Axelrod signals White House opposition to foreclosure moratorium

[lastone]

Source: CNN

Washington (CNN) -- The Obama administration opposes a moratorium on home foreclosures, but wants problems involving improper paperwork resolved as quickly as possible, senior adviser David Axelrod said Sunday.
"I'm not sure about a national moratorium," Axelrod said on the CBS...

Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/10/10/white.house.foreclosures/

---

big bailouts for the richest americans, nada for the rest of us.

[Pathwalker]

1. If this is a trial balloon, it better die a quick violent death.

I say that as a peaceable person. This had better NOT be true!!! :mad: :argh:

[MsPithy]

21. As soon as "cram down" failed I knew the Democrats and Obama

were not on our side. I hope everyone here knows congress had the opportunity to allow bankruptcy judges to reset the terms and principle for mortgages on a family's home. Congress and the President passed. I hope you also know that rich people who go to bankruptcy court can have their mortgages reset, in their favor, for all their homes, vacation homes, condo for the mistress, whatever, other than the first home. Why aren't bankers and Republicans upset about those mortgages being reset?

How in the world does it benefit anyone to have middle class folks thrown out of their homes, only to have the homes lie vacant, fall into disrepair and devastate the property values for the whole neighborhood?

[pattmarty]

31. Ya know, I have wondered the same about the banks owning............

..........."vacant" properties. I am definitely not a conspiracy theorist, but why are the banks in such a hurry to have vacant properties gaining NO income for them? I'm serious in this, there has got to be a reason and that reason HAS to have money somehow involved.

[RaleighNCDUer]

51. Pumping up a sagging balloon?

Every year tens of thousands of vacant homes are demolished because they've become hazards after being empty too long. One result of this is that even has housing prices are collapsing, the number of available homes is shrinking, thus propping up home prices.

Ya think?

[JDPriestly]

34. You are correct, MsPithy03

I sent a number of e-mails around about ways that the Obama and Bush administrations could have averted the general economic disaster that the foreclosure waves would bring.

I have wondered whether this is a property grab. The banks did this in the aftermath of the S&L crisis. They bought huge bunches of properties -- cheap -- and turned them around when the market rose. It's a scam. That is what it is and was from the beginning. -- a very clever way to cheat people out of their homes.

[northernlights]

42. I think this is the very reason "cram down" failed

they didn't want bankruptcy judges looking closely at the paperwork.

[jpak]

80. Obama and the Democrats are on your side.

To restart the housing sector, those foreclosures have to happen.

Once those homes are cleared off the books, banks will lend and home values will rise with the expanding market.

It has nothing to do with class.

Sorry to burst yer bubble.

[girl gone mad]

134. Pretty much every expert told this administration..

that without cramdown provisions, their plans to help homeowners would go down in flames.

They ignored this expert advice in favor of policy that essentially allowed the banks to cook their books, while doing more harm than good for homeowners.

[treestar]

148. Prove they would have gotten the votes and that Obama would have vetoed it

Before you make accusations like that. Truly irresponsible.

[fasttense]

75. If this be true, then Democratic Politicians deserve to lose.

Really, this is just so stupid. To go around and taking the side of banksters right in front for all the world to see, during a major populist uprising. God, do Democrats even know how politics works?

[treestar]

149. Major populist uprising?

Where is that going on? In your head?

[Ozymanithrax]

2. From what I've read, a moratorium on forclosures...

will lead to a slump in house sales and hurt the overall economy.

Now, what they should do is investigate the companies that falsified documents and perpwalk the notary publics and management that violated the law and charge them with felonies.

[JDPriestly]

36. It will hold up housing prices and keep people in their homes.

The social cost of evicting so many people, the fear it causes in consumers, working people and small business owners, is having a greater effect on the economy that a slump in house sales would.

[Ozymanithrax]

39. Even with the delay, the majority of the mortgage owners will be evicted anyway.

If they are unable to meet their mortgage payments, it is inevitable. Yes, there is a social cost to these evictions, and it is one that will simply be delayed.

The real problem is that the mortgage industry worked without oversight and outside of the legal framework. Anyone that signed documents illegally should be charged, convicted, and sent to jail.

[JDPriestly]

41. The interest rates on the mortgages should have been renegotiated.

There would have been various ways to do it. As I posted below, if these foreclosure mills had to resort to fraud to get the documents to prove up in court, what does that mean about the availability and reliability of the underlying documents? Are there problems with proving up title even on properties not being foreclosed? I have a strange feeling that this may be a deeper problem than just fraud in the foreclosure mills.

As I understand it, state laws regarding the recording of liens were not followed, and that is why the foreclosure mills were created. I may be wrong about that, but I think this problem goes to the lack of proper procedures in recording liens on some if not all loans sold or included in the derivatives business in recent years.

I'd like to hear from someone with more expertise on this than I have. I know a bit about this, but am not an expert. That's why I am posing this as a question, as a hypothetical and not even really an opinion.

[northernlights]

45. yes, JD. The notes were in many cases deliberately destroyed

the underlying documentation doesn't exist. 97% of houses sold since 2003 or so does not have the documentation. They did it to get around local fees.

This is a much bigger deal than a lot of people realize...yet. It's just coming out in the blogs now. It will hit the msm soon. The administration is doing everything they can to cover it up at least until after the election. But it is a very, very big deal.

I'm just glad I own my house outright...never had a mortgage on it, and the people I bought it from owned it for 20 years before I got it.

[No Elephants]

76. Recording a mortgage may involve a relatively small fee. I know of no government fee on a note.

No lender in his or her right mind would deliberately destroy a note and I very much doubt any would fail to record a mortgage of hundreds of thousands of dollars in order to avoid a relatively small fee. Recording a deed is more expensive but the buyer pays for that. I think so many deals were being done so fast, things were incredibly sloppy, both at the original home purchase or re-finance and also when the loans got sold and re-sold.

[northernlights]

152. I'm getting details confused because I've read too much, but yes the lenders were out of their minds

read Denninger / Market Ticker. Lots and lots of articles with history, links, supportive documentation.
http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=168722

Documentation was deliberately destroyed. It's all just now starting to hit the msm.

It is beyond sloppy paperwork. That is the cover story. The reality is fraud from initial sale through packaging and selling the securities. Something like 97% of mortgages written since 2003 have broken chain of title with fraudulent documentation being created after the fact to replace what has been lost/destroyed in order to foreclose.

[Ozymanithrax]

52. I agree, that interest should have been renegotiated...

However, if for many homes there is no clear owner because of derivatives, renegotiating the the interest payment would prove fruitless. With whom does the home owner renegotiate? Also, if they simply do not have the money to meet mortgage payments, that renegotiation is likely just a way of delaying things.

Things seem to be disintegrating quite fast. We will have to see if it can be pushed past the election. The best case I can see is that many of these companies will collapse.

This is a horrendous mess, and we can think Mr. Bush's ownership inititive and his administration that deplored oversight for a big chunk of it.

[No Elephants]

73. Repeal of Glass Steagall had a big role.

[No Elephants]

71. Recording a lien is done to protect a lender from other lenders. It does not

affect any right or obligation of the borrower. For example, Josie borrows from two banks and gives both a mortgage on her home to secure her obligation to repay. Under the law of most, if not all, states, the first bank to file has the senior lien on the home, regardless of who lent first or who lent her more.

Now, let's say both lenders lent her money in the a.m., planning to file first thing the next day. In the afternoon, a third lender lends her money and files immediately. The third lender now has the senior lien, and Josie is liable to all 3 lenders. Any lender, however, may start foreclosure.

Josie, however, is liable to all 3 lenders anyway bc of her agreement with each of them to pay her note. If all 3 mortgages are non-recourse, however, her only asset at risk is her home. If, however, she has also agreed to be personally liable to all 3 lenders, all 3 are entitled to go after her other assets.

If the loans are nonrecourse (no personal liablity on Josie's part) and foreclosure yields only enough for one lender, lenders 1 and 2 are SOL. That's why many house closings are done either in escrow or at the registry of deeds--so records can be checked right up until money changes hands.

I'm guessing mortgage lenders hired foreclosure mills bc the mills are cheaper and more practical than using inhouse personnel for foreclosures or hiring law firms foreclosures.

[JDPriestly]

115. But the problem here is that we don't really know who lender 1 is because

none of the lenders recorded their liens. There is a lot of unsubstantiated gossip and conjecture being written about this because people are confused, but it is my understanding that in some of these loans, no lender can produce loan documents that are valid. As I understand it, the original loan documents may exist, but the lender who now claims the right to foreclose is not named on the original loan documents.

Have you read Denninger's articles on this?

What if there is one loan that was fragmented and sold as a part of derivatives? Do the owners of interests in the derivatives have any claim to payments on the loan?

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/karl-denninger-explains-foreclosure-gate-dylan-ratigan

Check past posts not on the front page at

http://market-ticker.org/

I disagree with Denninger with regard to a moratorium on all foreclosures. If a lender can prove up the chain of custody of the title of the property, the lender should be able to foreclose.

I'm wondering about my own mortgage as are millions of other Americans. I'm also wondering about the money that Americans have put in their 401(K)s as well as the money in people's pension funds. I have wondered about those for a long time.

It is my understanding that the US government holds a lot of this bad paper. This swindle is even bigger than some of the swindles perpetrated by the heroes of the Gilded Age. And boy were those swindles doozies.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dylan-ratigan/property-rights-gone-wron_b_754586.html

[No Elephants]

72. Delay might see an unemployed owner getting a job and becoming able to pay

Or, delay may make more banks more willing to re-negotiate terms. Or, to negotiate a short sale. And, in any event, borrowers will live free for a while longer. So, delay is not irrelevant or meaningless. Nor is foreclosure ultimately inevitable in all cases.

Some of the foreclosures may never happen. Maybe the borrower is really paid up to date after all. Or, maybe the wannabe forecloser sold the mortgage to another lender and no longer has a legal right to foreclose. Or, maybe the note with an original signature has been lost as the mortgage was sold and re-sold over and over and, under state law, no one has a right to foreclose unless and until someone finds the note with an original signature. Those are the kinds of things no one has been checking.

[nadinbrzezinski]

44. Personally we should have a full bank holiday

and yes SHORT TERM either will lead to that.

[sabrina 1]

66. Too bad. The corrupt banks should have thought about that

before starting this whole mess. For people being forced out of their homes, millions of Americans now, the slump is already here.

Bailing out banks again is NOT the solution. Stopping foreclosures, renegotiating loans as they were supposed to do after WE bailed them out, but they refused to do, is a far better way of helping the economy. They were given over 50 billion dollars for the program of saving people's homes. They have used only about 200 million of that in 15 months. Stop defending these corrupt institutions. It's way past time for them to start paying their way in this country.

[wordpix]

104. agree with this but a slump in house sales wouldn't be bad for buyers

In some parts of the country (NYC, DC, San Fran to name a few), prices are outrageous. In DC, a 2 br, 2 bath condo goes for $350-700K on average, depending on condition, the building, sq. footage, and where it's located in the city. You have to be quite wealthy to afford to buy into DC with those prices. If you can't afford it, you must live outside the city and commute in, creating further demand for sprawling suburbs, traffic congestion and air pollution.

My point is, some of these prices are just nuts.

[bluestateguy]

3. I'm not a big fan of it either

All you would be doing is staving off the inevitable for many borrowers, who just fundamentally cannot afford the houses they bought because their incomes are just too small. Yes, a few of these folks might be able to renegotiate new terms, but we have already seen that many such people often end up falling behind again anyway, especially if there is a job loss in the household. So you might actually make things worse in the long run as a huge glut of inevitable foreclosures built up. Then on the day the moratorium expired, there would be a huge new wave of foreclosures that should have happened months ago.

And if you think the banks are tight with their money now, it would get even worse if such a moratorium were to be in effect, as they would be unwilling to loan to anyone with less than perfect credit, so responsible borrowers could be hurt too.

[emsimon33]

9. Boy, oh, boy have you swallowed the Kool aid!

I personally know several of "those people who bought houses they couldn't afford," as you put it. Because the mortgages were sub prime and the mortgage companies misrepresented the mortgages, the three families were able to pay their mortgages (which they got at a much higher interest rate than the going rate because they were sub-prime) until the mortgage companies began raising the interest rates as the ARMs were not tied to the prime rate but to the mortgage companies' greed. Rates were going up and through the roof every month. I was able to hook each family up with an honest mortgage lender and got them fixed rates that ended up being less than what their original interest rates were. All three families are still in their homes and paying their mortgages on time and with no effort!!!!! Yes, there may have been some people who took on mortgages that they could not pay, but a large percentage of people were duped and are victims of greed and dishonesty in an industry that continues its practices in now foreclosing on them without following the proper procedures.

The last laugh may be on them as people who can afford their mortgages just walk away from their upside down mortgages just as the Bankers Mortgage group did theirs in Washington DC (Thank you, Jon Stewart, for reporting on this).

There are two sets of rules in play in this country now: One for the rich and greedy and one for EVERYONE ELSE! And most of us are the EVERYONE ELSEs and we better stop blaming the victims and drinking the Kool Aid!

[Myrina]

29. +1000

thank you.

[pattmarty]

32. Hear, here!

[Riley18]

50. Thank you. If the bank would modify my mortgage to 31% of my gross,

I could go back to being one of those "responsible" homeowners again too. Problem is that the banks are not modifying the loans as they should be doing. Then to add insult to injury they have some people falling for their lies such as "those types of people would only stop paying their mortgages again anyway" in order to justify the banks refusal to modify in good faith.

[Lorien]

161. Well said

:yourock:

[xxqqqzme]

15. can't afford the house purchased

at insanely inflated prices maybe? If those mortgages were re-negotiated at a realistic sale price, then maybe those homes could remain occupied instead of vacant and a blight on the neighborhood.

[DeSwiss]

37. "tight with their money"

"tight with OUR money"

/fixed

[Alcibiades]

55. It wasn't the low-income borrower

http://functionalambivalent.typepad.com/blog/2008/09/mortgage-foreclosure-fun-fact.html

It was the zeal of the "flip your house" crowd: people making improvements they did not want but that "the market wanted." All these folks buying houses with borrowed money, then borrowing more to improve them, and having them reappraised and sold at an inflated price, all so they could take advantage of a tax loophole that makes capital gains on the sale of a primary residence the best sort of capital gains you can get.

The average foreclosed home was worth far MORE than average. This bubble was, predictably, the result of speculators, not the poor.

