“The note is often produced at some point in the litigation, but the real problem is, how did they get it? When did they get it? And did the transfer of ownership comport with federal and Florida law for the transfer of such negotiable instruments?”
In cases that are dismissed based on these arguments, foreclosure defense attorneys said lenders aren’t as eager to re-file the case.

Editor’s Note: If you ignore the hype about history being made, this is an informative article about a trend sweeping the country. Yes it IS that simple.

The best way to smoke out the REAL LENDER is by filing a lawsuit seeking to quiet title. This has already been done successfully in dozens of cases in many states. We are tracking what people are reporting. In almost ALL cases where this was the central focus of the attack against the pretender lender, the homeowner was awarded quiet title by DEFAULT. (The other side never answered).

TRANSLATION: The Court (Judge) entered a Final Judgment declaring that the homeowner owned his/her/their house free and clear of all encumbrances. The claims of the pretender lender were thrown out and the homeowner was left with his house as an asset, not alibaility. The homeowner was no longer subject to foreclosure or ANY claim on the note or mortgage that was signed at “closing.”

Like the NY York decisions recently reported quiet title is another way to invalidate the mortgage and extinguish the note and any right to enforce it.

CAUTION: “PRODUCE THE NOTE: It’s a valid strategy but it offends the sensibilities of many judges. If THAT is the focus of your attack or defense, then you are rolling the dice on ONE thing when there are many arrows in your quiver. Many Judges have held, contrary to the rules of evidence, that merely being unable to produce the original note is NOT a reason to stop the foreclosure. Legally it can be argued this is wrong. I think it is flawed legal reasoning. But the other side is that “just because the “lender” was sloppy in its record keeping does not mean the homeowner should get away scott free. ” Actually, legally, I think it DOES mean that and that Charney is right. But I think you need to couple your argument with why this is a matter of substance and not just procedure or legal sleight of hand.

The reason why many Judges HAVE applied the evidentiary rules regarding production of the note is that there could be someone else holding it with a greater right to enforce it than the pretender lender who is trying to foreclose. And in fact (with the help of a forensic analyst to assist as an expert) the securitization process multiple parties who COULD have the actual original note in their position and/or who COULD be parties with a superior legal right to be paid on the note —because THEY are the ones who actually advanced the money for the loan or they advanced the money to third parties who advanced the money to fund the loan.

Lawyer’s foreclosure defense of ‘quiet title’ faces tests

Jacksonville Business Journal – by Kimberly Morrison

April Charney of Jacksonville Area Legal Aid.

The house at 12920 Mt. Pleasant Road is a modest ranch-style home. The man in it is John McCampbell, a 61-year-old car mechanic who lives with his two children and fiancée.
He took out a $156,000 mortgage from the now-defunct Washington Mutual, which foreclosed on his home in 2004 after he lost his job. But when the lender was unable to produce the deed to prove it had a right to foreclose, McCampbell beat the foreclosure and remains there today.
Now McCampbell and his Fort Caroline home are poised to make history in foreclosure defense with an experimental legal approach that would wipe out his mortgage debt and hand him a clean deed. It’s called a “quiet title,” where the court establishes a party’s title to the property to remove or “quiet” any challenges or claims to it.
It sounds like an impossible endeavour. But April Charney, a Jacksonville Area Legal Aid attorney, has spent the past four years teaching lawyers across the country the legal framework of this foreclosure defense. With an average of 3,000 foreclosures filed every month in Jacksonville alone, there’s no shortage of lawyers tapping her expertise.
“It’s an exceptionally layered, nuanced practice of law, but right now a very productive one,” Charney said recently after her latest sold-out seminar in Jacksonville.
Bankers counter that Charney is taking advantage of a legal technicality.
Anthony DiMarco, executive vice president of governmental affairs for the Florida Bankers Association, said errors on assignments are not tantamount to a person not being responsible for their mortgage.
“When you are doing lots and lots of anything — and there were lots of these loans written — there are human beings involved and there were mistakes along the way just like anything else,” DiMarco said.

‘Show me the note’

Before asking the court to quiet a title, a foreclosure must be dormant for five years. That brings Charney to a critical juncture in many of her early cases where the five years is at or near its expiration. She’ll be seeking multiple quiet titles in 2010, including one for McCampbell, her client.
Charney is a national authority on foreclosure defense, and a driving force behind what is often called the “show me the note” movement making its way through jurisdictions across the country. The strategy is crippling lenders’ ability to foreclose on homes when they are not able to produce the note as evidence of their right to bring a foreclosure.
At the crux of her argument is the very loan itself, securitized loans that became commonplace in the late 1990s, and quickly dominated mortgage lending practice.
Mortgage securitization is the process of bundling home loans into securities and selling them to investors. Mortgage servicers collect monthly payments and distribute them to securities investors.
But Charney said the critical error was that the originating lenders systematically pledged the loans, and didn’t actually transfer them to the trusts that are supposed to hold them and issue the securities. The result is a paper trail that goes nowhere, and a reasonably successful legal strategy.

‘A red herring’

A secondary snag in lenders’ ability to obtain a foreclosure is the physical note, or lack thereof. The Florida Bankers Association testified to the Supreme Court task force on residential mortgage foreclosure that originals were “deliberately eliminated to avoid confusion” when entered into an electronic format. The problem with that is the court requires an original.
Ownership transfers after the foreclosure has been assigned, copies of notes and false signatures have been argued to amount to fraud.
“The ‘produce the note’ argument is really a red herring,” said Chip Parker, a Jacksonville foreclosure defense attorney. “The note is often produced at some point in the litigation, but the real problem is, how did they get it? When did they get it? And did the transfer of ownership comport with federal and Florida law for the transfer of such negotiable instruments?”
In cases that are dismissed based on these arguments, foreclosure defense attorneys said lenders aren’t as eager to re-file the case.
“There is some sloppiness, and what used to be tolerated by the courts is no longer being tolerated because the judges are starting to see the effect of sloppy pleading,” Parker said.

A slippery slope?

Lenders bringing foreclosures and attorneys defending them both claim to be on the side of their communities. Lawyers said the best thing for neighborhood stability and property values is to keep people in their homes. Bankers have a different approach.
“The best thing is to get through the foreclosure as quickly as you can,” DiMarco said. “The faster you can get through a foreclosure process, the faster we can get it sold and in the hands of someone who can get to be a contributing member of the community.”
DiMarco maintained that lenders are doing everything they can to work with homeowners and avoid a money-losing foreclosure, but took notice of a new phenomenon in the housing market — strategic foreclosures on the part of consumers. With courts backed up, mortgages upside down and banks more timid about foreclosing, some consumers who can pay are opting not to.
Lawyers don’t advise those who can afford to make their mortgage payments to stop in hopes they can get a free house out of it, and aren’t convinced that their tactics could provide an incentive for people to intentionally enter foreclosure. They point out that these are long, hard-fought battles that destroy credit.
Lawyers recognize that there must be some end other than a country full of ownerless and free homes. Charney is fiercely advocating a federal intervention, which bankers similarly see as the only reasonable solution.
“I had the vice president of a big mortgage company ask me, ‘What you’re doing here — do you understand what’s going to happen? You’re going to destroy the country. And if you don’t stop, we’re just going to go to Congress and get the laws changed.’ ” said Max Gardner III, a Shelby, N.C.-based bankruptcy attorney who also teaches foreclosure defense. “And my response is, ‘We have some changes we’d like to make, too.’ ”
kmorrison@bizjournals.com | 265-2218

Jose L. Semidey

NOW AVAILABLE ON KINDLE/AMAZON!

SEE calhoun_testimony LITANY of MORTGAGE LENDING ABUSES AND OTHER BANK ABUSES Admitted by Responsible Lending Association

Isn’t it interesting, frustrating, maddening that not only did Wall Street do it to 20 million homeowners in one form or another, they did it to the Federal Government too, which means they spread their pillage to all the taxpayers, not just the ones with mortgages.

By the way go get a copy of Nomi Prins, ex-director of Goldman Sachs, It Takes a Pillage. I saw her on C-Span “Afterwords” interviewed by Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont (I). She’s brilliant and (2) knows the ins and outs not only of the structure of mortgage derivatives but the math too.

What annoys me and should annoy ALL taxpayers is that we have been tricked by Wall Street AND Government into accepting the losses of Wall Street’s wild ride. Teaser rates for the Federal Government on bailouts that should never have occurred, FED rates that charge banks nothing for loans so they can go out and speculate (since Glass Steagel) while the taxpayer is on the hook. At the same time the FED is paying the “banks” a little extra to make them healthier.

Why doesn’t anybody get the fact that now these monsters of financial chicanery have unfettered access to your bank deposits to go and play with it as they wish. And not only are your deposits at the “bank” being used in this way, you are also guaranteeing this behavior if ANY bank fails! Where do you think this is leading folks? Competition is in worse shape than it was over a year ago. There is MORE RISK IN THE FINANCIAL MARKETPLACE than there was over a year ago.

Economists are warning us in despondent tones that the worst is yet to come but absent from the scene is the outrage from the public which is needed to force change and break the claims and power of the incestuous relationship between Washington and Wall Street.

The following is the lead article in NY Times Today. Some snippets from it as follows:

“The government is on teaser rates,” said Robert Bixby, executive director of the Concord Coalition, a nonpartisan group that advocates lower deficits. “We’re taking out a huge mortgage right now, but we won’t feel the pain until later.”

Treasury officials now face a trifecta of headaches: a mountain of new debt, a balloon of short-term borrowings that come due in the months ahead, and interest rates that are sure to climb back to normal as soon as the Federal Reserve decides that the emergency has passed.

Americans now have to climb out of two deep holes: as debt-loaded consumers, whose personal wealth sank along with housing and stock prices; and as taxpayers, whose government debt has almost doubled in the last two years alone, just as costs tied to benefits for retiring baby boomers are set to explode.

Global investors are shifting money into riskier investments like stocks and corporate bonds, and they have been pouring money into fast-growing countries like Brazil and China.

November 23, 2009

Payback Time

Wave of Debt Payments Facing U.S. Government
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS

WASHINGTON — The United States government is financing its more than trillion-dollar-a-year borrowing with i.o.u.’s on terms that seem too good to be true.

But that happy situation, aided by ultralow interest rates, may not last much longer.

Treasury officials now face a trifecta of headaches: a mountain of new debt, a balloon of short-term borrowings that come due in the months ahead, and interest rates that are sure to climb back to normal as soon as the Federal Reserve decides that the emergency has passed.

Even as Treasury officials are racing to lock in today’s low rates by exchanging short-term borrowings for long-term bonds, the government faces a payment shock similar to those that sent legions of overstretched homeowners into default on their mortgages.

With the national debt now topping $12 trillion, the White House estimates that the government’s tab for servicing the debt will exceed $700 billion a year in 2019, up from $202 billion this year, even if annual budget deficits shrink drastically. Other forecasters say the figure could be much higher.

In concrete terms, an additional $500 billion a year in interest expense would total more than the combined federal budgets this year for education, energy, homeland security and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The potential for rapidly escalating interest payouts is just one of the wrenching challenges facing the United States after decades of living beyond its means.

The surge in borrowing over the last year or two is widely judged to have been a necessary response to the financial crisis and the deep recession, and there is still a raging debate over how aggressively to bring down deficits over the next few years. But there is little doubt that the United States’ long-term budget crisis is becoming too big to postpone.

Americans now have to climb out of two deep holes: as debt-loaded consumers, whose personal wealth sank along with housing and stock prices; and as taxpayers, whose government debt has almost doubled in the last two years alone, just as costs tied to benefits for retiring baby boomers are set to explode.

The competing demands could deepen political battles over the size and role of the government, the trade-offs between taxes and spending, the choices between helping older generations versus younger ones, and the bottom-line questions about who should ultimately shoulder the burden.

“The government is on teaser rates,” said Robert Bixby, executive director of the Concord Coalition, a nonpartisan group that advocates lower deficits. “We’re taking out a huge mortgage right now, but we won’t feel the pain until later.”

So far, the demand for Treasury securities from investors and other governments around the world has remained strong enough to hold down the interest rates that the United States must offer to sell them. Indeed, the government paid less interest on its debt this year than in 2008, even though it added almost $2 trillion in debt.

The government’s average interest rate on new borrowing last year fell below 1 percent. For short-term i.o.u.’s like one-month Treasury bills, its average rate was only sixteen-hundredths of a percent.

“All of the auction results have been solid,” said Matthew Rutherford, the Treasury’s deputy assistant secretary in charge of finance operations. “Investor demand has been very broad, and it’s been increasing in the last couple of years.”

The problem, many analysts say, is that record government deficits have arrived just as the long-feared explosion begins in spending on benefits under Medicare and Social Security. The nation’s oldest baby boomers are approaching 65, setting off what experts have warned for years will be a fiscal nightmare for the government.

“What a good country or a good squirrel should be doing is stashing away nuts for the winter,” said William H. Gross, managing director of the Pimco Group, the giant bond-management firm. “The United States is not only not saving nuts, it’s eating the ones left over from the last winter.”

