The West Coast Foreclosure Show with Charles Marshall: Table Funded Loans, Consummation and the Courts

Posted on February 15, 2018 by Neil Garfield
images

The West Coast Foreclosure Show

Thursdays LIVE! Click in to the The Neil Garfield Show

Or call in at (347) 850-1260, 6pm Eastern Thursdays

Attorney Charles Marshall and Investigator Bill Paatalo will discuss the issues resulting  from table funding today on the West Coast Foreclosure Show.
Table Funding is a legal theory of liability Charles Marshall is applying in several of his California cases.   The theory has only received limited traction so far. Some judges are starting to accept that many loans were table funded and thus concealed the true lender, while other judges continue to reject the theory in fear that over a decade of table-funded loans would open up the floodgates.
Courts that have considered the argument that when “a borrower’s mortgage loan documents allegedly fails to identify the borrower’s ‘true lender’ that the mortgage loan was never consummated”— and have unanimously rejected it. (Marquez v. Select Portfolio Servicing, Inc. (N.D. Cal. Mar. 16, 2017, No. 16-CV-03012-EMC) 2017WL 1019820,  citing Sotanski v. HSBC Bank USA, Nat’l Ass’n, (N.D. Cal. Aug. 12, 2015) No. 15-CV-01489-LHK, 2015WL 4760506, at *6; Mohanna v. Bank of Am., N.A. (N.D. Cal. May 2, 2016, No. 16-CV-01033-HSG) 2016WL 1729996, Ramos v. U.S. Bank (S.D. Cal. Sept. 14, 2012,No. 12-CV-1820-IEG) 2012 WL 4062499, (holding that where “a lender was plainly identified … the loan was consummated regardless of how or by whom the lender was ultimately funded”)).

Table funded loans, according to Reg Z of the Federal Reserve, are predatory loans  per se especially if it was part of a pattern of conduct by the originator.

“Table Funding” now comes in many flavors:

1. The one addressed by TILA and required disclosures of the identity of the lender (giving the consumer choice over who he/she decides to do business with) has some basics to it. You have a real lender with real money making a real loan. But the disclosures say that the originator is the lender and do not disclose thee existence or identity of the real lender. Regulators have often treated a pattern of table funded loans as “predatory per se.” Back in the 60’s the banks were changing things at closing giving the borrower no option but to close with a “lender” who was different from the entity identified as lender in the original documents (application) and disclosures (GFE etc).

2. So the banks set up what they called warehouse lending in which the originator was borrowing money from the real lender and therefore really was the lender.

3. But in the customary purchase and assumption agreement with the “warehouse lender” it is clear that the so-called “warehouse lender” is the real lender, since it asserted ownership of the loan starting before the closing of the new loan.

4. In the era of claims of securitization, most such claims were completely false. But it created a vehicle in which sham conduits could be used to such an extent that it was virtually impossible to identify ANY real lender. This was done to cover-up theft of investor funds who thought they were buying certificates in a viable REMIC Trust that turned out not to exist and whose name was never used in the purchase of loans although it was used in foreclosures — only after the banks swore up and down that the trusts didn’t exist back in 2006-2009.

5. It was those stolen funds that funded “trading profits” from sham transactions including paying fees to originators who would have the borrower execute the note and mortgage in favor of the originator, who in turn transferred the paper to the various sham conduits. The actual debt never changed hands in any transaction because the owner of the debts, whether secured or not, was the investors whose money was illegal used to fund the whole venture.

This can demonstrated by using glasses of water. You have the investors pour some of their water (money) into a glass whose name is the underwriter of a so-called REMIC trust. The investor water is controlled by the underwriter who created a fictional entity (REMIC Trust) to issue bogus certificates that were entirely worthless. The water is owned by the investors. It never goes into the trust. It stays under the control of the underwriters. Just this week there was another multi-billion dollar settlement with investors who sued not for beach of contract (Bad loan underwriting) but for fraud.

So at all times the water is controlled, every drop of it, by the underwriter and the only movement of the water is when it is poured into separate pockets of the underwriter whose name does not appear on any of the so-called loan documents that are based upon a transaction that never happened — a loan of money by and from the originator to the borrower.

The underwriter used SOME of the money from investors to create the illusion of a loan transaction with the originator. So neither the originator nor the warehouse lender has any money in the deal (i.e., water). But endorsements and assignments are fabricated to create the illusion that someone purchased the loan. The only way that could have happened is if someone paid the investors. So the transaction didn’t happen but the paper did happen. All smoke and mirrors.

 

Please refer to page 24 of the attached brief (this was the appellate case Charles Marshall orally argued by phone this morning) for a negative spin on why table funding as a viable legal theory.
Charles Marshall, Esq.
Law Office of Charles T. Marshall
415 Laurel St., #405
San Diego, CA 92101
Investigator Bill Paatalo
BP Investigative Agency, LLC
P.O. Box 838
Absarokee, MT 59001
Office: (406) 328-4075

Filed under: foreclosure | Tagged: , , , , | 3 Comments »

What Do You Need? We Need Your Input!

Posted on November 7, 2017 by Neil Garfield

HELP!!

The challenge is no longer getting the information “out there.” The challenge is getting the job done by creating lawsuits, discovery and motions that will get actual traction in court. We need to BE good not just sound good.

What we are seeing is that errors in procedure and substance are being made clouding the message essential for the court to recognize a homeowner’s defenses.

AND what we are hearing is that pro se litigants and lawyers need a central place to go for forms and “ghostwriting”. I have been doing that for nearly 11 years but it is time to step up our game.

So I have assembled a pretty good crew of paralegals who have agreed in principal to provide services to consumers, especially homeowners, in litigation or approaching litigation. We have created excellent forms for Chain of Title Analysis and discovery like these interrogatories that can be used as a form or which can be tailored to your case.

see Florida First Set of Interrogatories

STAY WITH ME HERE. I need your input!

So on behalf of the group I am creating templates out of our past forms that we have actually used in successful litigation with edits of course to keep up with recent case law.

Here is the challenge: the above form can be used in its template form, changing names and inserting case numbers and the correct style BUT it is apparent that when people do that  they usually get lost in the details and either ask an irrelevant question in their case or worse make an admission accidentally that works against them.

So the answer seems obvious. Let people hire us to prepare discovery, motions etc. for their litigation cases whether they are lawyers or pro se litigants. Each case has differences that needs to be reflected in the discovery requests, motions and so forth. This means the writer must take the time to analyze your case sufficiently so that the parties are correctly identified and the right wording is used in whatever document they are preparing.

If a lawyer were retained to do this work, the interrogatories shown above would actually require at least one hour of file analysis and one hour drafting —- despite the apparent brevity of the document. This would cost at least $500 for even the youngest lawyers. So what happens is that since the lawyer is NOT getting paid to do original documentation, the case suffers.