[No Elephants]

77. The bubble resulted mostly from use of mortgages in derivative securities, which created a huge

market for mortgage loans, regardless of whether the borrower was creditworthy or not. That resulted in bad behavior on the part of everyone, from lenders and mortgage brokers, to real estate appraisers, to investmenters and middle "men, to rating companies like Moodys's, to accountants and lawyers up and down the line of transactions. Also complicit, knowingly or not, were lawmakers and regulators.

[Alcibiades]

83. That was the final nail in the coffin, yes

But the effect of the derivatives was to act as a risk multiplier. It wasn't simply that there was too much money chasing after houses, but also the incentive structure faced by individuals: many were using their primary residences as an investment, making improvements not because they wanted them, but because they wanted tax-free capital gains. And it wasn't simply that borrowers were not creditworthy: they were, but it was the underlying increase in the value of their collateral that was unsustainable. It wasn't simply a question of an increased number of originations to people who were not creditworthy, but also second mortgages, and increasing loan to value ratios.

I agree absolutely with the pivotal role of derivatives in magnifying the crisis, but it went beyond that, of course. Everyone, the appraisers, the realtors, the bankers, all had an incentive to get folks to buy "the most home you can afford." I'm just addressing the micro-level story, which is not the one told by Rick Sanchez. It wasn't Fannie and Freddie or the CRA or those damn poor people. The value of the homes that underwent foreclosure is much higher than the national average. It was driven, in part, by people like my stepbrother, who sold a house in Sacto for a tidy profit, turned that around to buy a 500k house on the coast, took out more loans and had it reappraised for 1.4 million. He is sitting in a 1.4 million dollar house, theoretically, but no one ever paid 1.4 million for it, and there's only a limited market for these--but, of course, everyone had an incentive to try to turn their houses into one, thanks in part to the tax advantages.

[PSPS]

4. I agree with Axelrod

Certainly, foreclosures must adhere to proper standards. So far, though, the current spate of foreclosure problems are largely technical in nature (robo signing, improper notary.) But, sadly, this will unleash another round of "demands" from those who intentionally bought beyond their means with their liar's loan to get their house "free" courtesy of the taxpayer (meaning those of us who know how to live within our means.)

The same goes for those unlucky ones who might have gotten into trouble with their overpriced house due to something other than the logical outcome of their lying, such as loss of job or getting sick. Sorry, but even sick people or people who lose their jobs shouldn't be entitled to a "free house" courtesy of the taxpayer.

[grasswire]

5. why would it be "courtesy of the taxpayer" if the banks had to eat...

...the loss?

I'm not advocating for free houses for people who lied to get a mortgage. But I don't follow what you are saying above.

[Bette Noir]

8. Breaking the law by seizing homes they don't own is hardly a technicality.

As I see it, the banks declared the moratorium to make sure proper procedures are being followed. They'll start foreclosing as soon as they make sure they're not exposing themselves to legal jeopardy by stealing people's homes.

Axelrod is just being a douche.

[emsimon33]

17. "Axelrod is just being a douche."

As are most members of Obama's administration! The irony is that the banks can't sell the houses any way and the unsold houses cause other value of others in the neighborhood to go down. So, what's the problem other than the greedy and dishonest have been called out for their greed and dishonesty and want to get back to their greedy and dishonest ways as soon as possible.

[EFerrari]

10. What free house? Wall Street drove the market off a cliff

and now homeowners that put their hard earned money down are having to make payments on a value that no longer exists. They woke up one morning and that $50K they put down on their house evaporated. Why should they take the hit for Wall Street?

A foreclosure moratorium would force mortgage holders to restructure mortgages. They have no incentive to do that now and that's why the administration's modification program is a bust.

[emsimon33]

18. Wow! End of discussion! You have said it all and said it well!

[No Elephants]

81. Bingo! Wall Street--and its many accomplices. (Pls. see Reply 77.)

[emsimon33]

14. Repeat from above but worth a repeat

I personally know several of "those people who bought houses they couldn't afford," as you put it. Because the mortgages were sub prime and the mortgage companies misrepresented the mortgages, the three families were able to pay their mortgages (which they got at a much higher interest rate than the going rate because they were sub-prime) until the mortgage companies began raising the interest rates as the ARMs were not tied to the prime rate but to the mortgage companies' greed. Rates were going up and through the roof every month. I was able to hook each family up with an honest mortgage lender and got them fixed rates that ended up being less than what their original interest rates were. All three families are still in their homes and paying their mortgages on time and with no effort!!!!! Yes, there may have been some people who took on mortgages that they could not pay, but a large percentage of people were duped and are victims of greed and dishonesty in an industry that continues its practices in now foreclosing on them without following the proper procedures.

The last laugh may be on them as people who can afford their mortgages just walk away from their upside down mortgages just as the Bankers Mortgage group did theirs in Washington DC (Thank you, Jon Stewart, for reporting on this).

There are two sets of rules in play in this country now: One for the rich and greedy and one for EVERYONE ELSE! And most of us are the EVERYONE ELSEs and we better stop blaming the victims and drinking the Kool Aid!

[saracat]

16. So you think that someone who has paid on their house for 20+ years

and can't find another job because their job was outsourced and is now sick and can't afford both Healthcare and their home is demanding a "free house" ? Seriously? They have paid for that house manytimes over with the usury practiced by the banks and it will eventually cost the government, the taxpayer a whole lot more if they are tossed in the streets. Unless of course they just seize the assetts and let them die which is the GOP healthPlan it seems some support.

[Celebration]

35. sounds like they made up documents out of thin air

and backdated them......technical? I think not. Fraudulent? A resounding YES!

[JDPriestly]

38. PSPS, are you an expert on this?

I believe the imperfections in the paperwork go beyond the mere technical.

Here is a hypothetical situation:

A homeowner bought a house in the mid-1980s at a modest price, downright cheap even in the current market. That homeowner refinanced a couple of times -- not to increase the amount owed or to borrow money but to get lower interest rates. This frugal homeowner is about to make the last payment on that mortgage. The homeowner's mortgage was sold a couple of times without the homeowner's involvement and is now being "serviced" by one of the mortgage companies that has had to stop foreclosures due to its problems with proving up its title. The homeowner does not know, but, based on the identity of the mortgage servicer, is inclined to presume, that the mortgage was among those that were sliced, diced and derivativized.

Assuming that the homeowner pays off the loan, will the homeowner be able to get a good title, a title that withstands the scrutiny of a title insurance company?

If so, please explain how the homeowner and the title insurance company can be sure that a creditor from, say Abu Dabai or Germany or someone else who claims ownership of a derivative in which a tiny morsel of the homeowner's property was placed will not file a lawsuit at some future date claiming to be an owner of an interest in the homeowner's property?

[No Elephants]

78. Please see Reply 77.

[sandnsea]

6. They don't know what's going on

They're wrong on this one. The foreclosure situation is a gigantic mess. Most of what they're doing is rewriting the exact same interest only ARM loans that got us into this mess. They need a moratorium to force everyone to take a hard look at what the big banks are really doing.

[mbperrin]

7. Yep, banks lent money out. If they made bad choices on lending, they

must bear the consequences, such as ceasing to exist as institutions; in the case of fraud, like robo-signing and so on, those in charge must be sent to jail and civil damages must be collected from them for their personal profits from such frauds.

Truth is, half of all bankruptcies in this country are from medical bills. Certainly not the borrower's fault - so the party most able to bear the loss - the lender, must do so.

Unless companies really are more important than people.


http://content.healthaffairs.org/cgi/content/abstract/hlthaff.w5.63v1

[EFerrari]

12. It's so easy to blame the borrower when lenders were on a predatory lending binge. n/t

[glitch]

22. Not to mention, the borrowers didn't trash the economy. Thankfully this systemic crime wave is being

exposed by people like Danny Schecter http://plunderthecrimeofourtime.com/

[No Elephants]

79. Banks bear the consequences? Isn't that what TARP prevented?

[mbperrin]

123. Nope. That was a gift. Now, if they are unable to foreclose and sell

properties for something, they will lose even more than that.

TARP quite literally was a handout - the money was not applied to strengthening any institution - lots of it paid out in bonuses or to folks like Goldman, who have no part to play in the real economy.

[emsimon33]

11. This mess could be easily fixed

By simply announcing that all existing mortgages are now set at 3% or 4% fixed for 30 years. If people want to pay them off in 15, then they can double up on paying down the mortgage.

[flvegan]

19. Yup. Very simple.

[indimuse]

13. he better start *signaling*

the other way...

[larryo]

20. I hate to be the bearer of bad news . . .

But bundles of mortgages are not, and have never been, "securities." That was the reason default insurance was necessary, and you noticed I assume that it was the toppling of the monoline insurance giant, AIG, that began the avalanche. That is because the money behind the "securities" was the same money as the money underlying the insurance guarantees, a classic PONZI scheme. Glass-Steagal was passed in 1933 because the merger of investment banking and insurance was a primary cause of the contraction that resulted in the great depression. Everyone knew that when, in 1999, Clinton sold out to big banking and signed Gramm-Leach-Bliley, gutting Glass-Steagal.

In other words, every telephone call that was made and every email that was used to sell an MBS was wire fraud and every mailing was mail fraud. The entire securitization scam was a violation of RICO laws, and all the scammers should have been prosecuted 2 years ago. This phonying up of the documents is just the tip of the iceberg.

Don't lay this at the feet of the borrowers; they were told that the value of their homes would continue to skyrocket, and they could always use part of the increase in equity to make the payments if they got too high. The point was to sell as many mortgages as possible, because the institutions that originated the mortgages sold them immediately to the securities originators.

The MBS markets in the United States are dominated by relatively few very large entities such as FNMA, Freddie Mac, the top-five investment banks (all of which have conduit programs) and the top-five credit card issuers (MBNA, AMEX, Citigroup, etc.). Hence the top-five MBS issuers control more than 50% of the US ABS/MBS market which is an illegal market concentration.

[glitch]

23. Wow! Excellent first post, welcome to DU! :) nt

[larryo]

138. Thanks!

[xchrom]

24. +1

[DURHAM D]

25. Really?

"Everyone knew that when, in 1999, Clinton sold out to big banking and signed Gramm-Leach-Bliley, gutting Glass-Steagal."

Really??? Guess you didn't bother to look at the over-whelming vero-proof support (votes) by the members of the House and the Senate.

[pattmarty]

33. So what's your point? It was a shitty bill that basically cancelled..........

.........Glass-Steagal, which is probably the number 1 reason that this economic disaster happened. Bill Clinton was no FDR by ANY means, he was a conservative Dem President just like Obama has shown he is.

[DURHAM D]

43. I thought the point was obvious.

If you don't get it I can't help you.

You really blame Clinton more than Reagan? Gheez...

[northernlights]

46. he should have vetoed it and sent it back

with a memorandum of disapproval.

And then done some arm-twisting. If he still failed, at least he would know he had tried to stop it. Instead just letting it slide on by.

[No Elephants]

85. No arm twisting. He wanted repeal.

[liberation]

58. Nice red herring...

... even though technically a red herring is a "fallacy" not a "point."


Glass-Steagall was disabled under Clinton's watch. And thus the buck for that clustefuck stops at his desk.

[pattmarty]

74. Show me exactly where I "blame" Clinton more than Reagan?............

............"You people" really are something. You just make up shit.

[larryo]

137. No -

I blame them both! But Reagan did not pretend to be anything other than the reactionary sock puppet that he was, whereas Clinton conned everyone and then sold out to the highest bidder.

Speaking of Reagan, the mortgage securities scheme was actually hatched under Reagan - the paving of the way began in the mid-1980's with the enactment of “REMIC” (Real Estate Mortgage Investment Conduit) provisions in the Internal Revenue Code. 236 USC 860A.

[No Elephants]

84. Clinton had said he wanted repeal of Glass Steagall on his desk ASAP. That

probably had a lot to do with a number of Democrats in Congress voting for repeal and thereby making it SEEM veto-proof.

Even if he had not signaled his zeal for repeal, there is less than no evidence that everyone of both Parties who voted for a bill believing the Presidented supported it (or even was neutral) would put his or her name on a vote for the identical bill again, despite written objections and a veto from the Oval Office (voice vote for an override being highly unlikely).

Besides, a President's signing a bill he does not support simply bc it got a lot of votes is (a) bs and (b) not the process for which the Constitution provides.

Finally, last time Bill was on The View, after the collapse, he was still defending his signing of repeal of Glass Steagall--and not on grounds that it was veto-proof.

That's many very good reasons to finally stop claiming Bill is relieved of responsiblity for signing of repeal of Glass Steagall.

[larryo]

136. Just goes to show

the truth of Dylan's observation that money doesn't talk, it swears!

[Enthusiast]

40. Thank you for contributing.

And welcome to DU. I hope you stick around so you can continue to shine a light on this poorly understood problem.

[larryo]

140. Thank you

I will contribute as much as I can, times being what they are.

[txlibdem]

56. Definitely welcome to DU

This thread has exposed the extent of just how successful big business and the wealthy have been in manufacturing division in the "bottom" 97%. In true Divide & Conquer fashion, they keep us blaming each other and hating each other.

When will we all wake up and realize that we have only one enemy: the rich!

The wealthy have caused all of the problems in our society but it is us "little people" who are now having to pay the cost to clean up their mess. Reagan, Bush Sr, and Bush Jr all raided the Social Security trust fund to hide their national debt numbers yet the only thing we hear is how Social Security is "in trouble" and the retirement age needs to be raised or benefits need to be cut. Why the hell are we not hearing that these three crooks who benefited from theft from Social Security are having all their assets seized?!?

[girl gone mad]

155. Welcome to DU.

Fraud is what they are so desperate to cover up, and it's the reason many of these documents were destroyed to begin with.

[larryo]

158. I have read a significant

number of law review articles about the securitization process itself - it is quite obscure, but I <i>believe</i> that destruction of the original loan documents was necessary to the process.

[flyarm]

26. Perhaps if people would READ the fraud that took place they might understand what the fraud is! here

I have put much of it together so you can understand what has gone on ..this has been fraud of the highest accord perpetrated on the American people!

Read it all go to the links..know what the fuck we are up against and how our congress tried to fuck us the rest of the way..by covering up the crimes of the too big to fail banks and crooks who are destroying this nation and her middle class!

wake... up ... America ! You have been fucked!

What the banks have done is so illegal and so against all our laws..and our congress was attempting to make their crimes legal..to fuck you!

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


No one knows or can know how many in congress and the senate voted for this bill

It was a roll call vote with no recording of who did or didn't vote for it!

*this was in the comment section of the article by : by Jennifer Brunner

It is a must to read although now almost a week old..to understand what has gone down here..it is a must read!

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/10/5/907016/-Preside...

