to a specific bond.
Therefore, how to make sure the safe mortgage loan stayed with the safe MBS tranche, and the risky and/or defaulting mortgage went to the riskier MBS tranche? Enter stage right, the famed MERSâthe Mortgage Electronic Registration System. MERS was the repository of these digitized mortgage notes that the banks originated from the actual mortgage loans signed by homebuyers. MERS was jointly owned by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (yes, those two, again, I know, I know: Like the chlamydia and the gonorrhea of the financial worldâyou cure âem, but they just keep coming back).
The purpose of MERS was to help in the securitization process. Basically, MERS directed defaulting mortgages to the appropriate tranches of mortgage bonds. MERS was essentially the operating table where the digitized mortgage notes were sliced and diced and rearranged so as to create the Mortgage Backed Securities. Think of MERS as Dr. Frankensteinâs operating table, where the beast got put together.
However, legallyâand this is the important partâMERS didnât hold any mortgage note: The true owner of the mortgage notes should have been the REMICâs.
But the REMICâs didnât own the note either, because of a fluke of the ratings agencies: The REMICâs had to be âbankruptcy remoteâ, in order to get the precious ratings needed to peddle Mortgage Backed Securities to insitutional investors. In other words, Lira is saying that mbs buyers thought that they were buying specific tranches tied to real mortgages, but they were just getting a statistical cut of wispy, non-corporeal representations of information related to the entire universe of mortgages floating around in the MERS.
In other words, Lira is saying that all mortgage backed securities are a scam.
See also this and this.
by 11b40
on Sat, 10/16/2010 - 16:52
#655566
Help me out here, because I really don't know much about the securitization end game.
So, all the mortages were sliced, diced, pakaged and sold all over the world, right?
What are they worth today? Say I am a Spanish pension fund, and I bought $100 million in CDOs in 2007 - what is the current value likely to be? I was expecting an income stream, too, right? What's been happening to that cash flow? Do I have SUBSTANTIAL losses? If I do, why can't I turn around and sue the pants off the fine folks who peddled the garbage to me under fraudulent terms and conditions? Maybe even sue the ratings agencies?
If I am right, it seems far beyond the ability of a lame-duck Congress to pass a doc signing retroactive law and just shove the whole thing under the rug. Yes, the banksters are powerful, but some other really powerful players all around the world seem to have been burned big time. Or, am I wrong?
reply flag as junk (0)
by 11b40
on Sat, 10/16/2010 - 16:52
#655567
Help me out here, because I really don't know much about the securitization end game.
So, all the mortages were sliced, diced, pakaged and sold all over the world, right?
What are they worth today? Say I am a Spanish pension fund, and I bought $100 million in CDOs in 2007 - what is the current value likely to be? I was expecting an income stream, too, right? What's been happening to that cash flow? Do I have SUBSTANTIAL losses? If I do, why can't I turn around and sue the pants off the fine folks who peddled the garbage to me under fraudulent terms and conditions? Maybe even sue the ratings agencies?
If I am right, it seems far beyond the ability of a lame-duck Congress to pass a doc signing retroactive law and just shove the whole thing under the rug. Yes, the banksters are powerful, but some other really powerful players all around the world seem to have been burned big time. Or, am I wrong?
reply flag as junk (0)
by Fed Supporter
on Sat, 10/16/2010 - 17:04
#655576
MERS, INC., APPELLANT, VS. SOUTHWEST HOMES OF ARKANSAS, APPELLEE
SEPTEMBER 23, 2009
MORTGAGE ELECTRONIC REGISTRATION SYSTEM, INC., APPELLANT, VS. SOUTHWEST HOMES OF ARKANSAS, APPELLEE
No. 08-1299
SUPREME COURT OF ARKANSAS
2009 Ark. LEXIS 121
March 19, 2009, Opinion Delivered
Further, under Arkansas foreclosure law, a deed of trust is defined as âa deed conveying real property in trust to secure the performance of an obligation of the grantor or any other person named in the deed to a beneficiary and conferring upon the trustee a power of sale for breach of an obligation of the grantor contained in the deed of trust.â Ark. Code Ann. § 18-50-101(2) (Repl. 2003). Thus, under the statutes, and under the common law noted above, a deed of trust grants to the trustee the powers MERS purports to hold. Those powers were held by East as trustee. Those powers were not conveyed to MERS.
