Posted on 10/25/2010 5:53:50 AM PDT by Chunga85
Frightening Fallout
In order to easily buy and sell mortgages between themselves so that these loans might be repackaged, securitized and then sold to investors as mortgage-backed securities, banks and other lenders needed a quick way to "trade" individual mortgages. They created a company called Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems (MERS). This group includes Bank of America Corp. (NYSE: BAC), GMAC LLC (NYSE: GMA), Wells Fargo & Co. (NYSE: WFC), Washington Mutual (now owned by JPMorgan Chase), the United Guaranty Corp. unit of American International Group Inc. (NYSE: AIG), Fannie Mae (OTC: FNMA), Freddie Mac (OTC: FMCC), mortgage-servicing companies and other similarly interested members.
You may not realize it, but at your home-purchase "closing," you sign a document that appoints MERS as the "nominee" for the lender that granted you a mortgage. That gives the nominee the right to flip your mortgage to any other bank or lender it chooses. That's how banks move mortgages around to package them into different securities.
But that brings us to the crux of the controversy: Every time there's change on the title (a change occurs when the nominee switches the lender on your title out for another), local governments require that a new title be recorded. Of course, those governments - the county or municipality that you live in - also charge a "recording fee." MERS also charges a fee, but it's a lot less than government recording fees.
Here's the problem. In creating MERS, these institutions actually changed the land-title system that this country - for much of its history - has relied upon to determine legal ownership status of land titleholders
(Excerpt) Read more at moneymorning.com ...
$nip>
Not only did the lenders sidestep (read that to mean avoid) paying billions of dollars in fees to local governments, they paid themselves from the fees that MERS collected.
MERS is facing class-action lawsuits and civil racketeering suits around the country and their members are being individually named in all these suits. One suit alleges that MERS owes California a potential $60 billion to $120 billion in unpaid land-recording fees.
$nip>
As long as our clerks of court focus on collecting $1 per page for court we'll be fine.
Tax Cheat Ping
The Alinsky plan crash the system.
There's a theory that you can crash a system ~ but what if the system is very big, heavy, consists of gazillions of tons of wood, iron, dirt, and exists within a matrix of division that's set by a third party?
Let me say this about that "I don't think so".
Sure, you can screw up the files like Sandy Burger did George Bush' Reserve Officer's Files, but that's about it. Eventually those files can be found, retrieved, and properly placed.
Regarding recording fees, the boys and girls down at the County Court House will have to prove that IN COURT for each and every instance. Obviously that will take time.
Article aims at banks but misses property taxes and insurance!
If home is in foreclosure not only are banks not being paid but Counties are not getting property tax and insurance companies aren’t getting paid also.
Translated, look for layoffs in County, School, and other down stream County departments. Look for insurance companies to raise rates to cover losses.
Look, the US banking system is a disaster. It absolutely, positively is failing and needs to fail. Having the US banking system be "crushed" is the first, necessary step on the road to recovery.
History is full of collapsed money systems. Richmond 1865, Berlin 1945, Peiping 1949, Havana 1959 are all recent examples.
Yes, everyone's savings are going to be wiped out, but, if they are denominated in USD, they're gone already. Most people just don't know it.
We can't start over, in the way we need to, until the system falls.
The collapse of the Federal Reserve, a/k/a the Third Bank of the United States won't be the END of the US economy. It will be the BEGINNING.
Burn, baby, burn!
What if the documents were shredded? And the LAW says the originals are required to assign to a new party? That's the situation we are seeing now. They are trying to forclose on properties even though they willingly destroyed their legal claim to the property several years ago. Notice the claims of forged documents in these stories, they are trying to fraudulently replace what they willingly destroyed in violation of state law.
This is where -—show me the note-— comes in. The note that you signed that has your ink signature on it that legally put you on the hook to pay a mortgage. Where is it? In a warehouse or lost in the shuffle or shredded by mistake or to destroy evidence?
It all depends on what you mean by "original" ~ and that's going to be marginally different in each state.
I can see lawsuits in 2912 from my yard!
So here’s the question that I would like to see answered.
I currently rent and am concerned about what would happen if my landlord were to have this property foreclosed upon due to this mess. I don’t think this would happen, but I can see how it could.
What are my rights in this instance? If the bank forecloses on the house and my landlord contests it, where do I stand, legally?
If you have some worthless USDs sitting around in your pocket or bank account please send them to me your steadfast FReeper FRiend>>>>> Or send them to to the FR fund raising drive
I am an artist and want to paper my wall with them. Send me your Andrew Jacksons and Benjamin Franklins
stay until after the foreclosure goes thru. then, when the bank owns the home and wants you to leave, they will offer you cash to turn over the keys and leave it in presentable condition - typically about 1000 - 1200.
