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"Streamlining" has lead to increased systemic risk and total system failures. True in banking, autos, government. everything
You two did NOT read that article that quickly
I am shocked, SHOCKED that people are rushing to call first before reading the post
CR is doing guest posts?!
Congrats, albrt!
CR has always done occasional guest posts. I never submitted one before because the standard set by CR and Tanta is so high.
anyone watch Michael Moore Capitalism?
Hoopa
I took a speed reading class.
A gentleman and a scholar
Well done, Sir!
Hey, when did CR add at the bottom an Older Posts section with all the recent posts listed in order.
It looks good.
Must not have been paying attention,
Albrt,
Excellent job and yes you do the high standards proud.
That said, you repeat several times; "Mortgages are complicated."
Mortgages are simple. Very simple. What financiers do with mortgages is complicated. Some of that complication increases safety and liquidity and such but some is obfuscation, revenue enhancement for the financiers and as we are discovering increasing risk while concealing that fact.
Mortgages are simple. Mortgage products are complicated.
Sporkfed must be as fast as our esteemed Congress in reading those boring things they have to vote on overnight. Ya know, silly things like TARP, the Patriot Act, the Constitution...
Rob Dawg wrote:
I gotta agree with albrt. As near as I can tell, there are 50 different types of mortgages in the US. Just the permutations of recourse/nonrecourse, lien/title, first/second/vacation home gets you a patchwork of laws that is already crazy.
Thanks Rob.
Conceptually simple, legally and practically complicated.
blackwater....
so true...voting on air....our congress is no better than radio shock jocks..
MERS v. Kansas => Mass Sank Rev.
=>Massive Sunk Revenues
i=9, v=22, e=5, u=21, e=5, n=14, u=21, e=5, s=19
i+v+e=36 -> 10 = j
u=21
e+n+u+e+s=64 -> 12 = l
jul = July = 7th month
Today's date is Oct 4. 89 days since July 7
102112 * 89 = 9,087,968 => 908-7968
I think this headline is some kind of coded message. I just need to pick up on the last piece to determine the area code.
Conceptually simple, legally and practically complicated.
Isn't it an argument that a simpler and more transparent legal framework for mortgages is needed? It could be accomplished very simply by saying that in order to qualify as Fannie/Freddie conforming mortgages they need to conform not only to standard about downpayment and max amount, but also to common legal standards.
What's the value of having this complicated patchwork of mortgage laws?
EvilHenryPaulson wrote:
O.M.G. The illuminati's phone number!
What's the value of having this complicated patchwork of mortgage laws?
None other than the value inherent in having 50 separate states.
hate to go ot but this is truly sad....
Yahoo! 404 - Page Not Found
The federal stimulus package approved in February includes $87 billion in Medicaid funding to help states. But Connecticut and several other states are using a loophole in the legislation to divert the money to budget items unrelated to health care, according to a congressional study.
One thing about the chinese that I notice here in San Francisco is they respect and take care of the elderly...thus I respect them
props to you, albrt
sportsfan wrote:
Good for IT people too.
908-7968???
That was my old girlfriend's phone #.!! Back then girls where coming out of the woodwork. Must have been a full moon.
Rats.
albrt - good to see you
EHP
Get to a library!
Today's date is Oct 4. 65 days since July
102112 * 65 = 6,637,280 => 663-7280
OT: from a previous thread.
Mike in Long Island on Sat, 10/3/2009 - 8:50 pm
Here's the latest insult. The state is imposing a saltwater fishing license for the first time ever
A story from another life. As a grad student, one summer (1991 I think) my stipend came from an assignment at the DEC (Long Island). One part of it was re enter all the Fishing (sports and commercial) license applications in a new database/spreadsheet (Lotus probably). The previous one created by an employee was no longer usable as he had left the dept and with the code to use it. !!
Two things stuck in my mind from this assignment.
One: The commercial fisherman were pissed off about deep sea catch limits imposed on them, which were not imposed on sport fishing. Apparently there were many NYC Police and Firemen on disability who were fishing daily on Sport fishing Licenses. These were the days when a tuna caught at sea had a japanese buyer on the dock to buy the tuna, starting from 5K for an average fish to as much as 25K.
- NY Times
Two: The other was analysing clam catches for successive seasons in great south bay. Used a GIS system, (I think GRASS in its infantile stages) to do the analysis. Being the eager beaver (and still am for new stuff, no pun), spent way more time on this than I got paid. I think based on the analysis, the DEC restricted certain areas in Great South Bay from clamming.
I knew a few clammers out by Blue Point, and had been out there helping a fellow grad student clam as well. Somehow I dont think I ever mentioned my stint at the DEC to the clammers.
- NY Times
MrM:
That's basically what we used to have with Fannie and Freddie - state laws were always different, but it was possible to get reasonably consistent results with properly underwritten plain vanilla mortgages.
The Feds may well step in and enforce something like that.
EvilHenryPaulson wrote:
O.M.G. The illuminati's fax number!
Excellent post.
They
are
watching
you
Henry
lawyers, too
That said, Fannie and Freddie can dictate max loan amount, and so they can dictate common legal structure, too
It is all optional, of course - states do not have to comply, they just won't get loan financing through Fannie and Freddie
The Feds may well step in and enforce something like that.
That was my point, too - the Feds should step in and enforce consistency
sbarkkum,
too bad big tuna have all been harvested...they were the buffalo of the sea...fishermen deplete resources as well as oil companies, timber companies, mining companies and farming companies..
the ocean is the canary in the coalmine....
Blackwaterwannabe wrote:
Hello, this is the Illuminati. Your call is important to us. Please listen carefully as some of the options may have changes since the last time you called:
If you would like to speak with Larry, please press 1 now.
If you would like to speak with Timmy, please press 2 now.
If you would like to speak with Ben, please press 3 now.
Otherwise, please stay on the line and your call will be answered in the order received.
If you would like to speak with an operator, you can't - as we don't exist.
albrt,
You have one thing in common with Tanta. Your post made my head hurt. I had to read it twice to understand 1/2 of it. Good job!
albrt, lawyerliz
analogy:
MERS is just like a telephone company. It's not the phone number that is important, but the owner of the phone number. There are other ways to contact that phone number's owner, and the telephone company cannot force you to contact them by phone. In this Kansas case, they contacted the address listed instead of going through the telephone company.
hee hee.
i'll
to that!!
Excellent summary, albrt.