MERS holds no authority to act as an agent and holds no property interest in the mortgaged land. It is not a necessary party. In [*11] this dispute over foreclosure on the subject real property under the mortgage and the deed of trust, complete relief may be granted whether or not MERS is a party. MERS has no interest to protect. It simply was not a necessary party. See Ark. R. Civ. P. 19(a). MERSâs role in this transaction casts no light on the contractual issues on appeal in this case. See, e.g., Wilmans v. Sears, Roebuck & Co., 355 Ark. 668, 144 S.W.3d 245 (2004).
Finally, we note that Arkansas is a recording state. Notice of transactions in real property is provided by recording. See Ark. Code Ann. § 14-15-404 (Supp. 2007). Southwest is entitled to rely upon what is filed of record. In the present case, MERS was at best the agent of the lender. The only recorded document provides notice that Pulaski Mortgage is the lender and, therefore, MERSâs principal. MERS asserts Pulaski Mortgage is not its principal. Yet no other lender recorded its interest as an assignee of Pulaski Mortgage. Permitting an agent such as MERS purports to be to step in and act without a recorded lender directing its action would wreak havoc on notice in this state.
Affirmed.
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://foreclosuredefensenationwide.com/?page_id=161">http://foreclosuredefensenationwide.com/?page_id=161</a><!-- m -->
reply flag as junk (0)
by Oh Lawrd
on Sat, 10/16/2010 - 17:06
#655580
Hereâs That Devastating Report On Bank Of America That Everyone Is Talking About Today
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://stopforeclosurefraud.com/2010/10/16/heres-that-devastating-report..">http://stopforeclosurefraud.com/2010/10 ... g-report..</a><!-- m -->.
reply flag as junk (0)
by Conrad Murray
on Sat, 10/16/2010 - 17:17
#655589
"The presentation comes to a pretty damning conclusion: Bank of Americaâs exposure could nearly halve its share price".
My thoughts:
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbB_HVcXpPk">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbB_HVcXpPk</a><!-- m -->
reply flag as junk (0)
by Conrad Murray
on Sat, 10/16/2010 - 17:08
#655583
I don't know how this will play out, but I hope everyone here is sending emails and/or making phone calls to all the media outlets they can think of about it. We have to make this a lead story nationally and keep it that way until it is resolved. It only takes a few minutes and those ratings fiends will respond to a loud, unified voice.
For those who haven't treated themselve to it yet, Caturday laughs (my first playlist for ZH):
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=8584FE99F413E42F">http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p ... 99F413E42F</a><!-- m -->
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a44/SpiderGirlie/Caturday.jpg">http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a44/Sp ... turday.jpg</a><!-- m -->
reply flag as junk (0)
by Fed Supporter
on Sat, 10/16/2010 - 17:34
#655604
From: <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://fedupusa.org/------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------For">http://fedupusa.org/------------------- ... -------For</a><!-- m --> Halloween, Iâm going as a MERS Vice-President October 16th, 2010 | Author: Stephanie
Christopher Peterson is a law professor at the University of Utah. In a pair of papers, onepublished last summer and one not yet published, he makes a compelling case that the Mortgage Electronic Registration System (MERS) ought to be illegal â and arguably is already.
These papers are getting some play right now because they anticipate the foreclosure documentation mess currently in the news. I am not even sure how to summarize them, and I strongly recommend you read one or both for yourself (tap âOne-Click Downloadâ for the PDF). Prof. Peterson has a very pleasing style, and the historical background he provides is fascinating, particularly in the earlier paper.
But, briefly⦠In the 1990s, mortgage lenders and servicers decided to bypass centuries of established precedent for tracking ownership of physical land and the related loans, because they did not want to pay fees to county registries that have tracked that ownership for legal purposes since before the nation was founded.
As a result, 60% of all mortgages in the U.S. today are legally âownedâ by MERS, a Delaware corporation with approximately zero employees. Now, in order for the owner of a mortgage to perform certain legal actions â like âconveying an interestâ in the land â some states require the signature of a âVice Presidentâ.