The current low rates on the country’s debt were caused by temporary factors that are already beginning to fade. One factor was the economic crisis itself, which caused panicked investors around the world to plow their money into the comparative safety of Treasury bills and notes. Even though the United States was the epicenter of the global crisis, investors viewed Treasury securities as the least dangerous place to park their money.

On top of that, the Fed used almost every tool in its arsenal to push interest rates down even further. It cut the overnight federal funds rate, the rate at which banks lend reserves to one another, to almost zero. And to reduce longer-term rates, it bought more than $1.5 trillion worth of Treasury bonds and government-guaranteed securities linked to mortgages.

Those conditions are already beginning to change. Global investors are shifting money into riskier investments like stocks and corporate bonds, and they have been pouring money into fast-growing countries like Brazil and China.

The Fed, meanwhile, is already halting its efforts at tamping down long-term interest rates. Fed officials ended their $300 billion program to buy up Treasury bonds last month, and they have announced plans to stop buying mortgage-backed securities by the end of next March.

Eventually, though probably not until at least mid-2010, the Fed will also start raising its benchmark interest rate back to more historically normal levels.

The United States will not be the only government competing to refinance huge debt. Japan, Germany, Britain and other industrialized countries have even higher government debt loads, measured as a share of their gross domestic product, and they too borrowed heavily to combat the financial crisis and economic downturn. As the global economy recovers and businesses raise capital to finance their growth, all that new government debt is likely to put more upward pressure on interest rates.

Even a small increase in interest rates has a big impact. An increase of one percentage point in the Treasury’s average cost of borrowing would cost American taxpayers an extra $80 billion this year — about equal to the combined budgets of the Department of Energy and the Department of Education.

But that could seem like a relatively modest pinch. Alan Levenson, chief economist at T. Rowe Price, estimated that the Treasury’s tab for debt service this year would have been $221 billion higher if it had faced the same interest rates as it did last year.

The White House estimates that the government will have to borrow about $3.5 trillion more over the next three years. On top of that, the Treasury has to refinance, or roll over, a huge amount of short-term debt that was issued during the financial crisis. Treasury officials estimate that about 36 percent of the government’s marketable debt — about $1.6 trillion — is coming due in the months ahead.

To lock in low interest rates in the years ahead, Treasury officials are trying to replace one-month and three-month bills with 10-year and 30-year Treasury securities. That strategy will save taxpayers money in the long run. But it pushes up costs drastically in the short run, because interest rates are higher for long-term debt.

Adding to the pressure, the Fed is set to begin reversing some of the policies it has been using to prop up the economy. Wall Street firms advising the Treasury recently estimated that the Fed’s purchases of Treasury bonds and mortgage-backed securities pushed down long-term interest rates by about one-half of a percentage point. Removing that support could in itself add $40 billion to the government’s annual tab for debt service.

This month, the Treasury Department’s private-sector advisory committee on debt management warned of the risks ahead.

“Inflation, higher interest rate and rollover risk should be the primary concerns,” declared the Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee, a group of market experts that provide guidance to the government, on Nov. 4.

“Clever debt management strategy,” the group said, “can’t completely substitute for prudent fiscal policy.”

Gretchen Gets It. The entire article is worth reading and even studying. If you get what she is saying, you can understand just how false this Waltz has been.

“The very design of the federal assistance to A.I.G. was that tens of billions of dollars of government money was funneled inexorably and directly to A.I.G.’s counterparties.” The report noted that this was money the banks might not otherwise have received had A.I.G. gone belly-up.

Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Société Générale and other banks were in the group that got full value for their contracts when many others were accepting fire-sale prices.

Ms. Tavakoli argues that Goldman should refund the money it received in the bailout and take back the toxic C.D.O.’s now residing on the Fed’s books — and to do so before it begins showering bonuses on its taxpayer-protected employees.

According to an e-mail message that Goldman sent to the New York Fed at the time, Mr. Geithner talked about the article with Mr. Viniar, Goldman’s chief financial officer, before calling me. When Mr. Geithner called, he said that Goldman had no exposure to an A.I.G. collapse and that the article had left an incorrect impression about that. When I asked Mr. Geithner if he, as head of the regulatory agency overseeing Goldman, had closely examined the firm’s hedges, he said he had not.

Probing, in-depth analyses of regulatory responses to the financial meltdown are worth their weight in gold. Mr. Barofsky’s certainly is. Yet in its rush to put financial reforms into effect, Congress seems uninterested in investigating or grappling with truths contained in such reports — and until it does, our country’s economic and financial system will continue to be at risk.

Revisiting a Fed Waltz With A.I.G.

A RAY of sunlight broke through the Washington fog last week when Neil M. Barofsky, special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, published his office’s report on the government bailout last year of the American International Group.

It’s must reading for any taxpayer hoping to understand why the $182 billion “rescue” of what was once the world’s largest insurer still ranks as the most troubling episode of the financial disaster. And it couldn’t have come at a more pivotal moment.

Many in Washington want to give more regulatory power to the Federal Reserve Board, the banking regulator that orchestrated the A.I.G. bailout. Through this prism, the actions taken in the deal by Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, who was president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York at the time, grow curiouser and curiouser.

Of special note in the report: the Fed failed to develop a workable rescue plan when A.I.G., swamped by demands that it pay off huge insurance contracts that it couldn’t make good on as the economy tanked, began to sink. The report takes the Fed to task as refusing to use its power and prestige to wrestle concessions from A.I.G.’s big, sophisticated and well-heeled trading partners when the government itself had to pay off the contracts.

The Fed, under Mr. Geithner’s direction, caved in to A.I.G.’s counterparties, giving them 100 cents on the dollar for positions that would have been worth far less if A.I.G. had defaulted. Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Société Générale and other banks were in the group that got full value for their contracts when many others were accepting fire-sale prices.

On the question of whether this payout was what the report describes as a “backdoor bailout” of A.I.G.’s counterparties, Mr. Barofsky concluded: “The very design of the federal assistance to A.I.G. was that tens of billions of dollars of government money was funneled inexorably and directly to A.I.G.’s counterparties.” The report noted that this was money the banks might not otherwise have received had A.I.G. gone belly-up.

The report zaps Fed claims that identifying banks that benefited from taxpayer largess would have dire consequences. Fed officials had refused to disclose the identities of the counterparties or details of the payments, warning “that disclosure of the names would undermine A.I.G.’s stability, the privacy and business interests of the counterparties, and the stability of the markets,” the report said.

When the parties were named, “the sky did not fall,” the report said.

Finally, Mr. Barofsky pokes holes in arguments made repeatedly over the past 14 months by Goldman Sachs, A.I.G.’s largest trading partner and recipient of $12.9 billion in taxpayer money in the bailout, that it had faced no material risk in an A.I.G. default — that, in effect, had A.I.G. cratered, Goldman wouldn’t have suffered damage.

In short, there’s an awful lot jammed into this 36-page report.

Even before publishing this analysis, Mr. Barofsky had made a name for himself as one of the few truth tellers in Washington. While others estimate how much the taxpayer will make on various bailout programs, Mr. Barofsky has said that returns are extremely unlikely.

His office has also opened 65 cases to investigate potential fraud in various bailout programs. “When I first took office, I can’t tell you how many times I’d be having a sit-down and warning about potential fraud in the program and I would hear a response basically saying, ‘Oh, they’re bankers, and they wouldn’t put their reputations at risk by committing fraud,’ ” Mr. Barofsky told Bloomberg News a little over a week ago, adding: “I think we’ve done a good job of instilling a greater degree of skepticism that what comes from Wall Street isn’t necessarily the holy grail.”

Mr. Barofsky says the Fed failed to strong-arm the banks when it was negotiating payouts on the A.I.G. contracts. Rather than forcing the banks to accept a steep discount, or “haircut,” the Fed gave the banks $27 billion in taxpayer cash and allowed them to keep an additional $35 billion in collateral already posted by A.I.G. That amounted to about $62 billion for the contracts, which the report describes as “far above their market value at the time.”

Mr. Geithner, who oversaw those negotiations, said in an interview on Friday that the terms of the A.I.G. deal were the best he could get for taxpayers. He considered bailing out A.I.G. to be “offensive,’ he said, but deemed it necessary because a collapse would have undermined the financial system.

“We prevented A.I.G. from defaulting because our judgment was that the damage caused by failure would have been much more costly for the economy and the taxpayer,” Mr. Geithner said. “To most Americans, this looked like a deeply unfair outcome and they find it hard to see any direct benefit. But in fact, their savings are more valuable and secure today.”

The report said that while bailing out Goldman and other investment banks might not have been the intent behind the Fed’s A.I.G. rescue, it certainly was its effect. “By providing A.I.G. with the capital to make these payments, Federal Reserve officials provided A.I.G.’s counterparties with tens of billions of dollars they likely would have not otherwise received had A.I.G. gone into bankruptcy,” the report stated.

As Goldman prepares to pay out nearly $17 billion in bonuses to its employees in one of its most profitable years ever, it is important that an authoritative, independent voice like Mr. Barofsky’s reminds us how the taxpayer bailout of A.I.G. benefited Goldman.

A Goldman spokesman, Lucas van Praag, said that Goldman believed “that a collapse of A.I.G. would have had a very disruptive effect on the financial system and that everyone benefited from the rescue of A.I.G.” Regarding his firm’s own dealings with A.I.G., Mr. van Praag said that Goldman believed that its “exposure was close to zero” because it insulated itself from a downturn in A.I.G.’s fortunes through hedges and collateral it had already received. (Goldman’s complete response is here.)

The inspector noted in his report that Goldman made several arguments for why it believed it was not materially at risk in an A.I.G. default, but he is skeptical of the firm’s reasoning.

So is Janet Tavakoli, an expert in derivatives at Tavakoli Structured Finance, a consulting firm. “On Sept. 16, 2008, David Viniar, Goldman’s chief financial officer, said that whatever the outcome at A.I.G., the direct impact of Goldman’s credit exposure would be immaterial,” she said. “That was false. The report states that if the New York Fed had negotiated concessions, Goldman would have suffered a loss.”

The report says that Goldman would have had difficulty collecting on the hedges it used to insulate itself from an A.I.G. default because everyone’s wallets would have been closing in a panic.

“The prices of the collateralized debt obligations against which Goldman bought protection from A.I.G. were in sickening free fall, and the cost of replacing A.I.G.’s protection would have been sky-high,” she said. “Goldman must have known this, because it underwrote some of those value-destroying C.D.O.’s.”

Ms. Tavakoli argues that Goldman should refund the money it received in the bailout and take back the toxic C.D.O.’s now residing on the Fed’s books — and to do so before it begins showering bonuses on its taxpayer-protected employees.

“A.I.G., a sophisticated investor, foolishly took this risk,” she said. “But the U.S. taxpayer never agreed to be a victim of investments that should undergo a rigorous audit.”

Perhaps Mr. Barofsky will do that audit, and closely examine the securities that A.I.G. insured and that Wall Street titans like Goldman underwrote.

Goldman contends that it had a contractual right to the funds it received in the A.I.G. bailout and that the securities it returned to the government in the deal have increased in value.

For his part, Mr. Geithner disputed much of the inspector general’s findings. He also took issue with the conclusion that the Fed failed to develop a contingency plan for an A.I.G. rescue and largely depended on plans proffered by the banks themselves.

He said the report’s view that the Fed didn’t use its might to get better terms in the rescue was unfair. “This idea that we were unwilling to use leverage to get better terms misses the central reality of the situation — the choice we had was to let A.I.G. default or to prevent default,” he said. “We could not enforce haircuts without causing selective defaults and selective defaults would have brought down the company.”

Mr. Geithner also said that the “perception that this decision by the government, not my decision alone, was made to protect any individual investment bank is unfounded.”

Less than two weeks after the A.I.G. bailout, Mr. Geithner took the firm’s side when he criticized a Sept. 28, 2008, article in The New York Times that I wrote about the A.I.G. bailout. That article included Goldman’s statement that it wouldn’t have been affected by an A.I.G. collapse. Among other things, the article, like Mr. Barofsky’s report, questioned Goldman’s assertion.

According to an e-mail message that Goldman sent to the New York Fed at the time, Mr. Geithner talked about the article with Mr. Viniar, Goldman’s chief financial officer, before calling me. When Mr. Geithner called, he said that Goldman had no exposure to an A.I.G. collapse and that the article had left an incorrect impression about that. When I asked Mr. Geithner if he, as head of the regulatory agency overseeing Goldman, had closely examined the firm’s hedges, he said he had not.

Mr. Geithner told me on Friday that he spoke with Mr. Viniar that day to ensure that Goldman’s hedges were adequate. And, notwithstanding the inspector general’s findings, he said he still believes Goldman was hedged.

Probing, in-depth analyses of regulatory responses to the financial meltdown are worth their weight in gold. Mr. Barofsky’s certainly is. Yet in its rush to put financial reforms into effect, Congress seems uninterested in investigating or grappling with truths contained in such reports — and until it does, our country’s economic and financial system will continue to be at risk.

WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT TO FORECLOSURE DEFENSE AND OFFENSE: OK I know the last thing you want to hear is how complex this scheme was. But if you can get over the intimidation factor, you will see how the lawsuits filed by individual homeowners, attorney generals, and class actions are picking apart the whole scheme, coming up with the inconvenient answers that Wall Street is working to avoid and that many government officials are too lazy or paid off or whatever to get involved.

So here we focus on the rating agencies and you might be asking why do I care if I wasn’t an investor who bought those empty bonds that funded my loan? The reason is that others with far greater resources than you are doing your work for you.

The SINGLE transaction, starting with the sale of the bond to the investor and then to the sale of the financial loan product to the homeowner and then ending with the false foreclosures and unconscionable proceeds of credit default swaps could ONLY have been achieved with the active participation from the rating agencies.

By selling their reputation for objectivity to the highest bidder, by misusing their skill in assessing credit risk,  the rating agencies enabled those bonds to be sold under the pretense that they were AAA sound investments. But for that the mortgage meltdown would never have occurred. But for that, you would not be in the upside down position, or delinquency, default or foreclosure in which you find yourself.

But for the free flow of free money there would have been no pressure to get rid of it in order to make Wall Street’s unconscionable profits. And without that pressure, housing prices would have remained relatively stable instead of shooting up to unprecedented (by any measure) unsustainable levels that were not reflective of what the homeowner would get when Wall Street’s scheme was over.

Your home loan was rated by these rating agencies. They looked the other way and changed underwriting standards from common sense to common fraud. The ONLY way the bonds sold to investors could have been rated so high was by rating the underlying mortgages and notes. No REAL analysis would have done anything except raise red flags bringing the rating down to junk. Just starting with the appraisal” on the house which was also a form of rating, no reasonable person could possible look at the history of housing prices and believe that the 30% jump in 4 months was sustainable. Nobody using their own money would fund a deal based on that. It is only because the originating “lenders” (i.e, straw-men, conduits) were not using their own capital that these loans were made.

We were all duped by the appraisers and the rating agencies who sold their integrity to the highest bidder. And in the process of tragedy of astonishing severity is unfolding, getting worse and fooling the American public — until it reaches each and every one of us, which it will.

At some point the homeowners should be suing the rating agencies and appraisers for their part in all this. The counterclaim is both fraud in the inducement and fraud in the execution. Fraud in the execution because you thought you were just taking out a loan when in fact you were purchasing a financial loan product that was a security promising you passive returns whose value was intentionally misrepresented. Fraud in the inducement because had you known the true value of the property you would never have assumed that you could cover the loan terms, which were also illegal and predatory.

The game is on. If you reach the truth before Goldman et al are done, you can stop it, reverse it, and set the country back on the path of confidence in an economy that is based upon something other than $500 trillion in derivative vapor.

Ohio Sues Rating Firms for Losses in Funds

Already facing a spate of private lawsuits, the legal troubles of the country’s largest credit rating agencies deepened on Friday when the attorney general of Ohio sued Moody’s Investors Service, Standard & Poor’s and Fitch, claiming that they had cost state retirement and pension funds some $457 million by approving high-risk Wall Street securities that went bust in the financial collapse.

The case could test whether the agencies’ ratings are constitutionally protected as a form of free speech.

The lawsuit asserts that Moody’s, Standard & Poor’s and Fitch were in league with the banks and other issuers, helping to create an assortment of exotic financial instruments that led to a disastrous bubble in the housing market.

“We believe that the credit rating agencies, in exchange for fees, departed from their objective, neutral role as arbiters,” the attorney general, Richard Cordray, said at a news conference. “At minimum, they were aiding and abetting misconduct by issuers.”

He accused the companies of selling their integrity to the highest bidder.

Steven Weiss, a spokesman for McGraw-Hill, which owns S.& P., said that the lawsuit had no merit and that the company would vigorously defend itself.

“A recent Securities and Exchange Commission examination of our business practices found no evidence that decisions about rating methodologies or models were based on attracting market share,” he said.

Michael Adler, a spokesman for Moody’s, also disputed the claims. “It is unfortunate that the state attorney general, rather than engaging in an objective review and constructive dialogue regarding credit ratings, instead appears to be seeking new scapegoats for investment losses incurred during an unprecedented global market disruption,” he said.

A spokesman for Fitch said the company would not comment because it had not seen the lawsuit.

The litigation adds to a growing stack of lawsuits against the three largest credit rating agencies, which together command an 85 percent share of the market. Since the credit crisis began last year, dozens of investors have sought to recover billions of dollars from worthless or nearly worthless bonds on which the rating agencies had conferred their highest grades.

One of those groups is largest pension fund in the country, the California Public Employees Retirement System, which filed a lawsuit in state court in California in July, claiming that “wildly inaccurate ratings” had led to roughly $1 billion in losses.

And more litigation is likely. As part of a broader financial reform, Congress is considering provisions that make it easier for plaintiffs to sue rating agencies. And the Ohio attorney general’s action raises the possibility of similar filings from other states. California’s attorney general, Jerry Brown, said in September that his office was investigating the rating agencies, with an eye toward determining “how these agencies could get it so wrong and whether they violated California law in the process.”

As a group, the attorneys general have proved formidable opponents, most notably in the landmark litigation and multibillion-dollar settlement against tobacco makers in 1998.

To date, however, the rating agencies are undefeated in court, and aside from one modest settlement in a case 10 years ago, no one has forced them to hand over any money. Moody’s, S.& P. and Fitch have successfully argued that their ratings are essentially opinions about the future, and therefore subject to First Amendment protections identical to those of journalists.

But that was before billions of dollars in triple-A rated bonds went bad in the financial crisis that started last year, and before Congress extracted a number of internal e-mail messages from the companies, suggesting that employees were aware they were giving their blessing to bonds that were all but doomed. In one of those messages, an S.& P. analyst said that a deal “could be structured by cows and we’d rate it.”

Recent cases, like the suit filed Friday, are founded on the premise that the companies were aware that investments they said were sturdy were dangerously unsafe. And if analysts knew that they were overstating the quality of the products they rated, and did so because it was a path to profits, the ratings could forfeit First Amendment protections, legal experts say.

“If they hold themselves out to the marketplace as objective when in fact they are influenced by the fees they are receiving, then they are perpetrating a falsehood on the marketplace,” said Rodney A. Smolla, dean of the Washington and Lee University School of Law. “The First Amendment doesn’t extend to the deliberate manipulation of financial markets.”

The 73-page complaint, filed on behalf of Ohio Police and Fire Pension Fund, the Ohio Public Employees Retirement System and other groups, claims that in recent years the rating agencies abandoned their role as impartial referees as they began binging on fees from deals involving mortgage-backed securities.

At the root of the problem, according to the complaint, is the business model of rating agencies, which are paid by the issuers of the securities they are paid to appraise. The lawsuit, and many critics of the companies, have described that arrangement as a glaring conflict of interest.

“Given that the rating agencies did not receive their full fees for a deal unless the deal was completed and the requested rating was provided,” the attorney general’s suit maintains, “they had an acute financial incentive to relax their stated standards of ‘integrity’ and ‘objectivity’ to placate their clients.”

To complicate problems in the system of incentives, the lawsuit states, the methodologies used by the rating agencies were outdated and flawed. By the time those flaws were obvious, nearly half a billion dollars in pension and retirement funds had evaporated in Ohio, revealing the bonds to be “high-risk securities that both issuers and rating agencies knew to be little more than a house of cards,” the complaint states.

Don’t be so fast to leave your home just because you are “behind”. Those payments might not be due at all or if they are, they are probably not owed to the people you are paying.

We are very pleased with the responses from our devoted readers, many of whom are direct contributors to this site. The insights, forms and analysis from the many soldiers — lawyers and laymen alike has made this site the premier resource for assisting distressed homeowners in gaining relief — sometimes total relief — from Mortgages based upon false appraisals, using predatory lending practices and withholding vital information from borrowers at the closing table.

How many borrowers would have signed on the dotted line if they had known that they were signing a ticket for unprecedented and unjustified fees and profits earned by unknown parties — sometimes as much as the mortgage itself?

How many investors would have put up the money if they had known that only some of it was being used to fund mortgage transactions and that the rest was being kept as fees, profits and reserves to pay them out of their own money?

The victims here are all homeowners and all consumers and all investors and all  taxpayers. The companies seeking to foreclose never owned the mortgage, note or obligation. They have no right to your property or the proceeds of sale to your property. Use this blogsite as your resource to educate yourself. Consult with local counsel start with the listing of “Lawyers that Get It”. Get a forensic review NOT just a “TILA loan audit” and challenge EVERYTHING!

Government officials, perhaps influenced by spending too much time with bankers, forgot that if you want to govern effectively you have retain the trust of the people. And by treating the financial industry — which got us into this mess in the first place — with kid gloves, they have squandered that trust.

During the bubble years, many financial companies created the illusion of financial soundness by buying credit-default swaps from A.I.G. — basically, insurance policies in which A.I.G. promised to make up the difference if borrowers defaulted on their debts. It was an illusion because the insurer didn’t have remotely enough money to make good on its promises if things went bad. And sure enough, things went bad.

By making what was in effect a multibillion-dollar gift to Wall Street, policy makers undermined their own credibility — and put the broader economy at risk.

finishing the job has become nearly impossible now that the public has lost faith in the government’s efforts, viewing them as little more than handouts to the people who got us into this mess.

The Big Squander

Earlier this week, the inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, a k a, the bank bailout fund, released his report on the 2008 rescue of the American International Group, the insurer. The gist of the report is that government officials made no serious attempt to extract concessions from bankers, even though these bankers received huge benefits from the rescue. And more than money was lost. By making what was in effect a multibillion-dollar gift to Wall Street, policy makers undermined their own credibility — and put the broader economy at risk.

For the A.I.G. rescue was part of a pattern: Throughout the financial crisis key officials — most notably Timothy Geithner, who was president of the New York Fed in 2008 and is now Treasury secretary — have shied away from doing anything that might rattle Wall Street. And the bitter paradox is that this play-it-safe approach has ended up undermining prospects for economic recovery. For the job of fixing the broken economy is far from done — yet finishing the job has become nearly impossible now that the public has lost faith in the government’s efforts, viewing them as little more than handouts to the people who got us into this mess.

About the A.I.G. affair: During the bubble years, many financial companies created the illusion of financial soundness by buying credit-default swaps from A.I.G. — basically, insurance policies in which A.I.G. promised to make up the difference if borrowers defaulted on their debts. It was an illusion because the insurer didn’t have remotely enough money to make good on its promises if things went bad. And sure enough, things went bad.

So why protect bankers from the consequences of their errors? Well, by the time A.I.G.’s hollowness became apparent, the world financial system was on the edge of collapse and officials judged — probably correctly — that letting A.I.G. go bankrupt would push the financial system over that edge. So A.I.G. was effectively nationalized; its promises became taxpayer liabilities.

But was there any way to limit those liabilities? After all, banks would have suffered huge losses if A.I.G. had been allowed to fail. So it seemed only fair for them to bear part of the cost of the bailout, which they could have done by accepting a “haircut” on the amounts A.I.G. owed them. Indeed, the government asked them to do just that. But they said no — and that was the end of the story. Taxpayers not only ended up honoring foolish promises made by other people, they ended up doing so at 100 cents on the dollar.

Could things have been different? Some commentators argue that government officials had no way to force the banks to accept a haircut — either they let A.I.G. go bankrupt, which they weren’t ready to do, or they had to honor its contracts as written.

But this seems like a naïve view of how Wall Street works. Major financial firms are a small club, with a shared interest in sustaining the system; ever since the days of J.P. Morgan, it has been common in times of crisis to call on the big players to forgo short-term profits for the industry’s common good. Back in 1998, it was a consortium of private bankers — not the government — that put up the funds to rescue the hedge fund Long Term Capital Management.

Furthermore, big financial firms have a long-term relationship, both with the government and with each other, and can pay a price if they act selfishly in times of crisis. Bear Stearns, the investment bank, earned itself a lot of ill will by refusing to participate in that 1998 rescue, and it’s widely believed that this ill will played a major factor in the demise of Bear Stearns itself, 10 years later.

So officials could have called on bankers to offer a better deal, for their own sake, and simultaneously threatened to name and shame those who balked. It was their choice not to do that, just as it was their choice not to push for more control over bailed-out banks in early 2009.

And, as I said, these seemingly safe choices have now placed the economy in grave danger.

For the economy is still in deep trouble and needs much more government help. Unemployment is in double-digits; we desperately need more government spending on job creation. Banks are still weak, and credit is still tight; we desperately need more government aid to the financial sector. But try to talk to an ordinary voter about this, and the response you’re likely to get is: “No way. All they’ll do is hand out more money to Wall Street.”

So here’s the real tragedy of the botched bailout: Government officials, perhaps influenced by spending too much time with bankers, forgot that if you want to govern effectively you have retain the trust of the people. And by treating the financial industry — which got us into this mess in the first place — with kid gloves, they have squandered that trust.