The solution, I think is to either charge $75 for each form like the above interrogatories as a form or guide or template — or charge $150 for a paralegal to do it up right. This puts the the homeowner in position to apply the most pressure on the banks without breaking the homeowner’s  bank account. 

The question is whether this is a business model that will actually work. I don’t have enough money to be wrong. So please send your comments or response to NEILFGARFIELD@HOTMAIL.COM. 

Feel free to use the above form but in all cases check with local counsel as to both form and content and  the timing and method of filing and service.

Filed under: foreclosure | Tagged: , | 13 Comments »

Attorney Verification of Foreclosure Complaints

Posted on May 30, 2017 by Neil Garfield

This is a blatant flaunting and end run around the rule of law. Following a 15 year tradition of fabricating “facially valid” documents, lawyers are having an employee of the law firm sign documents to verify a complaint or other filing.

Get a consult! 202-838-6345
https://www.vcita.com/v/lendinglies to schedule CONSULT, leave message or make payments.
THIS ARTICLE IS NOT A LEGAL OPINION UPON WHICH YOU CAN RELY IN ANY INDIVIDUAL CASE. HIRE A LAWYER.
—————-

Practically every consult I do for attorneys in litigation involves some document that was fabricated, forged and/or robosigned. This trick at misdirection of the court is accomplished by fabricating a document that looks to be facially valid but contains nothing but blatant lies about the people who signed it, the people who offered it, and the lawyers who pursue a false narrative based upon the presumptive validity of documents they know are not just flawed but more importantly fictitious having been fabricated strictly for the purpose of litigation and foreclosure.

Such documents are inadmissible, so the false proffer in court is that they are old valid and authentic documents that were not fabricated for use in court.

The latest turn (although not new) in these events is the execution of a “verification” or other document to be filed with the court by an employee of a law firm that at least initially starts the foreclosure. You may remember that David Stern and others made millions providing this service to banks, servicers and other parties who were involved in the initiation or maintenance of an action to foreclose. While Stern lost his license to practice law, he made off with tens of millions of dollars in fees directly attributable to falsifying documents.

Like the Bernie Madoff situation, some people were thrown under the bus and some people were not. Madoff’s PONZI scheme was not a singular event involving the the largest economic crime ($60 Billion) in Wall Street history. The publication of it gave convenient cover to underwriting banks and other cooperating entities involved in the absolute greatest of all PONZI schemes — the sale of worthless securities issued by empty trusts (over $5 trillion). The PONZI aspect was the same. But Madoff’s scheme was barely 1% of the amount stolen by Wall Street banks. And the Courts have been unwitting accomplices.

The actual “promise to pay” the investors came from the empty trust and not a homeowner or group of homeowners. The debt owed by homeowners was never owed to either the creditor (the investors) nor the trust (which was empty and never operated).  And the payments came from a dynamic dark pool consisting entirely of investor money that was legally and actually supposed to be in a bank account clearly labeled for the REMIC Trust that issued the RMBS — and then managed by a “Trustee” but the Trustee turned out to have no power. All the payments received by investors came from the dark pool — not from borrower payments or recoveries in foreclosure.

All power was vested in the “Master Servicer” which of course was the underwriter who sold the bogus RMBS in the first place — another hallmark of control always present in PONZI schemes. The entire scheme was based upon invested capital being diverted from the trusts — and then covered up by (a) payments out of the dynamic dark pool (PONZI) and (b) originating rather than buying nonconforming loans (a more elaborate PONZI).  The rest of the money was concealed in “trading profits” that are gradually released from the stockpile of money sucked out of the economy by the participating banks.

All of these transactions were “off balance sheet.” Since there were no “real transactions” in “real life” (loans, sales of loans creating a chain) the obvious fraud could only be covered up by getting court orders on a mass scale that assumed the false bank narrative was true. Those court orders and judgments were the first and only presumptively legal document in the entire chain. This is why the banks seek foreclosures at all costs to seal up potential civil and criminal liability for their initial theft from investors. Modifications must be done for purpose of appearances, but they are an intrusion into the business plan of getting as many foreclosures booked as possible.

In order to obtain such orders judges had to be satisfied that the designated forecloser was indeed a “lender” or “Creditor.” In order to do that the banks had to present fraudulent documents. In order to get the fraudulent documents through the system, the bank attorneys knew that in most cases they would only need to present “facially valid documents.” The judges would not look “under the hood.” And borrowers who could see the scam did not have access to information that would lead to the discovery of admissible evidence. Hence most contested foreclosures are still resolved in favor of the co-venturers involved in the fraudulent scheme.

Foreclosure mills are among the people whom the banks will readily throw under the bus (“we’re shocked to discover that our law firm was committing such heinous crimes”). If the law firms were unwilling to provide these “extracurricular services” they never would have retained the business of foreclosures. The banks needed to win because they needed that one legal document that would create the almost conclusive presumption that everything that preceded the judgment allowing foreclosure. And the banks knew that could only be done by fraudulent misrepresentations to the courts, to borrowers, to government agencies including law enforcement that to date has jailed absolutely nobody except Lorraine Brown of DOCX.

So what do I say when represented by an obviously  false document executed by an employee of the foreclosure mill? For example I just received (hat tip to Bill Paatalo) one such “verification” in  which the signor declares that the client is out of town and so the law firm is executing the verification for the client.

The obvious response is that (1) being located somewhere else doesn’t prevent an authorized competent person from doing the verification (2) the absence of a competent witness does not give authority to anyone else to verify as though they were a competent witness (3) the verification does not and probably cannot assert that the signor is competent, to wit:

COMPETENCY consists of (a) OATH (b) PERCEPTION (C) MEMORY and (d) the ability to communicate what the witness saw, heard or otherwise experienced personally.

The law firm clearly has no personal knowledge and therefore is executing the verification just to satisfy the elements of a facially valid verification, when both reason and parole evidence clearly shows that the verification is a sham.

Hence, sanctions should be appropriate against the employee who signed it, the lawyer, the law firm and the “client” if the client knew that this was being done. Of course in most cases the party named as bringing the foreclosure is NOT the client, which is another fraudulent misrepresentation in court that would defeat jurisdiction. The client is always the sub-servicer who takes orders from the “Master Servicer”, i.e.  the underwriter who created bogus trusts to issue bogus mortgage bonds and walked away with trillions of dollars.

 

Filed under: foreclosure | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , | 14 Comments »

Eric Holder Doctrine: Decriminalize Big Crimes

Posted on March 25, 2013 by Neil Garfield
see also Guest Post: Why The Government Is Desperately Trying To Inflate A New Housing Bubble
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-03-25/guest-post-why-government-desperately-trying-inflate-new-housing-bubble

The problem with the theory that criminal prosecution of the banks could have a negative effect on the world economies is that the banks have already had their effect on the world economy. Along with their own well-deserved hit to their reputations they took the U.S. reputation and probably the whole Eurozone with them.

