dryfly wrote:

Acquiring debt & related bobbles. Who needs to actually make money or the things it buys? Passe.

Point taken. Our common cultural thread is who can dig the deepest debt pit and not be buried for life? Real Life Financial Survivor!!

Albrt.

Wow.

Just wow.

My hat is off and my head is ing.

EDIT
you can't really expect me to read all that?
dude, I'm on Genocide Jury Duty... don't cha know?
and guess what
the UN picks up my booze per diem

:martini:

duke

yagij - That would make inflation the guy shoveling sand back into your debt pit, right?!

OT but what happened to: icons or is it just my browser?

Hunh? They are right there in your post. I think they
are more complicated and take longer to come up.

lawyerliz wrote:

They are right there in your post.

Must be me because I see the image's alt text, but no pictures themselves. Time to clear the cache or whatever you do to get HCN to work.

yagij wrote:

just my browser?

I think your browser is tired. Turn if off for a half hour, give it a good coat of wax, and then don't do heavy surfing for a couple of days to break it in.

Can you see my exploding head?

Thanks, Liz. The CDS issue makes my head hurt - I have no idea how it would come out. The investors and the pool trustees are different parties, so I'm sure the financial wizards would take the position that the CDS has no effect on ability to foreclose. But if some percentage of the beneficiaries of a trust have already been paid off, why should the trustee be able to get more money from the borrower in an equitable proceeding? Especially if the investors were paid off by the taxpayers.

josap,
I guess I don't socialize with the people you were talking about last thread because I'm not in a position to help them get ahead.
It is true that the mantra re: jobs is "connections, connections, connections...".

albrt wrote:

Thanks, Liz. The CDS issue makes my head hurt - I have no idea how it would come out. The investors and the pool trustees are different parties, so I'm sure the financial wizards would take the position that the CDS has no effect on ability to foreclose. But if some percentage of the beneficiaries of a trust have already been paid off, why should the trustee be able to get more money from the borrower in an equitable proceeding? Especially if the investors were paid off by the taxpayers.

One would think the parties that paid off the CDS claims would be allowed to collect on the foreclosure - no?

Rajesh wrote:

A trial in Cambodia: how long could it last, fifteen minutes, half an hours. I've been stuck in traffic jams longer than that.

Show trial? YEARS...

well done, well reasoned post

See, the thing is these guys pushed the idea of ownership to infinity
and beyond maybe.

1. You have mtges in a pool.
   Okay.
2. You sell a 1% interest in the pool to 100 people/entities
   and everybody gets 1% of the gains & losses.
   Okay.
3. You chop up the pool and squish the pieces together with other
   pools, before selling the 1% to 100 people.
   Then you chop those frankenstein pieces into AAA and ZZZ and sell
   those in 100 pieces

Maybe ok.

1. You cause the different pieces to be paid off at different times and
   different rates having little to nothing to do with the initial note rate.
   Who ever is getting the money--and at this point who knows?--have
   conflicts with other people in different tranches.

Ok, not ok?

1. Somebody hedges losses on some of the losses on some of those fragments
   and some of the somebodies get paid off by honest, non-broke
   or gov't backed counterparties and some don't.
   So some pieces of pieces of pieces are actually paid off.

Say 5% of your mtg is actually paid off and you are not underwater.
You can't pay 'cause you lost your job. Shouldn't you at least get
5% of the proceeds of the house is foreclosed and sold?

Actually, 2 steps are missing here:

A. Borrower makes a mtg.

B. Mortgagee assigns the mtg.

Shouldn't they tell you if somebody paid off part of your mortgage?

How do we know these idiots haven't lost track of who they owe
all these little pieces to? How do we know whether any proceeds
of the foreclosure sale will go to the right people? How do we know
the counterparty won't get po-ed, and in some especially egregious
case, sue the borrower (s)?

albrt wrote:

One of the hazards of letting people sell something as "insurance" when it is not subject to any of the rules that cover insurance.

What is the chance of that changing? Not necessarily via court ruling, regs or legislative requirement but because future CDS won't be written w/out the option of taking claim over the collateral [prior to pay out]? I certainly wouldn't sign on to a blank check authorization to take me to the cleaners unless I could touch & feel what caused me to have to 'accept' that loss. The smartest guys in the room should at least be smarter than me.

Any ideas?

They clearly weren't smarter then you.

Oh, maybe they could do equations you couldn't solve,
but the common sense was clearly missing in action.

I definitely think anything sold as insurance should be regulated as insurance. That would mean they would need to maintain reasonable reserves, they would probably only sell it to someone who has an insurable interest, etc.

If they want to sell somebody an instrument that is a naked option on the secondary mortgage market, they should call it that.

But I don't see any sign that anyone in authority is moving in this direction. The most they are currently talking about is making some small fraction of these deals trade on some type of exchange.