The only reason I see this being a little more than a
is this paragraph of yours:
The goal of the people who created MERS was to design a system that has traction in local recording systems, and is flexible enough that it could be made to work under the law of every state. The MERS system probably meets this goal when it is done right. In theory, using the term “nominee” gives MERS flexibility in defining the duties and obligations of the relationship. It may also give MERS some flexibility in explaining how the court should treat a nominee after something has gone wrong, as the law of the jurisdiction or the facts of a particular case seem to require. Unfortunately for MERS, experienced judges are wise to this trick and will most likely to continue placing reasonable limits on the ability of MERS to claim it is all things to all lenders.
That's an interpretative opening wide enough to drive a truck through, which means it's prime territory for clever attorneys and unimpressed jurists.
I'm quite sure that the lenders don't notify MERS efficiently any more than they
filed assignments of mtg in the right order or properly. Notes are very seldom actually
lost. I understand the foreclosure firms get extra money if they file quickly. They
then do nothing swiftly, which is ok by me. So they file long, long before the note can
be found.
Notes can be separated from mtges. Mtges cannot be separated from notes. The mtg "follows" the note.
So there was extra money. Who should get it? The borrower or the aggrieved
2nd mtgee? And what do they have to do to get it.
In Florida it sometimes happens that the 2nd doesn't ask, and the borrower
gets it!!!
I haven't noticed that MERS is particularly bad; in fact compared to most lenders
they are at least a B+.
I think it is more like this:
If you are Larry, please press 1 now
If you are Timmy, please press 2 now
If you are Ben, please press 3 now
If you are Lloyd, please press 4 now
If you are Jamie, please press 5 now
If you are Vikram or Ken, you do not need to press anything, we will be right there
If you have not heard your name, please hang up and forget you called
"The Legislature basically says, 'Too sick, too old, too bad."'
Sinking into barbarism?
EHP
That's basically right, although most of the mortgages do say you have to contact MERS, and then you do.
albrt, that was a good job you did on the post. I should have said that earlier.
Unlike MrM, though, I don't like the idea of the feds "stepping in and enforcing" anything, i.e., making decisions about mortgage law (or contracts or real property), but then I don't think they should ever have allowed the securitization of mortgages in the first place.
Were I a judge in a case where MERS wanted to be heard, I don't think I would let them speak.
MrM wrote:
HA!!! too funny.
Liz
The borrower got the money in the Kansas case.
all the ones I ever saw were perfectly clear about who you had to
contact.
I'd like to see a copy of the doc.
How much? Is the 2nd going to sue on the note?
Just to clarify - I am arguing in favor of enforcing legal consistency of vanilla mortgages in order to simplify their legal treatment. Banks should be able to offer any other kind of mortgages, they just won't be conforming to Fannie/Freddie standards.
albrt
interesting.
actually it might be more like this:
"Hello!
This is the Illuminati headquarters main Homeland Security DC district.
We see you are calling from 435-543-9876.
Your name is EvilHenryPaulson.
At least it is on that CR Blog. Of course we know what your real name is.
You have a wife, 3 kids,a dog that is currently unlicensed and you look too long at your paper girl when she delivers the morning paper. Also, it would seem that your FOREX portfolio might or might not have violated I.R.S. Tax Code 504B.9843 Section B.
We are delighted you called!
Please press 2 for your next qualified Illuminatii Specialist to assist you with your concerns, and remember have a nice day.
Somebody must just have called the Illuminati:
Goldman to be paid $1bn if CIT fails
Goldman Sachs stands to receive a payment of $1bn – while US taxpayers would lose $2.3bn – if embattled commercial lender CIT files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, people familiar with the matter said.
...
Goldman said: “This would not be a windfall payment. The make-whole payment is simply the present value of the spread to be earned over the life of the facility.”
CIT declined to comment. In an effort to prevent bankruptcy, it is working on a debt exchange offer that would virtually wipe out equity holders. In the event of bankruptcy, Goldman would reap more than $1bn because it also holds credit insurance that would be paid off.
Goldman said: “The credit default swaps Goldman Sachs purchased to prudently manage the risk associated with the CIT financing are not a directional ‘bet’ on CIT, but were bought to protect against the possibility of a precipitous decline in the value of the collateral.”
Liz: I think it was about $30,000. I haven't looked at what alternatives the bank might have.
I noodled through some recorded MERS mortgages here (they are available online). It isn't hard to find ones with odd errors. One defined MERS as the nominee of the lender as hereafter defined, and then never defined the lender.
we need a vampire squid icon
MrM wrote:
Who is the counterparty - AIG?
Who is the counterparty - AIG?
Please call the Illuminati hot line
All the MERS mtges I closed were the same. Weird.
If the 2nd had asked the trial court to hold the money until it's
rights could be adjudicated, and then sued on the note a whole
lot of lawyer's fees could have been avoided and the 2nd could
have got the 30k. Hmmm, but wait!!!, how much was the 2nd?
"What's the value of having this complicated patchwork of mortgage laws?"
Corporate America ALWAYS finds value in complexity. The arbitrage is where financial companies make their money. These laws are written by corporations for corporations. If they happen to help consumers consider that to be a lucky side affect.
The just got Barney Frank to shoot down a requirement being pushed that all financial firms be required to offer a plain vanilla lending option.
was it so much that 30k could have been scorned.
I have to repeatedly tell my clients that some money is
better than no money.
Any other cities have Chinese Golden Week celebrations going on? Saw a couple of Chinese flags that clip on to car windows yesterday, and passed an outdoor event today. Haven't noticed it before, might be a special year because of the 60th anniversary. Usually it's just all the festivals with a purpose (New Year, Moon, Dragon Boat...)
That intro was just an excuse to post this picture which I think is pretty cool http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3496/3972380141_32db7c35ff_b.jpg
on another regional note. Even more ships near port than last week. They don't seem to be on the typical tight schedule and look to be leaving half full.
Live Ships Map - AIS - Vessel Traffic and Positions
Who is the counterparty - AIG?
I'm sure AIG doesn't have $1B laying around, so they'll be hitting up Uncle Timmay.
HSBC chief fears a second downturn
Michael Geoghegan, chief executive of HSBC, is so convinced there will be a second downturn in the coming months that he plans to delay any rush to expand the bank.
“Is this a V recovery or a W?” Mr Geoghegan asked in an interview with the FT. “[I think] it’s the latter. [If I’m right], we have to be very careful we don’t grow the balance sheet so far before the recovery has come only to write it back into the impairment line later on. I’m cautious about growing too fast.”
...
Mr Geoghegan was also bearish on the outlook for banks’ regulatory capital – in particular the so-called tier one ratio that measures the top grade of capital as a proportion of risk-weighted assets, and the “core” tier one ratio that counts mainly equity. He said he expected the requirement for core tier one capital ratios to be “around the 10 per cent mark”. That is far higher than the 8 per cent that regulators have been suggesting in private.
Movie time, later all!