NY JUDGES ROCK

Indymac Bank F.S.B. v Yano-Horoski
2009 NY Slip Op 52333(U)
Decided on November 19, 2009
Supreme Court, Suffolk County
Spinner, J.
Published by New York State Law Reporting Bureau pursuant to Judiciary Law § 431.
This opinion is uncorrected and will not be published in the printed Official Reports.

Decided on November 19, 2009

Supreme Court, Suffolk County

Indymac Bank F.S.B., Plaintiff

against

Diana Yano-Horoski, Wells Fargo Bank Minnesota National Association as Trustee for Soundview Home Equity Loan Trust 2001-1 and Kimberly Horoski, Defendants.

2005-17926

Steven J. Baum P.C.

Attorney for Plaintiff

P.O. Box 1291

Buffalo, New York 14240

Diana Yano-Horoski

Defendant Pro Se

8 Oakland Street

East Patchogue, New York 11772-5767

Jeffrey Arlen Spinner, J.

This is an action wherein the Plaintiff claims foreclosure of a mortgage dated August 4, 2004 in the original principal amount of $ 292,500.00 recorded with the Clerk of Suffolk County, New York in Liber 20826 of Mortgages at Page 285. The mortgage secures an adjustable rate note of the same amount with an initial interest rate of 10.375%. The mortgage encumbers real property commonly known as 8 Oakland Street, East Patchogue, Town of Brookhaven, New York and described as District 0200 Section 979.50 Block 05.00 Lot 001.000 on the Tax Map of Suffolk County. Plaintiff commenced this action by filing a Summons, Verified Complaint and Notice of Pendency on July 27, 2005. The Notice of Pendency was extended by Order dated April 28, 2008 and a Judgment of Foreclosure & Sale was granted on January 12, 2009.

Thereafter and in accordance with the Laws of 2008, Ch. 472, Sec. 3-a and in view of the fact that the loan at issue was deemed to be “sub-prime” or “high cost” in nature, Defendant seasonably requested that the Court convene a settlement conference. That request was granted and a conference was commenced on February 24, 2009 which was continued five times in a series of unsuccessful attempts by the Court to obtain meaningful cooperation from Plaintiff. In view of Plaintiff’s intransigence in its continuing failure and refusal to cooperate, both with the Court and with Defendant’s multiple and reasonable requests, the Court directed that Plaintiff produce an officer of the bank at the adjourned conference scheduled for September 22, 2009.

At the conference held on September 22, 2009, Karen Dickinson, Regional Manager of [*2]Loss Mitigation for IndyMac Mortgage Services, division of OneWest Bank F.S.B. (“IndyMac”) appeared on behalf of Plaintiff. IndyMac purports to be the servicer of the loan for the benefit of Deutsche Bank who, it is claimed, is the owner and holder of the note and mortgage (though the record holder is IndyMac Bank F.S.B., an entity which no longer is in existence). At that conference, it was celeritously made clear to the Court that Plaintiff had no good faith intention whatsoever of resolving this matter in any manner other than a complete and forcible devolution of title from Defendant. Although IndyMac had prepared a two page document entitled “Mediation Yano-Horoski” which contained what purported to be a financial analysis, Ms. Dickinson’s affirmative statements made it abundantly clear that no form of mediation, resolution or settlement would be acceptable to Plaintiff. IndyMac asserts the total amount due it to be in excess of $ 525,000.00 and freely concedes that the property securing the loan is worth no more than $ 275,000.00. Although Ms. Dickinson insisted that Ms. Yano-Horoski had been offered a “Forbearance Agreement” in the recent past upon which she quickly defaulted, it was only after substantial prodding by the Court that Ms. Dickinson conceded, with great reluctance, that it had not been sent to Defendant until after its stated first payment due date and hence, Defendant could not have consummated it under any circumstances (Defendant, through Plaintiff’s duplicity, found herself to be in the unique and uncomfortable position of being placed in default of the “agreement” even before she had received it). Plaintiff flatly rejected an offer by Plaintiff’s daughter to purchase the house for its fair market value (a so-called “short sale”) with third party financing. Plaintiff refused to consider a loan modification utilizing any more than 25% of the income of Plaintiff’s husband and daughter (both of whom reside in the premises with her), the excuse being that “We can’t control what non-obligors do with their money” (the logical follow up to this statement is how does the bank control what the obligor does with her money?). The Court found IndyMac’s position to be deeply troubling, especially since a plethora of sub-prime loans in this County’s Foreclosure Conference Part have been successfully modified with the lender’s reliance upon the income of non-obligors who reside in the premises under foreclosure. The Plaintiff also summarily rejected an offer by both Plaintiff’s husband and daughter to voluntarily obligate themselves for payment upon the full indebtedness, thus committing their individual incomes expressly to the purpose of a loan modification. It should be noted here that Defendant did not even request any waiver or “forgiveness” of the indebtedness aside from some tinkering with the interest rate, just a modification of terms so as to enable her to repay the same. It was evident from Ms. Dickinson’s opprobrious demeanor and condescending attitude that no proffer by Defendant (short of consent to foreclosure and ejectment of Defendant and her family) would be acceptable to Plaintiff. Even a final and desperate offer of a deed in lieu of foreclosure was met with bland equivocation. In short, each and every proposal by Defendant, no matter how reasonable, was soundly rebuffed by Plaintiff. Viewed objectively, it is apparent that Plaintiff’s conduct in this matter falls within the definitions set forth in 22 NYCRR § 130-1.1( c)(2), which might well warrant the imposition of monetary sanctions.

On the Court’s own motion, a hearing was held on November 18, 2009 in order to explore the issues herein. At the hearing, Ms. Dickinson appeared as well as Mr. Horoski. IndyMac claimed a balance due, as of September 22, 2009 of $ 527,437.73 which included an escrow overdraft of $ 46,627.88 for taxes advanced since the date of default but did not include attorney’s fees and costs.. Plaintiff was unable to tell the Court the amount of the principal [*3]balance owed. Mr. Horoski advised the Court that according to two letters received from Plaintiff, the principal balance was said to be $ 285,381.70 as of February 9, 2009 and $ 283,992.48 as of August 10, 2009. Plaintiff stated was that Defendant must have made payments though it was conceded that in fact no payment had been made.Plaintiff insisted that it had remained in regular contact with Defendant in an effort to reach an amicable resolution, that it had extended two modification offers to Defendant which she did not accept and further, that due to her financial status she was not qualified for any modification, even under the Federal HAMP guidelines. Plaintiff denied that it had “singled out” Defendants, simply stating that her status was such that she fell outside applicable guidelines. All of these assertions were disputed by Defendant.

That having been said, the Court is greatly disturbed by Plaintiff’s assertions of the amount claimed to be due from Defendant. The Referee’s Report dated June 30, 2008, which has its genesis in a sworn affidavit by a representative of Plaintiff (presumably one with knowledge of the account), reflects a total amount due and owing of $ 392,983.42. The principal balance is reported to be $ 290,687.85 with interest computed at the rates of 10.375% from November 1, 2005 through August 31, 2006 ($ 25,118.62), 12.50% from September 1, 2006 to February 28, 2007 ($ 18,018.66), 12.375% from March 1, 2007 to March 31, 2008 ($ 39,126.39) and 11.375% from April 1, 2008 to June 24, 2008 ($ 7,700.24) totalling $ 89,963.91. Plaintiff also claims $ 20.00 in non-sufficient funds charges, $ 295.00 in property inspection fees and $ 12,016.66 for tax and insurance advances. The Judgment of Foreclosure & Sale dated January 12, 2009 was granted in the amount of $ 392,983.42 with interest at the contract rate from June 24, 2008 through January 12, 2009 and at the statutory rate thereafter plus attorney’s fees of $ 2,300.00 and a bill of costs in the amount of $ 1,705.00. Even computing the accrual of pre-judgment interest of $ 18,299.18 (using Plaintiff’s per diem rate in the Referee’s Report) together with post-judgment interest at a statutory 9% through November 19, 2009 (an additional $ 31,740.90), the application of simple addition yields a total amount due of $ 447,028.50. This figure is $ 80,409.23 less than the $ 527,437.73 asserted by Plaintiff to be due and owing from Defendant. The Court is astounded that Plaintiff now claims to be owed an escrow advance amount of $ 46,627.88 when, under oath, its officer swore that as of June 24, 2008 that amount was actually $ 34,611.22 less. Moreover, it now appears that the elusive principal balance is either $ 290,687.85, $ 285,381.70 or $ 283,992.48.

It is the province and indeed the obligation of the trial court to assess and to determine issues regarding credibility, Morgan v. McCaffrey 14 AD3d 670 (2nd Dept. 2005). In the matter before the Court, the pendulum of credibility swings heavily in favor of Defendant. When the conduct of Plaintiff in this proceeding is viewed in its entirety, it compels the Court to invoke the ancient and venerable principle of “Falsus in uno, falsus in omni” (Latin; “false in one, false in all”) upon Defendant which, after review, is wholly appropriate in the context presented, Deering v. Metcalf 74 NY 501 (1878). Regrettably, the Court has been unable to find even so much as a scintilla of good faith on the part of Plaintiff. Plaintiff comes before this Court with unclean hands yet has the insufferable temerity to demand equitable relief against Defendant.

The Court, over the course of some six substantive appearances in seven months, has been afforded more than ample opportunity to assess the demeanor, credibility and general state [*4]of relevant affairs of Defendant and Plaintiff. Although not actually relevant to the disposition of this matter, the Court is constrained to note that Defendant is afflicted with multiple health problems which outwardly manifest in her experiencing great difficulty in ambulation, necessitating the use of mechanical supports. Moreover, Defendant’s husband, Mr. Gregory Horoski, suffers from a myriad of serious medical conditions which greatly impede most aspects of his daily existence. Nonetheless, both of these persons, together with their adult daughter who resides with them and who is substantially and gainfully employed, receive income which they are more than willing to commit, in good faith, toward repayment of the debt to Plaintiff and indeed, despite their physical challenges, they have appeared at each and every scheduled conference before this Court. At each appearance, they have assiduously attempted to resolve this controversy in an amicable fashion, only to be callously and arbitrarily turned away by Plaintiff. This has been so even in spite of the Court’s continuing albeit futile endeavors at brokering a settlement.

As a relevant aside, the scenario presented here raises the specter of a much greater social problem, that of housing those persons whose homes are foreclosed and who are thereafter dispossessed. It is certainly no secret that Suffolk County is in the yawning abyss of a deep mortgage and housing crisis with foreclosure filings at a record high rate and a corresponding paucity of emergency housing. While foreclosure and its attendant eviction are clearly the inevitable (and in some cases, proper) result in a number of these situations, the Court is persuaded that this need not be the case here. In this matter, Defendant is plainly willing to make arrangements for repayment and both her husband and daughter are likewise willing to allocate their respective incomes in order to reach the same end. Were Plaintiff amenable, she would presumably continue to maintain the property’s physical plant, pay taxes thereon and the property would retain or perhaps increase its market value. Plaintiff would receive a regular income stream, albeit with a reduced rate of interest and without sustaining a loss of several hundred thousand dollars. In addition, no neighborhood blight would occur from the boarding of the property after foreclosure which would, in turn, avert problems of litter, dumping, vagrancy and vandalism as well as a corresponding decline in the property values in the immediate area. In short, a loan modification would result in a proverbial “win-win” for all parties involved. To do otherwise would result in virtually certain undomiciled status for two physically unhealthy persons and their daughter, leading to an additional level of problems, both for them and for society.

Since an action claiming foreclosure of a mortgage is one sounding in equity, Jamaica Savings Bank v. M.S. Investing Co. 274 NY 215 (1937), the very commencement of the action by Plaintiff invokes the Court’s equity jurisdiction. While it must be noted that the formal distinctions between an action at law and a suit in equity have long since been abolished in New York (see CPLR 103, Field Code Of 1848 §§ 2, 3, 4, 69), the Supreme Court nevertheless has equity jurisdiction and distinct rules regarding equity are still extant, Carroll v. Bullock 207 NY 567, 101 NE 438 (1913). Speaking generally and broadly, it is settled law that “Stability of contract obligations must not be undermined by judicial sympathy…” Graf v. Hope Building Corporation 254 NY 1 (1930). However, it is true with equal force and effect that equity must not and cannot slavishly and blindly follow the law, Hedges v. Dixon County 150 US 182, 192 (1893). Moreover, as succinctly decreed by our Court of Appeals in the matter of Noyes v. [*5]Anderson 124 NY 175 (1890) “A party having a legal right shall not be permitted to avail himself of it for the purposes of injustice or oppression…” 124 NY at 179.

