So, it seems to me mortgages such as the one outlined in this thread is null and void and relief going to the debtor.

Because it is so vauge as Marcus Aurelius points out in the 5th paragraph of his post.

Lenders as the formulators of loan contracts/documents are expected to forsee every possible scenario. Similar to the legal tecnicality obligation as I understand it for McDonalds having to pay millions to that woman who spilled hot coffee in her lap while at the drive-thru window.

That being said, as Marcus points out statutorial fuckery of the courts will protect banks that set people up to default ( I don’t mean to imply predatory borrowers should be held blameless).

Instead they went for the billion/trillion dollar bailouts because it was easier and more importantly fit a larger political agenda. Had they said instead that every member of MERS would be fined $10 million a day until they located every deed we would know where every piece of paper was located.

That said nothing would be different today. The Times would have had to write some other story with the same hang dog pics and great graphics.

Besides, the MERs banks traded these pieces of paper as “nothing more than simple securities” . Forget about the notion of a contract being a “sacred” agreement between two parties.

C’mon…

What exactly is the fraudulent scheme here? That the banks are making themselves unavailable?

There is no law that the banks have to renegotiate these Notes.

OK, so what about the fictitious assignments? Sure, this is fraud. But that’s more of a tangential element to the story. This is not a story about an industry wide conspiracy of banks to fraudulently endorse assignments. This is a story about banks establishing the MERS mechanism to avoid the hassles of continually recording each and every assignment…and that mechanism proving to be faulty. OK, it needs reform, but that’s quite different from saying it’s fraudulent.

And to the Marcus Aurelius .”intentional complexities involved in transmutation…..are characteristically used to obscure the chicanery involved in such schemes….”

What?

This is absurd. Whatever fraud occurred…and there was a lot of it…occurred on the front end. Loan originator to Borrower. Then, the fraud occurred from Loan Originator to Loan Investor. [With a healthy dose of borrower fraud as well.]

The ultimate MERS Assignee—the one “camouflaged” by the MERS front, if you will—DID NOT commit the fraud unless they forged the assignment. The article is muddled by not stating this fact more clearly.

“At Calculated Risk, the late Tanta was an expert on the legal basis of this scheme….”

Again, what scheme are you talking about?

Damn, you guys aren’t even alleging that the originating lender committed fraud by falsifying borrower docs., etc., etc…Instead the “fraudulent scheme” is that we have a purchase money mortgage, the Borrower didn’t pay and the Assignee was too lazy to authenticate. Therefore the Assignee not only has lost the right to authenticate and therefore collect—but the Assignee has also committed fraud.

This is a dramatic overreaction.

Unless that MERS assignee forged the assignment….then, at worst, the assignee just needs to validate the chain of indebtedness. Obviously, the banks consider this basic requirement to be beneath them and a royal pain in the ass. So on this I agree with: Tough shit—produce your valid claim. After enough banks go through this hassle, the entire premise of MERS will be called into question.

But to allege fraud in this circumstance is only going to encourage BS legal claims that all MERS transactions are fraudulent. Beyond being legally incorrect, it’s counterproductive to cleaning up this mess.

Marcus, I think it is pretty obvious that you have not fully considered the impact of the CRA, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton on this whole scenario. Clearly, govt. intervention has distorted the miraculous free market, which never would have allowed such a thing as this, or for that matter any of the other bad stuff that has happened. Oh, yeah, Obama sucks too. Where’s my dang tea??

/rightard

Think the banks will buy that?

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/26/business/26pay.html