President Obama Should Not Sign the Interstate Recognition of Notarizations Act

by :Jennifer Brunner
Tue Oct 05, 2010 at 03:31:19 PM PDT

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


Passed by Unanimous Consent - record was not kept


H.R. 3808

Rep. Robert Aderholt sponsored the bill and the cosponsors were: Bruce Braley , Michael Castle , and Artur Davis

Apr 27, 2010: This bill passed in the House of Representatives by voice vote. A record of each representative’s position was not kept.

Sep 27, 2010: This bill passed in the Senate by Unanimous Consent. A record of each senator’s position was not kept.


THE BILL WAS SENT TO OBAMA IN SEPT TO SIGN INTO LAW. OBAMA DID NOT SIGN IT. At the time the Bill was sent to Obama a couple states had begun RICO lawsuits on the Banks and begun investigations.

We do not know who voted for this bill to cover this up and attempt to make this fraud legal, because this congress would not record who voted for this piece of shit bill!

But one thing is for sure..Patrick Leahy was involved in this bill going forward.


Bill may make it harder to contest foreclosures - Business - ...
Story: Foreclosures seen slowing as document flaws emerge ... Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy pressed to have the bill rushed through the special ...

www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39556377/ns/business-real_estate - Similar
Senate Shockingly Passes Bill That Could Bail The Banks Out Of ...
Oct 7, 2010 ... phoenix foreclosure The hottest story right now in the banking industry ... Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy pressed to have the bill rushed ...

www.businessinsider.com/bank-foreclosure-bill-leahy-2..... - Similar
Think Progress » Obama To Veto 'Robo-Foreclosure' Bill
Oct 7, 2010 ... 43 Responses to “Obama To Veto 'Robo-Foreclosure' Bill” .... We must call, write , and otherwise pester Patrick Leahy and Bob Casey until ...

thinkprogress.org/2010/10/07/obama-vetos-banks/ - Similar
Obama Pulls a Pocket Veto on Foreclosure Bill - Truthdig
Oct 7, 2010 ... TAGS: bill foreclosure mortgage notary obama pelosi pocket veto subprime ... unanimous consent, Patrick Leahy D VT., the same one who is ...

www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/obama_pulls_a_po..... - Similar
How The Controversial Foreclosure Bill Made It Through ...
Oct 7, 2010 ... How The Controversial Foreclosure Bill Made It Through Congress ... This will search the titles of the threads in the Patrick Leahy forum ...


xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Exclusive Bombshell of Foreclosure Fraud – Full Deposition of TAMMIE LOU KAPUSTA
Edited on Sat Oct-09-10 02:08 PM by flyarm
Exclusive Bombshell of Foreclosure Fraud – Full Deposition of TAMMIE LOU KAPUSTA Law Office of David J Stern


http://4closurefraud.org/2010/10/07/exclusive-bombshell... /

“I personally did not do it because I refused to do it.”
“I wasn’t going to falsify a military document.”
“I was told that that’s fine, somebody else on your team will do it.”

Posted by Foreclosure Fraud on October 7, 2010


***be sure to read this part of the deposition ..and understand what was going on illegally with our military personal's social security numbers to gain documennts on other military people!

......................................................................

PAY ATTENTION TO THIS SECTION!!

They
23 would be stamped and signed by a notary or not. Per
24 floor we had a designated spot to place them and Cheryl
25 would come once a day and sign them.
22
1 Q Sign them as what?
2 A As –
3 Q For the bank?
4 A Correct.
5 Q Or for MERS or whoever it was for?
6 A Correct.
7 Q Would these notaries be there watching her as
8 she signed?
9 A No.
10 Q She would just sit there and sign stacks of
11 them?
12 A Correct. As far as notaries go in the firm I
13 don’t think any notary actually used their own notary
14 stamp. The team used them.
15 Q There were just stamps around?
16 A Yes.
17 Q And you actually saw that?
18 A I was part of that.
19 Q You did it? Are you a notary?
20 A No, I’m not.
21 Q Did you sign as a witness?
22 A I did not. I signed as a witness on one
23 document and after that I decided that I didn’t want to
24 put my name as a witness anymore.
25 Q Tell me about the stamps. You stamped them?
23
1 A Yeah, I had stamps. Each team had a notary on
2 them or notaries that I was aware of. Whether they were
3 or weren’t wasn’t –
4 Q You had stamps?
5 A Correct. We would stamp them and they would
6 get signed.
7 Q Stamp them in blanks?
8 A Yes.
9 Q Who would sign them?
10 A Other people on the team that could sign the
11 signature of the person or just a check on there or
12 whatever.
13 Q Was that common practice?
14 A Yes.
15 Q Was that standard practice?
16 A Pretty much.
17 Q What about the witnesses?
18 A Those would be signed by juniors who were –
19 Q Standing there?
20 A Here, sign this. It has to go to Cheryl, sign
21 it. Then it would go and sit at the desk where Cheryl
22 would sign everything.
23 Q Out of view of the notary and out of view of
24 the witnesses?
25 A Correct.
....
9 A There were people that were responsible for
10 signing Cheryl’s name. Cheryl, Tammie Sweat, and Beth
11 Cerni. Those were the only three people that could sign
12 Cheryl’s name. If you ever look at assignments you’ll
13 see that they are not all the same.
....
1 Q What do you mean falsify a military document?
2 A Well, I’m using the main defendant’s social
3 security number on somebody else’s name, not his name.
4 John Doe and the main defendant was James, I was taking
5 James’ social security number and putting John Doe’s
6 name in there. I wasn’t but that’s what the practice
7 was. The judges started saying we’re not going to
8 consider service completed until –
9 Q There’s a miliary search?
10 A Correct.
11 Q So why wouldn’t they use the right social
12 security number for the right person?
13 A Because you don’t have a social for an NKA or
14 unknown tenant. They wouldn’t enter a final judgement
15 unless the military doc was there.
16 Q So you just used anybody’s?
17 A Correct.



..........................

wonder how many Vets this was used on??

Or perhaps some military with info on illegal activity ..in say >>>IRAQ? or AFGHANISTAN...WHO COULD HAVE BEEN OR COULD BE IN THE FUTURE.. threatened with this????????? Think of the implications of this and the possiblity of the abuse of this against our military??????????? lIKE SAY ENLISTED MILITARY ..WHO COULD NOW LOSE THEIR HOMES IF THEY TOLD WHAT THEY SAW THAT WAS ILLEGAL..OR SAW WAR CRIMES THEY WITNESSED..the ramifications and implications of this could be devistating !


xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


Boiler Rooms, Foreclosure Mills: The Story of America’s Mortgage Industry Boiler Rooms, Foreclosure Mills: The Story of America’s Mortgage Industry
By Michael Hudson | October 7, 2010, 12:33 pm

http://www.publicintegrity.org/blog/entry/2507 /

Updated: 10/7/2010, 3:33 pm | The news about the nation’s foreclosure scandal has been coming fast and furious, driven by tales of backdated documents, false affidavits and “rocket dockets” that push families into the street.

A former employee with one of the nation’s largest lenders testifies that he signed off on 400 foreclosure documents a day without reading them or verifying the information in them was correct.

Ex-employees of a law firm that serves as a “foreclosure mill” for major lenders describe a workplace where speed — not accuracy or justice — trumps all. “Somebody would get a 76-day foreclosure,” one recalled, “and then someone else would say, ‘Oh, I can beat that!’”

Shocking stuff. But surprising? Not for anyone who’s been tracking the recent history of the mortgage machine. Just about every corner of the America’s mortgage industry has been blemished by significant levels of fraud over the past decade.

(read more at the link)
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Shi$ Hitting Fan: Tavakoli - Biggest Fraud In The History Of Capital Markets
by Badabing
Fri Oct 08, 2010 at 05:30:39 PM PDT

...As the Foreclosure Mill thugs working for the Banks and Lenders began in earnest to provide false affidavits and have swept throughout American cities like a crazed mass of locusts, picking of the bones of innocent Americans who knew without a doubt, that they were being illegally foreclosed upon, the critical mass of corruption finally reached it's zenith, just as so many of these great leaders warned us about.

I find it absolutely incomprehensible that Timothy Geithner and Ben Bernanke and AG Holder have sat back in silence while these bunch of 'hoodlums' have been allowed to strip Americans of their legal rights to pursue what used to be called 'due process' in our nation's courts, to demand that the Banks and Lenders provide correct origination documentation of the original loans on their homes.

Janet Tavakoli is now saying that every bank is about to shut down all foreclosures, in what she calls the "biggest fraud in the history of capital markets. She is also stating that within a month, all foreclosures executed within the past 2-3 years will be retried, and millions of existing home sales will be put in jeopardy.

What this essentially will mean for what is left of the national housing market is a nightmare, beyond our wildest dreams. We are only beginning to see the final Iceberg coming into view, that could very well finally destroy all homes values, and credibility in our entire Banking system, the could finally go over the cliff, because of their own greed and malfeasance.

MUCH MORE AT: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/10/8/908857/-Shi$-Hi ...


xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


The following is part of the interview conducted by Ezra Klein:


Ezra Klein: What’s happening here? Why are we suddenly faced with a crisis that wasn’t apparent two weeks ago? Janet Tavakoli: This is the biggest fraud in the history of the capital markets. And it’s not something that happened last week. It happened when these loans were originated, in some cases years ago. Loans have representations and warranties that have to be met. In the past, you had a certain period of time, 60 to 90 days, where you sort through these loans and, if they’re bad, you kick them back. If the documentation wasn’t correct, you’d kick it back. If you found the incomes of the buyers had been overstated, or the houses had been appraised at twice their worth, you’d kick it back. But that didn’t happen here. And it turned out there were loan files that were missing required documentation. Part of putting the deal together is that the securitization professional, and in this case that’s banks like Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan, has to watch for this stuff. It’s called perfecting the security interest, and it’s not optional.

EK: And how much danger are the banks themselves in? JT: When we had the financial crisis, the first thing the banks did was run to Congress and ask for accounting relief. They asked to be able to avoid pricing this stuff at the price where people would buy them. So no one can tell you the size of the hole in these balance sheets. We’ve thrown a lot of money at it. TARP was just the tip of the iceberg. We’ve given them guarantees on debts, low-cost funding from the Fed. But a lot of these mortgages just cannot be saved. Had we acknowledged this problem in 2005, we could’ve cleaned it up for a few hundred billion dollars. But we didn’t. Banks were lying and committing fraud, and our regulators were covering them and so a bad problem has become a hellacious one.

EK: My understanding is that this now pits the banks against the investors they sold these products too. The investors are going to court to argue that the products were flawed and the banks need to take them back. JT: Many investors now are waking up to the fact that they were defrauded. Even sophisticated investors. If you did your due diligence but material information was withheld, you can recover. It’ll be a case-by-by-case basis. EK: Given that our financial system is still fragile, isn’t that a disaster for the economy? Will credit freeze again? JT: I disagree. In order to make the financial system healthy, we need to recognize the extent of our losses and begin facing the fraud. Then the market will be trustworthy again and people will start to participate. EK: It sounds almost like you’re saying we still need to go through the end of our financial crisis. JT: Yes, but I wouldn’t say crisis. This can be done with a resolution trust corporation, the way we cleaned up the S&Ls. The system got back on its feet faster because we grappled with the problems. The shareholders would be wiped out and the debt holders would have to take a discount on their debt and they’d get a debt-for-equity swap. Instead we poured TARP money into a pit and meanwhile the banks are paying huge bonuses to some people who should be made accountable for fraud. The financial crisis was a product of our irrational reaction, which protected crony capitalism rather than capitalism. In capitalism, the shareholders who took the risk would be wiped out and the debt holders would take a discount but banking would go on....

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/10/thi ...


MUCH MORE AT: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/10/8/908857/-Shi$-Hi ...


xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


Attorneys General in 40 States Said to Join on Foreclosures Fri Oct-08-10 09:58 PM

40 states !!!!!!

The game of musical chairs has begun.
WHO will be left owing how much on gazillions of dollars of fraudulent Mortgage bonds?

Attorneys general in about 40 states may announce a joint investigation into foreclosures at the largest banks and mortgage firms, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter.

State attorneys general led by Iowa’s Tom Miller are in talks that may lead to the announcement of a coordinated probe as soon as Oct. 12, said the person, who declined to be identified because a final agreement hasn’t been reached. The number of states may change because several are still deciding whether to join the investigation, the person said. New Mexico Attorney General Gary King said today in a statement that his state will join a multi-state effort.

Lawyers representing the banks are expecting a more widespread investigation, according to Patrick McManemin, a partner at Patton Boggs LLP, a Washington-based law firm that represents banks, loan servicers and financial institutions. Bank of America Corp., the biggest U.S. lender, today extended a freeze on foreclosures to all 50 states.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-08/attorneys-gene ...

And why this rush by everybody to investigate?

Perhaps this:

'This is the biggest fraud in the history of the capital markets'

Janet Tavakoli: This is the biggest fraud in the history of the capital markets. And it’s not something that happened last week. It happened when these loans were originated, in some cases years ago.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/10/thi ...



xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

SOMEONE POSTED THIS ON DEMOCRATIC UNDERGROUND..
sorry I didn't keep the posters name..I wish I could credit that poster, but I can not..


62 million homes may be foreclosure-proof ... what you need to know
Fri Oct-08-10 06:42 PM
I'm putting this in GD rather than Editorials so that the maximum number of people will see it.

If you're in foreclosure or default, this article sums up the reasoning for a defense which has worked in numerous states, and it lists the main case citations you'll need to show your lawyer as a beginning point. I'm in the same boat (for 2 years, representing myself with the help of info on the net) so good luck to us all.

HOMEOWNERS' REBELLION:
COULD 62 MILLION HOMES BE FORECLOSURE-PROOF?

Ellen Brown, August 18th, 2010

http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/homeowners.php

<snip>

Over 62 million mortgages are now held in the name of MERS, an electronic recording system devised by and for the convenience of the mortgage industry. A California bankruptcy court, following landmark cases in other jurisdictions, recently held that this electronic shortcut makes it impossible for banks to establish their ownership of property titles—and therefore to foreclose on mortgaged properties. The logical result could be 62 million homes that are foreclosure-proof.