Refusing to prosecute is like saying we should not prosecute organized crime — or even the same crimes committed by smaller institutions — because someone might get killed or jailed or swindled out of more money than they already lost.
Our rating has dropped by all accounts in all the rating services — a consequence of not getting our house in order and not controlling institutions whose importance is obviously parallel to that of a water or electric utility. And people are still losing wealth and homes, thus undermining any prospect of a true economic recovery.
Eric Holder’s logic is simply not sustainable and the people of Maryland are doing the best they can to keep criminal banks out of their state. We should all do that, and do what the State of New York came close to doing — revoking the license of criminal banks to ply their snake oil financial products within their state. Now that does something to protect the public and puts everyone on notice that doing business with criminal mega-banks is risky business no matter what the smiling bank representative tells you.
The biggest flaw in Holder’s so-called logic about the banks being too big to jail is that an important part of justice has been thwarted. In fraud cases the victim receives some restitution from a receiver appointed after the culprit’s assets are seized. That can’t happen as long as we avoid criminal prosecution. And until there is criminal prosecution judges will continue to think that borrowers are deadbeats instead of victims.
Investors is the fake mortgage backed bonds issued by empty REMIC trusts that were never funded and thus never entered into a transaction in which they acquired loans deserve restitution. Clawing back the money held in the Cayman’s, Cyprus and other places can never happen as long as criminal prosecution is avoided.
The trust we earned from world central bankers,investors and borrowers has been destroyed and that is what is causing economic problems all over the world. Nobody knows where to put their money or even what currency will ultimately survive. This uncertainty is undermining our claim to moral superiority across the board in matters of state as well as commercial activity. We have opened the door to allowing Chinese firms to take the lead, like Alibaba which has quietly become larger than Amazon and EBay combined and is on track to become the world’s first trillion dollar company.
If we truly want to survive and prosper we can show the world that we know how to do the right thing rather than become an accessory during and after the fact of a continuing crime that ranks as the greatest fraud in human history. When investors get a check from a court-appointed receiver in a criminal case, when we see bankers go to jail, and when the amount demanded from borrowers is reduced by payments to the banksters, THEN confidence will be restored along with wealth, investment and employment.
We are pursuing a going out of business strategy. By holding back on the basis of the Holder Doctrine we are confirming that we lost our moral high ground. Someone will fill that void and don’t think for a minute that the Chinese are not acutely aware of their opportunity.
Remember when we made fun of Japanese products as cheap unreliable imports? They fixed that, didn’t they. The Chinese are now spreading out creating new standards of morality in the marketplace such as not releasing money to an online seller until the buyer is satisfied.

It won’t be long before Chinese currency and currencies pegged to Chinese currency become the standard medium of value replacing western currencies, unless we change and start running a country that controls and disciplines its players domestically and on the world stage.

Money-laundering firm should get no welcome in Maryland
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bs-ed-hsbc-20130325,0,1565911.story

Filed under: bubble, CDO, CORRUPTION, currency, Eviction, foreclosure, GTC | Honor, Investor, Mortgage, securities fraud | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | 149 Comments »

Where is all that money the banks took? Hiding in Plain Sight

Posted on March 15, 2013 by Neil Garfield

You’ll probably never get to this point in litigation but if you do, you’ll be glad you read this. Obviously there is a lot of talk about where all the money went. Right off the top the banks took some 20%+ off of the money that investors gave them to invest in mortgages. That is $2.6 trillion alone off of the $13 trillion in “mortgages” that were mostly defective or fabricated. Then add their profit from insurance and credit default swaps which might amount to on a nominal basis several times the original $13 trillion invested and we get an idea of how much money is being withheld from world economies including the United States.

The answer is that they are hiding it in plain sight and in conjunction with legitimate investments from many other investors and entities. They are putting it in the stock market, mostly, causing it to rise without reason, and to a lesser extent they are putting it into bonds. If someday someone traces the first dollar in from investors all the way through the convoluted fabricated system of what the banks called securitization and the rest of us know was a PONZI scheme, you’ll find it right in front of you listed in the Wall Street Journal.

And if you Google it, you’ll see that BofA’s security analysts agree that the Dow Jones Average and other equity indexes are not reflecting true economic activity. They didn’t get the memo to shut up and sit down. That is what happens when you are too big to fail — you are also too big to manage, too big to jail and too big to regulate. The complicity of regulators, auditing firms and others in this mess has yet to be determined but it seems likely that there will be suits and prosecutions against the auditing firms for taking management’s word for the data rather than testing it the way any first course in auditing 101 would teach future CPA’s. I do know, because I taught auditing classes when I was getting my MBA.

Where is the money that the bankers siphoned out of our economy? Hiding in plain sight in the equity markets. With societies in chaos and economies in tailspins around the world, somehow the equity indexes are reaching record highs and profits are being recorded that are clearly not conforming to economic activity that in some countries is at a virtual standstill or even declining.

Yet the equity markets supposedly are a measure of future earnings which magically appear, justifying the increase in stock prices. If I stole a few trillion dollars and I needed a place to hide it, I would invest it relentlessly in the equity markets and to a lesser degree into debt instruments.

The increase in the DJIA represents trillions in wealth increase — or it represents a deposit of ill-gotten wealth generated by the Wall Street banks and their co-venturers. With GDP so fragile around the world my conclusion is that economic activity around the world is not reflecting any support for the increase in expectations and increase in stock prices.

The banks cornered the market on money and had to decide where they were going to hide ill-gotten profits that most people don’t understand, know about or care about. The obvious answer was, when they were holding trillions of dollars, where the dollar was in possible jeopardy, was to put the money in equities on a slowly increasing relentless purchase of stocks and bonds.

Stocks are measured in numbers of shares rather than strictly dollar denominated accounts. This allows the holders of equities to sell in any marketplace converting the investment into any currency of their choice, potentially avoiding the negative impact of a sudden devaluation of the type that made George Soros so rich.

Undoubtedly this logic has not escaped other legitimate investors and investment managers. Thus the bull market effects produced by the underlying floor of bankers’ purchases of equities is hidden under an increase in legitimate buying. It is a perfect plan as long as receivers are not appointed over the mega banks and dollars are traced to their origin and destination.

If things seem upside down when you turn on the news, now you know why. It is still hard for people to wrap their head around this proposition. All anecdotal evidence which is now so extensive that it almost qualifies as a scientific survey, points to at least 2/3 of all mortgages being fatally defective as perfected liens, unreported compensation on loans (that the banks say were charged against investors) is present in nearly all loans of every kind where a claim of securitization is present, and bank profits and capital have continued to rise even though as intermediaries, they should be making less money because there is less economic activity in a recession or stagnant economy.

