b4L.
There is some bathwater to be thrown out, and precious little baby. The author's viewpoint seems to border on anarchist (the financial reform bill is "tepid;") and she seems almost aglee that ownership may be rescinded upon a technicality.
On the face of it, MERS is analogous to DTCC, which nobody has ever heard of but without which (or without something quite like it) the cost of trading stocks would be incalculable. Now, if there is some difference between "real property" and "corporate equity" that is rooted in something other than archaic law, perhaps there is a good reason that MERS is portrayed as a nefarious "front" operation. And given that big money is, in fact, a lot more nefarious these days than it was when DTCC was being set up, perhaps, again, the suspicion is somewhat justified.
But the piece reads like a standard bogey-man story that is getting heavy rotation in all victim classes these days.
And speaking of DTCC, if you buy stock in another person's name to hide your ownership, a court will, if it can, point to you as the "beneficial owner" and the other individual as the nominee. And liabilities associated with ownership will be, naturally, the concern of the "beneficial owner." This is merely just.
So, then, if Citi is the beneficial owner of a mortgage, and MERS is a mere nominee, then Citi in fact owns the liabilities (or assets) associated with that mortgage -- in principal, at least. The suits mentioned in the article seem to only want the "beneficial owner" precedent to apply when there's liability involved, not assets. No fair on that.
Finally, however, the owner of the mortgage(s) is(are) the owner(s) of the bonds that own them. It's that simple. And somewhere, there is a record of who owns what bond and mortgage that bond owns.
And those owners deserve recourse.
Free and clear title thanks to some slimy lawyers' ambitious class action? Maybe it'll fly, but it won't be good for anyone. Except lawyers.
I posted this article, completely unaware of the recent MERS buzzes -- I posted it because I want to see the Impenetrable Death Star known as the Information Complex be blown to bits and I felt that any suit that targets database activity would be a helpful step along the way.