MERS

Snippets From the 50 State Mortgage Settlement

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mersAs expected, states were strong armed by the administration and have agreed to a $25 billion, 50 state mortgage fraud settlement with five banks for robo-signing and mortgage fraud. According to the Wall Street Journal:

The agreement covers five banks: Ally Financial Inc., Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc., J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and Wells Fargo & Co. Together, the five firms handle payments on 55% of all home loans outstanding, or about 27 million mortgages, according to Inside Mortgage Finance.

While the banks pony up $25 billion, they are the ones who made out like bandits.

About $5 billion would be cash payments to states and federal authorities, $17 billion would be pegged for homeowner relief, roughly $3 billion would go for refinancing and $1 billion would be paid to the Federal Housing Administration.

Who's the Big Bad Wolf Now on Foreclosure Fraud and Abuse?

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three pigsWe all know the story of the three little pigs and the big, bad wolf.

Little pig, little pig, let me come in.
No, no, not by the hair on my chinny chin chin.
Then I'll huff, and I'll puff, and I'll blow your house in.

To date that's been the story of the banks as the big bad wolf, blowing houses down all over America with fraudulent foreclosures, viewing home owners as tasty piglet snacks of profit.

Will we ever see role reversal in this never ending grim tale? Will the big bad wolf finally be our government, blowing down the Banks' house of mortgage and foreclosure fraud? Can the government at least hand Americans just a few bricks at least? It's yet to be seen.

The latest seems to be dueling events. One the one hand, there is a foreclosure fraud settlement in the works for all 50 States, which supposedly gives banks immunity and waves all future legal actions. Yet at the same time, the New York Attorney General filed a civil fraud lawsuit against three major banks over MERS.

Saturday Reads Around The Internets - Death By 1,000 Euros

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shocknews
Welcome to the weekly roundup of great articles, facts and figures. These are the weekly finds that made our eyes pop.

 

Fed Chair Bernanke Warns on Europe, Jobs Crisis

It's astounding to me, that even the big banker in chief knows the jobs crisis and what's going on in Europe can bring the U.S. to it's knees, unlike most of the punditry these days:

Scalia Sets Standard for Massive Mortgage Fraud Class Action Law Suit

There hasn't been much in the way of justice for the average citizen for quite a while. Often, those accused of crimes cannot afford adequate representation and are subject to "let's make a deal justice." If you're unfortunate enough to be sued or party to a divorce proceeding, you soon learn that the court system is an entitlement program for attorneys, not a civilized means of settling disputes. (Image)

The last decade has been devastating for what many thought were inviolable fundamental rights. The Bush administration dismantled as much of the Constitution as time allowed including habeas corpus which prevents detention without a charge. Through a presidential directive, an even older legal tradition went by the way, the right to be indicted and tried before facing capital punishment. I am, of course, referring to President Obama's declared option to assassinate citizens of the United States identified as terrorists by anonymous bureaucrats.

The Scalia opinion in Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes seems like another brick in the wall that protects the powerful against the intrusions of civil rights and equal treatment sought by the rest of us. Brought in behalf of Wal-Mart's female employees, the suit sought compensation for 1.5 million women subjected to wage discrimination.

ForeclosureGate Deal - The Mandatory Cover Up

Michael Collins
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The Federal government is about to settle the ForeclosureGate affair, according to a report in the New York Times on April 9. The Times noted that twelve million homes will be lost by 2012. Home equity values are down by $5.6 trillion since the real estate crash.

The draft agreement released to American Banker shows another corporate-friendly deal designed to maintain the incumbent perpetrators at the expense of the people. (Image: zoonabar)

The proposed settlement culminates an effort by federal prosecutors to address strongly supported allegations of widespread mortgage fraud perpetrated on as many as sixty percent of current mortgage holders. Homeowners were sold mortgages, serviced for the loans, and, in some cases, subjected to foreclosure and eviction based on fictional contracts and collections practices that violate the most basic principles of contract law and specific federal code pertaining to fraudulent debt collection.

MERS Leaves the Field

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By Numerian
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How the banks could inflict such damage on the country’s home title and mortgage registry system would take another investigation by Congress to determine – assuming Congress was interested.
The Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems company (known as MERS), which has been at the center of legal problems affecting the securitization of home mortgages and foreclosures, has given up one of its principal corporate objectives. It is now instructing its members to cease foreclosing on residential properties in the name of MERS, and to begin immediately to register all assignments of mortgages with local county recorders of deeds. (Image)

The whole purpose of MERS when it was established in 1996 was to by-pass the county recording process, and the billions of dollars of fees that banks and mortgage companies would have had to pay to comply with state and local real estate laws. MERS operated on a legal assumption that it could have its cake and eat it too, by acting as an agent for its member banks in their real estate transactions, but also acting if necessary as a principal in its own name when it came to assigning mortgages and foreclosing on properties.

What's Behind the Foreclosure Crisis

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By Numerian

"MERS acts as nominee in the county land records for the lender and servicer. Any loan registered on the MERS® System is inoculated against future assignments because MERS remains the nominal mortgagee no matter how many times servicing is traded. MERS as original mortgagee (MOM) is approved by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Ginnie Mae, FHA and VA, California and Utah Housing Finance Agencies, as well as all of the major Wall Street rating agencies." About theMortgage Electronic Registration System, MERS

The foreclosure scandal surrounding the US financial industry is being portrayed by the banks as a technical problem which requires that some documentation errors be fixed. The White House has rejected the calls of many in the Congress for a nationwide moratorium on foreclosures on the grounds that there are quite a lot of them that are legitimate and should be processed. Government officials say it is going to take just a little bit of time to sort out these from the flawed foreclosures.