That money in the mega banks is our money — taxpayers, shareholders of insurance companies, shareholders of guarantors and co-obligors, investors who advanced the money the homeowners who put up their homes as collateral on non-existent or defective transactions in which the loan and property were intentionally inflated in value. The extra money in those deals were funneled into off shore accounts and transactions that were never taxed by agreement with the jurisdiction in which the the transactions were cited as taking place even though it all happened in the good old USA. I have seen the document where Bermuda accepted the jurisdiction over the transaction and agreed not to tax it.

Although this is my opinion for general information purposes, I feel comfortable sharing it with the public  because I have enough facts from current events and enough experience from my own past experience on Wall Street to be confident that the above rendition is true. Once again I remind readers that the legal consequence of these practices might vary from state to state and even between judges in the same district. Federal and State courts are likely to treat these presentations differently as well.

And just because you are right, doesn’t mean you can prove it or win. So it is imperative that you consult with an attorney who knows all the facts of your case, is familiar with securitization and is licensed in the jurisdiction in which your property or domicile is located.

Premarkets: Dow defies gravity, S&P nears record
http://money.cnn.com/2013/03/15/investing/premarkets/

Senate “Whale” Report Reveals JP Morgan as a Lying, Scheming Rogue Trader (Quelle Surprise!)
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/03/senate-whale-report-reveals-jp-morgan-as-a-lying-scheming-rogue-trader-quelle-surprise.html

Goldman partner Barg moves to New York from Asia in new role
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/15/us-goldman-barg-idUSBRE92E0CS20130315

Filed under: bubble, CDO, CORRUPTION, currency, Eviction, foreclosure, GTC | Honor, Investor, Mortgage, securities fraud | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | 37 Comments »

Big Banks Headed For Break-Up

Posted on March 14, 2013 by Neil Garfield
“What policy makers are starting to realize is that the absence of prosecutions and regulatory action against these banks has produced a profound loss of confidence not only in the financial markets but in the leader of the financial markets (the United States) to control itself and its own participants in finance. It’s not just fair to enforce existing laws and regulations against the banks who so flagrantly violated them and nearly destroyed all the economies of the world, it’s the only practical thing to do.” — Neil F Garfield, livinglies.me
If you are seeking legal representation or other services call our Florida customer service number at 954-495-9867 (East Coast) and for the West coast the number remains 520-405-1688. Customer service for the livinglies store with workbooks, services and analysis remains the same at 520-405-1688. The people who answer the phone are NOT attorneys and NOT permitted to provide any legal advice, but they can guide you toward some of our products and services.
The selection of an attorney is an important decision  and should only be made after you have interviewed licensed attorneys familiar with investment banking, securities, property law, consumer law, mortgages, foreclosures, and collection procedures. This site is dedicated to providing those services directly or indirectly through attorneys seeking guidance or assistance in representing consumers and homeowners. We are available to any lawyer seeking assistance anywhere in the country, U.S. possessions and territories. Neil Garfield is a licensed member of the Florida Bar and is qualified to appear as an expert witness or litigator in in several states including the district of Columbia. The information on this blog is general information and should NEVER be considered to be advice on one specific case. Consultation with a licensed attorney is required in this highly complex field.

Editor’s Comment: There is an old expression that says “At the end of the day, everybody knows everything.” The question of course is how long is the “day.” In this case the day for the bank appears to be about 10-12 years. The foibles of their masters, the conduct of their policies, and the arrogance of their behavior has led them into the position where the once unthinkable break-up of the bank oligopoly and their control, over our government is coming to a close.

The titans of Wall Street have thus far avoided criminal prosecution because of the misguided assumption — promulgated by Wall Street itself — that such prosecutions would destroy the economic systems all over the world (remember when Detroit arrogance reached its peak with “what’s good for GM is good for the country?”). But the Dallas Fed are joining the ranks of of once lone voices like Simon Johnson stating that Too Big to Fail is not a sustainable model and that it distorts the markets, the marketplace and our society.

It is virtually certain now that the mega banks are going to literally be cut down to size and that some form of Glass-Steagel will be revived. As that day nears, the images and facts pouring out onto the public and the danger to the American taxpayer facing deficits caused by the banks in part because they siphoned out the life-blood of liquidity from the American marketplace will overwhelm the last vestiges of resistance and the same lobbyists who were the king makers will be the kiss of death for re-election of any public official.

As they are cut down, the accounting and auditing will start and it will take years to complete. What will emerge is a pattern of theft, deceit, fraud, forgery, perjury and other crimes that are most easily seen in the residential foreclosures that now appear to be mostly illusions that have caused nightmare scenarios for millions of Americans and people in other countries. Those illusions though are still with us and they are still taken as real by many in all branches of government. The thought that the borrower should never have been foreclosed and that the amount demanded of them was wrong is not accepted yet. But it will be because of arithmetic.

Investment banks sold worthless bonds issued by empty creatures that existed only on paper without any assets, money or value of any kind. The banks then funded mortgages of increasingly obvious toxicity to people who might have been able to afford a normal mortgage or who couldn’t afford a mortgage at all but were assured by the banks that the deal was solid. Both investors and homeowners were taken to the cleaners. Neither of them has been addressed in any bailout or restitution.

It is the bailout or restitution to the investors and homeowners that is the key to rejuvenating our economy. Trust in the system and wealth in the middle class is the only historical reference point for a successful society. All the rest crumbled. As the banks are taken apart, the privilege of using “off-balance sheet” transactions will be revealed as a free pass to steal money from investors. The banks took the money from investors and used a large part of it to gamble. Then they covered their tracks with lies about the quality of loans whose nominal rates of interest were skyrocketing through previous laws against usury.

For those who worry about the deficit while at the same time remain loyal to their largest banking contributors, they are standing with one foot upon the other. They can’t move and eventually they will fall. The American public may not be filled with PhD economists, but they know theft when it is revealed and they know what should happen to the thief and the compatriots of the thief.

For the moment we are still rocketing along the path of assuming the home loans, student loans, credit cards, auto loans, furniture loans et al were valid loans wherein the lenders had a risk of loss and actually suffered a loss resulting from the non payment by the borrower. As the information spreads about what really happened with all consumer debt, housing included, the people will understand that their debts were paid off by the investment banks, the insurance, companies and the counterparties on hedge products like credit default swaps.

A creditor is entitled to be repaid the money loaned. But if they have been repaid, the fact that the borrower didn’t pay it does not create a fact pattern under which the current law allows the creditor to seek additional payment from the borrower when their receivable account is zero. Yet it is possible that the parties who paid off the debt might be entitled to contribution from the borrower — if they didn’t waive that right when they entered into the insurance or hedge contract with the investment banks. Even so, the mortgage lien would be eviscerated. And the debt open to discussion because the insurers and counterparties did in fact agree not to pursue any remedies against the borrowers. It’s all part of the cover-up so the transactions look like civil matters instead of criminal matters.