<snip>

MERS was developed in the early 1990s by a number of financial entities, including Bank of America, Countrywide, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac, allegedly to allow consumers to pay less for mortgage loans. That did not actually happen, but what MERS did allow was the securitization and shuffling around of mortgages behind a veil of anonymity. The result was not only to cheat local governments out of their recording fees but to defeat the purpose of the recording laws, which was to guarantee purchasers clean title. Worse, MERS facilitated an explosion of predatory lending in which lenders could not be held to account because they could not be identified, either by the preyed-upon borrowers or by the investors seduced into buying bundles of worthless mortgages. As alleged in a Nevada class action called Lopez vs. Executive Trustee Services, et al.:

Before MERS, it would not have been possible for mortgages with no market value . . . to be sold at a profit or collateralized and sold as mortgage-backed securities. Before MERS, it would not have been possible for the Defendant banks and AIG to conceal from government regulators the extent of risk of financial losses those entities faced from the predatory origination of residential loans and the fraudulent re-sale and securitization of those otherwise non-marketable loans. Before MERS, the actual beneficiary of every Deed of Trust on every parcel in the United States and the State of Nevada could be readily ascertained by merely reviewing the public records at the local recorder’s office where documents reflecting any ownership interest in real property are kept....

After MERS, . . . the servicing rights were transferred after the origination of the loan to an entity so large that communication with the servicer became difficult if not impossible .... The servicer was interested in only one thing – making a profit from the foreclosure of the borrower’s residence – so that the entire predatory cycle of fraudulent origination, resale, and securitization of yet another predatory loan could occur again. This is the legacy of MERS, and the entire scheme was predicated upon the fraudulent designation of MERS as the ‘beneficiary’ under millions of deeds of trust in Nevada and other states.

_________________________

Btw, MERS is entirely owned by the big banks - all of them. Even if a mortgage isn't involved in MERS (mine isn't) the party suing is probably a similarly phoney entity which doesn't own the note, so the same principles apply. Also a CA federal court has recently ruled that homeowners are intended 3rd party beneficiaries to the HAMP contract with banks, giving us standing to sue for a mod. (Marques v. Wells Fargo) Details here:

http://mandelman.ml-implode.com/2010/08/federal-court-b ... /

[chill_wind]

65. Good job flyarm. You should make that it's own OP.

An overwhelming amount of information now available and emerging every day proves this is waaaay beyond a spate of paperwork "technicalities."

My god!

http://mattweidnerlaw.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/RICOClassActionComplaint.pdf

[harmonicon]

27. did he also say, "we're doing all we can to lose this election, and the next one too"? nt

[Cronus Protagonist]

28. So, the home owners who over mortgaged their homes are "the rest of us"?

What about the renters? Really. We're "the rest of us", not the ones who are losing their "equity" in a property speculation. What about the unemployed renters? We could use some assistance please. Any chance you might move over and let us get at the trough?

Didn't think so.

[No Elephants]

86. Please see Reply 77 and Ferrari's posts.

Also, a lot of people defaulted bc one or more family members became unemployed or underemployed, not bc payment seemed unrealistic from the outset. And people were flat out lied to Finally, it has ALWAYS been the lender's responsiblity to make sure the borrower can repay--and no one told borrowers there was a new game in town.

I totally understand why Republicans, CNBC and the like blame borrowers, rather than the real culprits. I don't understand why Democrats do.

[pattmarty]

30. Does this REALLY surprise anyone?

[DainBramaged]

47. Every time I think this Administration is turning a corner, they fall off the bike

:eyes:

[RaleighNCDUer]

48. Jesus fuck! They are TRYING to lose this election. nt

[BzaDem]

49. Here's why we might not need a national moratorium.

There's a reason why banks that have paperwork problems have instituted their own moratorium. They aren't doing it out of the kindness of their heart. They are doing it because they don't want to be sued for each and every case of a foreclosure with bad paperwork.

There is no reason why foreclosures with perfect paperwork should be stopped. If creditors that have perfect paperwork cannot foreclose, that will kill the housing market and hurt the economy (and no creditor in their right mind would issue a mortgage in such an environment).

Foreclosures with imperfect paperwork should absolutely be stopped. But they are being stopped by banks, because now that lawyers have caught on to their fraudulent activity, banks don't want to be bankrupted by civil lawsuits and criminal investigations by state AGs.

In cases where a servicer continued with bad-paperwork foreclosures even after it has been shown that they are using bad paperwork, state attorney generals should open a criminal investigation on that bank (and in many states they are). You will get a self-imposed moratorium very quickly.

The only reason we might need a national moratorium is if it turns out most foreclosures have bad paperwork, AND most servicers when confronted with this refuse to stop (even after threatened criminal investigations and civil suits). But this has not happened yet -- banks do not want to be prosecuted or bankrupted.

[liberation]

61. LOL... very creative.

I would wait until you guys get better talking points faxed first thing in the morning tomorrow though.

[placton]

53. must..support...obama

it is the way of the Borg

[rug]

54. Too small to win.

[txlibdem]

57. When we bought our home in '05 we had to actually fight to get a fixed loan, not ARM

The mortgage office had the paperwork all worked up for an ARM even on the day we went in to sign so we made them tear it up in front of us and redo the loan as a 30-year fixed. If we hadn't been so persistent or hadn't been knowledgeable (or had trusted them to do the right thing) we would have lost our home already.

The banks were giving a larger commission for the ARMs than fixed rate loans. The corruption was rampant and systemic. Anybody who blames the home owner is missing the facts.

[No Elephants]

88. Banks were also paying more for high risk loans.

[txlibdem]

127. All part of a corrupt system designed by the crooks to benefit the crooks

and here we are stuck with the bill. None of the crooks go to jail. None of the crooks have to give back their huge bonuses.

[Exilednight]

59. They just keep screwing the middle-class and .........

poor while continually widening the gap of wealth.

[beforeyoureyes]

60. Anyone who appoints Timothy Geithner to their administration has already shown all their cards

eom

[flyarm]

68. + 1 million! thank you! eom

[zehnkatzen]

62. This is why the liberal base complains about Obama.

... and why I don't have a big problem with those complaints. This is something that the WH should never have said.

[Name removed]

67. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[orbitalman]

63. I don't understand OPPOSITION to a moratorium, at all. n/t

[Don Draper]

64. Gotta be kidding me

Has the election of Scott Brown, terrible poll numbers and upcoming political thrashing on Nov 2nd not taught Obama & his administration anything? Unbelievable!

[flyarm]

69. See my posts over here>>> too many to transfer..but too important to miss!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=9291379&mesg_id=9293803

[The Uncola]

70. THE GAME IS RIGGED.

This administration is as much a part of keeping it that way as the Regressives are. Scratch a CorpoDem, find a Neocon. Same crappy policies, different label.

[Egnever]

82. bullshit headline

"I'm not sure about a national moratorium," DOES NOT = OPPOSITION

[No Elephants]

89. "Signals opposition" is different from "states opposition"

[ClarkUSA]

87. What is wrong with what David Axelrod said? Not all foreclosures are fraudulent.

[flyarm]

90. 'This is the biggest fraud in the history of the capital markets' : Janet Tavakoli

'This is the biggest fraud in the history of the capital markets' : Janet Tavakoli


http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/10/this_is_the_biggest_fraud_in_t.html

'This is the biggest fraud in the history of the capital markets'

Janet Tavakoli is the founder and president of Tavakoli Structured Finance Inc.


EK: And how much danger are the banks themselves in?

JT: When we had the financial crisis, the first thing the banks did was run to Congress and ask for accounting relief. They asked to be able to avoid pricing this stuff at the price where people would buy them. So no one can tell you the size of the hole in these balance sheets. We’ve thrown a lot of money at it. TARP was just the tip of the iceberg. We’ve given them guarantees on debts, low-cost funding from the Fed. But a lot of these mortgages just cannot be saved. Had we acknowledged this problem in 2005, we could’ve cleaned it up for a few hundred billion dollars. But we didn’t. Banks were lying and committing fraud, and our regulators were covering them and so a bad problem has become a hellacious one.

EK: My understanding is that this now pits the banks against the investors they sold these products too. The investors are going to court to argue that the products were flawed and the banks need to take them back.

JT: Many investors now are waking up to the fact that they were defrauded. Even sophisticated investors. If you did your due diligence but material information was withheld, you can recover. It’ll be a case-by-by-case basis.

EK: Given that our financial system is still fragile, isn’t that a disaster for the economy? Will credit freeze again?

JT: I disagree. In order to make the financial system healthy, we need to recognize the extent of our losses and begin facing the fraud. Then the market will be trustworthy again and people will start to participate.

EK: It sounds almost like you’re saying we still need to go through the end of our financial crisis.

JT: Yes, but I wouldn’t say crisis. This can be done with a resolution trust corporation, the way we cleaned up the S&Ls. The system got back on its feet faster because we grappled with the problems. The shareholders would be wiped out and the debt holders would have to take a discount on their debt and they’d get a debt-for-equity swap. Instead we poured TARP money into a pit and meanwhile the banks are paying huge bonuses to some people who should be made accountable for fraud. The financial crisis was a product of our irrational reaction, which protected crony capitalism rather than capitalism. In capitalism, the shareholders who took the risk would be wiped out and the debt holders would take a discount but banking would go on.


By Ezra Klein | October 8, 2010; 1:27 PM ET

[ClarkUSA]

97. That cut-and-paste job doesn't answer my question.

[larryo]

159. But it certainly did

explain what was wrong with what Axelrod said, didn't it? I expect your question cannot be answered, because you are not involved in a legitimate discussion. No one, probably, can explain to you where Axelrod was wrong, because there are none so blind as them who will not see.

[flyarm]

91. Shi$ Hitting Fan: Tavakoli - Biggest Fraud In The History Of Capital Markets

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/10/8/908857/-Shi


Shi$ Hitting Fan: Tavakoli - Biggest Fraud In The History Of Capital Markets

ShareNew 0by Badabing

Fri Oct 08, 2010 at 05:30:39 PM PDT

One of the people that I have admired most during this nation's financial meltdown and clusterfuck has been the great Janet Tavakoli. From the beginning, she has consistently along with Yves Smith, Elizabeth Warren, Brooksley Born, and of course Congressman Alan Grayson hammered relentlessly and sounded the alarm of what would happen to our nation, should be continue to disavow the national 'cover up' of what Grayson rightfully is calling: FRAUD TO COVER UP FRAUD.

These great Americans would not allow companies like Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, GMAC, Bank of America, Wall Street, the Bankers the Lenders, the illicit and illegal Foreclosure Mills and even our own government to rewrite history with their pitiful public relations propaganda machines.

They all understood that a day or reckoning would come without a doubt in our nation, when the corruption would finally reach a critical mass, and now that day has come.

[ClarkUSA]

98. That cut-and-paste job doesn't answer my question, either.

[Safetykitten]

165. Looks like we need another TARP to catch all those little "details" that were missed the first go...

Either that or watch Obama get cornered into a Resolution Trust thingy by the republicans when they get back in control. Kinda like a Bush I gig.

[flyarm]

93. RICO Case in Kentucky

"Enjoy folks...... this little issue isn't going away and there's plenty more in this filing.... and if you're a holder of MBS (a pension fund, perhaps, or a pensioner who thinks they're going to get paid their pension?) contemplating that you very well may have an "empty box" that has no value, and no way to cure the problem, certainly ought to keep you up at night."

http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?singlepost=2196166

................................

RICO Case in Kentucky


RICO Case in Kentucky


MERS/MBS/Foreclosure Goes RICO - MarketTicker Forums

MERS/MBS/Foreclosure Goes RICO
The Market Ticker ® - Commentary on The Capital Markets
Posted 2010-10-03 23:10
by Karl Denninger
in Corruption
MERS/MBS/Foreclosure Goes RICO

snip:

See, without standing they can't foreclose, but then we get back to "who can?" And what we find is that the originator was paid, and thus they can't either. Worse, for those originators that are bankrupt, their "assets", such as they are, can't go anywhere without a bankruptcy trustee's signature, and further, even if someone was to acquire that, which nobody has, THE REMICs CAN'T TAKE THE PAPER ANYWAY AS THEIR CLOSING DATE HAS EXPIRED.

So we have a bankrupt originator who was paid in full and can't foreclose, and we have a note that can't be transferred into the REMIC without destroying its tax preference (retroactively, incidentally), which instantaneously trashes the value of the MBS - probably by more than they could hope to recover if they were going to take the note anyway.

In all cases, the lack of acquisition of the Class Members' mortgage loans violates the prospectus presented to the investors and the IRS REMIC requirements.

If an MBS Trust was audited by the IRS and was found to have violated any of the REMIC requirements, it would lose its REMIC status and all back taxes would be due and owing to the IRS as well as the state of Kentucky. As previously stated, one hundred percent (100%) of the income will be taxed.

As the Class Members are identified and the identity of the MBS REMICs revealed through this action, the individual "Trusts"/ MBS REMICs will be turned over to the IRS for auditing



snip:
REMICS were newly invented in 1987 as a tax avoidance measure by Investment Banks. To file as a REMIC, and in order to avoid one hundred percent (100%) taxation by the IRS and the Kentucky Revenue Cabinet, an MBS REMIC could not engage in any prohibited action. The "Trustee" can not own the assets of the REMIC. A REMIC Trustee could never claim it owned a mortgage loan. Hence, it can never be the owner of a mortgage loan.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Portion of Class Action in Kentucky:
57. Additionally, and important to the issues presented with this particular action, is the fact that in order to keep its tax status and to fund the "Trust" and legally collect money from investors, who bought into the REMIC, the "Trustee" or the more properly named, Custodian of the REMIC, had to have possession of ALL the original blue ink Promissory Notes and original allonges and assignments of the Notes, showing a complete paper chain of title.

58. Most importantly for this action, the "Trustee"/Custodian MUST have the mortgages recorded in the investors name as the beneficiaries of a MBS in the year the MBS "closed." Every mortgage in the MBS should have been publicly recorded in the Kentucky County where the property was located with a mortgage in the name similar to "2006 ABC REMIC Trust on behalf of the beneficiaries of the 2006 ABC REMIC Trust." The mortgages in the referenced example would all have had to been publicly recorded in the year 2006.

59. As previously pointed out, the ¡°Trusts¡± were never set up or registered as Trusts. The Promissory Notes were never obtained and the mortgages never obtained or recorded.

60. The "Trust" engaged in a plethora of "prohibited activities" and sold the investors certificates and Bonds with phantom mortgage backed assets. There are now nationwide, numerous Class actions filed by the beneficiaries (the owners/investors) of the "Trusts" against the entities who sold the investments as REMICS based on a bogus prospectus.

61. In the above scenario, even if the attorney for the servicer who is foreclosing on behalf of the Trustee (who is in turn acting for the securitized trust) produces a copy of a note, or even an alleged original, the mortgage loan was not conveyed into the trust under the requirements of the prospectus for the trust or the REMIC requirements of the IRS.

