How we got here: DURING THE HOUSING BOOM, WALL STREET "LENDERS" TRADED MORTGAGES UPWARDS OF 30 TIMES
Appraisals were overinflated, notes were lost & destroyed OR shredded, and sold into multiple pools. Mortgages were not recorded and exorbitant fees were charged by Wall Street giants.
These so-called lenders are now attempting to collect on loans they do not own. Often lending zero to the transaction, they willfully kept investors uninformed of the bets against their own investments. It's not enough they were paid many times over, including taxpayer bailouts -- now they are successfully grabbing up the taxpayers’ homes.
In a present PR attempt to do damage control, the banks are spending generously on new ad campaigns, claiming they are available to help you sort out all your troubles. Are we to believe they've had Personality + Integrity Makeovers and are now ready to play honestly? NO. Our insider sources, newcomers training in lengthy, secret closed-door seminars at the banks, have reported they are feeling dodgy about their new jobs, because the same old games for profit, disguised as help for the homeowner are being renamed and peddled.
The bank propaganda machine continues to assault us by spewing fabrications in the foreclosure blame-game, hoping to convince the justices, and the global community, this is all the fault of the homeowner. The Banksters have wrecked many people's lives willingly, knowingly, and blatantly. It cannot be permitted to continue. THE ISSUES AND CURRENT LEGISLATION- A Tsunami of Foreclosures
So really, who owns foreclosed properties? After Wall Street created the housing-bubble and its concurrent Ponzi-scheme, with the shameful aid of our government regulators, ranking Senate Banking Committee members, and our now smeared rating Agencies, the Banksters quickly realized they would ultimately end up with an unprecedented amount of foreclosures. This they had to trouble shoot, and they did so at the expense of the American people.
Understanding mortgage securitization and the role it had on foreclosures and evictions, is one component of the entire mess they created and profited by. By packaging mortgages and trading them in "pools," it now meant the bank originating the mortgage no longer held title to the mortgage. Hmmm.
And because they anticipated the tsunami of foreclosures, while they were kvelling over their yield spreads, and were delirious over the financial largess attained by default bets, they had to invent an entity to serve as a proxy in foreclosure proceedings, to cover and represent all of the players in the chain. They created MERS in 1995.
MERS is complicated, but for now let's just say it exists only to "track mortgages and the changes of servicing rights in the mortgage ownership" with no propriety interest. An electronic clerk that would zombie on into court and testify on behalf of The Banksters.
Knowing that some of your "Carlos Type Fighters" would challenge the banks in court proceedings, Wall Street's basic plan was to send MERS to all foreclosure proceedings and act as if they were the mortgage holder in order to clear up title issues.
This is only one of several tricks they use to stake a claim in the title of a property. So, The Banksters were able to create complex chains of trading to make billions of dollars, but later were unable to produce the chain of parties involved, or prove their ultimate right to the title and property. Therefore, they turned to lying and deceit to protect their fortunes and their freedom from criminal prosecution.
Who formed MERS? The former CEO's of Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac, IndyMac, Countrywide and American Land Title Association. An upstanding group of individuals. And the CEO's who devised it, lined their pockets handsomely. Get the picture?
Thankfully, our Western legal system mandates in civil proceedings that any party wanting to bring an action before the court has to have “standing.” As a rule, this is defined as a direct, proprietary interest.
Due to some wise judicial rulings, we have been fortunate to have many legal decisions where MERS has been found to have no right to initiate foreclosure proceedings. However, the judges are reluctant to move posthaste, and are poking along on a case-by-case basis. This forces millions more homeowners to come up with legal fees, which is an added stress and unwelcome financial strain.
To some degree, the fear of opening the floodgates is understandable. What is crucial from our judiciary is the time has come to end this insanity, and to rule that MERS has no legal standing at all. Stop protecting the banks over the homeowner. Which party created this crisis and its' subsequent legal nightmare? Canada is moving forward to protect the homeowners in lieu of the banks; and it is setting up victim's funds for legal expenses.
Ultimately, there would be no reason for the banks to show up at court, unless they could manage to reverse navigate their way through their intentionally complicated maze of transactions and clearly identify a party with genuine legal title over a mortgage in question.
In a somewhat related matter, a renowned foreclosure company who arranges the auction sales, has been proven in some courtrooms, to have NO LEGAL rights to operate in some of the states it was conducting business in; another form of abuse and illegal activity against the homeowner. The Restoring American Financial Stability Act of 2010.
With continued disappointment, we watch the banks spend billions fighting the key components of this necessary legislation. It was signed into law by President Obama on July 21st, 2010, but due to the ever dominant influence of the banks, the bill fell short, and was greatly weakened in key areas.
What part of crisis and disaster on an unprecedented scaled did they not get?
While it is commendable that President Obama has attempted to set up "The New Consumer Protection Agency, the fighting continues over Elizabeth Warren's appointment. At the very least, Americans deserve to have concrete legislation protecting them as the We The People attempt to move forward in our lives.