MrM, I do agree with you that Fannie and Freddie (along with FHA, VA and whatever other federal mortgage programs there may be) have the collective power . . . and also the responsibility . . .to set out and enforce some legal consistency in mortgages they agree to purchase.
My complaint, such as it is, is to the whole concept of MERS, especially as it relates to trading, nationally and internationally, what is essentially a local situation, namely the debt secured by a piece of property.
As albrt pointed out, the term "nominee" is more than a little ambiguous and MERS appears to like it that way even though they own neither the note nor the lien on the property. MERS may have done well during the bubble days, but I have a feeling its weaknesses will become more and more evident as mortgages go unpaid and judges say they don't have standing as a creditor.
If I were inclined to speculate, I might even say there is a connection there with the shadow inventory we hear about so often.
Mtges are very very very old. And mtg laws are too. I don't think they were
dictated by corporate American, they just grew.
And I don't think they are very complicated. They can be summed up by "you
don't pay, you don't stay". Ahem, until now of course.
The terms of notes can be quite complicated.
And there are loads of stuff in mtges 99% of which never ever comes up.
Such as who would know if you are storing toxic waste?
And simple stuff, like you have to pay the taxes and insurance and not
commit waste. Duh.
a bit more abstract, but we may also need a 'failed state' icon as well
what would either of those things look like?
The Cali state flag unsidedown?
Gosh it's almost like the Kansas court was asking for the legal documents supporting the assertion of ownership or something unreasonable like that.
the vampire squid would be easy... the failed state a bit more subtle, perhaps something involving cracks and flames...
anyhow, we are one. if the sole purpose of our executive and legislative branch wasn't "tossing the salad" of jamie, lloyd and friends, we would already have had established a new branch of the judiciary to handle real estate and mortgage related issues. instead, more billions directly to GS. heckuva job.
Liz
The second was more than the first, but not enough to scorn $30,000. They fought hard once they found out about it.
I think the first judgment may have stated the borrower would get the excess because the second lender didn't show up.
MERS has standard forms for many states - I've seen the one for Florida. But the lenders don't always use them. They don't have much detail about why MERS is part of the transaction. The one I saw that didn't define lender had the MERS part typed in. It was from a while back, so they might not have had all the forms done yet.
the failed state a bit more subtle, perhaps something involving cracks and flames...
Just use the flag of Liberia or Somalia
I would suggest some kind of rebus puzzle
Rebus Puzzles (Pictogram Puzzles) > Games 17-20 of 100
Maybe STfailATE => fail in state => Failing State ?
albrt:
Why couldn't the MERS transactions have been structured as follows:
Wouldn't this have been cleaner than the mess that they built for themselves?
NW
Who is talking about failed states?
Jim Cramer can get me a "guaranteed" 24.95%* ROI, and Ally Bank (wherever they came from) can get me a money market account that pays over 2!
Green shoots! Think positive! As many of the salespeople I encounter say:
"I refuse to participate in this recession!"
*
type so small i couldn't read but im sure its not important.
Blackwaterwannabe wrote:
Formerly known as GMAC.
I didn't understand the MERS-Kansas problem until tonight. Well done. Congrats and thanks, albrt!
OT: (another question that has been bugging me with no one to answer...the crowd in this blog is going to free me from all that nags me today
assumptions:
1.china has a very low debt/gdp ratio...hence it has a lot of room to spend.
2.It huge amount of savings and dollar reserve which can be used to buy commodities.
3. It will manage to keep buying excess commodities without causing too much price rise(since it is only sapping up the fallen demand of say USA)
What if:
there is a problem:
there is no room for wage growth infact unemployment will start to increase due to falling exports....which means consumption will fall.
they already have way too much production capacity.....and more infrastrucuture will not help if wages/consumption is falling.
but what if:
Government gives out coupons to buy stuff?? (yes they will have to be very complicated rules so that coupons are not sold and saved).
this should increase consumption. what is wrong with this scenario/hypothesis?
Why couldn't the MERS transactions have been structured as follows:
I think the simple answer would be that it would increase transactional costs to the point where MERS wouldn't have been a profitable endeavor (or endeavour if you're a reader in Canada).
I wish your proposal had been the history of what actually happened, with emphasis on the "Originator assigns" part.
Satire:
A very common, almost defining feature of satire is its strong vein of irony or sarcasm, but parody, burlesque, exaggeration, juxtaposition, comparison, analogy, and double entendre are all frequently used in satirical speech and writing.
good ?s. seems like an analysis of the yuan-dollar connection and the nature of the yuan itself would be a good start to a few good guesses. in the meantime, wish I'd bought some fxp under 9...
Norka:
In addition to the transaction costs of creating the entity, it isn't necessarily any easier to keep track of a document like a power of attorney than it is to keep track of the note.
Plus it is my impression that MERS has deliberately avoided any agency relationship, partnership, trustee status, or anything else that would imply MERS could be held accountable as a fiduciary if something goes wrong.
A toast to albrt for his terrific post.
Whatever happened to that surge of cases where the mortgage securities had been traded so often that it wasn't clear who held the mortgage? Is this example the beginning of that type of litigation?
"Blackwaterwannabe wrote:
and Ally Bank (wherever they came from) can get me a money market account that pays over 2!"
Actually, Ally money market rates are currently less than 2 %.
High-Yield CD, No Penalty CD, Money Market & Savings Rates | Ally Bank
techy246 wrote:
Probably this: yes they will have to be very complicated rules so that coupons are not sold and saved
What? I got that from the # 1 rated investment site in America!!
I'm calling Jim 1st thing in the morning...
Well done, albrt. You're almost ready for your own bunny slippers.
I wonder about the payment terms of Mr. Kesler's second mortgage. Was he current? Seems like if Sovereign wasn't receiving payments, they might have paid attention to what was happening on the first and would have known about the foreclosure proceedings.
Do we have a cricket icon?
Hmm. Not sure if I feel more like Burgess Meredith or Vincent Price. Price's movie had zombies, but Meredith had all those lovely books.
44 / 291.
Did I break Hoocoodanode? kcoop - is this solitary feeling a bug or a feature?
Exactly, they wanted all the authority, but none of the responsibility. Too clever by half.
My non-lawyers impression is they've tried to assert standing in three different jurisdictions, Kansas, Arkansas, and Nevada (Federal banruptcy court) and were turned down in each.
The Nevada case was interesting because they threw all sorts of rationales for standing at the wall and none of them stuck. The judge demolished each one in turn.
I think that "the white boys have really stepped in it this time."
NW
PS: good post, albrt.
kcoop - I can see a comment from norkawest at 5:52 PDT, but nothing since.
Can it really be that quiet in here?