62. As applied to the Class Members in this action, the end result would be that the required MBS asset, or any part thereof (mortgage note or security interest), would not have been legally transferred to the trust to allow the trust to ever even be considered a "holder" of a mortgage loan. Neither the "Trust" or the Servicer would ever be entitled to bring a foreclosure or declaratory action. The Trust will never have standing or be a real party in interest. They will never be the proper party to appear before the Court.

63. The transfer of mortgage loans into the trust after the "cut off date" (in the example 2006), destroys the trust's REMIC tax exempt status, and these "Trusts" (and potentially the financial entities who created them) would owe millions of dollars to the IRS and the Kentucky Revenue Cabinet as the income would be taxed at of one hundred percent (100%).



xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Class Action in Kentucky ( partial)


http://mattweidnerlaw.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/RICOClassActionComplaint.pdf

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
WESTERN DISTRICT OF KENTUCKY
LOUISVILLE DIVISION
CASE NO. ____________________
CLASS ACTION COMPLAINT
ELIZABETH FOSTER;
JOHN R. FOSTER; REPRESENTATIVE
CLASS PLAINTIFFS;
CONNIE WELLS;
ROYCE WELLS; on behalf of themselves
and others so situated
AUGUSTA MASON; as putative class members
BRIAN MASON;
SHERILL A. MOODY;
MARK MOODY, and;
CHARLOTTE A. WOODWARD
v.
MORTGAGE ELECTRONIC REGISTRATION
SYSTEMS, INC. AND,
MERSCORP,
collectively as MERS;
GMAC MORTGAGE LLC,
RESIDENTIAL ACCREDIT LOANS, INC., AND
RESIDENTIAL FUNDING COMPANY, LLC
collectively as GMAC ;
DEUTSCHE BANK NATIONAL TRUST COMPANY;
NATIONSTAR MORTGAGE;
AURORA LOAN SERVICES;
BAC LOAN SERVICES;
CITIMORTGAGE;
US BANK;


II.B. THE DEFENDANTS
Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc., MERSCORP, hereinafter
collectively (“MERS”) and the MERS Shareholders:

7. Defendant Merscorp, Inc., is a foreign corporation created in or about
1998 by conspirators from the largest banks in the United States in order to undermine
and eventually eviscerate long-standing principles of real property law, such as the
requirement that any person or entity who seeks to foreclose upon a parcel of real
property: 1) be in possession of the original note, 2) Have a publicly recorded mortage in
the name of the party for whom the underlying debt is actually owed and who is the
holder of the original Promissory Note with legally binding assignments, and 3) possess a
written assignment giving he, she or it actual rights to the payments due from the
borrower pursuant to both the mortgage and note.

8. Defendant Merscorp, Inc., claims to be the sole shareholder in an entity
by the name of Mortgage Electronic Registrations Systems, Inc., (“MERS”). MERS is the

RICO enterprise and is the primary innovation through which the conspirators, including
the Defendants, have accomplished their illegal objectives as detailed throughout this
Complaint.

9. For the purposes of this action, MERS shall also refer to each and every
shareholder of MERSCORP, who will be named as their identities are revealed.

10. The Complaint names the entity, Mortgage Electronic Registration
Systems, Inc., hereinafter, (“MERS”). MERS is the mortgage holder of record for the
Class Plaintiff’s second mortgage. The lender to the second mortgage is M & I Bank
FSB. It is this second mortgage, which is the subject of this action.

11. MERS is not the original lender for any of the class members loans.
MERS is not the creditor, beneficiary of the underlying debt or an assignee under the
terms of the Promissory Notes of the class members. MERS does not hold the original
of the Promissory Note, nor has it ever held the Promissory Notes of the class members.

12. The Mortgagee, MERS, is a owned by the company, MERSCORP,
which is in turn owned by a group of Wall Street investment Banks.

13. MERS is unregistered and unlicensed to conduct mortgage lending or
any other type of business in the Commonwealth of Kentucky and has been and continues
to knowingly and intentionally illegally and fraudulently record mortgages and conduct
business in Kentucky on a large scale and systematic fashion..

14. No promissory Note or other evidence exists which could ever make
the Plaintiffs and the class members indebted to MERS in any way.


15. MERS never had nor will it ever have standing to enforce the illegal
and fraudulent mortgage it filed against the properties in question. MERS never had nor
will it ever have the authority to assign the Mortgage to any entity.

16. MERS has never possessed a pecuniary or financial interest in the
Notes of the Plaintiffs and the class members.

17. MERS has never had any right to collect on the Note or enforce the
Mortgage, nor has it had a right to hold, enforce or collect upon any of the thousands of
Mortgages it has fraudulently recorded throughout the Commonwealth of Kentucky, in
the 50 states, the District of Columbia and all other US Territories.
The Law Firms:

18. In or about the last decade, the Defendant Firms joined with Defendant
Merscorp, Inc., and other conspirators in the fraudulent scheme and RICO enterprise
herein complained. . The employees of the Defendant Firms, including many licensed
attorneys, have become skilled in using the artifice of MERS to sabotage the judicial
process to the detriment of borrowers, and, over the past several years, have routinely
relied upon MERS to accomplish illegal acts.

19. Manley Deas Kochalski PLLC, is a law firm with its principal place of
business in the state of Ohio. Herein after (“MDK”,) the firm is one of the regional
foreclosure mills.

20. Dinsmore & Shohl LLP, is a law firm with its principal place of
business in the state of Ohio. Herein after (“D&S”,) the firm is one of the regional
foreclosure mills, and the regional corporate counsel for GMAC.


21. Lerner Sampson & Rothfuss, is a law firm with its principal place of
business in the state of Ohio. Herein after (“LSR”,) the firm is one of the regional
foreclosure mills, and the Kentucky counterpart to Florida’s Stern Law Group in that the
partners of LSR own their own document processing company, LSR Processing LLC, to
generate loan and mortgage documents. LSR has a pattern and practice on drafting
missing mortgage and loan documents and in turn, having them executed by their own
employees.

22. Jerry R. Howard Reisenfeld & Associates, LPA, is a law firm with its
principal place of business in the state of Ohio. Herein after (“R&A” ,) the firm is one of
the regional foreclosure mills.

23. Middleton & Reutlinger, is a Kentucky based law firm and serves as
MERS regional counsel.
The Document Processing Defendants:

24. LSR Processing LLC, is a document processing company, based in the
state of Ohio to generate loan and mortgage documents. Upon information and belief it
is owned by one or more of the partners of LSR law firm. LSR Processing was created
in order to facilitate the conspiratorial acts of the Defendants in relation to the creation of
fraudulent Promissory Notes, Note Assignments, Affidavits and Mortgage Assignments
LSR Processing has a pattern and practice of drafting missing mortgage and loan
documents and in turn, having them executed by their own employees.


]25. DOCX LLC, hereinafter (“DOCX”.) Defendant, DOCX, is a Georgia
Corporation with its principal place of business in Irvine, California. Although DOCX is
doing business in the state of Kentucky, it is not registered to engage in business in the
state of Kentucky.

26. Defendant Lender Processing Services, Inc. (“LPS”) is a Delaware
Corporation, with its principal place of business in Jacksonville, Florida. Although LPS
is doing business in the state of Kentucky, it is not registered to engage in business in the
state of Kentucky. At all times relevant hereto, LPS was the parent company of DOCX.
Together they are referred to as (“LPS/DOCX.”)
The Servicers and MBS “Trusts”2:

27. GMAC Mortgage and GMAC Residential Funding Corporation,
collectively hereinafter (“GMAC”,) is a foreign business entity, which according to the
MERS internet web site, www.mersinc.org, is a shareholder in MERS. GMAC serves
as a servicer on tens of thousands of Mortgage loans.

28. The Deutsche Bank as “Trustee” is a generic term for an entity not
incorporated or registered to do business in any of the United States in order to facilitate
illegal property foreclosures.

29. CitiMortgage is a foreign business entity, which according to the
MERS internet web site, www.mersinc.org, is a shareholder in MERS.

30. Aurora Loan Services is thought to be a foreign corporation, but is not
registered to conduct business in the state of Kentucky.

31. Nationstar Mortgage is thought to be a foreign corporation, but is not
registered to conduct business in the state of Kentucky.
2 Other loan Servicers and MBS “Trustee” Defendants shall be named as their identities are revealed. The
underwriters and originators of the MBS “Trusts” shall be named as their identities are revealed. It is
anticipated that they will include, but in no way be limited to Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, RFC
Financial and Goldman Sachs.

[flyarm]

95. Class Action Lawsuit Against Countrywide: California

Class Action in California against Countrywide

Class Action Lawsuit Against Countrywide: California in

http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=168698

Class Action Lawsuit Against Countrywide: California
The Market Ticker ® - Commentary on The Capital Markets
Posted 2010-10-09 20:31
by Karl Denninger
in Foreclosuregate
Class Action Lawsuit Against Countrywide: California

This is an extremely-important case folks. The pleadings here, like the case in Kentucky, lay the table in terms of the games that were played during the "Rah-Rah" years.

Let's start with the "meat" of the alleged violations:



And the first "meaty" part of the complaint....

5. The fraud perpetrated by the Countrywide Defendants from 2003 through 2007, including by BofA starting no later than 2007, was willful and pervasive. It begin with simple greed and then accelerated when Countrywide founder and CEO Angelo Mozilo (“Mozilo”) discovered that Countrywide could not sustain its business, unless it used its size and large market share in California to systematically create false and inflated property appraisals throughout California. Countrywide then used these false property valuations to induce Plaintiffs and other borrowers into ever-larger loans on increasingly risky terms. As Mozilo knew from no later than 2004, these loans were unsustainable for Countrywide and the borrowers and to a certainty would result in a crash that would destroy the equity invested by Plaintiffs and other Countrywide borrowers.


In other words, Countrywide is alleged to not only have made bad loans, but also to have intentionally inflated appraisals.

6. Hand-in-hand with its fraudulently-obtained mortgages, Mozilo and others at Countrywide hatched a plan to “pool” the foregoing mortgages and sell the pools for inflated value. Rapidly, these two intertwined schemes grew into a brazen plan to disregard underwriting standards and fraudulently inflate property values – county-by-county, city-by-city, person-by-person – in order to take business from legitimate mortgage-providers, and moved on to massive securities fraud hand-in-hand with concealment from, and deception of, Plaintiffs and other mortgagees on an unprecedented scale.


Oh, that's rich. So not only (it is alleged) did Countrywide bamboozle borrowers, they also bamboozled investors.


9. It is now all too clear that this was the ultimate high-stakes fraudulent investment scheme of the last decade. Couched in banking and securities jargon, the deceptive gamble with consumers’ primary assets – their homes – was nothing more than a financial fraud perpetrated by Defendants and others on a scale never before seen. This scheme led directly to a mortgage meltdown in California that was substantially worse than any economic problems facing the rest of the United States. From 2008 to the present, Californians’ home values decreased by considerably more than most other areas in the United States as a direct and proximate result of the Defendants’ scheme set forth herein. The Countrywide Defendants’ business premise was to leave the borrowers, including Plaintiffs, holding the bag once Countrywide and its executives had cashed in reaping huge salaries and bonuses and selling Countrywide’s shares based on their inside information, while investors were still buying the increasingly overpriced mortgage pools and before the inevitable dénouement. This massive fraudulent scheme was a disaster both foreseen by Countrywide and waiting to happen. Defendants knew it, and yet Defendants still induced the Plaintiffs into their scheme without telling them.

There's the base of it all....

24. Defendants have gone to great lengths to avoid producing documents in this litigation because they know that such documents will establish all details of the massive fraud they perpetrated on Plaintiffs and other Californians. PennyMac, the Granada Network and Defendants’ overseas operations are used by Defendants to systematically hide documents. By delaying production of documents, the Defendants are buying time as they (a) accept the benefits of the scheme described herein, (b) cover up their fraud, and (c) make it materially more expensive and difficult for Plaintiffs and their counsel to obtain a just result.

[ClarkUSA]

99. Why are you replying to yourself?

[flyarm]

100. Obama to veto bill over fear it will cause more foreclosures

we know Obama Veto'ed this bill..but understand what was in that bill..and why it was rushed to Obama with all the lawsuits beginning to fly in states all over this country..the Banks wanted to be able to use fraudulent documents from Foreclosure Mills and use them across state lines..so people would have a very hard time having their own state laws protect them! and their day in courts in their own states!

Thank Gove for the whistle blowers who let this info out before this bill could become law..but we are still fucked!

Obama to veto bill over fear it will cause more foreclosures - McClatchy D.C. Bureau - Kentucky.com
http://www.kentucky.com/2010/10/07/1469592_obama-to-veto-bill-feared-to-cause.html
Obama to veto bill over fear it will cause more foreclosures
Margaret Talev - McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama will veto a bill that he fears could be misused to force more homeowners into foreclosure.

Originally the measure, which makes it easier for notarized documents to be accepted across state lines, was thought to be non-controversial and passed with bipartisan support in Congress. However, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Thursday that there are now concerns that its language could cause "unintended consequences" damaging to consumers, especially homeowners.

Three large national banks have recently halted foreclosures in 23 states in light of evidence of flawed documents or improper procedures. In that context, Obama is asking Congress to go back to the drawing board on H.R. 3808, the ]"Interstate Recognition of Notarizations (IRON) Act of 2010." .



Read more: http://www.kentucky.com/2010/10/07/1469592_obama-to-veto-bill-feared-to-cause.html#ixzz121agENhs

[ClarkUSA]

102. This is the second time you've replied to yourself. You're still not answering my question.

[Pathwalker]

106. Please read post #103. Your question IS answered.

n/t

[ClarkUSA]

107. No, it wasn't. All I see is a lot of fear mongering. See Reply #105.

[ClarkUSA]

101. None of your cut-and-paste efforts answer my question.

[flyarm]

103. because it is going to effect every bank in this country..every bank will go under!

because unless the fraud by the banks to big to fail are held accountable in very short order and their crimes not covered up..this entire country is going to collapse...every bank ..

and the failure of these banks ..will effect every American in this country..no one will go unscathed.

please do some reading ..i have made it very easy for you to learn what is going on..

but you can take the horse to water , but you can not make it drink.

either you want to know the truth..or you don't ..it is that simple!

But you can not stop this collapse from happening ..nor can I ..only the leaders of this government can.

But we can put pressure on them to stop it now..before it is too late for all of us!

[ClarkUSA]

105. That's baseless fear mongering.

There's a reason why banks that have paperwork problems have instituted their own moratorium. They aren't doing it out of the kindness of their heart. They are doing it because they don't want to be sued for each and every case of a foreclosure with bad paperwork.

There is no reason why foreclosures with perfect paperwork should be stopped. If creditors that have perfect paperwork cannot foreclose, that will kill the housing market and hurt the economy (and no creditor in their right mind would issue a mortgage in such an environment).

