Comments on: What a Tangled Web Mortgage Securitizers Weave…

By: Wow, judges now nixing lenders’ foreclosure claims entirely in court | Loan Modification News

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 19:04:52 +0000

[...] I now see Barry Ritholtz has a piece out on this as [...]

By: ToNYC

ToNYC — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 04:18:12 +0000

No free lunch here either, chumps! The title will attract liens like a cat attracts fleas. The bill will accrue for as long as the free-loader thinks they get a free pass, and will lead to re-losing the free house. The mortgage will turn up having been bought by clever sleuthing and that hard work won’t be a free lunch either. Doesn’t anyone play chess in the financial services industry and think a few moves ahead?
There is nothing new under the sun, which is the only free lunch there is.

By: hue

hue — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 02:53:55 +0000

as a former mortgage broker, i should know better. the borrower can also buy title insurance, but most people don’t. the lender requires title insurance.

By: hue

hue — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 02:36:53 +0000

title insurance covers the lender, making sure the liens are cleared for the lender, not borrower. but often if not always charged to borrower at closing.

By: GeorgeBurnsWasRight

GeorgeBurnsWasRight — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 02:16:14 +0000

Let’s follow the logical progression of malfeasance/fraud:
Goal: securitize and sell as many mortgages as possible.
Phase 1. Greatly reduce underwriting standards to get more mortgages to securitize
Phase 2. Abandon underwriting standards (aka Liar Loans) to get more mortgages to securitize
Phase 3. Issue mortgages to phony or non-existent people to get more mortgages to securitize
Phase 4. Issue securitized packages with significant percentages of non-existent mortgages and/or assign the same mortgage to more than one package, to get more mortgages to securitize
We know that phases 1 through 3 happened, to varying extents. Anyone heard any evidence of phase 4?

By: 4closurefraud

4closurefraud — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 01:31:39 +0000

@bergsten – “Wow. That’s exquisite paranoia — I am impressed. I’ll try to do you one better.”

I’ll try to do you one better…

http://4closurefraud.wordpress.com/2009/10/25/i-am-an-attorney-so-i-decided-to-sue-my-lender/

4closurefraud

By: TakBak04

TakBak04 — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 00:53:37 +0000

The National Academy of Sciences has issued its own estimates of the number of Americans in poverty, and yes, it’s much worse than the official statistics have been telling us for the past decade. The new NAS formula estimates nearly 1 in 6 Americans, 15.8 percent, are living below the poverty line. That’s 48 million Americans.

By comparison, the latest official Census Bureau statistics are that 13.2 percent of Americans, or 39.8 million, are impoverished. It should be noted that the Census Bureau is reportedly cooperating with the National Academy of Sciences to get this information out as quickly as possible.

According to the Associated Press, the NAS took into consideration the rising costs of medical care, transportation, child care, as well as geographical variations in living costs. Unbelievably, the Census Bureau calculations never accounted for these costs, since they were first used in 1955. My guess is that this was a convenient way to hide the destruction of the working class beginning with the oil price shocks and Volcker interest rate shock of the 1970s, and horrific human impacts of the de-industrialization of the U.S. economy that was rapidly accelerated by the usury and speculation unleashed by Ronald Reagan’s deregulation mania. Not to mention the vicious attack on organized labor initiated by Reagan’s destruction of the air traffic controllers union.

Particularly troubling is the NAS’s finding that poverty among elderly Americans is actually twice what the official figure is. The NAS finds that 18.7 percent of Americans 65 and older – nearly 7.1 million – are in poverty. The traditional Census Bureau measure is 9.7 percent, or 3.7 million, elderly Americans in poverty. The Associated Press notes that the dramatic doubling of this statistics under the NAS measure is attributed to the NAS taking into account rising Medicare premiums, deductibles and the coverage gap in the prescription drug benefit.

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http://www.economicpopulist.org/content/yes-poverty-worse-they-ever-admitted

By: bergsten

bergsten — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 23:39:25 +0000

@BR – “Make sure you save your paperwork — and open a safety deposit box at a bank different from where your mortgage is held. ”

Wow. That’s exquisite paranoia — I am impressed. I’ll try to do you one better.

You pay off your mortgage, and (hopefully) some official-looking, stamped paperwork eventually turns up in the mail. How do you know it’s legit? I assume Title Insurance covers the lender, not the owner… What if the bank simply refuses (or delays indefinitely) to sign over title? Who wants to wait 30 years to find out they’ve been screwed from day one?

I’m even scaring myself!

By: Dr. Kenneth Noisewater

Dr. Kenneth Noisewater — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 23:13:14 +0000

Incidentally, if one were to end up with a “free house” as a result of lender incompetence, would that be counted as a windfall by the IRS?

By: ella

ella — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 19:33:21 +0000

Also see this article “New Shockwaves From Courts and Accounting Board
The Next Financial Crisis Hits Wall Street, as Judges Start Nixing Foreclosures” By PAM MARTENS who worked on Wall Street for 21 years; she has no security position, long or short, in any company mentioned in this article other than that which the U.S. Treasury has thrust upon her and fellow Americans involuntarily through TARP. She writes on public interest issues from New Hampshire.

http://www.counterpunch.org/martens10212009.html