Thus far, we have allowed windfall after windfall to the banks who never had any risk of loss and who received federal bailouts, insurance, and proceeds of credit default swaps and multiple sales of the same loan — all without crediting the investors who advanced all the money that was used in the mortgage maelstrom.

The practical significance of this is simple: the money given to the banks went into a black hole and may never be seen again. The money given BACK to (restitution) investors will result in fixing at least partly the imbalance caused by the bank theft. It will also decrease the loss suffered by the lenders in the loans marked as home loans, auto loans, student loans etc. This in turn reduces the amount owed by the borrower. Their is no “reduction” of principal there is merely a “deduction” or “correction” to reflect payments received by the investors or their agents.

The practical significance of this is that money, wealth and income will be  channeled back to the those who are in the middle class or who belong there but for the trickery of the banks and the economy starts to hum a little better than before.

It all starts with abandoning the Too Big To Fail hypothesis. What policy makers are starting to realize is that the absence of prosecutions and regulatory action against these banks has produced a profound loss of confidence not only in the financial markets but in the leader of the financial markets to control itself and its own participants in finance. It’s not just fair to enforce existing laws and regulations against the banks who so flagrantly violated them and nearly destroyed all the economies of the world, it’s the only practical thing to do.

Big Banks Have a Big Problem
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/14/big-banks-have-a-big-problem/

We The Taxpayers Are On The Hook For Mortgages, Student Loans, Banks
http://lonelyconservative.com/2013/03/we-the-taxpayers-are-on-the-hook-for-mortgages-student-loans-banks/

Documentary Co-Produced by Broker Exposes Foreclosure Devastation, Housing System Flaws, in Low-Income Hispanic Neighborhood of Phoenix
http://rismedia.com/2013-03-13/documentary-co-produced-by-broker-exposes-foreclosure-devastation-housing-system-flaws-in-low-income-hispanic-neighborhood-of-phoenix/

Housing advocates accuse Wells Fargo of damaging communities through foreclosures
http://www.scpr.org/blogs/economy/2013/03/13/12908/housing-advocates-accuse-well-fargo-damaging-commu/

 

Filed under: bubble, CDO, CORRUPTION, currency, Eviction, foreclosure, GTC | Honor, Investor, Mortgage, securities fraud, Student Loans | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , | 18 Comments »

Student Loans, Housing and Poverty in the U.S.

Posted on March 11, 2013 by Neil Garfield

“Bottom Line: Foreclosures need to stop, student loans need to be modified and return to pre-2005 rules for dischargeability, wages need to rise and the number of people earning wages needs to rise. If you don’t have those ingredients, the economic “recovery” will forever be fragile and will forever be in danger of a much deeper collapse than we saw in 2008 because underlying conditions are worse. That’s why American companies are holding trillions in cash and assets overseas. They don’t trust us anymore.” — Neil F Garfield, livinglies.me

For assistance with presenting a case for wrongful foreclosure and student loans, please call 954-495-9867 (East Coast) 520-405-1688 (West Coast), customer service, who will guide you to our information resources and upon request put you in touch with an attorney in the states of Florida, Tennessee, Georgia, California, Ohio, and Nevada. (NOTE: Chapter 11 may be easier than you think).

Editor’s Analysis: According to the official figures there are around 50 million people living below the poverty line. Surveys show that the number of people who can’t buy essentials for their family actually total close to 150 million people, which is half the country. The unemployment rate, if one were to add the number of people who are underemployed or who have given up looking for work, is probably over 20% — 60 million people!

The chasm referred to as income and wealth inequality is growing daily. $1 trillion in debt burdens students who could be far more productive. Until 2005, this debt was dischargeable in bankruptcy. But the banks managed to get changes made in the bankruptcy code equating student debt with alimony and child support and further requiring means testing in chapter 7 thus inhibiting the discharge of debts on credit cards charging 20% or more per year in interest and medical costs, which if you read Brill’s article in Time Magazine last week, are marked up 3000%.

Some $13 trillion in mortgage loans were faked and the banks continue to lie to the President, the Congress, the state legislatures, governors and Attorneys general.

If you add it all up, it isn’t hard to see why economists refer to the “recovery” as fragile. If you ask me it is unjust, wrong and impractical to continue on the same path we are on in the hopes that down the road somehow we will grow out of the problem we have — an economy that benefits a few people while the number of people falling behind, with lower and lower wages and decreased accessibility to credit increasing every month. Billions are added each month in student loan debt which is fast becoming a cancer on our society simply because of the new bankruptcy provisions.

The 7 year experiment in making student loans non-dischargeable is a miserable failure. It is a major contributor to the impending decline in the credit rating of the what was once the strongest nation on earth in every way. Because we allowed the banks to get the TARP funds and all the other forms of bank bailouts, and because we ignored the real victims — the investors and the homeowners who were tricked into deals that could not possibly work, the foundation of the country has been so undermined that we now rank #10 behind France and Spain in upward economic mobility. That means that the chances are better in those countries to climb the ladder of success than they are here.

This is not a piece suggesting we convert to socialism as our economic path. It is rather a call-out to our government that it cannot continue to bow to the will of the banks and expect the country to hold together. With half the country gasping for air, we must jettison our ideology and go for the practical solutions — most of which already exist or existed until a short while ago.

The problem is not that capitalism isn’t working. The problem is that capitalism is being used as a cover for the creation of illusions of prosperity and the reality of a near fascist state. That is what happens when someone corners the market on oranges and that is what happens when the someone is allowed to corner the market on money. And THAT is why we need government regulators and legislators who are NOT permitted to go through the revolving door from government to business and back again. If you take the referees off the field, don’t be surprised with what happens next.

For better or worse our economy is still 70% dependent upon consumer spending. Yet we pursue policies that diminish the ability of consumers to spend and diminish the number of consumers. The fact that there is still some muscle in the our system is testament to our inner strengths and prospects if we make the necessary changes to our democratic institutions and reign in those who are admittedly too large to govern or regulate.

Despite the obvious fundamental defects in the loan originations and transfers of loans that were the products of imagination and illusion, we treat them as real and even sacred. The playing field has been tilted so that all the benefits roll into one corner while the rest of us scramble to  make ends meet. The risk factors in any loan or program have been pushed entirely over into the public sector when the government should be able to stop the foreclosures, cure the student defaults and renew the progress of wage growth.

The keys to end this nightmare here and abroad is housing, student loans and employment. Students who have unpayable student loans are refused employment because many employers do credit checks. The same holds true for the millions of Americans who have been victims of fake foreclosures by strangers who never put up a dime to fund or purchase the loan and then submitted a credit bid at the “auction.” The private student loans arose because somebody thought it was a good idea to raise the cost of student loans by inserting profit seeking banks as intermediaries. Now that is corrected as to future loans, but it does nothing to correct the problems of past mistakes by government.