Vader (11/8/2009 - 12:21 pm)
The rule is that the one who dies with the most toys wins.

But still dies? Damn it! I want my money back!

albrt wrote:

One of the hazards of letting people sell something as "insurance" when it is not subject to any of the rules that cover insurance.

"No subrogation for you" said the Soup Nazi.

Well got yard work to do being its like mid60s out - what's the chance of THAT in Minnesota in November? About the same odds as this CDS thing getting figured out.

Yeah, I have weeds to deal with.

Cookies. Pumpkin nut cookies. . . . .

BUT Liz, banker got to be rock stars and worshiped by minions via CNBS! How dare we question their kewlness and all powerful knowledge. Schmucks like me couldn't possibly understand how hard they work for their tens of millions in bonuses every year or how important they are to my life.

dryfly wrote:

I certainly wouldn't sign on to a blank check authorization to take me to the cleaners unless I could touch & feel what caused me to have to 'accept' that loss. The smartest guys in the room should at least be smarter than me.

Dryfly: You are confusing CDS as "insurance" versus CDS as "bets". If CDS is insurance, then you are probably are correct. If CDS are just bets, then you just admit that your pony came up lame and move on to the betting window in preparation for the next race.

NorkaWest -- how many s could we make from the meat of a single ? This is sort of like angels and pinheads I guess...

Thanks barfly. I remember watching testimony a couple of years ago by former CFTC chair Greenberger who also was indignant about lack of regulatory oversight in the futures market. He resigned in 1999 after Gramms CFMA got slipped in to a large piece of must pass legislation at the 11th hour.

Gee, I like it. Sorry. Mine included blueberrys and a small piece of
apple too.

lawyerliz

can you point me at the albrt post that you indicated was outstanding

id like to read it

lawyerliz wrote:

You usually get that by art or litterature or philosophy etc etc, not money.

Unless you're Bernie Made Off

oh gee i get it it was...gosh i never read the name of the author

embarrassed

Mock Turtle - I don't have a blog. I am just generally referring to the fact that the CDS written by AIG and others have resulted in some investors (such as Goldman Sachs) being repaid for their mortgage investments, and I think a homeowner being foreclosed might be entitled to inquire whether the debt has already been paid off. Especially if it was the taxpayers that paid it.

CDS refers to credit default swaps, which were sold as "insurance" to protect mortgage investors in case their mortgage securities went bust. But they were also sold to anyone else who wanted to make a bet against mortgage securities. The banks then used the revenue from the swaps to create "synthetic" credit-backed securities, and on and on. It was quite the house of cards, and it appears the Obama administration's main goal in banking reform is to set the house of cards back up again. I don't think they can do it because it basically didn't work.

Rob Dawg wrote:

i think you hit bullseye with the discussion of insurance like products without insurance oversight.

But they aren't insurance like products. They are "bets", pure and simple. You just hope that your bookie isn't an AIG without the Federal backstop.

NorkaWest
that Soup Nazi reference almost gave me to heaves
why?
cause in late '92 I included my run-ins with the real soup purveyor on 8th Ave and 47th
in material that I did before a live audience ...
2 audiences the same result
sitting on their hands
my mistake - it was before a E&Y audience
Seinfeld's take was inferior to mine but they
did do the high concept 'soup nazi' Clever but
you had to be Jewish to pull that off...
that is you've got to have that on your brain 24/7
and this goyem doesn't

There was a real soup NAzi?

albrt

thanks

i readd the post and it just didnt register the by line

"CR Note: This is a guest post from albrt."

im a dummy

great post and thanks

btw...i just did a search of naked capitalism...thinking liz was refering to...

and it reminded me of the very incitefull observations you posted there

a recent favorite

"I would agree with this comment, except that we are ignoring the elephant in the room:

Why is everyone so hesitant to suggest that a primary purpose of the Bush treasury, the Obama treasury and the Bernanke fed is to enrich bankers and bank bondholders?

By that standard they were wildly successful, and all their actions to date are well explained. They also succeeded in preventing this Potemkin system of large banks from being exposed as a fraud, but that is important only to the extent it preserves the ability to enrich bankers in the future."

from Naked capitalism nov 5th

One ummm, caveat, albrt, I doubt that any mtg got entirely paid
off due to hedging swaps, what ever. Wouldn't it be only a piece
of a mtg?

To fight for your 'underwater' home in the courts, there's attorney fees...what if the buyer 'loses' in a challenge to keep their home by asking for 'lost' paperwork or the chain...wonder what the attorney bill would be? Renting is an option for an underwater home also.

josap,

Many wonder why the rich get rich and the poor stay poor. The world of wannabees grows.

True, mof. But I actually don't do much. I throw my wrench into the monkeyworks
and nothing happens for a year, year and a half.