In the matter of Eastman Kodak Co. v. Schwartz 133 NYS2d 908 (Sup. Ct., New York County, 1954), Special Term stated that “The maxim of “clean hands” fundamentally was conceived in equity jurisprudence to refuse to lend its aid in any manner to one seeking its active interposition who has been guilty of unlawful, unconscionable or inequitable conduct in the matter with relation to which he seeks relief.” 133 NYS2d at 925, citing First Trust & Savings Bank v. Iowa-Wisconsin Bridge Co. 98 F 2d 416 (8th Cir. 1938), cert. denied 305 US 650, 59 S. Ct. 243, 83 L. Ed. 240 (1938), reh. denied 305 US 676, 59 S Ct. 356 83 L. Ed. 437 (1939); General Excavator Co. v. Keystone Driller Co. 65 F 2d 39 (6th Cir. 1933), cert. granted 289 US 721, 53 S. Ct. 791, 77 L. Ed. 1472 (1933), aff’d 290 US 240, 54 S. Ct. 146, 78 L. Ed. 793 (1934).

In attempting to arrive at a determination as to whether or not equity should properly intervene in this matter so as to permit foreclosure of the mortgage, the Court is required to look at the situattion in toto, giving due and careful consideration as to whether the remedy sought by Plaintiff would be repugnant to the public interest when seen from the point of view of public morality, see, for example, 55 NY Jur. Equity § 113, Molinas v. Podloff 133 NYS2d 743 (Sup. Ct., New York County, 1954). Equitable relief will not lie in favor of one who acts in a manner which is shocking to the conscience, Duggan v. Platz 238 AD 197, 264 NYS 403 (3rd Dept. 1933), mod. on other grounds 263 NY 505, 189 NE 566 (1934), neither will equity be available to one who acts in a manner that is oppressive or unjust or whose conduct is sufficiently egregious so as to prohibit the party from asserting its legal rights against a defaulting adversary, In Re Foreclosure Of Tax Liens 117 NYS2d 725 (Sup. Ct. Kings County, 1952), aff’d on other grounds 286 AD 1027, 145 NYS2d 97 (2nd Dept. 1955), mod. on other grounds on reargument 1 AD2d 95, 148 NYS2d 173 (2nd Dept. 1955), appeal granted 7 AD2d 784, 149 NYS2d 227 (2nd Dept. 1956). The compass by which the questioned conduct must be measured is a moral one and the acts complained of (those that are sufficient so as to prevent equity’s intervention) need not be criminal nor actionable at law but must merely be willful and unconscionable or be of such a nature that honest and fair minded folk would roundly denounce such actions as being morally and ethically wrong, Pecorella v. Greater Buffalo Press Inc. 107 AD2d 1064, 468 NYS2d 562 (4th Dept. 1985). Thus, where a party acts in a manner that is offensive to good conscience and justice, he will be completely without recourse in a court of equity, regardless of what his legal rights may be, Eastman Kodak Co. v. Schwartz 133 NYS2d 908 (Sup. Ct., New York County, 1954), York v. Searles 97 AD 331, 90 NYS 37 (2nd Dept. 1904), aff’d 189 NY 573, 82 NE 1134 (1907).

An objective and painstaking examination of the totality of the facts and circumstances herein leads this Court to the inescapable conclusion that the affirmative conduct exhibited by Plaintiff at least since since February 24, 2009 (and perhaps earlier) has been and is inequitable, unconscionable, vexatious and opprobrious. The Court is constrained, solely as a result of Plaintiff’s affirmative acts, to conclude that Plaintiff’s conduct is wholly unsupportable at law or in equity, greatly egregious and so completely devoid of good faith that equity cannot be permitted to intervene on its behalf. Indeed, Plaintiff’s actions toward Defendant in this matter have been harsh, repugnant, shocking and repulsive to the extent that it must be appropriately [*6]sanctioned so as to deter it from imposing further mortifying abuse against Defendant. The Court cannot be assured that Plaintiff will not repeat this course of conduct if this action is merely dismissed and hence, dismissal standing alone is not a reasonable option. Likewise, the imposition of monetary sanctions under 22 NYCRR § 130-1.1 et. seq. is not likely to have a salubrious or remedial effect on these proceedings and certainly would not inure to Defendant’s benefit. This Court is of the opinion that cancellation of the indebtedness and discharge of the mortgage, when taken together, constitute the appropriate equitable disposition under the unique facts and circumstances presented herein.

After careful consideration, it is the determination of this Court that the indebtedness evidenced by the Adjustable Rate Note dated August 4, 2004 in the original principal amount of $ 292,500.00 made by Diana J. Yano-Horoski in favor of IndyMac Bank F.S.B. should be cancelled, voided and set aside. In addition, the Mortgage which secures the Adjustable Rate Note, given to Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems Inc. As Nominee For IndyMac Bank F.S.B. dated August 4, 2004 and recorded with the Clerk of Suffolk County on August 16, 2004 in Liber 20826 of Mortgages at Page 285, as assigned by Assignment recorded with the Clerk of Suffolk County in Liber 21273 of Mortgages at Page 808 should be cancelled and discharged of record. Further, Plaintiff, its successors and assigns should be forever barred and prohibited from any action to collect upon the Adjustable Rate Note. In addition, the Judgment of Foreclosure & Sale granted on January 12, 2009 and entered on January 23, 2009 should be vacated and set aside and the Notice of Pendency should be cancelled and discharged of record. For this Court to decree anything less than the foregoing would be for the Court to be wholly derelict in the performance of its obligations.

Upon the Court’s own motion, it is

ORDERED that the Adjustable Rate Note in the amount of $ 292,500.00 dated August 4, 2004 made by Diana J. Yano-Horoski in favor of IndyMac Bank F.S.B. shall be and the same is hereby cancelled, voided, avoided, nullified, set aside and is of no further force and effect; and it is further

ORDERED that the Mortgage in the amount of $ 292,500.00 which secures said Adjustable Rate Note given by Diana J. Yano-Horoski to Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems Inc. As Nominee For IndyMac Bank F.S.B. dated August 4, 2004 and recorded with the Clerk of Suffolk County on August 16, 2004 in Liber 20826 of Mortgages as Page 285, as assigned to IndyMac Bank F.S.B. by Assignment recorded with the Clerk of Suffolk County in Liber 21273 of Mortgages at Page 808 shall be and the same is hereby vacated, cancelled, released and discharged of record; and it is further

ORDERED that the Plaintiff, its successors and assigns are hereby barred, prohibited and foreclosed from attempting, in any manner, directly or indirectly, to enforce any provision of the [*7]aforesaid Adjustable Rate Note and Mortgage or any portion thereof as against Defendant, her heirs or successors; and it is further

ORDERED that the Judgment of Foreclosure & Sale granted under this index number on January 12, 2009 and entered in the Office of the Clerk of Suffolk County on January 23, 2009 shall be and the same is hereby vacated and set aside; and it is further

ORDERED that the Notice of Pendency filed with the Clerk of Suffolk County on July 27, 2005 under sequence no. 172456, which was extended by Order dated September 2, 2008 shall be and the same is hereby cancelled, vacated and set aside; and it is further

ORDERED that the Notice of Pendency filed with the Clerk of Suffolk County on August 29, 2008 under sequence no. 199616, shall be and the same is hereby cancelled, vacated and set aside; and it is further

ORDERED that the Clerk of Suffolk County shall cause a copy of this Order & Judgment to be filed in the Land Records so as to effectuate of record each and every one of the provisions hereinabove set forth with respect to cancellation of the instruments and items of record; and it is further

ORDERED that Plaintiff shall pay to the Clerk of Suffolk County, within ten (10) days from the date of entry hereof, any and all fees and costs required to effect cancellation of record of the Mortgage, Notices of Pendency and any other fees so levied; and it is further

ORDERED that within ten (10) days of the date of entry hereof, Plaintiff’s counsel shall serve a copy of this Order upon the Clerk of Suffolk County and the Defendant.

This shall constitute the Decision, Judgment and Order of this Court.

Dated: November 19, 2009

Riverhead, New York

E N T E R:

______________________________________

JEFFREY ARLEN SPINNER, J.S.C.

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The Emperor\’s New Clothes: THOSE FORECLOSURES ARE NOT REAL FOLKS, GET IT?

1-in-10-u-s-mortgage-delinquencies-reach-a-record-high-going-up

The Emperor is still strutting around as though he was fully clothed in the best silk, color and design. Wall Street is still the darling of government and a whole lot of other people, even if it was a little bad these past few years. We’ve been through the part where the swindler’s came to town, where the government officials ashamed of their apparent blindness and ignorance raved about the new derivative innovations, and the parade of foreclosures based upon invisible clothes. But we have not arrived at the part in the story where the little child yells out that the old fool has no clothes on. And we still don’t hear everyone laughing at wall Street and sending them home to lick their own wounds instead of inflicting it on everyone else.

The swindlers are still in town selling invisible clothes to everyone gullible enough to buy nothing and call it something. We are running on vapor since 1983 when derivatives were zero. Now we have credit derivatives with a nominal value of somewhere over $500 Trillion — that is ten times the total money in circulation from government origins. That’s “nominal value” because they don’t exist and they have no value. There is no substance to them to the extent that they are based on secured debt and possibly all other debt. There is no mortgage, there is no note, although there might be an obligation. But if there is an obligation it probably has been extinguished by either set off for predatory “lending” (actually illegal sale of unregistered securities fraudulently masquerading as loan products) or extinguished by payment directly or indirectly from Uncle Sam, more investors or others. In this fairy tale (national nightmare), the swindler’s take over the government instead of sneaking out of town with their hoard of ill-gotten gains.

Think about it. If virtually ALL of the securitized residential mortgages that were originated for the last 10 years are in some sort of trouble, how much brain power does it take to conclude that there was something wrong with them to begin with?

If virtually ALL of the mortgage backed securities that were created and sold in the last 10 years went into default, how much brain power does it take to conclude that there was something wrong with them to begin with?

So if virtually all the transactions originating the source money and all the transactions that were funded from the source money went bad, how much brain power does it take to conclude that there was no substance to the transaction and that the whole thing was a fantasy from Wall Street, who are now strutting around with their pockets bulging with the all the money everyone else (investors and “borrowers”) lost?

I’ve been as gentle as I could, giving everyone a chance to catch up but we are now on the precipice of a cliff far deeper than anything we have seen before including one year ago. And nobody on the side lines is really getting it. We continue our march toward the edge of the cliff, push the ones in front off, in the hope or belief that we won’t ever get there. So here it is, my opinion to be sure, but anyone who has been following my writings since April, 2007 knows that I called the stock market crash, the credit freeze and the collapse of the world economies and why. So it’s not like I don’t have a track record. I wasn’t the only one and people with far more credibility than me spotted the same things and continue to scream bloody murder, “the emperor has no clothes!” See comments by Roubini, Krugman, Volcker et al.

1. Geithner and Summers have to go. They are the emperor’s closest confidants who don’t want to look stupid even if it destroys the entire country. The current emperor is still on a learning curve so we have to cut him some slack. The prior ones, well….read on.
2. The recession is real but most of it could be reversed by simply admitting the obvious: those derivatives have no value, the mortgages are mostly invalid, the notes are mostly invalid, and the obligations are mostly extinguished by the swindlers’ own chicanery with Federal bailouts and Credit Default Swaps, which were the cloth of the Emperor’s invisible clothes.
3. The need for the AIG bailout can be argued. But nobody can argue that the people who benefited from it are the same people who got us into this mess. They took a system that was working and turned it into a system that couldn’t work. They turned mortgage lending on its head: mortgages that were likely to perform were valuable only as cover for most of the illegal activities underneath. The real incentive was to create mortgage pools that would fail and where they could collect on credit default swaps worth as much as 30 times the original nominal value. Vapor on Vapor.
4. That means they have every motivation to make certain you go into default and no motivation whatsoever to modify, settle, allow short-sale or do anything for the benefit of a homeowner who wants to settle the matter honorably. You can’t do that when you are dealing with dishonorable people with motives that amount to acts of domestic terrorism. There is no talking to them because if they can get you to default on that $300,000 loan they probably are going to get paid $9,000,000 just on your default. How do you like them apples? Check it out. It is true.
5. Any obligation — whether it is a loan for refinancing a house, buying a house, student loan, auto loan etc. that have the attributes discussed in this blog — does NOT have any security or note that can be enforced and all of them can be extinguished in bankruptcy — probably even including the nondischargeable student loans. (More on that another time).
6. Therefore, much of the recession, all of the foreclosures and much of the lost wealth that is “missing” is legally, morally and ethically and in actuality and reality, a fantasy. Some 20 million homeowners or more with these residential mortgages securitized through a money laundering scheme are sitting on wealth they have been convinced they don’t have. But they do. Those houses are free and clear — legally, morally and ethically.
7. All the homes in the MERS database are probably free from any encumbrance legally, ethically and morally. Trillions of dollars of wealth that is claimed as “lost” is still possessed by people who don’t know they have it and the game is on to make sure that if they ever figure it out it will be too late.
8. Imagine the purchasing power in our consumer economy if the mortgage obligations and other obligations simply vanished. What would happen to the recession? What would happen to unemployment? What would happen to tax revenues without ever raising the rate of taxation? It would all self correct. And speaking of taxes, how about all those trillions of dollars in “fees” and “profits” that were sequestered off shore, never reported and thus never taxed? what would happen to the national and state deficits?
9. All this is happening because the wrong people are controlling the conversation and most people are listening because the “experts” because they are so smart “must know better.” Consider me the child who yelled “But the Emperor has no clothes.” A million experts with long resumes, PhD’s and persuasive catch words can’t change the fact that the money laundering scheme of the last 10 years was clothed in “Apparent” legality but in substance was simply fraud perpetrated by people who were not any smarter or better than the common swindler. They did, however, have one ace in the hole — the Emperors were in on it. Maybe we have a chance with the current administration, maybe not.
10. Unless we do something about this, we will suffer the indignity of decline into third world status as the wealthy few squeeze the life out of the rest of the country. Is this too extreme for you? Go to the International Money Fund website or the World Bank website or any other website or book that addresses basic economics. You won’t find anything different there. Just words, like these, with a little more polish and a little more academic tone, with the same message.