Imagine for a moment why a state might impose such a requirement, and then read this quote from Prof. Petersonâs new paper (emphasis mine):
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://fedupusa.org/wp-content/themes/old_glory_wp_theme_lr/images/PostQ..">http://fedupusa.org/wp-content/themes/o ... es/PostQ..</a><!-- m -->.); background-position: 0% 0%; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border: 1px solid #8090d6;">
As a practical matter, the incoherence of MERSâ legal position is exacerbated by a corporate structure that is so unorthodox as to arguably be considered fraudulent. Because MERSCORP is a company of relatively modest size, it does not have the personnel to deal with legal problems created by its purported ownership of millions of home mortgages. To accommodate the massive amount of paperwork and litigation involved with its business model, MERSCORP simply farms out the MERS, Inc. identity to employees of mortgage servicers, originators, debt collectors, and foreclosure law firms. Instead, MERS invites financial companies to enter names of their own employees into a MERS webpage which then automatically regurgitates boilerplate âcorporate resolutionsâ that purport to name the employees of other companies as âcertifying officersâ of MERS. These certifying officers also take job titles from MERS stylizing themselves as either assistant secretaries or vice presidents of the MERS, rather than the company that actually employs them. These employees of the servicers, debt collectors, and law firms sign documents pretending to be vice presidents or assistant secretaries of MERS, Inc. even though neither MERSCORP, Inc. nor MERS, Inc. pays any compensation or provides benefits to them. Astonishingly, MERS âvice presidentsâ are simply paralegals, customer service representatives, and foreclosure attorneys employed by other companies. MERS even sells its corporate seal to non-employees on its internet web page for $25.00 each. Ironically, MERS, Inc.âa company that pretends to own 60% of the nationâs residential mortgagesâdoes not have any of its own employees but still purports to have âthousandsâ of assistant secretaries and vice presidents.
This is just my personal favorite of the various legally questionable facets of the MERS scheme. There are several others, and again I strongly recommend reading the papers for the rest. Itâs great stuff.
I have a hunch the lawyers are just getting warmed up on this one. Should be fun to watch.
One more quote from the new paper:
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://fedupusa.org/wp-content/themes/old_glory_wp_theme_lr/images/PostQ..">http://fedupusa.org/wp-content/themes/o ... es/PostQ..</a><!-- m -->.); background-position: 0% 0%; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border: 1px solid #8090d6;">
If the growing line of cases asserting that MERS is neither a mortgagee nor a deed of trust beneficiary is correct, then courts must soon confront profound questions about the very enforceability of MERSâ security agreements. Not merely an ancillary issue, MERS registered loans have fundamental problems related to the very nature of what a mortgage is. There is a compelling legal argument that loans originated through the MERS system fail to create enforceable liens.
Oh, my.
reply flag as junk (0)
by max2205
on Sat, 10/16/2010 - 17:33
#655608
Ben this is Tim. Write BAC a big check Sunday before the market opens. Call it Fadenlane II.
Are ALL Mortgage Backed Securities a Scam?
Submitted by George Washington on 10/16/2010 16:38 -0500
Cohen Fannie Mae Felix Salmon Freddie Mac Gonzalo Lira Mortgage Backed Securities Mortgage Loans ratings Ratings Agencies
â Washingtonâs Blog
Pensions and other large investors may sue the banks which sold them mortgage backed securities (mbs)based upon fraudulent misrepresentation.
Indeed, as William D. Cohen and Felix Salmon point out in must-read stories, the big banks hired a company called Clayton Holdings to sample the quality of mortgages being purchased.
Clayton found very high percentages of mortgages which did not meet minimal underwriting standards.
However, instead of disclosing to the investors purchasing mbs that many of the mortgages were bad - or even that there were samples and statistical analyzes performed by Clayton and the banks - the banks simply kept it to themselves, and used that inside information about poor mortgage quality to negotiate a discount of the price that the banks paid when purchasing the loan portfolios from the folks who originated the loans.
This is like buying a used car, but having a mechanic look it over first. Once the mechanic discovered a cracked engine block, the buyer negotiates the purchase price way down, but then turns around and sells the car for a higher price without ever disclosing that there was a cracked engine block or even that a mechanic had looked it over.
Indeed, its worse ... at least with the car, there is something physical to inspect. But because many of the underlying mortgage documents have gone missing, there is nothing for the mbs buyer to investigate even if he wanted to. For example, as I've previously noted, MERS - the holder of 60% of all U.S. residential mortgages (and many commercial mortgages) - is a shell company, and many mortgage documents were forged.
