Bank Shot, Nobody Can Buy or Sell Property

The Market Oracle ^ | 10-11-2010 | Submissions (James Howard Kunstler)

[blam]

Bank Shot, Nobody Can Buy Or Sell Property

Housing-Market / US Housing
Oct 11, 2010 - 02:47 PM
By: Submissions

James Howard Kunstler writes: The banking authorities were shocked - shocked - to discover last week that an awful lot of mortgage paper in this country is not quite in order... appears to contain, er, irregularities... seems less than kosher... frankly, exudes an odor like unto dead carp or, shall we say, a heap of dead carp the size of the building at 3900 Wisconsin Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. Any day now we will hear that... mistakes... were... made.

Is it indelicate to say that the USA as an enterprise has its head so deeply and firmly up its ass that the all the proctologists alive on planet Earth could not extract the collective cranium from the collective cloacal chamber even with the aid of a Bucyrus-Erie 1060-WX bucket-wheel excavator? Like, where were we the past ten years?
Surely not everybody in the nation was doing bong hits while playing Grand Theft Auto, or watching The Real Housewives of New Jersey, or downing tequila shots and Percocets in the parking lot of the Talladega Superspeedway, or cooking meth in the family room, or whacking it to Internet porn, or searching for "excitement" in one of America's 450 commercial gambling casinos.

Did nobody, for instance at Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, review any of the paperwork fluttering in from places like Countrywide or Ditech and scores of other boiler rooms where mortgages were hatched like Peking ducklings?
There was an awful lot of it, I'm sure, but aren't there a lot of seat-warmers at Fannie and Freddie who collect their salaries for the express purpose of reading mortgage documents? Was nobody the least bit suspicious about the mysterious flurry of "restaurant employees" and "lawn-care technicians" buying million-dollar condominiums with no money down at terms that would make a three-card monte dealer weep with laughter?
After all, they had to sort and bundle all these contracts for the likes of Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan and Citibank - the list isn't that long, but you get the picture....

And speaking of these august institutions, didn't anybody in the divisions charged with assembling complex securities composed of mortgages, or composed of bets against bundles of mortgages, or composed of some notion of something dimly related to a rumor of mortgage lending - didn't any of these expensively-educated chaps or lasses pause a moment in their aardvark-like labors of bonus-seeking to withdraw their snouts from the moist ground where swindles pupate and at least goggle in self-admiration at the fantastic legal novelty of their endeavors.

And what of the numberless agencies, federal on down, starting with, say, the Office of Thrift Supervision, or the Comptroller of the Currency, or the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, or the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, or the chairpersons of a dozen senate and house subcommittees on matters related to finance, or the various inspectors general from sea to shining sea or the attorneys general of all fifty states plus the US Department of Justice, or the countless fiduciary officers of the pension funds who tripped over each other buying all the tainted paper churned out like so much Purina Rat Chow - or, for Godsake, a lonely loan officer here or there with something resembling a conscience?

Nobody in the USA noticed anything the least bit fishy. And now all that epic rot has eaten through the last hanging tendrils of the banking system. And the whole shootin' match is fixing to seize up and blow like a Chevy Big Block Super Stroker 632 engine that some clown has poured karo syrup into.

But, sadly, I can only return to the trope of cranial rectosis. And when your head is in such a dark place, it's hard to see the truth, let alone tell something you can't even see. And sadly too, the truth is that this ghastly mortgage fiasco was a fraud that the whole nation perpetrated on itself in a tragic rush to get something for nothing.
Since the failure of authority is complete, it's now up to nature to act as the arresting officer. She's a harsh mistress. She's going to kick our ass.

I'm sorry, but I don't see anyway out of this. With fraud absolutely everywhere in our banking system, like some advanced metastatic cancer, financial metabolism comes to a sickening stop.
Nobody can buy or sell property. Nobody can trust any American financial institution. Money can't circulate. Nobody will be able to get any money.
It won't be long before that translates into nobody getting any food. We may be a nation of clowns, but as Lon Chaney famously observed a while ago - when explaining his technique of horror movie-making - "...there's nothing funny about a clown in the moonlight...."