Foreclosures with imperfect paperwork should absolutely be stopped. But they are being stopped by banks, because now that lawyers have caught on to their fraudulent activity, banks don't want to be bankrupted by civil lawsuits and criminal investigations by state AGs.

In cases where a servicer continued with bad-paperwork foreclosures even after it has been shown that they are using bad paperwork, state attorney generals should open a criminal investigation on that bank (and in many states they are). You will get a self-imposed moratorium very quickly.

The only reason we might need a national moratorium is if it turns out most foreclosures have bad paperwork, AND most servicers when confronted with this refuse to stop (even after threatened criminal investigations and civil suits). But this has not happened yet -- banks do not want to be prosecuted or bankrupted.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=4570873&mesg_id=4571198

[flyarm]

108. I said last night I was watching a ball game..I stayed up all night and posted your answers..

seems someone is now attempting to remove many of my answers..seems someone does not want the truth to be told..

and it seems you never went back to see the answers..others have!

so You want the answers..get ready..i will repost them all here..right now!

[ClarkUSA]

110. That's unfair. If a bank's mortgage practices aren't fraudulent, why should it be penalized?

[RaleighNCDUer]

167. Yeah - the banks are terrified of all the lawsuits to be filed by

homeless, jobless, invisible people.

Lawsuits cost money, and that's exactly what the victims of the fraud do NOT have. So why on earth would the banks be afraid of them? Even a class-action suit, joined by thousands of individually powerless people, would take YEARS to resolve. Why would the banks fear that?

Do you really have no concept of how powerful the big banks are, and how insignificant we are?

[larryo]

143. The foreclosures

are part of a larger scheme, which is by definition racketeering. RICO prohibits anyone from obtaining or maintaining an interest in real property through a pattern of racketeering activity, which is exactly what the securitization of mortgages was.

That is what is wrong with what Axelrod said - he is deliberately misdirecting the focus of public attention away from the larger racket, and he is doing so because his employer is in the bankers' pockets - that point has already been adequately made on this thread; it was conclusively established with the appointment of Timothy Geithner to head Treasury.

[ClarkUSA]

146. You're making a lot of legal and conspiracy claims without offering a shred of evidence.

[larryo]

157. No evidence?

Are you awake? The evidence is all around you and right in front of you!

AIG's monolines collapsed when the predictable, and often predicted (by Janet Tavakoli, Nouriel Roubini and many others), mortgage defaults began to occur. The default insurance was promised to protect against default, but it proved to be a false promise, and then the entire scheme unraveled right in front of you.

Where do you think all the money from TARP went? Do you have a clue? It went to pay "counterparties" - that is well established. Do you know what is meant by "conterparties?" Those were the investors who bought the fraudulent securities - they had slam-dunk lawsuits against everyone from the banks that originated the mortgages <i>intending</i> that they be securitized to the securitizers themselves. They could not be permitted to sue, of course, because then even the corporate press could not have kept the truth from the American public, so instead the Treasury was raided, first by the Bush bankers and then by the Obama bankers - all the same - to repay the investors.

The evidence is there for the asking - a previous poster cited the work of Tavakoli, who has been right on this from the beginning. I suggest you start with the work of Ellen Brown, webofdebt.com, before you ask any more questions that you only embarrass you.

[girl gone mad]

160. There are mountains of evidence.

You'd have to be willfully ignorant not to see it.

[RaleighNCDUer]

166. And who decides which are and which aren't?

The fraudsters.

Nice system we got there.

[No Elephants]

92. I don't mind lack of a moratorium, as long as foreclosures are 100% on the up and up

and fraudulent or sloppy forecosures are punished. The bill Congress sent Obama was a bi-partisan, voice vote POS.

[flyarm]

94. its not sloppy foreclosures..it is fraud and cover ups of fraud!

it is breaking laws in all of our states ..and it is the banks robbing all of us blind!

and ready to bankrupt our entire nation!! and put us into complete collapse!

[Tarheel_Dem]

96. More pre-emptive outrage, I see. Nice to see all the newbies here....

:hi:

Lots of "Democrats", on "Democratic" Underground, only days away from a mid-term, pushing rumors and gossip as news. What could be a possible motive, ya think? Hmmmmmmmmm.......

[flyarm]

109. Secretary Brunner Outlines Two Lines of Attack in Fighting High Ohio Foreclosure Rates

Home / Press Releases / 2010 Press Releases /

Secretary Brunner Outlines Two Lines of Attack in Fighting High Ohio Foreclosure Rates

http://www.sos.state.oh.us/SOS/PressReleases/2010/20100930.aspx

Secretary Brunner Outlines Two
Lines of Attack in Fighting High Ohio Foreclosure Rates
9/30/2010

For Immediate Release

SECRETARY BRUNNER OUTLINES TWO LINES OF ATTACK IN FIGHTING HIGH OHIO FORECLOSURE RATES

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, Ohio’s chief elections officer and the state officer responsible for licensing notary publics, today issued a directive to boards of elections that foreclosures cannot be used without further investigation to disqualify voters and revealed that she has referred specific instances of notary abuse occurring at Chase Home Mortgage in Columbus and by the Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc. (MERS) to a federal prosecutor for investigation.

DIRECTIVE ON VOTERS FACING FORECLOSURES: Secretary Brunner, in Directive 2010-66, instructed Ohio’s 88 county boards of elections that they may not cancel an Ohioan’s voter registration based solely on the fact that the person is involved in the foreclosure process. The filing of a foreclosure action does not affect a voter’s right to vote until there is a final judgment entry, including the passage of at least 30 days from the date of the entry because of the right of appeal, and verification that the person no longer resides at the property. Ohio continues to experience high residential foreclosure rates.

Those who lose their homes because of foreclosure may wait until Election Day to update their address. Boards are instructed in the directive how to help voters displaced because of foreclosure, based on whether they move (1) within the same precinct, (2) within the same county but to a different precinct, or (3) to a different county in Ohio. Voters facing foreclosure may use their current location of residence as their residence for the purposes of voting.

REFERRAL OF CHASE HOME MORTGAGE AND MORTGAGE ELECTRONIC REGISTRATION SYSTEMS, INC. TO FEDERAL PROSECUTOR: Secretary Brunner, in two letters dated Aug. 11, 2010 and Sept. 1, 2010, referred matters of alleged notary abuse in thousands of home mortgage foreclosures by Chase Home Mortgage and the Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc. to U.S. District Attorney Steven Dettelbach in Cleveland. Citing two depositions, (one & two) of Chase employee Beth Cottrell, taken in Columbus in May of 2010, and a deposition of MERS Secretary and Treasurer, William Hultman taken in New Jersey in April of 2010. These depositions contain sworn testimony that at Chase Home Mortgage, 18,000 documents per month are executed and notarized per month by eight people, with admissions that:

[flyarm]

111. Flawed Paperwork Aggravates a Foreclosure Crisis

Flawed Bank Paperwork Aggravates a Foreclosure Crisis - NYTimes.com

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/04/business/04mortgage.html?_r=3&partner=rss&emc=rss&pagewanted=all

Flawed Paperwork Aggravates a Foreclosure Crisis
By GRETCHEN MORGENSON
Published: October 3, 2010


snip:

But analysts say that the wave of defaults still does not excuse lenders’ failures to meet their legal obligations before trying to remove defaulting borrowers from their homes.

“It reflects the hubris that as long as the money was going through the pipeline, these companies didn’t really have to make sure the documents were in order,” said Kathleen C. Engel, dean for intellectual life at Suffolk University Law School and an expert in mortgage law. “Suddenly they have a lot at stake, and playing fast and loose is going to be more costly than it was in the past.”

Attorneys general in at least six states, including Massachusetts, Iowa, Florida and Illinois, are investigating improper foreclosure practices. Last week, Jennifer Brunner, the secretary of state of Ohio, referred examples of what her office considers possible notary abuse by Chase Home Mortgage to federal prosecutors for investigation.

The implications are not yet clear for borrowers who have been evicted from their homes as a result of improper filings. But legal experts say that courts may impose sanctions on lenders or their representatives or may force banks to pay borrowers’ legal costs in these cases.

Judges may dismiss the foreclosures altogether, barring lenders from refiling and awarding the home to the borrower. That would create a loss for the lender or investor holding the note underlying the property. Almost certainly, lawyers say, lawsuits on behalf of borrowers will multiply.

[flyarm]

112. H. R. 3808 One Hundred Eleventh Congress

http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=111_cong_bills&docid=f:h3808enr.txt.pdf

H. R. 3808
One Hundred Eleventh Congress
of the
United States of America

AT THE SECOND SESSION

Begun and held at the City of Washington on Tuesday,
the fifth day of January, two thousand and ten
An Act

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.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of
the United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This Act may be cited as the ‘‘Interstate Recognition of
Notarizations Act of 2010’’.
SEC. 2. RECOGNITION OF NOTARIZATIONS IN FEDERAL COURTS.
Each Federal court shall recognize any lawful notarization
made by a notary public licensed or commissioned under the laws
of a State other than the State where the Federal court is located
if—
(1) such notarization occurs in or affects interstate commerce;
and
(2)(A) a seal of office, as symbol of the notary public’s
authority, is used in the notarization; or
(B) in the case of an electronic record, the seal information
is securely attached to, or logically associated with, the electronic
record so as to render the record tamper-resistant.
SEC. 3. RECOGNITION OF NOTARIZATIONS IN STATE COURTS.
Each court that operates under the jurisdiction of a State
shall recognize any lawful notarization made by a notary public
licensed or commissioned under the laws of a State other than
the State where the court is located if—
(1) such notarization occurs in or affects interstate commerce;
and
(2)(A) a seal of office, as symbol of the notary public’s
authority, is used in the notarization; or
(B) in the case of an electronic record, the seal information
is securely attached to, or logically associated with, the electronic
record so as to render the record tamper-resistant.
SEC. 4. DEFINITIONS.
In this Act:
(1) ELECTRONIC RECORD.—The term ‘‘electronic record’’ has
the meaning given that term in section 106 of the Electronic
Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act (15 U.S.C.
7006).
(2) LOGICALLY ASSOCIATED WITH.—Seal information is ‘‘logically
associated with’’ an electronic record if the seal information
is securely bound to the electronic record in such a manner
H. R. 3808—2
as to make it impracticable to falsify or alter, without detection,
either the record or the seal information.

Speaker of the House of Representatives.

Vice President of the United States and
President of the Senate.

[flyarm]

113. FORECLOSUREGATE AND OBAMA'S 'POCKET VETO'

FORECLOSUREGATE AND OBAMA'S 'POCKET VETO'

http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/foreclosuregate.php
FORECLOSUREGATE AND OBAMA'S 'POCKET VETO'
Ellen Brown, October 7th, 2010
http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/foreclosuregate.php

Amid a snowballing foreclosure fraud crisis, President Obama


snip:



But those errors go far deeper than mere sloppiness. They are concealing a massive fraud.

They cannot be corrected with legitimate paperwork, and that was the reason the servicers had to hire “foreclosure mills” to fabricate the documents.

These errors involve perjury and forgery -- fabricating documents that never existed and swearing to the accuracy of facts not known.

Karl Denninger at MarketTicker is calling it “Foreclosuregate.”

Diana Ollick of CNBC calls it “the RoboSigning Scandal.” On Monday, Ollick reported rumors that the government is planning a 90-day foreclosure moratorium to deal with the problem.

Three large mortgage issuers – JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and GMAC -- have voluntarily suspended thousands of foreclosures, and a number of calls have been made for investigations.

[flyarm]

114. Federal Court: Borrower is INTENDED 3rd Party Beneficiary of HAMP – Homeowner Sues for Breach

Federal Court: Borrower is INTENDED 3rd Party Beneficiary of HAMP – Homeowner Sues for Breach - Mandelman Matters

http://mandelman.ml-implode.com/2010/08/federal-court-borrower-is-intended-3rd-party-beneficiary-of-hamp-contract-%E2%80%93-homeowners-can-sue-for-breach/

Federal Court: Borrower is INTENDED 3rd Party Beneficiary of HAMP – Homeowner Sues for Breach



snip:

According to the court order

“On or about April 13, 2009 Defendant entered into the Commitment to Purchase Financial Instrument and Servicer Participation Agreement for the Home Affordable Modification Program under the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 with Federal National Mortgage Association (“Fannie Mae”) and agreed to perform certain loan modification and foreclosure prevention services for eligible loans.”


“Plaintiff filed a complaint in San Diego County Superior Court alleging breach of the Agreement on the theory that he is a third-party beneficiary under California Civil Code Section 1559, that his loan was eligible for modification, Defendant refused to offer to modify it under the Agreement, but instead commenced foreclosure proceedings.”

Based on breach of contract, Mr. Marques also alleged that Wells Fargo’s Servicer violated the Unfair Competition Law (Cal. Bus. & Prof Code § 17200 et seq. (“UCL”) and he sought damages and declaratory judgment that Wells does not have the right to foreclose on the Property.

So, the first thing Wells Fargo did was to argue that the venue was improper. Wells Fargo said that the complaint should either be dismissed, or transferred to the District of Colombia… and I’m pretty sure that’s the D.C. in Washington D.C. Now, I don’t know about you, but I found that nothing short of hysterical. Mr. Marques should travel back and forth to Washington D.C. in order to sue Wells Fargo? Where’s that damn stagecoach from anyway… D.C.?

It’s called a “forum selection clause,” and the judge wasn’t buying any of it, explaining in his order:

“Plaintiff argues that enforcing the clause would be unreasonable because it would effectively deprive him of his day in court. The court agrees. That Plaintiff is financially distressed is obvious from the nature of this action and Defendant does not dispute it. Where a party’s financial circumstance would effectively preclude him from a day in court, enforcing the forum selection clause would be unreasonable. Defendant’s motion to dismiss or transfer for improper venue is therefore DENIED.”

[ClarkUSA]

116. That's unfair. If a bank's mortgage practices aren't fraudulent, why should it be penalized?

[flyarm]

117. Boiler Rooms, Foreclosure Mills: The Story of America's Mortgage Industry

Boiler Rooms, Foreclosure Mills: The Story of America's Mortgage Industry

Written by Michael Hudson
Michael Hudson is a staff writer with the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit journalism organization.
October 10, 2010


snip:
Ex-employees of a law firm that serves as a “foreclosure mill” for major lenders describe a workplace where speed — not accuracy or justice — trumps all. “Somebody would get a 76-day foreclosure,” one recalled, “and then someone else would say, ‘Oh, I can beat that!’”

Shocking stuff. But surprising? Not for anyone who’s been tracking the recent history of the mortgage machine. Just about every corner of the America’s mortgage industry has been blemished by significant levels of fraud over the past decade.