This isn’t just theory. Trillions of dollars are being held off shore by companies who legitimately are not convinced that the U.S. will actually pull out of this spiral anytime soon. So they are investing in capital and labor elsewhere. No effort has been made to claw back the trillions of dollars that disappeared in the maelstrom of the mortgage meltdown. Those funds are hidden off shore too.

And even more importantly, no company wants to invest in a marketplace where the laws are not enforced with consistency. If you speak with many CEO’s in private they will tell you that jail time for bankers would be a stimulus to confidence in the U.S. marketplace. What we have is a marketplace without boundaries as to the the fraud and other criminal behavior that was never before tolerated in our system.

Large and medium sized organizations holding trillions of dollars in liquid assets and other investments overseas see this very clearly. They have no more reason to commit to the U.S. economy than they do to any other banana  republic.

Why Student Debt Will Make U.S. Insolvent
http://www.business2community.com/finance/why-student-debt-will-make-u-s-insolvent-0430373

Wall Street turns profit in student loan debt
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/03/11/loan-m11.html

Student Debt Crushes Borrowers And Threatens The U.S. Economy
http://www.addictinginfo.org/2013/03/09/student-debt-crushes-borrowers-and-threatens-the-u-s-economy/

http://blog.credit.com/2013/03/do-we-need-to-change-bankruptcy-rules-for-student-loans/

Don’t Panic: Wall Street Is Going Crazy For Student Loans — But It’s Not a Bubble http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/03/dont-panic-wall-street-is-going-crazy-for-student-loans-but-its-not-a-bubble/273682/

You Know What Sucks? Your Student Debt. You Know What’s Great? The Solution.
http://beingliberal.upworthy.com/you-know-what-sucks-your-student-debt-you-know-whats-great-the-solution-2

Filed under: bubble, CDO, CORRUPTION, currency, Eviction, foreclosure, GTC | Honor, Investor, Mortgage, securities fraud | Tagged: , , , , , , | 62 Comments »

Banks Controlled Independent Reviews

Posted on January 7, 2013 by Neil Garfield

“TARP was supposed to cover losses from defaulting loans. But then it was switched to make direct capital infusions into the mega banks. Why the switch? Because everyone realized very early on that the banks had no losses from defaulting loans. It was the investors who made the loans and would take those losses. But even though the government recognized this fact, it did so in secret allowing the confusing notion of bank losses to permeate the judicial cases. All they had to do to stop foreclosures was to tell the truth and Judges would have correctly assumed that the Banks were mere intermediaries. PRACTICE HINT: Is Champerty and maintenance a cause of action for damages, a defense to a lawsuit or both?” — Neil F Garfield, livinglies.me

CHECK OUT OUR DECEMBER SPECIAL!

What’s the Next Step? Consult with Neil Garfield

For assistance with presenting a case for wrongful foreclosure, please call 520-405-1688, customer service, who will put you in touch with an attorney in the states of Florida, California, Ohio, and Nevada. (NOTE: Chapter 11 may be easier than you think).

If you are having trouble believing that the recession, the mortgages, the foreclosures, the auctions, and the health of the banks are all a big lie click here for Matt Taibbi’s Article in Rolling Stone

Editor’s Comment: The so-called independent reviews were neither independent nor reviewed. They were processed. Which is to say they went in one end and came out the other. The so-called reviews relied completely on the banks themselves to review their own criminality in the foreclosure process that was only one step in a multifaceted plan to take down the wealth of America and concentrate in the hands of people who could claim it as their own.

The reviews were not independent because all the information offered was the information that the banks wanted to reveal and half of that was completely fictitious. The lack of an administrative hearing process made it impossible for the independent review conclusions to be challenged. Talk about stacking the deck.

A random survey of foreclosures would show that the forecloser was a complete stranger to the transaction, never invested a penny in the origination or purchase of the loan, and never accounted properly for its actions to the actual lender/investors. How do we know this with certainty? Because real independent reviews like the ones conducted in counties all over the country came to exactly that conclusion after reviewing foreclosures that were “completed.”

There is no ambiguity except whether the credit bid and ensuing deed upon foreclosure is void or voidable. I maintain it is void and not voidable. Voidable means that the victim must do something to replace the job of the county recorder. Voidable means that the transaction stands and the deed is valid even though we know it is a wild deed with no place for it in the chain of title. Voidable means that in a later refi or sale if some title lawyer is actually doing his work the way it was done since the dawn of title records, he or she is going to discover the wild deed and declare the title to be clouded defective or fatally defective. And that would be because of all the documents submitted by a series of entities that had no function except layering over the festering corruption of title created in the first place.

Actual findings that somehow leaked through the controlled review process were suppressed. It all comes down to the same thing in administrative action, law enforcement action, executive action and legislative action: homeowners are deadbeats who don’t count or can be managed through the miracle of telling big lies through the media. The conclusion reached in virtually all cases was the same: while the forgeries, fabrications and perjury were bad things and the ensuing theft of the homes was allowed to proceed anyway, the net result is that these people borrowed the money, defaulted on the payments and lost the house they were supposed to lose anyway.

It is a compelling argument if it was true. In fact, the posturing and lying of the banks enhanced the lender/investor losses and stopped the homeowners from connecting up with real lenders to settle the loans and then go after the banks together for lying to everyone about appraisals, underwriting, and loan quality.

As I see it, the only way this is going to wind up is that those people who fight back with Deny and Discover will be rewarded for their efforts if they persist. But on the whole, most people will not fight back leaving the Banks with windfall several times over. Government won’t help them. If the Banks lose every case that is contested it will be less than the amount they would reserve for loan losses if their loans were real.

We all know that the Banks were using investor money 96% of the time, and yet we allowed them to get insurance, credit default swaps, and federal bailouts on investments they never made. We allow them to pretend that they own what the investors own, thus corrupting their balance sheets with fictitious assets. We allowed them to book fictitious sales of bogus mortgage bonds to investors using the investors own money to create the infrastructure that was never used to sell, assign or securitize the loans. The Bankers who control the banks also control all the profits from these false “proprietary trades”, book them as they wish partly to keep the value of the stock higher and higher, and then keep the rest in off balance sheet off-shore transactions spread around the world.

In an economy that is still driven 70% by consumer spending these policies are arrogant and stupid. The investors who were the real lenders should be paid. The balance on the books owed to those investors should be reduced. And the process of separating the false tier 2 premiums on proprietary trades and the REAL balance owed by borrowers should proceed. This can only happen, given current circumstances by denial of all elements of the cause of action for foreclosure, and pressing on through discovery against the Master Servicer, subservicer (who did they pay? how long did they day after the declaration of default?), the Trustee of the REMIC trust (where are the trust accounts?), the aggregators and other parties that were engaged in the PONZI scheme that was covered over by a false infrastructure of assignments and securitization which never took place.