But Gonzalo Lira claims that the entire mbs sausage-making process is a scam:
The whole purpose of MBSâs was for different investors to have their different risk appetites satiated with different bonds. Some bond customers wanted super-safe bonds with low returns, some others wanted riskier bonds with therefore higher rates of return.
Therefore, as everyone knows, the loans were âbundledâ into REMICâs (Real-Estate Mortgage Investment Conduits, a special vehicle designed to hold the loans for tax purposes), and then âsliced & dicedââsplit up and put into tranches, according to their likelihood of default, their interest rates, and other characteristics.
This slicing and dicing created âsenior tranchesâ, where the loans would likely be paid in full, if past history of mortgage loan statistics was to be believed. And it also created âjunior tranchesâ, where the loans might well default, again according to past history and statistics. (A whole range of tranches were created, of course, but for purposes of this discussion, we can ignore all those countless other variations.)
These various tranches were sold to different investors, according to their risk appetite. Thatâs why some of the MBS bonds were rated as safe as Treasury bonds, and others were rated by the ratings agencies as risky as junk bonds.
But hereâs the key issue: When an MBS was first created, all the mortgages were pristineânone had defaulted yet, because they were all brand new loans. Statistically, some would default and some others would be paid back in fullâbut which ones specifically would default? No one knew, of course. If I toss a coin 1,000 times, statistically, 500 tosses the coin will land headsâbut what will the result be of, say, the 723rd toss specifically? I dunno.
Same with mortgages.
So in fact, it wasnât that the riskier loans were in junior tranches and the safer mortgage loans were in the senior tranches: Rather, all the loans were in all the tranches, and if and when a mortgage in a given bundle of mortgages defaulted, the junior tranche holders would take the losses first, and the senior tranche holder take the loss last.
But who was the owner of the junior tranche bond and the senior tranche bond? Two different people. Therefore, the mortgage note was not actually signed over to the bond holder. In fact, it couldnât be signed over. Because, again, since no one knew which mortgage would default first, it was impossible to assign a specific mortgage to a specific bond.
Therefore, how to make sure the safe mortgage loan stayed with the safe MBS tranche, and the risky and/or defaulting mortgage went to the riskier MBS tranche? Enter stage right, the famed MERSâthe Mortgage Electronic Registration System. MERS was the repository of these digitized mortgage notes that the banks originated from the actual mortgage loans signed by homebuyers. MERS was jointly owned by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (yes, those two, again, I know, I know: Like the chlamydia and the gonorrhea of the financial worldâyou cure âem, but they just keep coming back).
The purpose of MERS was to help in the securitization process. Basically, MERS directed defaulting mortgages to the appropriate tranches of mortgage bonds. MERS was essentially the operating table where the digitized mortgage notes were sliced and diced and rearranged so as to create the Mortgage Backed Securities. Think of MERS as Dr. Frankensteinâs operating table, where the beast got put together.
However, legallyâand this is the important partâMERS didnât hold any mortgage note: The true owner of the mortgage notes should have been the REMICâs.
But the REMICâs didnât own the note either, because of a fluke of the ratings agencies: The REMICâs had to be âbankruptcy remoteâ, in order to get the precious ratings needed to peddle Mortgage Backed Securities to insitutional investors. In other words, Lira is saying that mbs buyers thought that they were buying specific tranches tied to real mortgages, but they were just getting a statistical cut of wispy, non-corporeal representations of information related to the entire universe of mortgages floating around in the MERS.
In other words, Lira is saying that all mortgage backed securities are a scam.
See also this and this.
by 11b40
on Sat, 10/16/2010 - 16:52
#655566
Help me out here, because I really don't know much about the securitization end game.
So, all the mortages were sliced, diced, pakaged and sold all over the world, right?
What are they worth today? Say I am a Spanish pension fund, and I bought $100 million in CDOs in 2007 - what is the current value likely to be? I was expecting an income stream, too, right? What's been happening to that cash flow? Do I have SUBSTANTIAL losses? If I do, why can't I turn around and sue the pants off the fine folks who peddled the garbage to me under fraudulent terms and conditions? Maybe even sue the ratings agencies?
If I am right, it seems far beyond the ability of a lame-duck Congress to pass a doc signing retroactive law and just shove the whole thing under the rug. Yes, the banksters are powerful, but some other really powerful players all around the world seem to have been burned big time. Or, am I wrong?
reply flag as junk (0)
by 11b40
on Sat, 10/16/2010 - 16:52
#655567
Help me out here, because I really don't know much about the securitization end game.