On the front end of the process, for example, many mortgage pros used “boiler room” salesmanship to peddle loans to borrowers who didn’t understand what they were getting and couldn’t afford their loans in the long run.
To make these deals go through, some workers forged borrowers’ signatures on key documents, pressured real estate appraisers to inflate home values, and created fake W-2 tax forms that exaggerated loan applicants’ earnings.

At Ameriquest Mortgage, one of the companies I focus on in my new book about the subprime mortgage debacle, The Monster, this sort of cut-and-paste document production was so common employees joked that the work was being done in “The Lab” or the “Art Department.”

Please read the full article at:

http://www.eurasiareview.com/201010108958/boiler-rooms-...

[ClarkUSA]

119. All of your cut-and-paste jobs don't address the question of fairness.

If a bank's mortgage practices aren't fraudulent, why should it be penalized a national moratorium of its foreclosures?

[flyarm]

121. bullshit..you could not possibly have read it all since i posted it..

go play with someone else.I am not playing your game!

not possible for you to have read just what i have posted so far!

[ClarkUSA]

126. I did. To repeat: If a bank's mortgage practices aren't fraudulent, why should it be penalized?

It's a very simple question of fairness. What you seem to be advocating for -- a national moratorium on foreclosures, even when a bank's mortgage practices were not fraudulent --is grossly unfair and legally suspect.

[flyarm]

130. they will all be penalized..because they will collapse with the too big to fail banks..

it will be a domino effect..the collapse will be throughout the entire banking world..

unless this is dealt with in short order..the too big to fail..will fail..taking the rest of the banks with them..the big ones need to be broken up ..and held accountable for these frauds very soon..or they will collapse..not if..but when.

[ClarkUSA]

131. No, that's unfair. BTW, do you have anything besides doomsday rhetoric & irrelevant cut/paste jobs?

[ClarkUSA]

132. self-delete

[larryo]

144. Perhaps you could

identify a bank that is now involved in the foreclosure orgy but which did not participate in the securitization of mortgages?

[ClarkUSA]

147. Perhaps you could tell me why a bank which hasn't committed fraud should be penalized?

If not, then don't bother me with an irrelevant question that has nothing to do with what I asked in the first place.

[larryo]

156. You asked

why a bank that did not commit fraud should be penalized, and I challenged you to point at one that is involved in massive foreclosures that was not involved in the securitization fraud - i.e., that was not either a securitizer itself AND that did not do business with the securitizers. And now you want to argue that question had nothing to do with what you originally asked? You have a short attention span!

If you can name one, just one, then your question has some basis in reality. If you cannot, then you are just dissembling and trying to divert attention away from the fact that it was the banks, not all of the community banks but virtually all of the <i>national</i> banks, that created the housing bubble in the single-minded pursuit of short term profit, knowing exactly what they were doing all the time.

A bank that was not involved in the fraud should obviously not be penalized - now, if you can, name one!

And while you are at it, try to figure out what "relevant" means.

[flyarm]

118. Exclusive Bombshell of Foreclosure Fraud – Full Deposition of TAMMIE LOU KAPUSTA

Exclusive Bombshell of Foreclosure Fraud – Full Deposition of TAMMIE LOU KAPUSTA
Edited on Sat Oct-09-10 02:08 PM by flyarm
Exclusive Bombshell of Foreclosure Fraud – Full Deposition of TAMMIE LOU KAPUSTA Law Office of David J Stern


http://4closurefraud.org/2010/10/07/exclusive-bombshell... /

“I personally did not do it because I refused to do it.”
“I wasn’t going to falsify a military document.”
“I was told that that’s fine, somebody else on your team will do it.”



Posted by Foreclosure Fraud on October 7, 2010


***be sure to read highlighted part of the deposition ..and understand what was going on illegally with our military personal's social security numbers to gain documents on other military people!

......................................................................

PAY ATTENTION TO THIS SECTION!!

They
23 would be stamped and signed by a notary or not. Per
24 floor we had a designated spot to place them and Cheryl
25 would come once a day and sign them.
22
1 Q Sign them as what?
2 A As –
3 Q For the bank?
4 A Correct.
5 Q Or for MERS or whoever it was for?
6 A Correct.
7 Q Would these notaries be there watching her as
8 she signed?
9 A No.
10 Q She would just sit there and sign stacks of
11 them?
12 A Correct. As far as notaries go in the firm I
13 don’t think any notary actually used their own notary
14 stamp. The team used them.
15 Q There were just stamps around?
16 A Yes.
17 Q And you actually saw that?
18 A I was part of that.
19 Q You did it? Are you a notary?
20 A No, I’m not.
21 Q Did you sign as a witness?
22 A I did not. I signed as a witness on one
23 document and after that I decided that I didn’t want to
24 put my name as a witness anymore.
25 Q Tell me about the stamps. You stamped them?
23
1 A Yeah, I had stamps. Each team had a notary on
2 them or notaries that I was aware of. Whether they were
3 or weren’t wasn’t –
4 Q You had stamps?
5 A Correct. We would stamp them and they would
6 get signed.
7 Q Stamp them in blanks?
8 A Yes.
9 Q Who would sign them?
10 A Other people on the team that could sign the
11 signature of the person or just a check on there or
12 whatever.
13 Q Was that common practice?
14 A Yes.
15 Q Was that standard practice?
16 A Pretty much.
17 Q What about the witnesses?
18 A Those would be signed by juniors who were –
19 Q Standing there?
20 A Here, sign this. It has to go to Cheryl, sign
21 it. Then it would go and sit at the desk where Cheryl
22 would sign everything.
23 Q Out of view of the notary and out of view of
24 the witnesses?
25 A Correct.
....
9 A There were people that were responsible for
10 signing Cheryl’s name. Cheryl, Tammie Sweat, and Beth
11 Cerni. Those were the only three people that could sign
12 Cheryl’s name. If you ever look at assignments you’ll
13 see that they are not all the same.
....
1 Q What do you mean falsify a military document?
2 A Well, I’m using the main defendant’s social
3 security number on somebody else’s name, not his name.
4 John Doe and the main defendant was James, I was taking
5 James’ social security number and putting John Doe’s
6 name in there. I wasn’t but that’s what the practice
7 was. The judges started saying we’re not going to
8 consider service completed until –
9 Q There’s a miliary search?
10 A Correct.
11 Q So why wouldn’t they use the right social
12 security number for the right person?
13 A Because you don’t have a social for an NKA or
14 unknown tenant. They wouldn’t enter a final judgement
15 unless the military doc was there.
16 Q So you just used anybody’s?
17 A Correct.



..........................

wonder how many Vets this was used on??

Or perhaps some military with info on illegal activity ..in say >>>IRAQ? or AFGHANISTAN...WHO COULD HAVE BEEN OR COULD BE IN THE FUTURE.. threatened with this????????? Think of the implications of this and the possiblity of the abuse of this against our military??????????? lIKE SAY ENLISTED MILITARY ..WHO COULD NOW LOSE THEIR HOMES IF THEY TOLD WHAT THEY SAW THAT WAS ILLEGAL..OR SAW WAR CRIMES THEY WITNESSED..the ramifications and implications of this could be devistating !

[flyarm]

120. informative links for those who want to know the truth!

************************Here are some links:*******************************



*Judge Thomas Porteous and the Judicial ‘Devil’s Den” from Whence He Came

http://newsblaze.com/story/20100922041842lawg.nb/topstory.html

*Lack of Legal Help: One More Way the Deck Is Stacked Against Homeowners

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/lack-of-legal-help-one-mo_b_310353.html

*Case In Point: Foreclosure Mills, Judicial Fraud, Consumer Exploitation. . .

http://open.salon.com/blog/wwwlawgraceorg/2010/08/18/case_in_point_foreclosure_mills_judicial_fraud_consumer

* EXCLUSIVE: Fannie and Freddie’s Foreclosure Barons

http://motherjones.com/politics/2010/07/david-stern-djsp-foreclosure-fannie-freddie?

*Lehman Brothers, Wells Fargo Foreclosure and Insurance Claims

http://www.lawgrace.org/2008/09/14/lehman-brothers%E2%80%99-mortgage-troubles-nationally-evidence-of-foreclosure-fraud-deception-and-conspiracy-with-wells-fargo-deceptive-judicial-filings/

*Response to: ‘Louisiana Courts’ Low Ranking Based on Flawed Data’

http://newsblaze.com/story/20100327052856lawg.nb/topstory.html/

*OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT OBAMA on Foreclosure Crisis

http://www.pr-inside.com/open-letter-to-president-obama-on-foreclosure-crisis-r1505916.html

*Super Future Equities Inc. v. Wells Fargo, et al.,

http://www.bankruptcylawnetwork.com/2007/05/11/what-are-those-mortgage-servicers-doing/

*DEBTOR’S HELL, a 4-part investigation by the Boston Globe

http://www.boston.com/news/specials/debt/

*Dubious Fees Hit Borrowers in Foreclosures

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/06/business/06mortgage.html?_r=3&hp&oref=slogin&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

[flyarm]

122. The Finality of Foreclosure Sales

The Finality of Foreclosure Sales
posted by Bob Lawless

http://www.creditslips.org/creditslips/2010/10/the-finality-of-foreclosure-sales.html

read the comments as well..very informative

snip:
Over at the New York Times, Ron Lieber has an article today with a new angle on the document problems that have caused mortgage lenders like GMAC Mortgage, JP Morgan Chase, and Bank of America to call a halt to foreclosure proceedings. Lieber asks what would happen "if scores of people who had lost their homes to foreclosure somehow persuaded a judge to overturn the proceedings?" What would happen to the persons who had purchased the homes out of foreclosure and are now living in them?

The answer, Lieber writes, might depend on whether they have title insurance. Lieber is not necessarily wrong, but the article conveys more of a sense of crisis than is probably appropriate for the title insurers. That is not to say that the mortgage documentation problems are not serious for other reasons or that the title insurers are home free. The law, however, strongly protects the finality of past foreclosure sales.

At first, these rules might seem unfair. Why should the law protect old court proceedings that have been tainted by mistake or, even worse, fraud? The answer, of course, is for the instrumental reason that a court system could not operate where every old judgment was open to attack. Losing parties will almost always feel the judge make a mistake or the opposing party misled the court through half-truths or outright lies. Before a court enters final judgment, procedural rules and court appeals are designed to maximize the possibility the truth will win out and to minimize the possibility of judicial error. The law imposes a very heavy burden on those seeking to attack final court judgments.

The same ideas strongly protect the finality of a court's foreclosure judgment. The foreclosure judgment, however, is only an interim step to the ultimate disposition of the property at the foreclosure sale and the transfer of the deed. Now, third party rights will come into play, and the need for finality becomes even stronger. If foreclosure deeds were subject to attack, at worse we might have no bidders at the sale, and at best we would have drastically lower prices. Even if the successful purchaser at the foreclosure sale is the lender, it will be selling later to a third party, and we will have the same need for finality.


edit to add:

Robert Lawless, professor of law, specializes in bankruptcy, consumer credit, and business law. He is intensely interested in empirical legal studies and interdisciplinary work. His book, Empirical Methods in Law, written with University of Illinois law professors Jennifer K. Robbennolt and Thomas S. Ulen, was recently released by Aspen Publishing. In addition to a course in empirical methods, he teaches in the areas of bankruptcy and commercial law.

Professor Lawless is one of seven regular contributors to the blog Credit Slips, a discussion on credit and bankruptcy. He also is a member of the Consumer Bankruptcy Project, a long-term empirical project studying persons who file bankruptcy. The latest report from the Consumer Bankruptcy Project received the 2009 Editor’s Prize from the American Bankruptcy Law Journal. Professor Lawless has testified before Congress, and his work has been featured in media outlets such as CNN, CNBC, The New York Times, USA Today, the National Law Journal, the L.A. Times, the Financial Times, and Money magazine.

Prior to joining the faculty at the University of Illinois, Professor Lawless was the Gordon & Silver, Ltd. Professor of Law at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas William S. Boyd School of Law. From 1993 to 2002, he was on the faculty at the University of Missouri-Columbia School of Law, and he has been a visiting faculty member at the University of Illinois, Ohio State University, and Washington University in St. Louis. Professor Lawless began his career as a law clerk for the Honorable Harlington Wood, Jr., of the United States Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit and then practiced law in Washington, D.C., with the firm of Zuckert, Scoutt & Rasenberger.

He received both his bachelor's degree in accounting with highest honors and J.D. summa cum laude from the University of Illinois and served as editor-in-chief of the University of Illinois Law Review.

[flyarm]

124. The Foreclosure Crisis Explained – as Sausage Making

a very simplified way of understanding what is going on and what has gone on..and the consequences of our government covering this up!


The Foreclosure Crisis Explained – as Sausage Making

By: Becca Friday October 8, 2010 9:10 pm



http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/75666

I am not posting this because taking it out of context does it no good.

do read the comments after ..

[flyarm]

125. ""meat" of the alleged violations:" In California Case against Countrywide.

Class Action Lawsuit Against Countrywide: California in

http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=168698

Class Action Lawsuit Against Countrywide: California
The Market Ticker ® - Commentary on The Capital Markets
Posted 2010-10-09 20:31
by Karl Denninger
in Foreclosuregate
Class Action Lawsuit Against Countrywide: California

snip:

This is an extremely-important case folks. The pleadings here, like the case in Kentucky, lay the table in terms of the games that were played during the "Rah-Rah" years.

Let's start with the "meat" of the alleged violations:



And the first "meaty" part of the complaint....

5. The fraud perpetrated by the Countrywide Defendants from 2003 through 2007, including by BofA starting no later than 2007, was willful and pervasive. It begin with simple greed and then accelerated when Countrywide founder and CEO Angelo Mozilo (“Mozilo”) discovered that Countrywide could not sustain its business, unless it used its size and large market share in California to systematically create false and inflated property appraisals throughout California. Countrywide then used these false property valuations to induce Plaintiffs and other borrowers into ever-larger loans on increasingly risky terms. As Mozilo knew from no later than 2004, these loans were unsustainable for Countrywide and the borrowers and to a certainty would result in a crash that would destroy the equity invested by Plaintiffs and other Countrywide borrowers.


In other words, Countrywide is alleged to not only have made bad loans, but also to have intentionally inflated appraisals.

6. Hand-in-hand with its fraudulently-obtained mortgages, Mozilo and others at Countrywide hatched a plan to “pool” the foregoing mortgages and sell the pools for inflated value. Rapidly, these two intertwined schemes grew into a brazen plan to disregard underwriting standards and fraudulently inflate property values – county-by-county, city-by-city, person-by-person – in order to take business from legitimate mortgage-providers, and moved on to massive securities fraud hand-in-hand with concealment from, and deception of, Plaintiffs and other mortgagees on an unprecedented scale.