Our economy is projected to grow at a mere 2% this year if we are lucky, because the banks are holding all the fuel for the engine. If we were to apply simple precepts of law on fraud and contracts, the amount clawed back to investors and homeowners would end the crisis for the economy and yes, possibly threaten the existence of the large banks, but greatly enhance the prospects for the 7,000 other banks in the U.S. alone. But that of course would only happen if we were doing things right.

OCC Foreclosure Reviewer: “Independent” Reviews Were Controlled by Banks, Which Suppressed Any Findings of Harm to Foreclosed Homeowners
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/01/occ-foreclosure-file-reviewer-independent-reviews-were-controlled-by-banks-which-suppressed-any-findings-of-harm-to-foreclosed-homeowner.html

Filed under: bubble, CDO, CORRUPTION, currency, Eviction, foreclosure, GTC | Honor, Investor, Mortgage, securities fraud | Tagged: , , , , , , , | 132 Comments »

Barofsky: We Are Headed for a Cliff Because of Housing

Posted on September 19, 2012 by Neil Garfield

Editor’s Note: Hera research conducted an interview with Neil Barofsky that I think should be  read in its entirety but here the the parts that I thought were important. The After Words are from Hera.

After Words

According to Neil Barofsky, another financial crisis is all but inevitable and the cost will be even higher than the 2008 financial crisis. Based on the way that the TARP and HAMP programs were implemented, and on the watering down of the Dodd-Frank bill, it appears that big banks are calling the shots in Washington D.C. The Dodd-Frank bill left risk concentrated in a few large institutions while doing nothing to remove perverse incentives that encourage risk taking while shielding bank executives from accountability. Neither of the two main U.S. political parties or presidential candidates are willing to break up “too big to fail” banks, despite the gravity of the problem. The assumption that another financial crisis can be prevented when the causes of the 2008 crisis remain in place, or have become worse, is unrealistic. In the mean time, what Mr. Barofsky describes as a “parade of scandals” involving highly unethical and likely criminal behavior is set to continue unabated. Although the timing and specific areas of risk are not yet known, there is no doubt that U.S. taxpayers will be stuck with another multi-trillion dollar bill when the next crisis hits.

*Post courtesy of Hera Research. Hera Research focuses on value investing in natural resources based on original geopolitical, macroeconomic and financial market analysis related to global supply and demand and competition for natural resources

Excerpts from Interview:

HR: Did the TARP help to restore confidence in U.S. institutions and financial markets?

Neil Barofsky: Yes, but it was intended and required by Congress to do much more than that and Treasury said that it was going to deploy the money into banks to increase lending, which it never did.

HR: Were the initial goals of the TARP realistic?

Neil Barofsky: First, if the goals were unachievable, Treasury officials should never have promised to undertake them as part of the bargain. Second, even if the goals were not entirely achievable, it would have been worth trying. Treasury officials didn’t even try to meet the goals.

HR: Can you give a specific example?

Neil Barofsky: The justification for putting money into banks was that it was going to increase lending. Having used that justification, there was an obligation, in my view, to take policy steps to achieve that goal, but Treasury officials didn’t even try to do it. The way it was implemented, there were no conditions or incentives to increase lending.

HR: What policy steps could the U.S. Department of the Treasury have taken to help the economy?

Neil Barofsky: There are all sorts of things that Treasury could have done. For example, they could have reduced the dividend rate—the amount of money that the banks had to pay in exchange for being bailed out—for lending over a baseline, which would have decreased the bank’s obligations. Or, they could have insisted on greater transparency so that banks had to disclose what they were doing with the funds. Treasury chose not to do any of these things.

HR: Weren’t there other housing programs like the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP)?

Neil Barofsky: Yes, but there were choices made to help the balance sheets of struggling banks rather than homeowners. The HAMP program was a massive failure but it wasn’t preordained. It was the result of choices made by Treasury officials.

HR: What could have been done differently in the HAMP?

Neil Barofsky: HAMP was deeply flawed with conflicts of interest baked into the program. The management of the program was outsourced to the mortgage servicers, which were thoroughly unprepared and ill equipped. The program encouraged servicers to extend out trial modifications. It was supposed to be a three month period but it often turned into more than a year. The servicers, because they could accumulate late fees for each month during the trial period, were incentivized to string the trial periods out then pull the rug out from under the homeowner, putting them into foreclosure, without granting a permanent mortgage modification. The servicers could make more money doing that then by doing mortgage modifications. If they had done permanent mortgage modifications, the banks couldn’t have kept the late fees.

HR: Are you saying that the program encouraged banks to extract as much cash as possible from homeowners before foreclosing on them anyway?

Neil Barofsky: Yes. The mortgage servicers exploited the conflicts of interest that were in the program, and blatantly broke the rules, and Treasury did nothing.

HR: When you were serving as Inspector General for TARP, you issued a report indicating that government commitments totaled $23.7 trillion. What was that about?

Neil Barofsky: $23.7 trillion was simply the sum of the maximum commitments for all the financial programs related to the financial crisis. The number was misconstrued as a liability but the government never stood to lose that much. For example, the government guarantee of money market funds was a multi-trillion dollar commitment. Of course, not all of that money could have been lost because it would have required every fund to go to zero. The government guaranteed commercial paper but, again, for that commitment to have been wiped out, every company would have had to have defaulted. But the numbers were very important in terms of transparency. All of the data were provided by the agencies responsible for the various programs, so the $23.7 trillion number was simple arithmetic. It was important to understand the scope of the extraordinary actions that were being taken.

HR: What are the potential future losses that the U.S. government—that taxpayers—might have to absorb?

Neil Barofsky: The real issue is the potential for another financial crisis because we haven’t fixed the core problems of our financial system. We still have banks that are “too big to fail.” Standard & Poor’s estimated last year that the up-front cost of another crisis, including bailing out the biggest banks yet again, would be roughly 1/3 of the U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) or about $5 trillion. The resulting problems will be even bigger.

HR: What were the problems resulting from the 2008 financial crisis?

Neil Barofsky: When you look at the fiscal impact of the 2008 crisis, you have to look at it not only in terms of lost tax revenues and increased government debt, but also in terms of the loss of household wealth. People who became unemployed suffered tremendous losses and the government’s social benefit costs expanded accordingly. One of the reasons we had the debt ceiling debate last year, when the U.S. credit rating was downgraded, and why we are facing a fiscal cliff ahead is the legacy of the 2008 crisis.

We have a lot less dry powder to deal with a new crisis and we almost certainly will have one.

HR: Why do you expect another financial crisis?