Maybe I'm Patrick Swayze and norkawest is Vincent Schiavelli. That would explain it.
Feckless Ness wrote:
Apparently so.
9 EST is generally family time in this great land of ours
I would think keeping track of the powers of attorney would be much, much easier than tracking all the individual mortgage notes. A few thousand mortgage servicers versus tens of millions of mortgages.
Require each servicer serving a MER mortgage to have a standard servicing contract with MERS (rates could vary, but not the other terms) and include a standard power of attorney provision in each standard contract.
NW
I thought the Tim Reynolds and Dave Mathews rendition of Dancing Nancies was spot on at FARM AID tonight.
the link is Bonarooo..
Whew. I was getting ready to sing. Second verse, same as the first.
I'm Enery the Eitff I am
Enery the Eitff I am I am
Great work Albrt.
"In some cases MERS will act for the interested parties in lawsuits. If a MERS lender wants MERS to file a foreclosure suit, the lender is supposed to find the original note, endorse it in blank, and give it to a certifying MERS officer before the foreclosure is filed."
If MERS was created to form a database to allow for a more streamlined process for securitization then the original note still has all the significance in proving the debt exists in foreclosure proceedings. Did creating MERS give the impression to the lenders that as long as the mortgage was entered into MERS then they could take shortcuts in the mortgage process allowing for the lenders to save money in the accepted mode of establishing the paperwork for their mortgages? Is producing the note and who owns it at the heart of the problem that MERS was supposed to rectify for the lenders? At least from their perspective? MERS having standing in foreclosure procedures would certainly have simplified the process for foreclosure.
The "produce the note" defense in foreclosure has been a winning strategy in many jurisdictions, perhaps the lenders/servicers know how bad the documentation became over the last few years and want to avoid any further losses by being forced to show their paperwork. Just hypothesizing and thinking out loud...
++++
GMAC changed names to ALLY Bank. Just like Blackwater became XE.
Feckless Ness wrote:
Yeah, too quiet.
But then, somebody on here discovered the Illuminati's coded secret phone number... So, it might NOT be a coincidence that nobody is on here. Just sayin'
How unMerican of them not to share the area code. Not.
it's 666
Too nice a day to spend much time here.Took a walk late morning and encountered an 8 point buck walking on the road in the other direction.He veered off into a field,watched me pass and resumed his journey down the road.
yo tom! -- mom got a job but her pay went 20 years into the past. emotionally devastating.
Dropped off some mail at the post office on Friday evening.
When I was coming out and getting into my car, I saw a family of deer standing in the middle of the street between the town park and fire station. they froze for a moment and the mozied on over to the shrubbery next to the fire station parking area. It was lush and green and freshly planted. Chow time for the whole family.
Brush clearance for the Fire Department. They should have known better than to plant tinder so close to a structure.
Ah. Beautiful.
Once around Midnight, going out for my last puff, I spotted a huge pointer walking casually down the middle of the torn-up newly-to-be constructed paved road..in Cook County IL!
Since then I've seen a black bear walking (lumbering)across a two lane major road-near rush hour where I now live near Norfolk VA. I called animal control!
Seriously.
I was absolutely NOT under the influences of hallucinogens that early in the afternoon.
Just call me St.Blackwater of Assisi.
Sneering,she did better than a friend of mine with 20 years internal audit experience,11 months unemployed,75% pay cut.Norka,I enjoy seeing the tick ridden pests sauntering around the neighborhood and knowing i have an earthquake larder if need be,
Un preyed on deer are awful nuisances.
i keep begging the lurkers to come out of hiding but only a few have.
Liz, think of the bambies (and the humanity).....
My dear Lady, PETA would not take kindly to that remark!
Here's my big prediction for the next 12 months. Major, major downsizing of state and local governments. Revenues are way, way down - insufficient to support existing budgets. Wage and hiring freezes won't be enough. There will have to be deep job cuts.
Roses are weeds, right? Deer luv roses. Therefore deer are good.
Yeah, well you should talk to my friend in West Va with the chewed up garden.
Are baby deer tastier?
My roses are very leggy, but they aren't weeds.
75% cut -- that's damn near impossible... i mean it is what it is but scheisse that's brutal. i'd have to live in my civic.
my gut feeling says..
state govt will get Federal aid to keep their worker drones.
Fed will also keep hiring with printed money.
I'm confused. Lawyers actually...have friends???
lawyerliz wrote:
sorta of like veal..... seen any veal in the markets lately? not there because of consumer revulsion
Is it unethical of a wolf to eat a deer?
are you my friend Blackwater?
Gators, native.
Pythons, not native.
I sneer at your bears.
Just kidding LL. I am no friend of PETA.
Except of course for cruelty.
Best Wishes.
from a comment on comments....
techy246 -- "Fed will also keep hiring with printed money."
talkin my book here
techy - the federal government already handed out grants for local government job creation. It didn't go very far. 2010 is going to be bloody.
Well dc is doing ok. Just not as what he was before.
Damn, where is Nova when you needhim?
I read somewhere that a certain Italian auto maker had been subcontracted by Treasury to keep up the supply of US money.
It's all good, don't ya know?
I know! I know!
Let's outsource the government!!!
and Zimbabwe...don't forget Zimbabwe. All US currency.
I have a couple hundred channels of Comcast, and thereis NOTHING to watch. So i sit here watching a trickle of new comments with my mind on idle.
Trickle-down CR....
And. . . . Let's outsource Wall Street!!!
Ok, lurkers, Jim is bored.
Say something to entertain him.
I have a better idea: Let's BOMB Wall Street and let G-d sort them out.
lawyerliz wrote:
All we need is the neutron bomb, and start all over.
Jim: call JD. He is always a hoot.
Oh, well, all today's lurkers are chicken.
Nitey nite.
I'm going to make brownies.
Yummmm. Over and out.
Blackwaterwannabe wrote:
Better yet: declare Wall Street a terrorist haven, and turn loose the Preditor unmanned vehicles. GS is Al Queda's home location, right?
HOMELAND SECURITY WISHES TO SPEAK WITH YOU FECKLESS:
What KIND of brownies??
blackwater -- i'm curious about your name. my extensive 10 second exploration of your homepage didn't give me satisfaction. care to elaborate?
lets incite a riot.
Do the drapes match the carpet?
luv you liz...
Jim,
Not a football fan? Pittsburgh, despite losing to Cincy last week, is tidily dismantling the Chargers.
TJ-
Its all BEARS this year dude. Got paypal? Huh?
Wow... that was a MAJOR edit.