So, all the mortages were sliced, diced, pakaged and sold all over the world, right?
What are they worth today? Say I am a Spanish pension fund, and I bought $100 million in CDOs in 2007 - what is the current value likely to be? I was expecting an income stream, too, right? What's been happening to that cash flow? Do I have SUBSTANTIAL losses? If I do, why can't I turn around and sue the pants off the fine folks who peddled the garbage to me under fraudulent terms and conditions? Maybe even sue the ratings agencies?
If I am right, it seems far beyond the ability of a lame-duck Congress to pass a doc signing retroactive law and just shove the whole thing under the rug. Yes, the banksters are powerful, but some other really powerful players all around the world seem to have been burned big time. Or, am I wrong?
reply flag as junk (0)
by Fed Supporter
on Sat, 10/16/2010 - 17:04
#655576
MERS, INC., APPELLANT, VS. SOUTHWEST HOMES OF ARKANSAS, APPELLEE
SEPTEMBER 23, 2009
MORTGAGE ELECTRONIC REGISTRATION SYSTEM, INC., APPELLANT, VS. SOUTHWEST HOMES OF ARKANSAS, APPELLEE
No. 08-1299
SUPREME COURT OF ARKANSAS
2009 Ark. LEXIS 121
March 19, 2009, Opinion Delivered
Further, under Arkansas foreclosure law, a deed of trust is defined as âa deed conveying real property in trust to secure the performance of an obligation of the grantor or any other person named in the deed to a beneficiary and conferring upon the trustee a power of sale for breach of an obligation of the grantor contained in the deed of trust.â Ark. Code Ann. § 18-50-101(2) (Repl. 2003). Thus, under the statutes, and under the common law noted above, a deed of trust grants to the trustee the powers MERS purports to hold. Those powers were held by East as trustee. Those powers were not conveyed to MERS.
MERS holds no authority to act as an agent and holds no property interest in the mortgaged land. It is not a necessary party. In [*11] this dispute over foreclosure on the subject real property under the mortgage and the deed of trust, complete relief may be granted whether or not MERS is a party. MERS has no interest to protect. It simply was not a necessary party. See Ark. R. Civ. P. 19(a). MERSâs role in this transaction casts no light on the contractual issues on appeal in this case. See, e.g., Wilmans v. Sears, Roebuck & Co., 355 Ark. 668, 144 S.W.3d 245 (2004).
Finally, we note that Arkansas is a recording state. Notice of transactions in real property is provided by recording. See Ark. Code Ann. § 14-15-404 (Supp. 2007). Southwest is entitled to rely upon what is filed of record. In the present case, MERS was at best the agent of the lender. The only recorded document provides notice that Pulaski Mortgage is the lender and, therefore, MERSâs principal. MERS asserts Pulaski Mortgage is not its principal. Yet no other lender recorded its interest as an assignee of Pulaski Mortgage. Permitting an agent such as MERS purports to be to step in and act without a recorded lender directing its action would wreak havoc on notice in this state.
Affirmed.
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://foreclosuredefensenationwide.com/?page_id=161">http://foreclosuredefensenationwide.com/?page_id=161</a><!-- m -->
reply flag as junk (0)
by Oh Lawrd
on Sat, 10/16/2010 - 17:06
#655580
Hereâs That Devastating Report On Bank Of America That Everyone Is Talking About Today
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://stopforeclosurefraud.com/2010/10/16/heres-that-devastating-report..">http://stopforeclosurefraud.com/2010/10 ... g-report..</a><!-- m -->.
reply flag as junk (0)
by Conrad Murray
on Sat, 10/16/2010 - 17:17
#655589
"The presentation comes to a pretty damning conclusion: Bank of Americaâs exposure could nearly halve its share price".
My thoughts:
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbB_HVcXpPk">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbB_HVcXpPk</a><!-- m -->
reply flag as junk (0)
by Conrad Murray
on Sat, 10/16/2010 - 17:08
#655583
I don't know how this will play out, but I hope everyone here is sending emails and/or making phone calls to all the media outlets they can think of about it. We have to make this a lead story nationally and keep it that way until it is resolved. It only takes a few minutes and those ratings fiends will respond to a loud, unified voice.