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You can use this information by establishing “probable cause” in the mind of the Judge or jury right off the bat — we know they lied to investors, are we now supposed to believe they told the truth to the homeowners?

This is the kind of news article buried deep into a newspaper or far down on the list of on-line articles that leaves everyone — homeowners, attorneys, judges, legislators and regulators — in the dark. Wells Fargo is settling one of many claims that it lied to investors about the mortgage backed securities they bought which funded your loan and which filled the pockets of Wall Street “innovators” for years. It doesn’t actually tell us what they lied about — you’ll need to look up the complaint (which I hope someone will do and send to me in pdf format) but it does say that those investors are now paid off in full and that Wells Fargo is buying back what they sold.

Now Wells Fargo will attempt to use that purchase as proof that it is the “INVESTOR” ignoring the ill-gotten gains that preceded it, and attempting to establish itself as the holder in due course, long after the securities were in default, long after the underlying asset mortgages were in default, and long after Wells Fargo received payoffs in credit default swaps that easily cover what they paid the investors and then some.

The point here is that the shell game continues. The regulators are not sophisticated or motivated enough to actually express this for what it is. Even the media gets totally confused. Instead of saying that many loans were paid off or sold back to Wells Fargo for $1.4 billion, it says something about “auction rate securities” which means nothing to practically everyone. What this REALLY means is that you have a defendant (actually several of them — see below) who has actually and demonstrably committed fraud as part of the securitization scheme that funded the financial loan products sold to homeowners — except that so far everyone is concentrating on the fraud on investors. Why is that? The little guy who was lied to, abused and shaken by this ordeal doesn’t matter. It’s just the people with the money that count. You can use this information by establishing “probable cause” in the mind of the Judge or jury right off the bat — we know they lied to investors, are we now supposed to believe they told the truth to the homeowners?

Wells Fargo to Repurchase $1.4 Billion of Securities

Wells Fargo & Company said on Wednesday that it had agreed to buy back $1.4 billion in auction-rate securities it sold to investors before the market for those securities dried up last year.

The decision settles a lawsuit brought against the firm by California’s attorney general, which accused it of violating the state’s securities laws. Wells Fargo, which is based in San Francisco, also agreed to pay the state’s expenses related to the lawsuit.

The brokerage arm of the bank marketed the securities, which resemble corporate debt and whose interest rates were regularly reset by auctions, as an alternative to cash for years, even after analysts warned that the market could freeze up. In February 2008, banks stopped participating in the auctions and effectively locked up investors’ cash.

The suit, brought by the California attorney general, Jerry Brown, contended that Wells Fargo had routinely misrepresented, marketed and sold auction-rate securities as safe, liquid and cashlike investments, omitting material facts.

“Wells Fargo convinced thousands of investors to purchase auction-rate securities with promises of robust returns and liquidity, but when the market collapsed, investors were left out in the cold,” Mr. Brown said in a statement. “Based on misleading advice, investors bought these risky securities. Now, retail investors and small businesses are finally getting their money back.”

Under the terms of the settlement, Wells Fargo agreed to buy back at par value by April 2010 all auction-rate securities bought through its brokerage unit by investors before the market froze up.

About half of the auction-rate securities sold by Wells, which is based in San Francisco, were bought by California residents.

Mr. Brown and Wells reached a settlement agreement Tuesday night, people briefed on the matter said.

The settlement arises in part from an investigation led by Washington State’s Department of Financial Institutions, according to a statement by the North American Securities Administrators Association. Washington State filed an administrative action against Wells before California filed its own case. That matter has also been settled.

State regulators have secured settlements in which banks have agreed to repurchase more than $61 billion in auction-rate securities from investors. Among the firms that have settled these lawsuits are UBS, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and Credit Suisse.

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Editor’s Note: While the media, Wall Street and government sources try to placate us, there are inescapable truths right now and inescapable consequences right around the corner. Other than people who own their home outright or who are relatively close to that point, nearly every homeowner in America has several problems: (1) title is clouded if they refinanced or purchased a home in the last 10 years unless their loan product was local and thus not securitized and (2) they are hopelessly lost in debt that was fabricated by the sellers of Wall Street loan products because whether they know it or not, their home is worth less right now than what they owe, especially after you take into consideration the costs of sale (brokerage commissions etc.) and costs of closing.

The future is even more bleak as prices continue to fall under pressure from an increasing number of homes in inventory. If we stopped building now it would probably take close to 10 years to sell all the houses that are actually in the pipeline. Many of them are not counted right now as “inventory” but they are there nonetheless. Prices will fall under even more pressure as an increasing number of people, their real income decreasing for the last 30 years, simply pick up sticks and leave the keys on the counter. They can rent or even own a home for far less than the payments being demanded on their existing home. In many cases it is a simple calculation of whether to take a “hit” on their FICO score or try to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars they might never recover. As stated, they can’t pay it anyway because median income is dropping. In other words inventory will increase just from voluntary abandonments. Just staying in the house a few months during the process of foreclosure and eviction can put some money back on the table for the homeowner who is already strapped whether payments are being made or not.

Housing prices are tied to median income more than anything else. Unemployment, underemployment, and decreasing wages —actual dollars as well as relative purchasing power is lowering REAL median income every month. Those FOR SALE signs and the prices being asked are not real. Sure some buyers might bite, but most are going to wait until there is some indication that we have hit bottom. So prices will come under increasing pressure from lower median income and an absence of buyers. Using Schiller’s inflation adjusted index, it is obvious when we are still 15%-25% from the bottom using today’s “asking” prices as the baseline.

So that house that the seller thinks is “worth” $300,000 because they bought it for $450,000 is actually only going to fetch perhaps $250,000, less expenses. In all probability the Seller does not have the resources to make up the difference between the actual net selling price or proceeds and the alleged amount due (ignoring the fact that the amount due has probably been paid several times over to the investors who advanced the money that went mostly into the pockets of the Wall Street masters of the universe and partly into the funding of the loan). The only options are short-sale with permission from an entity that does not have any authority to approve it, loan modification with principal reduction with the same authority problem, attack the pretender lenders using the tools provided here, or walk from the house and forget about the whole thing. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what many people will elect out of those choices.

U.S. Mortgage Delinquencies Reach a Record High

The real story with real solutions or at least partial solutions. Sheriff Green started all this. Bravo. Now start thinking of all the profits, transfers and records that should have been reported, filed and taxed and the state budget problems will be over.

Philadelphia Gives Homeowners a Way to Stay Put

Several comments have been posted in addition to other information about MERS which is bringing the entire MERS issue over the brink of the absurd. Who, what where is MERS? Write in with your MERS stories. Take note that we are dealing with at least four entities that I am now aware of —MERS, MERSCORP, Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc., (note plural), Mortgage Electronic registration System, Inc. (note singular). Who are they? What are they in this shell game of “bankruptcy remote vehicles and why are the courts so deaf to the obvious implications of this game on the quality of title on each and every one of the 60 million homes that MERS alleges to have in its data base? Is our judiciary being run by politics — the one branch of government that is supposed to be independent of the executive and legislative branches that have been so useless in this crisis?

In a classic reverse of fortunes, the bad guys have taken control of the dialogue and using legal technicalities and their formidable size and names to impress the judge that it is the hapless borrower who is trying to get away with something on a legal technicality. In a perversion of lady justice, these people take homes that satisfy no obligation and keep the proceeds as a tip for keeping their mouths shut about the pornographic profits earned by Wall Street when these financial products were sold upstream to investors and down stream to homeowners. It is hush money to maintain the cone of silence about the huge profits earned on the down side when the mortgages went into default, just as they were always planned to do.

One reader writes in about Ohio: “I find it very interesting that here in Summit County Ohio, MERS USED to be listed as the Plaintiff in foreclosure actions within our court system. NOW, they are always listed as a Defendant. It’s like playing a game of MONOPOLY with my little brother here. When he found himself on the losing end of the game, he simply changed the rules.They CANNOT have it both ways.”
Another reader wrote in that in Florida the ONLY way MERS is registered to do business is as registered agent to receive service of process. If that is true their representations in hundreds of thousands of foreclosures has been false, fraudulent and flagrant. But of course we know that isn’t the only reason their representations have been false, fraudulent and flagrant.

Yet Minnesota seems to be sensitive to the banking interests, passing laws and interpreting statutes to give MERS status it was never meant to have. Bypassing those annoying provisions of the 5th and 14th amendment about due process, and 500 years of common law, they allow MERS to foreclose on a home and keep the house distributing the title and proceeds anyway it wants even though no MERS entity has EVER put one dime into the transaction and even though MERS is a total stranger to the transaction other than being named, without its knowledge but with its consent in tens of millions of real estate closings.

And California is allowing Judges to abandon 500 years of common law in allowing someone who is a stranger to the transaction to make claims at the cost, detriment and prejudice to the real parties to that transaction. Further, California continues to allow the procedural shell game in unlawful detainers wherein they use the law that was meant to be used in normal evictions and misapply to foreclosures in which the actors are impostors, blocking the homeowner from access to the courts or the right to be heard, and preventing the exercise of his/her rights to due process.

How do we know? Because if you go to the MERS website they tell you. And what they tell you is that they are a bankruptcy remote vehicle to be utilized in evading or avoiding laws on taxes, recordation, fees, and reporting. They tell the banks not to worry, they will never make a claim for the mortgage or the note or the obligation. They say they are only a bookkeeping service.

And from other sources we know they have about 17 employees, they have an automated attendant system to deputize anyone who knows how to access their system, and that ANYONE can sign as an officer of MERS even if none of the 17 people who work there ever heard of you or ever will hear of you.
It’s a shell game, and lawyers and Judges should be concentrating on this not because it is a legal technicality but because if we are a nation of laws, the protection of ALL interested parties should be our paramount concern. In each and every legal action neither the borrower nor the actual lender who advanced the cash for the loan is part of that equation.

In a classic reverse of fortunes, the bad guys have taken control of the dialogue and using legal technicalities and their formidable size and names to impress the judge that it is the hapless borrower who is trying to get away with something on a legal technicality. In a perversion of lady justice, these people take homes that satisfy no obligation and keep the proceeds as a tip for keeping their mouths shut about the pornographic profits earned by Wall Street when these financial products were sold upstream to investors and down stream to homeowners. It is hush money to maintain the cone of silence about the huge profits earned on the down side when the mortgages went into default, just as they were always planned to do.

This isn’t hard to understand. It is hard to accept. It is a challenge to us as citizens regardless of our political persuasions, to break up the oligopoly that controls Washington in BOTH political major parties and reinstate government for the people and by the people. I’m doing my part, what are you doing?

Editor’s Note: In this article you have the nub of the problem for the investors, for the foreclosers, for the pretender lenders. What did the taxpayer actually pay for and what did they get for it? And if the money all went to pay off credit default swaps at 100 cents on the dollar then are those obligations to be considered paid or still outstanding, due and owing. And if they are still due and owing, to whom?

Remember that in addition to the windfall hidden yield spread premium between the aggregating pool and the SPV pool that amounted to as much as multiples of the loan amounts, these investment banks placed bets (credit default swaps) on the failure of those pools. These were pools they created (or that they had inside information on) and they “traded” with other investment houses (creating plausible deniability that they had done anything wrong). Based on the certainty that the pools would fail they purchased as many as 30 bets that the loan would fail and under the rules, they were allowed to collect 30 times the loss amount.

So that is why I have repeatedly said that the only incentive amongst the pretender lenders and all the other sharks posing as conduits or intermediaries, was to make certain that the loans went into default. Unless a solid percentage went into default, the credit default swaps didn’t pay off. Loan modifications don’t pay off, short-sales don’t pay off, settlements don’t pay off. Only defaults brings the ridiculous profits to the doorstep of these companies who are the only ones making money off this debacle. And the NY Fed either didn’t understand it or did understand it. Either way the NY Fed needs to be brought to task about this and the question of Geitner’s continued tenure as Treasury secretary needs to be addressed.

But this is not going to be settled in the court of public opinion. It is only going to be settled in the courts of competent jurisdiction. Somehow we have to get the message across that these people are making king’s ransoms off the defaulting loans and that they are taking the houses too as the cherry on top of their self-created gluttonous cake.