Final thought on MERS. Thousands of mortgage brokers arranged loans during the go go years and many were not professional or accountable. The loan officers rubberstamped the loans and then the lenders sold them to Wall Street and continued to provide servicing. Who ensured the paperwork was actually in order at the banks? Who stored the original documents and where? What happened to the original documents when a servicer or lender went BK and was absorbed by another entity? When Wall Street created their CDO tranches and sold them all over the world then those people now own the mortgages, not the servicer or Wall Street. MERS was supposed to track these transactions but if it was all done electronically and MERS has no standing then aren't all of those securitized mortgages in effect null if challenged?
Forgive the Joe6pack view of these transactions.
Well, somehow my (Cutler-less) BRONCOS are 4-0, and nobody is more surprised than I (even though those 'Boys sure looked it).
yup...nxt time he does that "prepare for deletion" thing i'm gonna cut it
Just do a quick "reply" and it'll be locked in.
Toto, I don't think they can foreclose on us in Kansas anymore.
thoughts on gold held outside US borders?.
That's what I've been trying to get at with my comments concerning MERS on this and prior posts.
Have these decisions laid the ground work for imploding the entire mortgage backed securities edifice.
It might have more value here, for the time-being. Hard to say?
There you go again. You just screwing with us, or what?
just looking for oak clusters.
I am trying to build a model based on game theory thing of all the different players in the macroeconomic co-operation.
say japan,china,Oil producing nations, europe, usa, other exporters etc will be the players....and i have a feeling that it is in the benefit of everyone to co-operate while at the same time they will be trying to de-couple(sort of trying to become self sufficient in case everything blows up).
does anyone know which theory will best fit this model? (if not it does not matter...we can simply write all the players their desired need...their expectations from other etc...).
I also lack intimate understanding about Europe, Japan to be able to make any good estimates about their response.
anyone knows about any other source where this may already have been discussed?
Huh?
Ah, Ah!!! These comments are driving me nuts. The problem isn't with Kansas law - it's that when the original mortgage was filed, instead of saying notify MERS, it said to notify the originator. Bad document. That's the only story!!
This isn't a problem with MERS. It is not a problem with Kansas law now saying that MERS doesn't have standing. It is a problem with the document itself. If MERS had known about the default because in the document it said notify MERS instead of notify LENDER, then MERS would have been able to show up and get its money. The borrower had defaulted on the first, and the holder of the first lien had already foreclosed and got the money. The court part was over by the time MERS and Sovereign (who had bought the second through MERS) showed up.
There is no need to postulate that we need to unify the property laws of 50 states.
The problem is that apparently due diligence was lacking, and nobody reviewed the darned documents.
techy246 wrote:
"Don't panic; But if you do panic, panic first."
Have these decisions laid the ground work for imploding the entire mortgage backed securities edifice
NO. This is pretty much a non-story, unless half the docs out there say to notify the originator instead of MERS. In that case, it could be fixed by just filing a normal assignment to MERS as nominee.
Sure SN, what the hey, its slow, Sunday PM and I'm almost out of beer. Well, that might not be the total truth,but Im at my limit. before going to mass. Shit, I already missed that.
Well maybe next week.
Anyway, as a contractor I spend half my life(or used to) @ Home Depot and once upon a time b4 the Sh*t hit the fan I parked next to a dude that was trying to load materials onto his truck. After accepting my offer to help we talked a bit about his disgust with being a GC and having to deal w/all the drug addicts , alkies, and crappy workmanship that those jobs would entail(especially if you vie for the cheapest labor &material prices).
He said he had sold ALL his units and accepted a job w/BLACKWATER for a 6(six) figure placement starting the following month.
The funny thing about this is that this 'dude' was middle age like me, and although , like me(for all you hotties out there), was in good physical shape, he was, well middle age.
God Bless America! Everyone can succeed!
Hi MoM!!!
So it's perfectly acceptable for a party that was not nor is currently a party to the actual transaction to be named in the public records? Seems like a shell game to me.
panic is not one of the options....you have to keep playing.
Well then, shouldn't your handle be "Xewannabe"?
MoM,you just ruined a whole bunch of theories by summarizing CR's post accurately,for shame.And I have a sneaking suspicion that the Due Diligence didn't happen because Doris got her walking papers and the cute little intern reviewing the loan docs would have trouble reading "my pet goat" without a dictionary and someone to tell her what THAT was and show her how to use it.
Where is that written? At some point a country is going to decide that not everyone's going to make it to the exit on time.
Hippies and Rednecks
are you really ready for me?
Locked and loaded!
Will they or have they fixed the problem?
I doubt it.
Too much work, if they think that they can still bluff the courts.
One thing for certain... the effort of having to go back and re-check everything the (MERS) has done will cost a fortune.
interesting. so you are a wannabe? you didn't go?
i remember talking to an electrician, she said that she could pull in an easy 6 just pulling wire over there. they have respect for women, she said. sure they won't rape or behead you, i said, but what about the ieds? what about the nice guys you'd be camping with out in the middle of nowhere? she didn't go. thank glod.
commentWalla!
Albrt, nice work. Makes me long for the days when we had a much better signal-to-noise ratio.
let me elaborate a bit more.
china: wants to keep exporting...keep pegging the yuan to the USD to subsidize the export
but at the same time has started diversifying into commodities
it would like to have self sufficient economy before USA consumer goes kaput.
but right now...it is still directly/indirectly dependent on USA consumer for upto 30% employment of its population.
and it owns a huge amount of USD denominated assets.
so it is beneficial if USD does not fall sharply....and US consumers does not cut back sharply.
we have to elaborate more about china to know its true character...and what will be its strategy...
i repeat there is no exit right now....its not day trading
everyone is in this together and very much dependent on co-operation.
Good to see you MoM.
You're basically right, but my point is they can't get all that back office stuff done on a 5% mortgage and still have enough left over to generate big fees for Wall Street.
And I do think the federal government is going to formalize the de facto nationalization of the residential mortgage market. Probably by creating an old-school Fannie/Freddie system that is slightly more mandatory, preempting state laws that get in the way.
. . . so you are a wannabe?
I'd rather go with the original (well, the original for my generation):
YouTube - Doobie Brothers - Black Water (High Quality)
Shnaps wrote:
It's still pretty high if you tune in at the right times. Not saying this is one of those times, mind you.
Thanks, Shnaps, Squidward, and anyone else I didn't reply to personally. I'm working tonight and only checking in occasionally.
Interns.Back in the days of paper files and original documents I had an intern assigned to me.I had about 2,000 files that needed alphabetizing,and I spent 45 minutes explaining what alphabetizing was.She came back in a week all happy and said she was done,but had some files left over....every box of files had one "A",one 'B" and so on.True story.She had two large assets and was keeping my supervisor Steve Bull happy so there wasn't much I could do about the situation.Steve was well named...he once told me "Well Tom,SO FAR that looks like a pretty definite maybe,but I am not entirely sure".
dis-Attenuation usually occurs between 2 and 5 am PST
Will we every catch 2005?