For those who haven't treated themselve to it yet, Caturday laughs (my first playlist for ZH):
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=8584FE99F413E42F">http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p ... 99F413E42F</a><!-- m -->
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a44/SpiderGirlie/Caturday.jpg">http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a44/Sp ... turday.jpg</a><!-- m -->
reply flag as junk (0)
by Fed Supporter
on Sat, 10/16/2010 - 17:34
#655604
From: <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://fedupusa.org/------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------For">http://fedupusa.org/------------------- ... -------For</a><!-- m --> Halloween, Iâm going as a MERS Vice-President October 16th, 2010 | Author: Stephanie
Christopher Peterson is a law professor at the University of Utah. In a pair of papers, onepublished last summer and one not yet published, he makes a compelling case that the Mortgage Electronic Registration System (MERS) ought to be illegal â and arguably is already.
These papers are getting some play right now because they anticipate the foreclosure documentation mess currently in the news. I am not even sure how to summarize them, and I strongly recommend you read one or both for yourself (tap âOne-Click Downloadâ for the PDF). Prof. Peterson has a very pleasing style, and the historical background he provides is fascinating, particularly in the earlier paper.
But, briefly⦠In the 1990s, mortgage lenders and servicers decided to bypass centuries of established precedent for tracking ownership of physical land and the related loans, because they did not want to pay fees to county registries that have tracked that ownership for legal purposes since before the nation was founded.
As a result, 60% of all mortgages in the U.S. today are legally âownedâ by MERS, a Delaware corporation with approximately zero employees. Now, in order for the owner of a mortgage to perform certain legal actions â like âconveying an interestâ in the land â some states require the signature of a âVice Presidentâ.
Imagine for a moment why a state might impose such a requirement, and then read this quote from Prof. Petersonâs new paper (emphasis mine):
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://fedupusa.org/wp-content/themes/old_glory_wp_theme_lr/images/PostQ..">http://fedupusa.org/wp-content/themes/o ... es/PostQ..</a><!-- m -->.); background-position: 0% 0%; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border: 1px solid #8090d6;">
As a practical matter, the incoherence of MERSâ legal position is exacerbated by a corporate structure that is so unorthodox as to arguably be considered fraudulent. Because MERSCORP is a company of relatively modest size, it does not have the personnel to deal with legal problems created by its purported ownership of millions of home mortgages. To accommodate the massive amount of paperwork and litigation involved with its business model, MERSCORP simply farms out the MERS, Inc. identity to employees of mortgage servicers, originators, debt collectors, and foreclosure law firms. Instead, MERS invites financial companies to enter names of their own employees into a MERS webpage which then automatically regurgitates boilerplate âcorporate resolutionsâ that purport to name the employees of other companies as âcertifying officersâ of MERS. These certifying officers also take job titles from MERS stylizing themselves as either assistant secretaries or vice presidents of the MERS, rather than the company that actually employs them. These employees of the servicers, debt collectors, and law firms sign documents pretending to be vice presidents or assistant secretaries of MERS, Inc. even though neither MERSCORP, Inc. nor MERS, Inc. pays any compensation or provides benefits to them. Astonishingly, MERS âvice presidentsâ are simply paralegals, customer service representatives, and foreclosure attorneys employed by other companies. MERS even sells its corporate seal to non-employees on its internet web page for $25.00 each. Ironically, MERS, Inc.âa company that pretends to own 60% of the nationâs residential mortgagesâdoes not have any of its own employees but still purports to have âthousandsâ of assistant secretaries and vice presidents.
This is just my personal favorite of the various legally questionable facets of the MERS scheme. There are several others, and again I strongly recommend reading the papers for the rest. Itâs great stuff.
I have a hunch the lawyers are just getting warmed up on this one. Should be fun to watch.
One more quote from the new paper:
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If the growing line of cases asserting that MERS is neither a mortgagee nor a deed of trust beneficiary is correct, then courts must soon confront profound questions about the very enforceability of MERSâ security agreements. Not merely an ancillary issue, MERS registered loans have fundamental problems related to the very nature of what a mortgage is. There is a compelling legal argument that loans originated through the MERS system fail to create enforceable liens.
Oh, my.
reply flag as junk (0)
by max2205
on Sat, 10/16/2010 - 17:33
#655608
Ben this is Tim. Write BAC a big check Sunday before the market opens. Call it Fadenlane II.