Oh, that's rich. So not only (it is alleged) did Countrywide bamboozle borrowers, they also bamboozled investors.


9. It is now all too clear that this was the ultimate high-stakes fraudulent investment scheme of the last decade. Couched in banking and securities jargon, the deceptive gamble with consumers’ primary assets – their homes – was nothing more than a financial fraud perpetrated by Defendants and others on a scale never before seen. This scheme led directly to a mortgage meltdown in California that was substantially worse than any economic problems facing the rest of the United States. From 2008 to the present, Californians’ home values decreased by considerably more than most other areas in the United States as a direct and proximate result of the Defendants’ scheme set forth herein. The Countrywide Defendants’ business premise was to leave the borrowers, including Plaintiffs, holding the bag once Countrywide and its executives had cashed in reaping huge salaries and bonuses and selling Countrywide’s shares based on their inside information, while investors were still buying the increasingly overpriced mortgage pools and before the inevitable dénouement. This massive fraudulent scheme was a disaster both foreseen by Countrywide and waiting to happen. Defendants knew it, and yet Defendants still induced the Plaintiffs into their scheme without telling them.

There's the base of it all....

24. Defendants have gone to great lengths to avoid producing documents in this litigation because they know that such documents will establish all details of the massive fraud they perpetrated on Plaintiffs and other Californians. PennyMac, the Granada Network and Defendants’ overseas operations are used by Defendants to systematically hide documents. By delaying production of documents, the Defendants are buying time as they (a) accept the benefits of the scheme described herein, (b) cover up their fraud, and (c) make it materially more expensive and difficult for Plaintiffs and their counsel to obtain a just result.


Of course there's the famous "let's hide Waldo" game once the gig is pretty much up. After all, if we have to produce the documents, well, our goose might be cooked - and that would be bad.

So what else is presented in here? Oh, all sorts of good stuff. Here's a sampling:


275. Defendant CT REAL ESTATE SERVICES, INC. is a California corporation – corporation number C0570795 – and is a resident of Ventura County, California. Defendant CT REAL ESTATE SERVICES has acted alongside and in concertwith BofA in carrying out the concealment described herein and in continuing to conceal from Plaintiffs, from the California general public, and from regulators the details of the securitization and sale of deeds of trust and mortgages (including those of Plaintiffs herein) that would expose all Defendants herein to liability for sale of mortgages of California citizens – including all Plaintiffs herein – for more than the actual value of the mortgage loans. The sale and particularly the undisclosed sale of mortgage loans in excess of actual value violates California Civil Code, §§ 1709 and 1710, and California Business and Professions Code § 17200 et seq., 15 U.S.C. §§ 1641 et seq. and other applicable laws.

That sounds like a problem to me......

[ClarkUSA]

128. What is wrong with what David Axelrod said? Not all banks committed mortgage fraud.

None of your cut-and-paste jobs answer that question. It's a very simple question of fairness. What you seem to be advocating for -- a national moratorium on foreclosures, even when a bank's mortgage practices were not fraudulent --is grossly unfair and legally suspect.

[flyarm]

135. because he knows damn well that this is fraud of epic proportions..and 40 states are about to open

investigations of this horrific fraud on the American people!

read the damn articles..i refuse to waste another minute answering you when I have provided enough reaidng for you to understand..if you don't want to under stand fine..not my problem!

[ClarkUSA]

139. That doesn't make any sense. What you're advocating is grossly unfair and legally suspect.

Why should banks who have not engaged in fraudulent mortgage practices be penalized?

[flyarm]

153. turn on MSNBC right now..you will get a frigging ear full!

as i said I won't answer you anymore..your answer is over and over in what i have posted..

You claim i am pasting..bullshit..I have read each an everything I have posted here...I have spent god knows how many hours researching this stuff for a family member who is going through this at present..I have highlighted for you,,and you keep pasting the same stupid question over and over..without ever reading any of thos information...and I know damn well you haven't read a thing..because your answer is in numerous of these articles.
..over and over again!

You have the same behavior of people who posted for 8 years under another president..

and I wouldn't play with them..and I am not playing your games..

game over!

[ProudDad]

145. ALL BANKS commit the biggest fraud of ALL

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2550156453790090544#

And how it could be...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBX-jaxMneo

[flyarm]

154. WASH RINSE REPEAT, WASH RINSE REPEAT,WASH RINSE REPEAT

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[flyarm]

129. Foreclosuregate – The “Nothingburger” Defense Gets Destroyed « Foreclosure Fraud – Fighting Foreclos

Foreclosuregate – The “Nothingburger” Defense Gets Destroyed « Foreclosure Fraud – Fighting Foreclosure Fraud by Sharing the K


Foreclosuregate – The “Nothingburger” Defense Gets Destroyed
Posted by Foreclosure Fraud on October 9, 2010

The “Nothingburger” Defense Gets Destroyed
Or more than destroyed.

Janet Tavakoli: This is the biggest fraud in the history of the capital markets. And it’s not something that happened last week. It happened when these loans were originated, in some cases years ago. Loans have representations and warranties that have to be met. In the past, you had a certain period of time, 60 to 90 days, where you sort through these loans and, if they’re bad, you kick them back. If the documentation wasn’t correct, you’d kick it back. If you found the incomes of the buyers had been overstated, or the houses had been appraised at twice their worth, you’d kick it back. But that didn’t happen here. And it turned out there were loan files that were missing required documentation. Part of putting the deal together is that the securitization professional, and in this case that’s banks like Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan, has to watch for this stuff. It’s called perfecting the security interest, and it’s not optional.

Now you getting it folks?

This is NOT a “minor clerical error.”

It is NOT correctable at this point in time.

These securities are FATALLY DEFECTIVE. The parties with the legal duty to check these facts did not do so.

It gets worse.

Most people don’t understand that these securities were (and are) typically “sold forward.”

That is, the bank doesn’t take its own money, loan it to homebuyers, and then take the notes and securitize them, selling the pieces to recover its money.

No, what happened then (and still does today) is that these MBS are sold first and filled after!

read the rest at the link...........

[flyarm]

133. Attorneys General in 40 States Said to Join on Foreclosures

Attorneys General in 40 States Said to Join on Foreclosures Fri Oct-08-10 09:58 PM

40 states !!!!!!

The game of musical chairs has begun.
WHO will be left owing how much on gazillions of dollars of fraudulent Mortgage bonds?

Attorneys general in about 40 states may announce a joint investigation into foreclosures at the largest banks and mortgage firms, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter.

State attorneys general led by Iowa’s Tom Miller are in talks that may lead to the announcement of a coordinated probe as soon as Oct. 12, said the person, who declined to be identified because a final agreement hasn’t been reached. The number of states may change because several are still deciding whether to join the investigation, the person said. New Mexico Attorney General Gary King said today in a statement that his state will join a multi-state effort.

Lawyers representing the banks are expecting a more widespread investigation, according to Patrick McManemin, a partner at Patton Boggs LLP, a Washington-based law firm that represents banks, loan servicers and financial institutions. Bank of America Corp., the biggest U.S. lender, today extended a freeze on foreclosures to all 50 states.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-08/attorneys-gene ...

And why this rush by everybody to investigate?

Perhaps this:

'This is the biggest fraud in the history of the capital markets'

Janet Tavakoli: This is the biggest fraud in the history of the capital markets. And it’s not something that happened last week. It happened when these loans were originated, in some cases years ago.


http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/10/thi ...

[ClarkUSA]

141. Great but note that they're not engaged in a witch hunt against banks who have not committed fraud.

[ProudDad]

142. You DO realize we don't need those fucking banks...

Steady state local economies that are the right size for the local bioregion's resource base...

Local financing of housing requirement...

Living within our means on Earth...

Don't need no fucking banks financing wars, population overshoot, catastrophic global climate destabilization and pollution, and don't forget MacMansions(tm) in the hills...

Don't need them, don't want them...


How the banks rip us all off!
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-25501564537900...

And how it could be...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBX-jaxMneo

http://steadystate.org/

[larryo]

163. Actually, I think we do.

Unfortunately, I think we do need banks. However, we don't need <b>private</b> banks. In the colonies, and in some states immediately after the colonial period, no taxes were collected on wages or profits because the state governments supported themselves through interest earned on loans made by state banks. Those loans were strictly controlled as to interest charged, and it was in their interests, because it is in the interests of the community, that those loans be <i>repaid</i> rather than collected. So the banks were willing to work with people, because the people were the bankers' next door neighbors and the banks were not permitted to profiteer.

Most of the private banking at the time was done by the Bank of England (a creature of monarchy) and by the Rothschilds or their nominees. The history of these institutions reveals a campaign of economic imperialism waged for generations - the War of 1812 was actually a continuation of what we call the Revolutionary War, but its underlying driving force was British economic imperialism, and the Rothschild banks were deeply involved in financial arrangements with all sides.

Andrew Jackson slew the second national bank, created by a coterie of Congressional insiders who had sold out to the banks, much as so many of them have today. The single most contentious issue between founding factions - the Federalists vs. the Jeffersonian Democrats, was the propriety of the establishment of a privately owned national bank. This fight has been going on for a long time.

The sordid tale of the creation the Federal Reserve is told in a book entitled "The Secret of Jekyll Island." It is easily available at Amazon if you are really interested. I would also recommend "Secrets of the Temple" by William Grieder - it is a page turner, if you can believe it about a book about banking. Are you aware that the government has a deal with The Fed that The Fed will print the money - <i>the lawful currency of the United States</i> - and then the government will borrow the money at interest before it is circulated?

Why should we be paying interest on our own currency?

Lincoln paid the Civil War debts of the union by ordering the mint to print "greenbacks," thus saving the interest that would have gone to the private banks had he borrowed the money from them. If banking and credit-giving was simply viewed as a public utility, which it actually is (as we have learned), these problems would resolve themselves.

The upshot of all this is that private banking benefits only the bankers, who as a group are about as trustworthy as a gang of crackheads. But banks are necessary for growth, for investment and to handle the currency - if you think growth is not necessary, just remember what Bob Dylan said: "Him not busy bein' born is busy dyin'."

[ProudDad]

168. That's what I said...

"we don't need those fucking banks"

The ones that charge "interest" -- the concept that there's an infinite amount of resources on a finite Earth...

and we don't...

[flyarm]

150. Did GMAC Try to Bury Its Foreclosure Smoking Gun?

Did GMAC Try to Bury Its Foreclosure Smoking Gun?
The deposition the lender really, really doesn't want you to see.

— By Andy Kroll

http://motherjones.com/politics/2010/10/did-gmac-try-bury-its-foreclosure-smoking-gun

read the whole story...

snip:

Then, in mid-June, Cox says, something odd happened. GMAC fired the local attorney who'd handled the case up to that point and replaced her with counsel from a powerful white-shoe firm, Pierce Atwood. The new firm's first move was to accuse Cox of violating Maine civil court rules by distributing legal documents that caused "embarrassment, annoyance, oppression, and intimidation" of GMAC and Stephan. (GMAC's attorneys say Cox sent the deposition directly to the Florida blog, which he denies.)

The firm demanded financial sanctions against Cox totaling thousands of dollars. And it asked the court to make Cox retrieve the deposition from blogs and website, effectively yanking it off the Internet, and prevent him from further sharing the deposition or using it in any other GMAC-related cases. Cox fired back by saying he had every right to share the deposition. Blocking his use of the document violated his First Amendment rights, he argued.

Gina Proia, a GMAC spokeswoman, denied that the company was trying to "silence" Cox. "The pleadings in that case speak for themselves, and any attempt by Mr. Cox to characterize the pleadings in an inflammatory fashion are categorically disputed," she said in a statement.

After reviewing GMAC's plea to the court, Duke University law professor Tom Metzloff, a civil procedure expert, was skeptical about the mortgage company's claims. He says the American legal process tends to favor openness over blanket secrecy. Only in cases where a deposition contains trade secrets or highly personal information (the contents of a divorce case, for instance) do individuals or companies get to block it from becoming public. Whereas GMAC looks like "they're trying to close the barn door after the horse has gotten out," Metzloff says. "It looks like they're trying to do a little damage control."

[flyarm]

151. Automated Greed Factories: How Soulless Banking Is Crushing the Economy

Automated Greed Factories: How Soulless Banking Is Crushing the Economy
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rj-eskow/automated-greed-factories_b_757971.html


Richard (RJ) Eskow
Consultant, Writer, Senior Fellow with The Campaign for America's Future

Posted: October 11, 2010 10:50 AM

snip:
These are not "paperwork errors," as bankers and many compliant journalists have described them. Signing an affidavit when you don't know it's true is a crime. In many cases, the banks had to know the claims in these documents couldn't be proven. In a way, they had no choice but to submit fraudulent documents. Their financial edifice was a house of cards, and without proof of their claims they were forced to add more cards to it. "Robo-signing" was the natural next step, after the "robo-lending" and "robo-betting" that built the house of cards in the first place.

This behavior is the end result of lazy, greedy, non-reality-based banking. It is the ultimate - and probably inevitable - product off a system that has turned banks into factories for the automated production of profits without any connection to the outside world.

The soul of a dead machine

The bankers signing these documents were performing a criminal act.


But they were also like Mickey Mouse as the Sorcerer's Apprentice in Fantasia, running harder and harder to keep up with the creatures they had animated to do their bidding. As for the "flash crash," we've been assured that new "circuit breakers" will prevent future calamities. But we've also seen a series of subsequent "mini crashes," including one plunge in aluminum prices that was described as the "Jumpin' Jack Flash mini crash" (after the Whoopi Goldberg hacker movie, not the Stones song.)

How did the system get so irrational, so abstract, so voracious and uncontrollable? Another story this week tells us.

The US Senate, acting as swiftly and invisibly as a algorithmic trading program, approved legislation that would have created new hurdles for people trying to protect themselves banks from illegal "robo-signed" documents. After a public outcry the President refused to sign the bill, but its very passage showed how a mechanized banking sector can use campaign contributions and political connections as its robotic arms and legs.




While they've been convincing us how busy and important they are, bankers have actually been doing less and less real work, with less grounding in reality as the rest of us know it. The Soul in the Machine has died, especially at the largest and most powerful banking institutions - the ones that remain Too Big to Fail and Too Inhuman to Live.

[OnceUponTimeOnTheNet]

162. kick. nt.

[Devil_Fish]

164. Dear White House, It's quite simple, If you don't have the deed, you can't forclose. NT