Audit Faults New York Fed in A.I.G. Bailout

And probably people “of the cloth” from all denominations.

We are a nation of faith. Jesus angrily drove the money lenders out of the temple. How can we stand by and allow the borrowers to be driven out of their homes?

The fact is most of these victims were hunted down like a foxhunt, with strangers knocking on doors, experts giving them quiet assurance of how wonderful their house was and how much it was worth, how wonderful it was that the bank would approve such generous terms (because they weren’t playing with their own money), and with undisclosed yield spread premiums of unimaginable size sometimes in multiples of the mortgage amount itself.

I have already spoken about how in Florida they hired and got licenses for 10,000 mortgage brokers to act as bird dog originators — all 10,000 of them were convicted felons, mostly for economic crimes, many of whom just got out of jail. Translation: they needed people who would be willing to lie in order to get borrowers to sign. Yet that was not enough. “One theme emerging from these suits is how banks teamed up with pastors to win over new customers for subprime loans.”

It is probably not politically correct and even offensive to say that American society has one faith in common: money. Belief in money and in particular that almighty dollar is something that all of us seem to converge on from disparate facets of life, class levels and religious faith. The protestant ethic on which our country supposedly rests, is all but dead. People who conduct their lives according to the principles of hard work, building a foundation of quality and prospering in the end usually are derided as old-fashioned or even naive in “today’s marketplace.”

If you really want to know why this nonsensical mortgage meltdown could occur, look no further. For all the cries of “shame” and demands for justice, our society, as a whole is doing virtually nothing about making sure it never happens again and in fact has already launched the next round of speculation based upon a government bailout of the losses when they occur.

It no longer matters if you work hard. It doesn’t matter if you are honest. It doesn’t even matter if what you do is successful. You will be paid a king’s ransom as long as you are playing “the game.” When the cards come tumbling down, it doesn’t matter — you are rich beyond your wildest dreams and even if you have nothing left to do, you don’t need to work anyway. The fact that tens of millions of people can’t work, are NOT rich, and have no income or safety net is of no concern. It isn’t that these people all lack conscience. The inconvenient truth is that they are following the rules of our society.

One recurring theme coming up in many lawsuits is “business Model” adopted by the Top Dogs (Bank of America, Countrywide, Wells Fargo etc.) who simply repeated the multilevel marketing schemes that proliferate across our great land in search of another unearned dollar.

I have already spoken about how in Florida they hired and got licenses for 10,000 mortgage brokers to act as bird dog originators — all 10,000 of them were convicted felons, mostly for economic crimes, many of whom just got out of jail. Translation: they needed people who would be willing to lie in order to get borrowers to sign. Yet that was not enough. “One theme emerging from these suits is how banks teamed up with pastors to win over new customers for subprime loans.”

Just look at how much trouble we are having distributing flu shots and getting people to accept the flu shot. Channels of every type and place imaginable are hawking the shots (which by the way I think is a good thing, and yes, I got one) at tens of thousands of outlets and delivery points. MERS says it has 60+ million mortgage transactions in its data records. How do you reach 60 million homeowners?

Well it turns out to be easy in country where the overwhelming majority of the populace are people of “faith.”

I invite you all to take a look at “Did Christianity Cause the Crash?” by Hanna Rosin published in the current issue of The Atlantic, December 2009 at page 39.

A Case in Point: Beth Jacobson, witness for the prosecution in City of Baltimore vs. Wells Fargo. Just the facts Ma’am. Virtually none of the mortgage “specialists” any of us spoke to over the phone had any education, training or experience in mortgages, finance or even bookkeeping. They were trained on how to look like they were experts. They would lie to you eye to eye. And they were rewarded. “Sometimes the bank would send a Hummer limo to pick up Jacobson for a celebration, she says. She’d arrive at a bar and find all her co-workers drunk and her boss “doing body shots off a waitress.”

Like any “good idea” (without any sens of “enough”) the marketing model of establishing sales channels through houses of worship was irresistible. After all, congregants were in a vulnerable mood when they went to church, they were easily pacified by their faith in their clergyman, and any “Wealth Now” seminar assumes an aura of both credibility at the least and mandate from God at most. And the Pastor, the Church or some “program” of the church would get a $350 “donation.” It didn’t take long for those in the congregation who were prospecting for the next person they could fool to get the point — bring subprime mortgage candidates to the bank and get paid $350 per mortgage. So if they did 10 mortgages per week, they earned themselves $3500 per week.

The results are well known, but not particularly flushed out. People who are living lives of quiet desperation under a mountain of debt they would never escape suddenly saw the jackpot. And so while the mortgage meltdown was in its hay day their income jumped from what had been $35,000 per year to an av erage of $350,000 per year. And after 2-3 years they were convinced that they now were big earners. When the crash occurred, they were slow to realize or believe that they were no six figure earners and they never were. They were low five figure earners, and those jobs were no longer available so now they would need unemployment or other public assistance.

What bothers me is not that people of the cloth are like anyone else — subject to temptation and possibly who got there because of the protection it provides for all sorts of deviants or corruption. N0, what bothers me is that even as mainstream media publishes these stories, the underlying assumption is that the mortgage mess is still MOSTLY the fault of consumers whose eyes were too big for their stomachs.

The fact is most of these victims were hunted down like a foxhunt, with strangers knocking on doors, experts giving them quiet assurance of how wonderful their house was and how much it was worth, how wonderful it was that the bank would approve such generous terms (because they weren’t playing with their own money), and with undisclosed yield spread premiums of unimaginable size sometimes in multiples of the mortgage amount itself. And yet the victims continue to be portrayed as gamers who lost. That bothers me because until we get all the facts out on the table, there never be a solution to this mess, this confabulation.

Until there is real understanding of the facts, we will continue to protect the large banks that are “too big to fail” and continue to ignore the plight of the common man and woman. As long as we persist, we will not rebuild the middle class. Without a stable prospering middle class, we are nothing. That’s the real irony. The wealth needs to be in the middle class to have society that survives itself. Legally I have no doubt that the wealth is there but it has not been claimed. Practically, until Judges and lawyers and homeowners “get it” they will continue to blame the “borrower” and let the pretender lender do body shots “off the waitress.”

Editor’s Note: Why do I do this? Because we are delivering a message to future generations about how the world works contrary to our constitution and contrary to American values and ideals. Conservatives conserve nothing except the wealth of the fantastic few while the liberals liberate nobody from the yoke of economic slavery. Maybe it’s all a game. I won’t play and if you care about this country and wish to avoid a societal collapse, you should stop playing too.

History has shown us with grim clarity what happens to any country or empire when the power and the wealth gets so concentrated in just a few people while the rest of the population can’t keep a roof over their head and can’t eat food and can’t get medical care, all hell breaks loose. Galbraith, IMF economists, World Bank economists, all know what is going to happen do to our failure to police our own, our failure to make it right and our failure to make amends to our allies or would-be allies.

Children are learning an important lesson: in their world, Mom and Dad are powerless to prevent the worst things from happening and there is nobody else they can depend upon. A whole generation is growing up with the notion that the American Dream is an unknown, unknowable fantasy. Every time the far right asserts personal responsibility in the face of a wretched fraud committed on most of the country, they close the gate a little more, waiting for the final slaughter. Every time the far left wimps out on their own paltform, the one the people elected them on for CHANGE NOW, they deceive and abandon our citizens.

And so we are a Prozac nation because everyone is depressed. We are a Xanax nation because everyone is so stressed out we can’t think straight. And those of us who are entering our twilight years see a future where our children and grandchildren and their children will lead bleak lives of quiet desperation in a country which proclaims free speech and assembly but has surrendered that basic right to about 100 institutions that control the lobbyists who control the flow of money in Washington and state houses.

In April, 2007 stocks were up, confidence was high and everyone had been convinced that all was well without questioning anything. Meanwhile in the inner recesses of the Federal Reserve and halls of power of the executive branch and the U.S. Department of Treasury in particular, they knew the collapse was coming and the only reason they did nothing was political — they didn’t want to admit that the free market was not working, that it wasn’t free, that it was controlled by monopoly and oligopoly, and that the government wasn’t working either because we the people had allowed people to get re-elected despite their sell-out of our countries and our lives.

In I did some very simple calculations and determined that the DJIA was not actually worth 14,000, it was worth 8,000. As it came down, more stumps revealed themselves as the high water receded. The equities market is overpriced by about 25%-30%. Housing is still inflated by 15%-20%. Nobody wants to hear this. The dollar is in a swan dive because everyone in the world knows the reality except the citizens of the United States of America where we have a “free press” that would rather entertain us than actually tell us the news.

I’m doing my part. What are you doing to end this catastrophe?

Job Woes Exacting a Toll on Family Life

THE WOODLANDS, Tex. — Paul Bachmuth’s 9-year-old daughter, Rebecca, began pulling out strands of her hair over the summer. His older child, Hannah, 12, has become noticeably angrier, more prone to throwing tantrums.

Initially, Mr. Bachmuth, 45, did not think his children were terribly affected when he lost his job nearly a year ago. But now he cannot ignore the mounting evidence.

“I’m starting to think it’s all my fault,” Mr. Bachmuth said.

As the months have worn on, his job search travails have consumed the family, even though the Bachmuths were outwardly holding up on unemployment benefits, their savings and the income from the part-time job held by Mr. Bachmuth’s wife, Amanda. But beneath the surface, they have been a family on the brink. They have watched their children struggle with behavioral issues and a stress-induced disorder. He finally got a job offer last week, but not before the couple began seeing a therapist to save their marriage.

For many families across the country, the greatest damage inflicted by this recession has not necessarily been financial, but emotional and psychological. Children, especially, have become hidden casualties, often absorbing more than their parents are fully aware of. Several academic studies have linked parental job loss — especially that of fathers — to adverse impacts in areas like school performance and self-esteem.

“I’ve heard a lot of people who are out of work say it’s kind of been a blessing, that you have more time to spend with your family,” Mr. Bachmuth said. “I love my family and my family comes first, and my family means more than anything to me, but it hasn’t been that way for me.”

A recent study at the University of California, Davis, found that children in families where the head of the household had lost a job were 15 percent more likely to repeat a grade. Ariel Kalil, a University of Chicago professor of public policy, and Kathleen M. Ziol-Guest, of the Institute for Children and Poverty in New York, found in an earlier study that adolescent children of low-income single mothers who endured unemployment had an increased chance of dropping out of school and showed declines in emotional well-being.

In the long term, children whose parents were laid off have been found to have lower annual earnings as adults than those whose parents remained employed, a phenomenon Peter R. Orszag, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, mentioned in a speech last week at New York University.

A variety of studies have tied drops in family income to negative effects on children’s development. But Dr. Kalil, a developmental psychologist and director of the university’s Center for Human Potential and Public Policy, said the more important factor, especially in middle-class households, appeared to be changes in family dynamics from job loss.

“The extent that job losers are stressed and emotionally disengaged or withdrawn, this really matters for kids,” she said. “The other thing that matters is parental conflict. That has been shown repeatedly in psychological studies to be a bad family dynamic.”

Dr. Kalil said her research indicated that the repercussions were more pronounced in children when fathers experience unemployment, rather than mothers.

She theorized that the reasons have to do with the importance of working to the male self-image, or the extra time that unemployed female breadwinners seem to spend with their children, mitigating the impact on them.

Certainly, some of the more than a dozen families interviewed that were dealing with long-term unemployment said the period had been helpful in certain ways for their families.

Denise Stoll, 39, and her husband, Larry, 47, both lost their positions at a bank in San Antonio in October 2008 when it changed hands. Mrs. Stoll, a vice president who managed a technology group, earned significantly more than her husband, who worked as a district loan origination manager.

Nevertheless, Mr. Stoll took unemployment much harder than she did and struggled to keep his spirits up, before he landed a new job within several months in the Kansas City area, where the family had moved to be closer to relatives. He had to take a sizable pay cut but was grateful to be working again.

Mrs. Stoll is still looking but has also tried to make the most of the additional time with the couple’s 5-year-old triplets, seeking to instill new lessons on the importance of thrift.

“Being a corporate mom, you work a lot of hours, you feed them dinner — maybe,” she said. “This morning, we baked cookies together. I have time to help them with homework. I’m attending church. The house is managed by me. Just a lot more homemaker-type stuff, which I think is more nurturing to them.”

Other families, however, reported unmistakable ill effects.

Robert Syck, 42, of Fishers, Ind., lost his job as a call-center manager in March. He has been around his 11-year-old stepson, Kody, more than ever before. Lately, however, their relationship has become increasingly strained, Mr. Syck said, with even little incidents setting off blowups. His stepson’s grades have slipped and the boy has been talking back to his parents more.

“It’s only been particularly in the last few months that it’s gotten really bad, to where we’re verbally chewing each other out,” said Mr. Syck, who admitted he had been more irritable around the house. “A lot of that is due to the pressures of unemployment.”