Inquiring minds want to know---
Do you know that three of every four elderly people in U.S. nursing homes are women?
Women take care of the most elderly men. Medicaid takes care of the most elderly women.
So, cutting Medicaid for nursing homes is sexist.
techy,
Don't know about that. Appears to me that China is setting itself up to take us down without firing a shot, and for now is just stringing us along while it finishes it's preparations. The US as world's consumer is already history.
.No. I would much rather be exposed to the wonderful & exciting optimism that currently pervades the modern green shoot genre.
Besides killing woman & children never really did it for me...
She came back in a week all happy and said she was done,but had some files left over....
LOL. What a great line.
When was she elected to the California legislature?
Is she on one of the budget committees?
There's 2 big skyscrapers on hold in China, and there's a relatively high number of others approved but that have not yet broken ground.
The 2 on hold, foundation complete but work stopped:
Tianjin, Tianjin International Trade Centre, 300m, 80 floors.
Wuxi, Whalf Times Square, 328m, 68 floors
A rough guess of construction costs for skyscrapers of that size in recently completed in China would be ~$2mn per meter in height.
"Back in the days of paper files and original documents I had an intern assigned to me..."
OK, I don't know if this will make sense to anyone who is not a geek, but here goes:
So back in the day when I use to design computer circuits, I gave a schematic to an intern to create a wire-wrap prototype circuit.
When you draw schematics, and you intend to show say a 16-bit buss from one chip to another, you draw a single line with a slash through it and a number next to the slash indicating the buss width.
So the intern, not understanding the notation, wraps up a circuit that connects all of the pins at one end to each other, a single wire to the other chip, and wires all of the buss pins on the other chip to each other and the connecting wire.
A model of efficiency.
OK, how many people got that?
EvilHenryPaulson wrote:
When I was in Bejing in 2002, I saw three towers, at least 30 stories tall, sitting empty with no windows or finish, in a field full of weeds. All in one large block near the office of the company I was visiting.
sm_landlord
I getcha, but then again I never had a problem finding a flux capacitor either
Yes, and Rare Earth control
All that does is make the diodes on the left side of my body hurt, in fact, pains are shooting up and down as I type.
sm_landlord wrote:
No comment but then my capacitors used to be behind a cage inside a Faraday cage and were installed with a forklift.
"I getcha, but then again I never had a problem finding a flux capacitor either "
You have a good source for flux capacitors???!?!
Citizen AllenM wrote:
Wouldn't the pains only shoot in one direction?
"my capacitors used to be behind a cage inside a Faraday cage and were installed with a forklift. "
Lasers?
X-Ray emitting diodes.
bet the kid never forgot what the notation meant and to ask if he/she didn't understand.
that is what internships are for: to learn by doing.
hope you weren't too rough on your intern.
Eventually, how did the intern work out?
Quick learner or utterly hopeless?
Vader wire wrapped 74xx TTL boards for fun.
Still have spools of 30 ga setting around to remind me of what I did in my 20s instead of chasing women.
"Eventually, how did the intern work out?"
Pretty good, although I think she ended up getting married and doing organic gardening.
I had much better interns later. One ended up becoming an accomplished systems administrator.
I never beat up on interns. I was one once.
I always hated it when when folks bragged of their farad capacitors.
Or were they high voltage oil filled ones.
Yes, the oil filled ones.
Vader wrote:
Want some more? I still have a few boxes of that stuff.
Edit: Could you use a PROM burner or two?
sm_landlord
There are 182 skyscrapers above 300m in height in various stages of development in China. (proposed, approved, under construction)
Here are the number completed in the history of time before today, including Hong Kong:
1989: 1
1990
1991
1992: 1
1993
1994
1995
1996: 1
1997: 2
1998: 1
1999
2000: 1
2001
2002
2003: 1
2004
2005: 1
2006
2007: 2
2008: 3
under construction today: 42
on hold: 2
That's what bugs me about people who think that China is a supernatural country. Yes China has growth in its future, but it does not mean anything like the current pace can keep up for more than a decade before saturating supply for all time (see steel, shipbuilding, airplanes, power production, ...). Keep in mind the demographic dividend is now decelerating, and the elder care interest payment is accelerating
The case is not a "nothing burger."
It's not an exact analogy,
but if you go to the theatre and don't mind paying the coat check charge, and trust the folks behind the counter, you expect to get your coat back at the end of the evening. And, almost 100% of the time you do, and with your gloves still in the coat.
Well, what if the coat check folks got word from Mr. Jones to give your coat to Mr. Jones? Jones ends up with the coat, and even got the coat check operation to sign an assignment of the coat to him.
Does that mean that Mr. Jones is now the owner of my coat? Did the coat check have authority from me to give my coat to Jones and vest ownership in him? If so, how? By what signed document from me?
If MERS is only a nominee of the lender for purposes of the mortgage recording (so that mortgage assignments, and payment of debt registration tax need not be down on a transfer), does MERS have the authority for MERS to sign an assignment? Does MERS have the authority to sue? Has the loan originator signed something impowering MERS, beyond what the usual mortgage language? That language makes MERS a clerk at the coat check counter, with as much authority to pass ownership to someone else as the clerk at the coat check counter....
Now of course, as the owner of my coat, I can do with it what I wish. But, if Jones doesn't get the coat directly from me, or have anything that I've signed giving him the coat, then Jones ought to be ready to prove he's really the owner...and when this gets repeated multiple times, then who does own the coat (really)?
oops nobody wants to help me complete the world economic model
tood bad i will have to spam again tomorrow when there will be more audience.
I hear tell that Larry Silverstein has extraodinary abilities in turning albatroses into profitable ventures. Perhaps they might give him a call and flip me a fin for the referral?
he he not, My new life is selling stuff on eBay for a salvage outfit. I get to rummage though stuff that gets brought in and giggle at old tube radios, TTLs, test equipment that I played with long ago.
A couple of months back, the TTL bug bit me and I collected some TTLs and was looking at eBay for wire wrap sockets and such, Then I realized what was happening and tossed it. Some things just cannot be relived.
Now if I had had hot cars and hot women as a hobby, that would have been worth reliving even if both were now antiques.
EvilHenryPaulson wrote:
They're pretty good at starting things. You have to give them credit for ambition.
I remember one dinner though, where i suggested that they could develop a movie industry that could rival Hollywood in Asia.
They were way too aware of their own limits to buy that one... but I think they appreciated the thought.