James Howard Kunstler

[blam]

Karl Denninger's post on this subject:

Kunstler: Must-Read

[Blogger]

Sounds downright apocalyptic

[null and void]

Phony Falsified Foreclosure Papers ping

Background:

Senators seek halt to foreclosures - Reid fighting for his political life

BofA Halts All Foreclosures

BofA stops foreclosures in all 50 states

Obama sends foreclosure docs bill back to Congress (pocket veto)

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

Minnesota attorney general asks lenders to halt foreclosures

Texas Freezes Foreclosures

Can this monumental mortgage foreclosure train wreck be salvaged?

LISTEN TO THIS TERRIFING 911 CALL- BANK BREAKING DOWN A DOOR!

I got just what you need. Lender Processing Services’ DOCX Document Fabrication Price Sheet

[Clintonfatigued]

This is ominous. Can anything be done?

[UCANSEE2]

It’s a game to stave off the collapse until after the elections.

[SoConPubbie]

It’s a game to stave off the collapse until after the elections.

It's also a game to buy votes by Corporations friendly to Democrats.

[frog in a pot]

Thank you for the links.

[Myrddin]

Buy stuff you need now or in the future before
your cash becomes worthless. Food, clothing, some
ammo to defend your person and property. A pair
of shoes while they are still for sale and within
your means. It’s not going to improve any time
soon.

[blam]

Market Currents

"Monday, October 11, 6:20 PM
The Obama administration apparently heeds the pleas of groups who call a potential foreclosure moratorium "catastrophic," and Yves Smith laments that Obama has thrown his weight behind banks rather than borrowers. But with Goldman Sachs (GS) the latest to freeze foreclosures, there may be nothing he can do to stop the train wreck.

[NoControllingLegalAuthority]

Well, one thing is for sure. Obama will be remembered well in history for presiding over the complete collapse of the U.S. economic system.

It might be a good idea to elect a U.S. president who has a clue if we ever get another chance to do it.

[Kartographer]

Move along folks. Nothing to see here. No fraud (Well there is fraud but only technically) here just a bunch of ‘dead beats’ trying to play the system to get free houses.

I say even if the banks have to use forgeries, post dated documents and perjury themselves to win a case for foreclosure its little we lose in our effort to make sure the ‘dead beats’ don't win. To hell with the rule of law!

[phockthis]

sfl

[blam]

ForclosureGate And Real Estate Armageddon

[2ndDivisionVet]

Anyone who knew anything about Ameriquest, Countrywide, Greentree or a hundred others like them knew this was coming, sooner or later. Stock up on bagged rice, beans, lentils, flour, canned goods, sugar & coffee. Buy as much ammo, gold, silver and other trade goods as possible. Start stocking up on water, too.

[Armed Civilian]

ping for reading when I sober up!

[JSteff]

A ton of panic over something that does not affect MOST people. The loans have always been bad and on the books. For 98% of those who have good mortgages and pay their bills nothing will change for you.

The bad ones have mostly always been there and yes most of it was created by Dodd an Frank meddling in the system process. None the less it was always there. Unless someone calls all the loans due immediately (like the Chinese) nothing will change.

Move along, nothing to see here, but keep all hands and arms inside the tram car please.

[TigersEye]

And still no word on who trashed the markets two years ago.

A Contrived Crisis? - You Decide

Sept. 15, 2008: Obama and McCain are virtually tied in their race for the presidency. Out of no-where, in the space of less than 2 hours, the Federal Reserve noticed a tremendous drawdown of money market accounts in the U.S. to the tune of $550 billion. Rep. Paul Kanjorski of Pennsylvania said that if authorities had not closed the banks, $5.5 trillion would have been withdrawn from US banks, which would have caused the collapse of the US within 24 hours.

[NVDave]

Actually, I’d say if you bought property from 2002 onwards, and your mortgage was sold into the secondary market, there’s a good likelihood that your ability to get a properly quiet title to your property when you pay off your mortgage is already compromised.