The MERS problem is also outlined in a rather long and exhaustive paper in the Cincinnati Law Review. The salient point is here:
With these services on offer, the mortgage finance industry quickly and wholeheartedly embraced recording and foreclosing its mortgage loans in MERS’s name, rather than the actual parties in interest. Instead of legislation or a landmark court ruling, mortgage industry insiders report that the key development in the acceptance of MERS was the endorsement of credit rating agencies such as Moody’s, Standard and Poor’s, and Fitch Investment. 71 For example, in 1999-before any significant appellate judicial opinion on the subject-Moody’s Investors Services issued a report concluding that MERS’s mechanism to put creditors on notice of a mortgage would not be harmed. 72 Moody’s concluded without citation to any court opinion, or even to any state recording statute, that “subsequent creditors of the entity selling the mortgages to the MBS [mortgage backed securities] transactions [sic] should not be able to contest the conveyance of the mortgages based on lack of notice. 73
Got that?
The agencies concluded without any legal justification whatsoever that this was all ok.
Since when does a ratings agency trump State Law?
more here
http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=170097
And Here’s Another One: Georgia
These are getting rather, well, numerous. Kinda like rabbits...
The claims here are familiar - MERS has no standing because MERS has no ownership interest. As a nominee MERS has no power beyond that of the underlying entity it serves as an agent of, and that agent must be identified and prove up it’s interest.
This is pretty black-letter stuff, and people are starting to figure it out.
Plaintiff shows herein that MERS’ foreclosure on Plaintiff’s property was not valid and was wrongful, as are those foreclosures by MERS on the property in the State of Georgia of all similarly situated persons to the Plaintiff wherein MERS sent the notice of foreclosure to the debtor and wherein MERS purports to have exercised the power of sale and auctioned the property. MERS does not have the authorized power to send a valid notice of foreclosure within the State of Georgia for those deeds where it is “solely a nominee” and does not have the authority or power under Georgia law to foreclose on a property or engage in an auction of sale on such property where is is “solely a nominee” on such deeds.
As a result of such unifonn, wrongful conduct by MERS, the Court must, inter alia: I) invalidate the foreclosure sale, 2) order as void the Foreclosure Deed (or Deed Under Power); and/or 3) restore equitable or legal title, if possible, as it existed just prior to the foreclosure sale and award compensation for any damages suffered as a result of MERS’ actions. Alternatively, the Court should impose a constructive trust over the proceeds from, or the value of the property as determined by, any such foreclosure auction.
It’s about damn time.
Dustin Rollins v Mers Class Action Suit
http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=170215
If Carter, Clinton, and Obama had not forced banks to make loans to unqualified people the banks would not have been in position to have to try to protect themselves.
Starting to get nervous about the JP Morgan stock I own. Sometimes it’s the only thing saving my portfolio and other times it’s the only thing going down. My broker asked me why I wanted to hold on to it but he couldn’t give any reason not to. What do you all think?
LAW? Who needs laws? Just banks don’t need laws, banks don’t have to abide by laws. Laws are for the little people. Banks make it up as they go. Face it either way they will used the law to make money on one end or get the government bail them out and make them whole on the other end. With a win/win like that what have they got to loose?
See what their deal is.
That is exactly what is going on and it is not right we are no better then the Banana Republics as long as this continues. They have nothing to lose but WE DO, we will end up picking up the bill for all this FRAUD and losing our Republic to boot. It’s CRIMINAL nothing less and it defines who we are as a people and a Nation. I am disgusted and sad at the same time.
Bank Of America Finally Confirms Foreclosure Errors, And A Whopping Incidence Rate
Bank of America, which is gearing to resume foreclosures as soon as today, has just confirmed that it has “discovered errors in 10 to 25 out of the first several hundred foreclosure cases it examined starting last Monday.” Assuming a nice round number of 500 or so tested cases, this means a faulty incidence rate of up to 4%. Considering that the bank has about 102,000 cases it is preparing to resume foreclosing on, this could mean that as much as 4,500 cases are about to put back. And who knows what else Bank of America is lying about?
If it looks like FRAUD well you know what they say...
Richard M. Bowen, former chief underwriter for Citigroup’s (nyse:C) consumer-lending group, said he warned his superiors of concerns that some types of loans in securities didn’t conform with representations and warranties in 2006 and 2007.
“In mid-2006, I discovered that over 60 percent of these mortgages purchased and sold were defective,” Bowen testified on April 7 before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission created by Congress. “Defective mortgages increased during 2007 to over 80 percent of production.”
Here comes the Class Action Suits
And Here’s Another One: Georgia
http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=170215
Even the Fed wants in
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/20/business/20bond.html
But what will happen? Oh I know you and I and taxpayers who had nothing what so ever to do with this Fraud will end up footing the bill because our politicians are owned by these banks and either it will come through more legislation or back door bailouts through quantitative easing destroying the dollar and our savings.
I’ll do you one better. I’d gladly send you paper Imperial Reichsmarks for any barbarous relic you have lying around.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.