Except sometimes I get a pleading that asks for more time for answering
the discovery. Sure, I say. Take all the time you want. Take years. I've
never gotten any discovery back, don't know that I ever will.

Yes Liz, I think in many cases it would be just a piece. On the other hand, who knows whether some of the banks had "insurance" on non-securitized mortgages?

I assume he made really good soup.

True, albrt. I have just justified the time spent here as non-wasted.

what do New Yorkers know about really good soup?
used a ton of corn starch to make them thick...
yes, he used that phrase "no soup for you!"
we were literally eyeball to eyeball
it was a gas...

I am sure that he witnessed at least one of my knock down drag out arguments with that nutter...

Yeah a guy arguing about soup when there's options a few yards away. What a nut! Wait a minute, iirc there were two guys arguing,...

it defies a reasonable sense of justice that investor could buy a CDS

and then

go massively short (and not too long ago naked short) and then add rumors

in the hopes of driving the underlying investment into the ground

thus profiting from the short and the insurance

how is this different from insuring your neighbors house against fire

and then committing arson

albrt wrote:

CDS refers to credit default swaps, which were sold as "insurance" to protect mortgage investors

I think you will find that the seller's of CDS went out of their way to make sure that they wouldn't be considered insurance in the strict statutory sense. IMO a judge who deemed those contracts to be insurance from a statutory sense (something that would be necessary to consider whether the investors had been paid off) would be doing much more than just getting involved in a foreclosure proceeding. It would expose the seller of CDS to possible criminal and civil liability for selling insurance without a license or approval of the state insurance commissioners. Talk about throwing a grenade into a crowd- it would threaten not only CDS but all swap transactions and over the counter derivative transactions.

It is exactly the same, which is one of the reasons insurance is regulated.

I have to head out now - thanks everyone, and I will check back later.

mock turtle wrote:

Why is everyone so hesitant to suggest that a primary purpose of the Bush treasury, the Obama treasury and the Bernanke fed is to enrich bankers and bank bondholders?

hey Mock - when I said that yesterday in my denunciation of Obama you took great umbrage - what changed?

crazyv wrote:

it would threaten not only CDS but all swap transactions and over the counter derivative transactions.

Yes it would. And that is exactly what they need to do. Because it was fraud, it was a bet sold as insurance in a way designed to get around insurance law.

I have never watched the entirety of that Seinfeld episode, why?
because it taught me a cruel realty in the creative world -
sometimes you must go with your instinct even when the crowd
sits on their hands... and boy, did I pay on that one!

Ok, so the lender hands the property over to the insurer.
That's sorta what I remembered in the mid 80s we handled
a lot of sales of foreclosures, but I don't remember who exactly
signed the paperwork.

I really doubt there is any subrogation available, and how
dumb was that?

mock turtle wrote:

how is this different from insuring your neighbors house against fire

and then committing arson

It is why when buying insurance you must have an insurable interest to purchase insurance. However, derivatives were not considered insurance they were considered financial products and therefore the statutory rules regarding insurance didn't apply. It is all about a continuum. pick two adjoining points and they are not very different. But the law requires that a line be drawn somewhere. If you didn't then paying somebody a fixed amount to shovel your driveway for the season (irrespective of how much it snowed ) would be considered an insurance product.

josap wrote:

Yes it would. And that is exactly what they need to do. Because it was fraud, it was a bet sold as insurance in a way designed to get around insurance law.

what about put options purchased on stock? What about a variable rate mortgage whose interest is capped? There are a myriad of transactions that share characteristics with CDS. As I said they all fall on a continuum and a line has to be drawn. When I first got involved in swaps in the early 80's there was some concern that an interest rate swap was gambling contract.

Sorry, didn't mean to tweak you so hard,...but you know it takes two to argue,...and I think I've learned not to argue with the demented.

"The smartest guys in the room should at least be smarter than me."

They effectively turned a relatively straight forward transaction (writing mortgages) into a high tech shell game garnering massive compensation. They have money. The poor sap who lost his house and job looks rather ignorant in comparison. Most of us prefer smart folks engaging in activities that result in some positive impact on society. Greedy smart and crooked smart are unfortunate combinations.

thanks sfdts
yeah, it was a surrealistic experience, something I thought out of the norm
sadly I pitched the story to a totally wrong audience, my bad.
yes, it remains a sore point.

mock turtle wrote:

yep and that is the policy that we are criticizing here....CDS should have been regulated but were not...in fact were explicitly protected from reg under gramm leach bliley act of 1999

ok so why just credit default swaps but not all swap transactions. If you believe we should regulate all swaps as insurance why not put options on stocks. My point is whatever point you decide to draw the line - I can give you a transaction that is essentially the same. In determining whether something is insurance from a statutory perspective it matters a great deal who the counter parties to the transaction are. We have a long tradition that transaction amongst sophisticated investors have to meet a much lower regulatory threshold. I would suggest that the problem here is not with the regulation of CDS but many people who considered themselves to sophisticated were in fact not.