ARGHH! These rebuttals are driving me crazy!
The response to the amicus brief filed by financial institutions in the MERS Kansas Supreme Court case is the story. The courts statement in the decision:
"The amicus argues that "[a] critical function performed by MERS as the mortgagee is the receipt of service of all legal process related to the property." The amicus makes this argument despite the mortgage clause that specifically calls for notice to be given to the lender, not the putative mortgagee. In attempting to circumvent the statutory registration requirement for notice, MERS creates a system in which the public has no notice of who holds the obligation on a mortgage."
The creditors do not want a challenge to MERS standing in a foreclosure procedure. Simply accepting that MERS represents the mortgage holder simplifies the process. Asking for the original note during discovery is being used to slow down foreclosures and bankruptcies. My earlier point still stands:
"Who ensured the paperwork was actually in order at the banks? Who stored the original documents and where? What happened to the original documents when a servicer or lender went BK and was absorbed by another entity? When Wall Street created their CDO tranches and sold them all over the world then those people now own the mortgages, not the servicer or Wall Street. MERS was supposed to track these transactions but if it was all done electronically and MERS has no standing then aren't all of those securitized mortgages in effect null if challenged?"
It is a huge mess and will need to be rectified in legislation or a SCOTUS decision. Not quite a nothing burger.
Final point. If MERS was counted on to ensure the legality of the CDO mortgage tranches and is shown wanting then isn't whatever is left of those CDO's still considered viable called into question?
What do I know? I'm just an anonymous poster in a comment section. Just like everyone else. g'night
Vader wrote:
Too bad, I have a 74xxx collection that I want to unload.
"Now if I had had hot cars and hot women as a hobby, that would have been worth reliving even if both were now antiques. "
I unloaded that stuff when I turned 50. It was much more trouble than storing a bunch of old electronics.
But I am still considering buying another Corvette before they stop making them...
Berkeley story, today...
At a street fair there was a booth set up advising the public where antennae were located in Berkeley.
They also were advertising places where you could buy Faraday shield helmets!
Externalized Costs wrote:
It's too easy. I have to believe that it will be challenged repeatedly and result in a major mess.
"They also were advertising places where you could buy Faraday shield helmets!"
Paging Comrade Misean...
*That's what bugs me about people who think that China is a supernatural country. *
----------------
I think its more like 10 years back they were nobody....now they are number 2 or 3 player in the world.
china problems:
around 50% of population still at poverty level.(Subsistence living), which means they still need to create a ton of jobs(but jobs have started falling).
one child policy led to 2 old people for every young person.
male to female ratio is pretty bad.....imagine the social consequences (maybe good for male brothel business and porn industry
right now the technocrats running the country appear to be good folks imagine if crazies came to power...we will know the side effect of benevolent dictatorship.
things in their favor:
surplus reserve (can be used to corner commodities)
they can literally spend their way out.
no need to play bullshit politics and pander to the idiot population like in our democracy...they can move quick and stay focussed.
Externalized Costs,
All good points. A huge mess indeed.
Going back to one of my earlier points: Perhaps there is something about MERS that ties into the shadow inventory, i.e., the over 90 default rate that is not going to foreclosure.
Just might be a slight problem with the paperwork.
What kinda of 74xxx stuff?
techy246 wrote:
Things not in their favor:
large numbers of unemployed disenfranchised young males.
Unless they need cannon fodder, of course.
All of the basic 74xx plus some 74xxx registers and stuff, some mixed analog/digital. And proto boards. Already unloaded my digital 'scopes.
So it's perfectly acceptable for a party that was not nor is currently a party to the actual transaction to be named in the public records? Seems like a shell game to me.
TJ!! Listen up. Read carefully, because you didn't read albrt's post:
A) Every note and every evidence of obligation to be filed in land records (mortgage, deed to secure, trust deed) has verbiage like
"I promise to pay to ________________(Lender) the sum of XXXXXX.XX .
And somewhere in that note the Lender will be defined as the Lender, its legal successors, or anyone to whom the note is transferred.
B) Mortgages, deeds, etc, the same. It will list the Lender and include some language such as "successors and assigns". It varies by state. And if you do not file a mortgage or deed, you can lose your secured position. If that were not true, than we'd have lawsuits going back centuries.
C) If the debt is sold or otherwise transferred, an assignment will be filed in the land records to tell everyone who the party is. Once the debt is sold, the legal right to collect on the debt is there. OK? But if no one knows who owns the mortgage, legal notice can't be sent in case someone else is claiming the property for non-payment of debt. Therefore, if no document is ever filed in the land records, at some point the interest in the property SECURING the debt is going to be lost.
The point of filing the mortgage with MERS as the nominee was that MERS was supposed to be acting as an agent to get notices, etc. It was never a case that MERS was going to come into court claiming that it owned the property. Whoever owned the property would be the actual party. MERS was just supposed to be a clearing house acting as an agent for the lender, but that was never specified, and THAT IS NOT WHAT THE DOCUMENT THEY FILED SAID.
There is no problem about the complexity of this mortgage (a second lien). The only problem is that whatever doofus who originally filed the second mortgage wrote in the document that the Lender (who was listed as Millennia) rather than MERS should be notified. So when the first lienholder foreclosed, that is what they did. Landmark fulfilled the legal requirements. If a federal court had heard this case it would not have ruled any differently.
Now, the person who defaulted on both the first and second liens went into bankruptcy and hadn't been paying the loan for over six months. There is no doubt that Sovereign knew about the default (or its servicer). What really happened here is that because it was a second lien, no one thought it was worth while to chase it. But in this case, the first mortgage was for very little, and there was money left over for the second lienholder, which is something of a rarity nowadays. So when Sovereign realized it had left cash on the table, it showed up wanting money. To which it would have been legally entitled, no problem whatsoever, if it were not that the whole thing were already over and done with, the monies disbursed, etc, all according to the proper legal procedures. Everything was over. Case closed. A court had authorized the final disbursements.
So when Sovereign showed up and told the court that the proceeds had been improperly disbursed and wanted the court to go back and undo the disbursement., the court asked for an explanation and a justification, possibly with a quizzical look on its face, and pointed out that filing an assignment after a foreclosure had already been completed and transferred was not going to get Sovereign anywhere. And Sovereign got MERS to show up and jump in and claim it was a party entitled to notice under law, because Sovereign didn't even have a claim to be a party to be notified, although it was legally entitled to the money if it had shown up and claimed it. What was really going on was that MERS and Sovereign were hopping around claiming that Landmark should have just known to notify MERS and implying that the court should have known this too and should never have let this happen. But "ya shoulda known" does not qualify as a legal claim on property in any court anywhere when there are legal statutes.