When Mr. Bachmuth was first laid off in December from his $120,000 job at an energy consulting firm, he could not even bring himself to tell his family. For several days, he got dressed in the morning and left the house as usual at 6 a.m., but spent the day in coffee shops, the library or just walking around.

Mr. Bachmuth had started the job, working on finance and business development for electric utilities, eight months earlier, moving his family from Austin. They bought something of a dream home, complete with a backyard pool and spa.

Although she knew the economy was ultimately to blame, Mrs. Bachmuth could not help feeling angry at her husband, both said later in interviews.

“She kind of had something in the back of her mind that it was partly my fault I was laid off,” Mr. Bachmuth said. “Maybe you’re not a good enough worker.”

Counseling improved matters significantly, but Mrs. Bachmuth still occasionally dissolved into tears at home.

Besides quarrels over money, the reversal in the couple’s roles also produced friction. Mrs. Bachmuth took on a part-time job at a preschool to earn extra money. But she still did most, if not all, of the cooking, cleaning and laundry.

Dr. Kalil, of the University of Chicago, said a recent study of how people spend their time showed unemployed fathers devote significantly less time to household chores than even mothers who are employed full-time, and do not work as hard in caring for children.

Mr. Bachmuth’s time with his girls, however, did increase. He was the one dropping off Rebecca at school and usually the one who picked her up. He began helping her more with homework. He and Hannah played soccer and chatted more.

But the additional time brought more opportunities for squabbling. The rest of the family had to get used to Mr. Bachmuth being around, sometimes focused on his search for a job, but other times lounging around depressed, watching television or surfing soccer sites on the Internet.

“My dad’s around a lot more, so it’s a little strange because he gets frustrated he’s not at work, and he’s not being challenged,” Hannah said. “So I think me and my dad are a lot closer now because we can spend a lot more time together, but we fight a lot more maybe because he’s around 24-7.”

When Rebecca began pulling her hair out in late summer in what was diagnosed as a stress-induced disorder, she insisted it was because she was bored. But her parents and her therapist — the same one seeing her parents — believed it was clearly related to the job situation.

The hair pulling has since stopped, but she continues to fidget with her brown locks.

The other day, she suddenly asked her mother whether she thought she would be able to find a “good job” when she grew up.

Hannah said her father’s unemployment had made it harder for her to focus on schoolwork. She also conceded she had been more easily annoyed with her parents and her sister.

At night, she said, she has taken to stowing her worries away in an imaginary box.

“I take all the stress and bad things that happen over the day, and I lock them in a box,” she said.

Then, she tries to sleep.

all we have left is the obligation, unsecured and subject to counterclaims etc. MOST IMPORTANT procedurally, it requires a lawsuit by the would-be forecloser in order to establish the terms of the obligation and the security, if any. This means they must make allegations as to ownership of the receivable and prove it — the kiss of death for all would be lenders except investors who funded these transactions.

sirrowan
sirrowan@peoplepc.com

“I just thought of something. I was reading what was posted a few above me regarding MERS own rules. They claim that their “officers” tend to act without authority from MERS and they do not use any records held by MERS etc.

How can this be? How can they be officers then? They aren’t if you ask me. Now wonder all these judges are telling them they are nothing but agents if even that, lol.

But if they were officers, wouldn’t MERS be liable for the actions of their “officers” on behalf of MERS?”

ANSWER from Neil

Sirrowan: GREAT POINT! The answer is that if they have a user ID and password ANYONE can become a “limited signing officer” for MERS.

Sometimes they say they are vice-president, sometimes they use some other official title. But the fact remains that they have no connection with MERS, no employment with MERS, no access to MERS records, and definitely no direct grant of a POA (Power of attorney). It’s a game.

This is why I have repeatedly say that in every securitized chain, particularly in the case of a MERS chain, there are one or more documents that are fabricated, forged or voidable. Whether this rises the level of criminality is up to future courts to determine.

One thing is sure — a party who signs a document that has no authority to sign it in the capacity they are representing has just committed violations of federal and state statute and common law. And the Notary who knew the party was not authorized as represented has committed a violation as well. Most states have statutes that say a bad notarization renders the document void, even if it was recorded. This breaks the chain of title and reverts back to the originating lender (at best) or voids the documents in the originating transaction (at worst).

In either event, the distinction I draw between the obligation (the substance of the transaction caused by the funding of a “loan product”) and the note (which by law is ONLY EVIDENCE of the obligation and the mortgage which is ONLY incident to the note, becomes very important. If the documents (note and mortgage) are void then all we have left is the obligation, unsecured and subject to counterclaims etc. MOST IMPORTANT procedurally, it requires a lawsuit by the would-be forecloser in order to establish the terms of the obligation and the security, if any. This means they must make allegations as to ownership of the receivable and prove it — the kiss of death for all would be lenders except investors who funded these transactions.

Dan Edstrom, you are great!

OK I found the loan level details for my deal. It shows my loan in foreclosure and my last payment in 6/2008 (which is accurate). What it doesn’t say (among other things) is what advances were made on the account. Very interesting. This report is generated monthly but they are only reporting the current month. It also shows which pool my loan is in (originally their were approx. 4 pools, now there are 2). This means I can use all of this information to possibly calculate the advances reported – except that two months before I missed my first payment they stopped reporting SUB-servicer advances. [Editor's Note: Those who are computer savvy will recognize that these are field names, which is something that should be included in your demand and in your QWR. You will also wanat the record data and metadata that is attached to each record. ]

DIST_DATE
SERIES_NAME
LOAN_NUM
POOL_NUM
DEAL_NUM LTV_DISCLOSED_PCT CLTV_PCT CREDIT_SCORE_NBR BACK_END_DTI_PCT
JUNIOR_RATIO LOAN_DOC_TYPE_DSCR LOAN_PURPOSE_TYPE_DSCR OCCUPANCY_TYPE PROPERTY_TYPE_DSCR LIEN_PRIORITY_DSCR STANDALONE_IND SILENT_SECOND_IND PROPERTY_STATE CONFORMING_BAL_IND INT_RATE_TYPE_DSCR MARGIN_GROSS_PCT
PMT_1ST_DATE INT_CHG_FREQ_MTH_QTY INT_CHG_PRD_INCR_CEIL_RATE INT_LIFE_CEIL_RATE INT_LIFE_FLOOR_RATE INT_ONLY_TERM_MTH_QTY INT_CHG_1ST_MTH INT_CHG_FREQ_DSCR INT_CHG_MTH_DIFF_QTY MORTAGE_INSURANCE_PROVIDER MORTAGE_INSURANCE_TYPE_DSCR MATURITY_DATE
NOTE_DATE
PRIN_ORIG_BAL
SOLD_BAL
TERM_ORIG_MTH_QTY PREPMT_PENALTY_TERM_MTH_QTY BORROWER_RESIDUAL_INCOME_AMT RFC_GRADE_CODE PRODUCT_GROUP_FALLOUT_DSCR MI_TYPE_DSCR INDEX_TYPE_CODE INDEX_TYPE_DSCR MLY_CURTAILMENT_AMT MLY_DRAW_GROSS_AMT MLY_COUPON_NET_RATE MLY_COUPON_GROSS_RATE MLY_PRIN_UNPAID_BAL MLY_PRIN_SCHED_BAL LOAN_AGE MLY_TERM_REMAIN_MTH_QTY MLY_UTILIZATION_PCT MLY_DELQ_REPORT_METHOD MLY_LOAN_STATUS_CODE MLY_LOAN_STATUS_DSCR MLY_PREPMT_TYPE_DSCR MLY_PAID_TO_DATE

If anyone wants this file or any of the servicing reports so they can see the actual data shoot me an email.

Thanks,
Dan Edstrom
dmedstrom@hotmail.com

TENT CITY, California While Vacant Houses Deteriorate

From watergatesummer.blogspot.com we have this post on the moronic ideology that misuses our natural and creative resources. It can be said that conservatives do not conserve and liberals do not liberate. I coined that because it is obvious that politics in this country is degrading even while some try to revive it.

Out of pure ideology and ignorance, people are being ejected from homes they own on the pretense that they don’t own the home. This sleight of hand is accomplished by “bridge to nowhere” logic — the pretender lender merely pretends to be authorized to initiate foreclosure proceedings.  They come into court with a pile of  inconsistent documents with little or no REAL connection with the originating papers and zero connection with the REAL lender.

So we end up with hundreds of thousands of homes that are empty, subject to vandalism and decay from lack of mainteance and lack of anyone living in them, combined with nobody paying utility bills etc that would help take the edge off the crisis. Instead, we choose to allow TENT CITY where there are no decent facilities, where people are living in tents literally, resulting in a greater drain on social services, police, fire, health, schools etc.

Why because some ideologue and people who mindlessly subscribe to such ideology has already played Judge and Jury and convicted these victims of Wall Street fraud. They are certain that these are deadbeats that don’t pay thier bills and won’t listen when someone points out that many of these people had nearly perfect credit scores before tragedy hit. That means the victims were generally considered to have been better credit risks based upon an excellent record of paying their bills, than their ideological detractors.

Someone of this ideology will tell us or anyone who will listen that the victims should have read what they were signing. The is fact that NOBODY reads those closing documents, not even lawyers, not even the ideological (don’t confuse me with the facts) conservatives. So the same people who say you should have read those documents, didn’t read their own.

And now everyone who is NOT in foreclosure or who has already lost possession of their home and who signed a securitized loan package is “underwater” an average of 25% , which means that they are, on average around $70,000 in debt that will never be covered by equity in their lifetime — so they can’t move without coming to the table with the shortfall.

Such ideologues fall short of helping their fellow citizens to be sure. What is astonishing is that they fall short of helping themselves, which means they subject their life partners, spouses, children and other dependents to the same mindless mind-numbing shoot myself in the foot political theology.  And somehow it is THESE people who are controlling the pace of the recovery, controlling the correction in housing and social services who are claiming to be angry about their country being taken away from them!

MR. GEITNER, MR. SUMMERS AND OTHERS WHO ARE ON THE ECONOMIC TEAM DESERVE some CREDIT FOR BRINGING US BACK FROM AN ECONOMIC PRECIPICE THAT WOULD HAVE RESULTED IN A DEPRESSION FAR DEEPER AND LONGER THAN THE GREAT DEPRESSION. AND THEY SHOULD BE CUT SOME SLACK BECAUSE THEY WERE HANDED A PLATE ON WHICH THE ECONOMY WAS BASED LARGELY ON VAPOR — THE CONTRACTION OF WHICH WILL SPELL DISASTER IN MORE WAYS THAN ONE.

THAT SAID, THEY ARE GOING TOO FAR IN PROTECTING INVESTMENT BANKS AND DEPOSITORY BANKS FROM THEIR OWN STUPIDITY AND ENCOURAGING BEHAVIOR THAT THE TAXPAYERS WILL ABSORB — AT LEAST THEY THINK THE TAXPAYERS WILL DO IT.

As the following article demonstrates, the model currently used in this country and dozens of other countries  is “pay to play” — and if there is a crash it is the fees the banks paid over the years that bails them out instead of the taxpayers.

For reasons that I don’t think are very good, the economic team is marginalizing Volcker and headed down the same brainless path we were on when Bush was in office, which was only an expansion of what happened when Clinton was in office, which was a “me too” based upon Bush #1 and Reagan. The end result is no longer subject to conjecture — endless crashes, each worse than the one before.

The intransigence of Wall Street and the economic team toward any meaningful financial reform adds salt to the wound we created in the first palce. We were fortunate that the rest of the world did not view the economic meltdown as an act of war by the United States. They are inviting us to be part of the solution and we insist on being part of the problem.

Sooner or later, the world’s patience is going to wear thin. Has anyone actually digested the fact that there is buyer’s run on gold now? Does anyone care that the value of the dollar is going down which means that those countries, companies and individuals who keep their wealth in dollars are dumping those dollars in favor of diversifying into other units of storage?

The short-term “advantage” will be more than offset by the continuing joblessness and homelessness unless we take these things seriously. Culturally, we are looking increasingly barbaric to dozens of countries that take their role of protecting the common welfare seriously.

Bottom Line on these pages is that it shouldn’t be so hard to get a judge to realize that just because the would-be forecloser has a big expensive brand name doesn’t mean they are anything better than common thieves. But like all theft in this country, the bigger you are the more wiggle room you get when you rob the homeless or a bank or the government or the taxpayers. Marcy Kaptur is right. She calls for a change of “generals”  (likening Obama’s situation to Lincoln),  since their skills were perhaps valuable when Obama first tackled the economic crisis — but now are counterproductive. We need new generals on the economic team that will steer us clear from the NEXT crisis not the LAST crisis.

Britain and U.S. Clash at G-20 on Tax to Insure Against Crises

Dear Everyone:

Yes I had a heart attack last week and several stent procedures. No I’m not dead, but thanks for asking. I’m OK now but I have a period of recovery that will last through the end of the year. If I do things right, you won’t notice the difference. Thanks to everyone for their good wishes. Go get’em!

Regards,

Neil