Great post and commentary! The lawyerliz commentary on ownership seems spot on. Makes one wonder if the entire mess comes grinding to a halt. High tech shell game...

Hey, careful now, high-tech shell games are one of our only remaining growth industries!

When are 'buyers' going to start suing for 'lost equity' and 'economic hardship' due to the securitization RE value 'bubble' which was based on faulty securitization ratings, hit-the-mark RE appraisals, excessively risky mortgage loans based on faulty lending standards, deregulation of banking, government lending programs that were not viable, etc.

Makes one wonder if the entire mess comes grinding to a halt.

You know those video games where you shoot the huge rock and it turns into a smaller rock, and then you shoot the smaller rock and it turns into still smaller rocks, so your screen fills up with troubles...and all the while they can still do damage?

We do live in a Caveat Emptor society.

"Gotcha" capitalism

mock turtle wrote:

bad example.

Actually not- if you read the your states insurance statutes very literally that transaction is an insurance transaction. The point I was making is that there is a continuum of transactions all of which could be considered insurance via a narrow reading. Clearly we draw a line somewhere and two adjoining transaction on opposite sides of the line although functionally the same will be subject to completely different regulatory treatment.

As to regulation of CDS - no I don't believe that they should be regulated. I think in many respects this is same debate as gun control. If you believe in gun control then it would be consistent to believe in regulation of CDS. The problem was not CDS but the people who were using them. None of this would be an issue if we had not allowed commercial banks (back stopped by the tax payer and who play a pivotal role in the economy) to get involved in a derive so much of their profits from dabbling in these types of transactions. It was the shadow banking system that was the problem. If the major commercial banks hadn't been involved the damage would have been contained to essentially those playing in the casino. AIG's loss would have been GS gain up to the point where AIG could no longer pay Goldman.

"CDS should have been regulated"

I have come to view derivatives as tail wagging the dog (exchange traded instruments). I really do fear a sudden stop when a critical mass of derivative products suddenly go south.

Caveat Emptor capitalism exists because exploiting another's lack of knowledge is virtuous and highly rewarded in our society.

Need to ad they where also encouraged and cheered by our government and regulators.

crazyv

up thread you attempted to wrap your self in the mantle of albrt

you quoted me (quoting albert and agreeing that):

"Why is everyone so hesitant to suggest that a primary purpose of the Bush treasury, the Obama treasury and the Bernanke fed is to enrich bankers and bank bondholders? "

then you went on to say

"hey Mock - when I said that yesterday in my denunciation of Obama you took great umbrage - what changed?"

just to set the record straight here is what you said yesterday,that i objected to

" crazyv (profile) wrote (in reply to...) on Sat, 11/7/2009 - 2:41 pm

" Obama is really a Republican Manchurian candidate and with this garbage bill he has pretty much discredited most of the progressive agenda. "

ok heres the difference

i agree with you and Rob Dawg and Albrt and others that obama is wrong for promulgating banksta policies

but i am not with you.... and i dont confuse this.... with all other aspects of his progressive agenda

in other words i dont criticize bush for everything he did just because of a specific policy failures or disasters.

i judge his policies one by one

I conclude that the counterparties knew AIG ultimately couldn't pay as the money backing the AAA credit was legally off limits. Caveat Emptor was apparently inapplicable in this case.

LOL. From the post:

The judge primarily based his decision on the plain language of the mortgage document, which said:

"MERS (as nominee for Lender and Lender’s successors and assigns) has the right to exercise any or all of those interests, including, but not limited to, the right to foreclose and sell the Property."

Plain language for lawyers.
1. "has the right to exercise any or all of those interests" As opposed to being able to exercise those interests without having the right to.
2. "Any and all" Any includes all. Redundant and verbose, rest of the world uses any.
3. "including, but not limited to" Redundant and verbose. rest of the world uses "including."

Normal people would shorten this to:

MERS (as nominee for Lender and Lender’s successors and assigns) can exercise any of those interests, including the right to foreclose and sell the Property.

I would guess that MERS was previously assigned in the doc. Further shortening if true:

MERS can exercise any of those interests, including the right to foreclose and sell the Property.

Have "those interests" previously been delineated? More shortening. Were "those interests" listed as rights of the lender? Then why is this sentence here at all.

Yes I know there is history etc. But contract language history seems to avoid the common sense of elementary school Venn diagrams.