And the court looked at the mortgage and said LO! Landmark followed the instructions in the document, and LO! there is no other document, and LO! therefore you cannot go back and demand that people give you money, we are not going to reopen this proceeding, you cannot claim that your rights under law were violated when everyone followed the legal procedure and did, damn it all, what you told them to do. And no, you can't get around this by claiming that MERS was a party entitled to notification because it never had a legal claim to the property or the proceeds of the note, and Sovereign wasn't deprived of its legal rights because the document which established Sovereign's legal rights told Landmark to go notify this other guy. Get real, snarled the court!
So this is just a standard fuckup. Believe it or not, banks and other creditors do lose money by failing to file in the land records. To obviate that nasty possibility, one of the things a standard audit will do is go through checking loans, ensuring that documents have been properly filed, etc. When you file a mortgage or deed, you get notice back that it has been recorded. And that goes right in the loan file and gets transferred with everything else. So in the loan file, there was a copy of this mortgage and the recording notice, and apparently no one ever bothered to read it, which raises interesting questions indeed about loan purchasing procedures.
So again, this is not a problem with MERS per se. It is a problem with sloppiness causing a creditor to lose money. If the mortgage had been filed with directions to notify MERS in case of default, everything would have been fine. When Sovereign purchased the loan Sovereign should have found the problem. When the loan wasn't being paid, Sovereign could have yanked the file, contacted MERS or any attorney and told it to go file an assignment, which it had. But no, Sovereign just assumed that there would be nothing left and that MERS was handling it anyway.
I found the court's reasoning rather funny, because you could tell it wanted to write "Assuming makes and Ass out of U and Me."
Thank you for the summary article. Particularly the link to the NV ruling which I had been unaware of previously. I had already read the Kansas case, and have been in a few law suits involving the MERS system and thus have some well formed opinions on the subject. I agree with 90% of what you posted, I won't burden you wil the other 10%. Although the decision was something of a Nothingburger in retrospect, it is a big deal that MERS didn't win. If MERS ever wins one of these case they (MERS is owned by Fannie, Freddie and the big Banks) will spend tens of millions in promoting such a decision via the media and their network of paid mouth pieces. As had been stated early in this thread... the value of allowing States to establish their own property laws, is pretty much the value of having separate States, if we standardize property laws throughout the Country, we might as well eliminate State and Local governments and put control of everything under the Federal government.
JD wrote:
Which seems to be where we're headed.
Good comment, MoM. You explained what happened in that case very clearly.
I will be the first to admit that the Kansas case does not set any precedent with regard to MERS having standing to collect proceeds, foreclose or do anything else.
I suspect, however, that a case that does address those issues is winding its way through the courts right about now.
Re: Chinese investments
EHP, I predict they'll need a "bubble" and something akin to securitization to transfer all these goodies into external hands before their final value is established. The massive (ah-hem) 'investment' in manufacturing capacity ongoing is a prime candidate.
(They may decide to keep hold of their commodities investments -- 'island' paranoia runs deep.)
Thanks again everyone.
It is true that this case was mostly about a simple screwup.
It is also true that MERS and the MERS lenders are trying to get courts to give them special status so everyone will have to notify them of everything, and they can get a second chance at saving mortgages when the paperwork is wrong. So far the courts are not buying it, and the lenders are going to have to keep spending a few bucks to either do things right the first time or fix things afterwards, or just lose money like they did in the Kansas case.
Thanks, MoM, excellent detail, and humorously said!
MERS isn’t obscuring land titles in a way that will interfere with future transactions. If a mortgage is paid off, it should be released in the local public records. The odds that somebody screwed something up may go up a little or down a little, but a title company should be able to insure any subsequent sale.
Don't quite understand your meaning on this albrt, but I can say from the title side of the game, MERS has been a big mess.
Can't tell you how many times I have founf a "MERS" mortgage that the "lender" assigned to someone else, who then assigned it again. Then when you check MERS' website to find out where to order the payoff from, it isn't any of the documented parties.
Haven't heard of a claim coming down yet, but there's a lot of junk in the system rgiht now.
Albrt - I think you identified the issue with "MERS and the MERS lenders are trying to get courts to give them special status". Because legally, that just doesn't fly. It's not as if other people haven't lost money because they didn't comply with laws.
You can't give one entity "special status". It's a legal problem.
And no, the fact that states govern property laws is not going to be overthrown. If states suddenly violated their own laws to prevent these foreclosures from going through, someone might have a constitutional claim on the grounds of equal protection. But the idea that lenders, or any group of lenders, or any lender's clearinghouse (which is really what MERS is) shouldn't HAVE to comply with the law, because, well, they are special is in itself a ridiculous claim, and granting it really does raise an equal protection claim.
Because I can assure you that if Joe Blow or Bank of Blow had done what Sovereign did, the court would have laughed merrily at Joe's request for a Blow special. The only thing that really protects property titles is this system, and the MERS system isn't broken - it's just that everyone got very sloppy.
It's not as if Sovereign didn't have legal remedy. It could certainly have pursued its rights. It knew the loan wasn't being paid. It's that it didn't bother all the way along the line, and then it showed up in outrage after the whole thing was over expecting the court to fix it, and the court looked matters over, and said, you know, you lost your rights fair and square, just as anyone else would have.
And no, the feds aren't going to put in some law saying that MERS always has to be notified. The feds don't have the authority. Possibly Congress might, for just a wee bit of change, pass such a law, but the state courts would still have to enforce it.
You can't overset the property laws of 50 states. If you nullify the law, you would create worse chaos, with conflicting claims in state and federal courts. The property laws exist so that an entity can reasonably know it is buying a property as long as that entity checks the land records, and in order for the person who now owns that property to be secure in his rights, MERS cannot be granted some sort of magical override. Not even Congress can grant rights to MERS that any other secured entity wouldn' t have. You'd generate lawsuits from here to kingdom come.
See, turn it around. What if your home you just bought is that home? Because, if the Sovereign/MERS claim were to be granted, then your home is really still subject to that security interest. There is a reason for the procedures, and you cannot grant MERS special rights without taking away other people's rights.
Re: " 5:52 PDT, but nothing since"
zzzzzzzz
MrM wrote:
Diversity is a good thing. Where would we be now if every state had gone crazy with housing debt like CA, NV, FL & AZ? Better that those states economies die like the canary in the coal mine, to warn the rest of us of the limits of a ponzi.
albrt good post... thanks for that...
MoM good to see you and thanks for the follow ups...
Cheers all....
Thanks albrt...
N1 isn't kickin' the can down the road...he's kickin' the depression down the road.
Just as surely as he is extending the "safety net".
ANYTHING for a second term.