And that's just one sentence.

mock turtle wrote:

with all other aspects of his progressive agenda

I guess we just value things differently- for me selling out to the banksters and the insurance companies pretty much outweighs the any of the other progressives things he might do. Getting his DOJ not to prosecute medical marijuana big difference to GWB but not even close to the handouts to the insurance companies. For me the biggest problem with the financial bailout is not the money that was given to GS and others but that it continued the theme of the last 16 years that what is good for Wall Street is good for America. That every policy must be viewed through the prism of the Dow Jones. If the market is up the policy must be good and if it is down then the policy must be bad. It is that mind set which has got us to this point.

crazyv said

"As to regulation of CDS - no I don't believe that they should be regulated. I think in many respects this is same debate as gun control. If you believe in gun control then it would be consistent to believe in regulation of CDS."

the right to keep and bear arms is part of the bill of rights

writing a CDS contract is not

a CDS is not like a rifle or a pistol

a CDSs are like a weapons of mass destruction

the lack of regulation and transparency of credit defualt swaps, and fraud, and leverage are at the core of our destruction

by the way even constitutional rights may be subject to limitations

you cant yell fire in a crowded theater where there is no fire

you cant carry your pistol into the the federal prison at joliet when visiting a friend who is an inmate

crazyv

i absolutely agree with what you said at 1201

and i respect your right to say that failings in a policy area taint things adjascent

"Caveat Emptor capitalism exists because exploiting another's lack of knowledge is virtuous and highly rewarded in our society. "

Caveat Vendor is inefficient. I conclude that many of these products were sold due to end-to-end control fraud. Imagine the fallout from all the voided contracts.

mock turtle wrote:

the lack of regulation and transparency of credit defualt swaps, and fraud, and leverage are at the core of our destruction

Then you must be very optimistic about our future - because the solution is so easy. I have consistently said and will say so again- most people have the cart before the horse. It is our underlying economic rot- median wages stagnant for almost a decade that precipitated the problems on Wall Street not the other way around. It serves the PTB to create a narrative that has Wall Street's melt down as the cause of the problem - how else can you get the tax payer to bail them out? If median wages had grown during the last decade by 2% (well under the productivity gains) there wouldn't have been a mortgage melt down because people would have been able to afford their payments.

crazyv

half agree

im not optimistic about the future because , well ....ive said why probably too often...but i agree with mp and many others here about doom potential

but i do agree that the wage issues and the transparency issues you raise are keys to solutions

and thats why dryfly and i and others keep harping on the question... where are the good jobs gonna come from

Off to spend the afternoon at a wedding.

Enough doom for one day. On to an enjoyable afternoon.

Globalization has killed wages and many jobs. Credit was used where the paychecks were short. The RE/CRE bubble was a scam to cash in on the leftovers of globalization, creating a fee and commission profit machine, an 'asset' timing pump and dump machine, and the means to drain banks of loan money to be taken away...and to be 'replaced' by 'bailout/stimulus' money...so a double hit to the public and a double take for the various profiteers of Bubbles/Busts...

mechants of fear 1215

absolutely the word

sdtfs,
Foreclosure as a resolution is not working in many cases or is not even an option for some blighted homes...this was more than 'bad advice'...this was a consumer rip-off because of all the 'deregulated' shady, shadow stuff that went on with the bogus ratings, lack of transparency & disclosure, etc. also...people wer sold lemon loans and over-priced lemon houses basically based on a whole process of fraud and obfuscation...

"Wall Street is not good for America. "

Somehow, many are/were convinced that financial services is more than an intermediary. In the end, there is no real, tangible production. The massive costs are ultimately borne by the real producers of tangible value.

sdtfs,
Mortgage lenders and REALTORS can be very convincing...they are trained in various sales and closing strategies...we were 'sold' the Home-ownership idea as almost an exercise in Patriotism ('go out and spend') by the Great Closer Dubya...now we have another Great Closer (O)...

Ring of Fire Radio | Wall Street's Naked Swindle

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. interviews Matt Taibbi

As far as I know, my discovery sits on a desk at the foreclosure mill,
and the most that happens is that they object, or it is sent over to the
bank/lender/somewhere where it sits on some paralegal/clerk's desk
who has absolutely no idea what I am asking for or what any of it means,
and then it just sits and sits. I have never got a meaningful response
to any request to lenders, and I don't expect to get one now.

EHP:

There are some additional topics that I would hope to explore at some point.

One is the concept of an innocent purchaser. In many contexts, the law does protect the innocent purchaser, and so the person who bought the stolen car would get to keep it. But you aren't considered innocent if you should have known from the title documents that the car was stolen. The same concept applies to real estate, so covering up the chain of title can have an important effect on who wins or loses in a mortgage lawsuit.

The double recovery issue is tough and very complicated. It is not necessarily clear that the homeowner should get the benefit of the lender's decision to buy "insurance," but it is also not clear that the lender should get bailed out by the taxpayer, and then go ahead and foreclose on the property anyway. This is especially difficult to resolve when it is not at all clear who owns what.

Hmmm, does all this obfuscation == unclean hands?

This is equity, after all.

CNN Political Ticker: All politics, all the time Page not found « - Blogs from CNN.com

Cao, who hails from one of the most Democratic districts in the country, also asked the president for assurances that the administration would do more to help with ongoing disaster relief efforts in his New Orleans district, specifically by forgiving millions in disaster loans to the region.

josap wrote:

When you get a mortgage of over 80% the buyer pays mortgage insurance on the loan.
If the buyer defaults, the lender gets paid by the insurance and gets the house.

I have not read the mortgage insurance documents, but my understanding is the insurance covers actual losses by the bank. So if they foreclose at a loss, that loss gets covered. I don't think you enter a double-payment scenario unless the bank takes payment under the insurance policy and then pursues a deficiency judgment on the former owner.

So a claim on the insurance would not be ripe until the bank realizes a loss on the security.. no naked options there.

I didn't file a pleading to give them a chance to hit a year without
record activity. Then I can file a mtn to dismiss and hopefully
make them start all over again.

Most of the time I don't do this 'cause I don't want to come to their
attention. If they forget for 5 years I will plead statute of limitations.
Unlikely.

But Merchants you see this would be a countersuit. You have to
pay a filing fee if you file a countersuit, up to $1909. Depending on
the amount of the suit. What I am doing is called affirmative defenses,
no fee.

These are people with very little money.

Paper Pusher--the judges decide. They have jurisdiction in a
particular county. If nobody argues against what the plaintiff sez--
the borrower doesn't even appear--the foreclosure mill/lender
wins. Attorneys run the cases. If the atty does nothing nothing
happens, unless the judges on their own dismiss for lack of
prosecution; mostly they don't bother.

If the judge decides that the Plaintiff has no standing they can dismiss
the case. Typically you get 2 or 3 or 4 chances to amend your
complaint so it can't be dismissed. So you are dismissed, but
with the right to amend.

Nah, that would get successfully appealed and they
all hate being reversed.

My son said that some of his classes have been cancelled
because so many students have swine flu.

He doesn't supposedly, but he still is sick.

Absolutely Allen C.

They put mine on a pile somewhere to rot.

lawyerliz wrote:

Nah, that would get successfully appealed and they
all hate being reversed.

But then it would be off their calender and every other petitioner would be cleaning up their act. It's got to be hellaciously expensive to appeal and I'd bet the numbers don't add up for most foreclosures.

Up to $1909 to file a 'countersuit'...yikes. So much for a consumer retaliation.
Many people who will 'fight' for their homes may have been paying for many years...may have put a lot of 'home improvement' in...imagine if you have been paying for 20 years and end up in trouble because of health and/or employment problems. That is something to fight for as it's a 'lifetime' of payments maybe at stake...in losing a home to foreclosure...

"attorney fee biling "

Productive of bile? What about home improvement and plumbers?

It would seem the banks need a higher tier of mill for the more complicated cases. A place to send lawyerliz's files to.

Few have been paying for 20 years and get into this position.

If they bought 20 years ago, thats 1989, trust me you still have
equity, perhaps plenty of equity and your mtg has been paid down
to a significant degree. That is, if you haven't taken all the money
out via a 2nd mtg.

Liz,
When people gets delays on their foreclosure...maybe they have moved out and are renting...so their 'home' is in the foreclosure process (or in a legal challenge to foreclosure) is empty...would the buyers just rent their 'homes' in question out to generate the attorney fees (in case they 'lost' the challenge)?

If the house is empty I don't take their money usually.

Also. Remember they could ask for a receiver to be appointed to
pick up the rentals, but they don't.

Condo assn lawyers are now asking for receivers when
the maintenance isn't paid and it's being rented.

No wonder I am addicted. If I start talking to ummmm,
"normal" people about this stuff their eye glaze over; you
guys actually like to read it.

lawyerliz wrote:

No wonder I am addicted. If I start talking to ummmm,
"normal" people about this stuff their eye glaze over; you
guys actually like to read it.

What can we say? We're UberNerds!

This stuff is as good as 'NFL football'...

"pavel,
Home improvement and plumbers were paid by equity loans and lines of credit in many cases...the 1st lender would benefit from this..."

No doubt, Merchants. I was thinking of the bile factor, having contracted for some repair work around the house. We could have used cheaper contractors, but then we've found that the results are sometimes less than satisfactory.

mock turtle wrote:

ok true but lets be clear

I think it's worse that this. The Democrat Party is willing to throw bones (winds power, health-care, "fixing" global-warming) to the "Progressives" in exchange for the ONE unspoken thing that really matters: continuing as the political whores purchased by the nobility that owns 90% of the wealth of the country. Nothing is going to be fixed or addressed "Progressively" because the REAL job of the politicians that the Progressives keep electing is to keep the existing power structure intact; the top 1%, the top 3 million people, wealthy. The "Progressives" will have wasted four years of controlling both houses, and the Presidency, and all they'll get out of it is excuses. Of course, the "Progressives" will accept this and keep voting Democratic.

So, Progressives are no more intelligent than "conservatives". This means you're in the same boat as the Faux News dumbasses, who are happily voting for "conservative" Republicrats because of the fornicating-harlot or the male-5th-appendage fake issues.

MONEY is all that matters. The two wings of the combined Parties sole job is to keep the voters mind off the ONE issue that matters most: WHO is getting the wealth of the nation (other than Hu).

"Pavel, some computer billionaire had a sign on his wall saying:

Price! Service! Quality!!!

Pick any 2. "

That's a stitch, Liz.

Are economic/social conditions as grim around the country as reading might lead one to believe? It's not only large numbers of people out of work, but the stress on families. Is that a correct impression?

"MONEY is all that matters. "

It is when a society despairs of anything else.

pavel.chichikov wrote:

Price! Service! Quality!!!

It is actually a variation of the Project management triangle. Three sides: Time, People, Quality. The area of the triangle is cost. The triangle is demonstrating that if the cost is fixed (area) all you can do (as a project manager) is change the length of the sides of the triangle, trading off one item for another.

NaRm,
Money and making sure real money gets to the Big industries and Big finance so they can keep on keeping on 'making money'...fer example...altho' it doesn't seem this way but the medical/healthcare/pharma industry is in the process of getting bailed out from this awful Deflation and loss of premium payments from unemployment, etc. and it is a priority that the aforementioned Big Industry continues to have paying customers at expensive pricing and 'limited availability' which makes it even more expensive...
Healthcare just got bailed out probably if the (Big Spending Whale) Savior Train gets through the Senate...more paying customers for Big Pharma...Celebrate, Celebrate...Dance to the Music...

mock turtle wrote:

we are going to have to dial it back fast or accept the changes

And we're going to have to use a variety of energy sources, including nuclear. The current leading argument against nuclear is that it would take too long to come on line. Not only is that a dumb argument (because this is a long-term problem), but it encourages people to focus on useless schemes like biofuels, which is simply not a solution except in the most minor stopgap way.

sm_landlord wrote:

And we're going to have to use a variety of energy sources, including nuclear.

Perhaps here, but the Chinese are building coal fired power plants. The Chinese and Indians will follows the exact same path that we have taken as it's the path of least resistance for the current generation of people. When there's 3 billion more people driving around, it really won't matter what we're doing exactly.

Moral: Don't take out any 99 year leases on property near the ocean. Nothing else matters really. Life will go on, wineries in Canada, peasants dieing to liberate water, glorious stories of war and dead solders. Human history contiues.

"In politics has HAS to matter most. Because power comes from money. If you want social justice you've GOT to have power to bring about change. Money = power."

Societies live when people love it enough to die for it, though hopefully they won't have to. A society based only on money may be attractive to the loveless, but it is not lovable.

NaRm,
Yeah...it's all done in the 'public interest' more or less right...if you suspect, can see, or can prove otherwise...that's simply tinfoil kookery...right?

"And we're going to have to use a variety of energy sources, including nuclear. The current leading argument against nuclear is that it would take too long to come on line. Not only is that a dumb argument (because this is a long-term problem), but it encourages people to focus on useless schemes like biofuels, which is simply not a solution except in the most minor stopgap way."

James Lovelock, the preeminent climate pessimist, thinks so. He thinks nuclear power is the only way out, and even then it's a desperate expedient.

Bicycles or public transportation will be the choice of transportation for many in the coming Deflation...
Got that public transit system in Phoenix in place just in time maybe...

Hey CR check this out DOG!

Default notices rising in upper echelon ZIPs

"Then there are the cynical people that laugh at all of them (but, it's best to do so very quietly, as I'm sure you know)"

I haven't laughed at people for some time. I don't think of myself as cynical either. Maybe happy to see self-sacrifice. There is still quite a bit of it around. There had better be, or we're toast.

grillfalcon wrote:

Democrat party?

One party, two different stories for the dumbasses to make them think we've actually got a democracy. As most Mericans equate voting with democracy it doesn't take much of a story to confuse their tiny brains: LOOK THE OTHER PARTY IS _____________ VOTE FOR US!

sm_landlord wrote:

Of course the greenies blocked that latest solar plant proposal in the desert, but eventually something has to give.

Don't forget tho. If it wasn't for "the greenies" this entire country would be like China now. The greenies questioned the wisdom of our glorious bidness leaders. They were right.

Who was questioning the wisdom of our glorious financial leaders?

Who was calling BOTH groups godless commies? Question the leaders? Question __________ !!!!

sm_landlord wrote:

BTW, there is an interesting new piece about biofuels that argues for a more balanced energy policy in IEEE Spectrum this month:

I read that - pretty good piece - except the choice of biofuel was weak - better source would be 'elephant grass'... as tough as switch grass but lots more productivity per acre... grows on crap land but requires more rain. Also better route to fuel would be via Fischer Tropsch chemistry not fermentation but both points are nitpicking. Key points are accurate though: [1] no one source is gonna do it all and [2] food into fuel is a dead end no matter how you spin it.

pavel: Two folks meet. Each mistrusts the other and is continuously trying to game him/her to their own advantage. We will assume both are completely rational and act in their own self-interest under conditions of perfect information. Can they ever form the basis of a relationship, much less a society?

'fox news is also stupid...'
So is the 'War On Terror' stupid?

sm_landlord wrote:

Which is why we need to get busy. Eventually people will get tired of China Syndrome re-runs. The Nimbyfornia aspect is the hardest part.

Its the waste that is the problem - at least until they get practical 'complete burn' breeders running. One of my best friends is into nuclear remediation [done them all - Oak Ridge, Savanna, Rocky Flats, Hanford, Los Alamos]... while the mil sites were far more problematic - reprocessing commercial fuel is still formidable and more importantly EXPENSIVE. Include that cost in your 'total cost calculator' and nukes aren't anywhere near as attractive even w/out Mr. Nimby.

That all changes when totally safe slow burn - complete burn reactors become commercially available - my guess is sooner than we can imagine given the need. It might even be your 'next big thing' [Schumpeter wave initiator].

Back to dryfly's backyard 'biofuels site'... [wood pile]

merchants of fear wrote:

So is the 'War On Terror' stupid?

How about is the 'War On Stupid' terror?

Lobbyist Ben Dover wrote:

Fox news haters seem to reflect trollism

I think it depends on what the purpose of the new outlet is. When a news outlet has a cult following, unquestioned loyality - like a celebrity or sports team - then it's no longer news.

MofF and LLiz:

If the borrower will be on the hook for the lenders legal costs;
if the borrower is so under water that there is no way they will every break even;
the lender can only foreclose on the under water house whose sale proceeds are all that the lender will get to cover the loan, servicer fees, and legal fees (i.e., non-recourse),

then the underwater borrower would be economically irrational not to try to maximize the lenders legal costs.

The FB is already skrood.

Running up lender's legal fees is a way for the FB to make certain that the lender is sharing the pain.

It's not about saving the FB's house; it's about the FB legally "getting even".

NW

CNN was biased with the attack on middle America. When I listen to Lou Dobbs ask UAW workers loaded questions that need more detail, then that is their bias. Most peoples decisions are made off of sound bites with shallow thinking.

Lobbyist Ben Dover wrote:

CNN was biased with the attack on middle America.

Everybody is bias. It's the cult aspect of the bias that I'm worried about.

I am not following the CDS example and the notion of "Double Recovery." The payments made to certificate holders of an RMBS trust and those made to parties to a CDS are independent from one another under contract law, that is the certificate holders provided consideration for the right to be made payments pursuant to distributions from the trust, while the parties to the CDS provided consideration to one another to make payments pursuant to a CDS agreement. The only thing that the two share, is that payments that the CDS parties agreed to make to one another, are calculated and derived from the same underlying asset, but the parties to the CDS have no interest and no claim on the assets of the trust.

However, what may be a "double recovery" situation, is a deal in which the RMBS is "wrapped" by a certificate insurance policy. Under this scenario, the certificate holders hold certificates that are insured by Ambac or MBIA or possibly AIG, and when Realized Losses on the certificates occur, the insurer pays the certificate holders as if no losses actually occurred. Under the terms of the Insurance Policy and the governing Sale and Servicing Agreement, the proceeds from the sale of the foreclosed properties would be distributed to the certificate holders, or if any draws were made on the insurance policies, to the insurers as recoveries or partial recoveries under their policies. Assuming that AIG has been bailed out and any policies which they may wrapped around an RMBS have been paid out by the government, and therefore the certificate holders have been made whole by the government, and the the insurer has suffered no loss since it was bailed out, the mortgagor could argue that unless the agreement between the insurer and the government provided that all proceeds from the sale of foreclosed and REO properties were to be distributed to the government, that allowing the insurer to collect under the policy would be allowing double recovery, or at least an unwarranted recovery because the insurer never paid out the losses coming from the foreclosed property.

In an RMBS transaction when payments of interest and principal are not made to to the Trust a shortfall occurs and there is not sufficient amounts in the trust to make all the payments on the certificates. The available payments are made, and the deficiencies are considered to be "Realized Losses" and allocated to the certificate-holders as determined in the water-flow of the transaction (first to the Class A-10, second to the Class A-9... tenth to the Class A-1).

A CDS is a contract between two parties that may or may not have rights to any payments from the Trust;