Neil Barofsky: It just comes down to incentives. A normally functioning free market disciplines businesses. The presumption of bailout for “too big to fail” institutions changes the incentives of a normally functioning free market. In a free market, if an institution loads up on risky assets with too little capital standing behind them, it will be punished by the market. Institutions will refuse to lend them money without extracting a significant penalty. Counterparties will be wary of doing business with companies that have too much risk and too little capital. Allowing “too big to fail” institutions to exist removes that discipline. The presumption is that the government will stand in and make the obligations whole even if the bank blows up. That basic perversion of the free market incentivizes additional risk.

HR: Are “too big to fail” banks taking more risks today than they did before?

Neil Barofsky: Bailouts give bank executives an incentive to max out short term profits and get huge bonuses, because if the bank blows up, taxpayers will pick up the tab. The presumption of bailout increases systemic risk by taking away the incentives of creditors and counterparties to do their jobs by imposing market discipline and by incentivizing banks to act in ways that make a bailout more likely to occur.

HR: Is it just a matter of the size of banking institutions?

Neil Barofsky: The big banks are 20-25% bigger now than they were before the crisis. The “too big to fail” banks are also too big to manage effectively. They’ve become Frankenstein monsters. Even the most gifted executives can’t manage all of the risks, which increases the likelihood of a future bailout.

HR: Since bank executives are accountable to their shareholders, won’t they regulate themselves?

Neil Barofsky: The big banks are not just “too big to fail,” they’re ‘too big to jail.’ We’ve seen zero criminal cases arising out of the financial crisis. The reality is that these large institutions can’t be threatened with indictment because if they were taken down by criminal charges, they would bring the entire financial system down with them. There is a similar danger with respect to their top executives, so they won’t be indited in a federal criminal case almost no matter what they do. The presumption of bailout thus removes for the executives the disincentive in pushing the ethical envelope. If people know they won’t be held accountable, that too will encourage more risk taking in the drive towards profits.

HR: So, it’s just a matter of time before there’s another crisis?

Neil Barofsky: Yes. The same incentives that led to the 2008 crisis are still in place today and in many ways the situation is worse. We have a financial system that concentrates risk in just a handful of large institutions, incentivizes them to take risks, guarantees that they will never be allowed to fail and ensures that the executives will never be held accountable for their actions. We shouldn’t be surprised when there’s another massive financial crisis and another massive bailout. It would be naïve to expect a different result.

HR: Didn’t the Dodd-Frank bill fix the financial system?

Neil Barofsky: Nothing has been done to remove the presumption of bailout, which is as damaging as the actual bailout. Perception becomes reality. It’s perception that ensures that counterparties and creditors will not perform proper due diligence and it’s perception that encourages them to continue doing business with firms that have too much risk and inadequate capital. It’s perception of bailout that drives executives to take more and more risk. Nothing has been done to address this. The initial policy response by Treasury Secretaries Paulson and Geithner, and by Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke, was to consolidate the industry further, which has only made the problems worse.

HR: The Dodd-Frank bill contains 2,300 pages of new regulations. Isn’t that enough?

Neil Barofsky: There are tools within Dodd-Frank that could help regulators, but we need to go beyond it. The parade of recent scandals and the fact that big banks are pushing the ethical and judicial envelopes further than ever before makes it clear that Dodd-Frank has done nothing, from a regulatory standpoint, to prevent highly unethical and likely criminal behavior.

HR: Is the Dodd-Frank bill a failure?

Neil Barofsky: The whole point of Dodd-Frank was to end the era of “too big to fail” banks. It’s fairly obvious that it hasn’t done that. In that sense, it has been a failure. Dodd-Frank probably has been helpful in the short term because it increased capital ratios, although not nearly enough. If we ever get over the counter (OTC) derivatives under control, that would be a good thing and Dodd-Frank takes some initial steps in that direction. I think that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is a good thing.

Nonetheless, the financial system is largely in the hands of the same executives, who have become more powerful, while the banks themselves are bigger and more dangerous to the economy than before.

HR: How are OTC derivatives related to the risk of a new financial crisis?

Neil Barofsky: Credit default swaps (CDS) were specifically what brought down AIG, and synthetic CDOs, which are entirely dependent on derivatives contracts, contributed significantly to the financial crisis. When you look at the mind numbing notional values of OTC derivatives, which are in the hundreds of trillions, the taxpayer is basically standing behind the institutions participating in these very opaque and, potentially, very dangerous markets. OTC derivatives could be where the risks come from in the next financial crisis.

HR: Can anything be done to prevent another financial crisis?

Neil Barofsky: We have to get beyond having institutions, any one of which can bring down the financial system. For example, Wells Fargo alone does 1/3rd of all mortgage originations. Nothing can ever happen to Wells Fargo because it could bring down the entire economy. We need to break up the “too big to fail” banks. We have to make them small enough to fail so that the free market can take over again.

HR: Does the political will exist to break up the largest banks?

Neil Barofsky: The center of neither party is committed to breaking up “too big to fail” banks. Of course, pretending that Dodd-Frank solved all our problems, as some Democrats do, or simply saying that big banks won’t be bailed out again, as some Republicans have suggested, is unrealistic. Congress needs to proactively break up the “too big to fail” banks through legislation. Whether that’s through a modified form of Glass-Steagall, size or liability caps, leverage caps or remarkably higher capital ratios, all of which are good ideas, we need to take on the largest banks.

HR: Do you think the U.S. presidential election will change anything?

Neil Barofsky: No. There’s very little daylight between Romney and Obama on the crucial issue of “too big to fail” banks. Romney recently said, basically, that he thinks big banks are great and the Obama Administration fought against efforts to break up “too big to fail” banks in the Dodd-Frank bill. Geithner, serving the Obama White House, lobbied against the Brown-Kaufman Act, which would have broken up the “too big to fail” banks.

HR: What will it take for U.S. lawmakers to finally take on the largest banks?

Neil Barofsky: Some candidates have made reforms like reinstating Glass-Steagall part of their campaigns but the size and power of the largest banks in terms of lobbying campaign contributions is incredible. It may well take another financial crisis before we deal with this.

HR: Thank you for your time today.

Neil Barofsky: It was my pleasure.

Filed under: bubble, CDO, CORRUPTION, currency, Eviction, foreclosure, GTC | Honor, Investor, Mortgage, securities fraud | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments »

Politics Diverting Us From the Real Issues

Posted on September 19, 2012 by Neil Garfield

“The bottom line is that conservatives don’t conserve anything. They have their hand deeper into the public purse than anyone else. Liberals don’t liberate anyone either, providing the tools to prospects for progress and prosperity. The terms should not be used because nobody means what they say.” Neil F Garfield livinglies.me

Editor’s Comment: Romney’s latest gaffe is only a mistake in terms of him having said it, not that that he didn’t mean it. To set the record straight the 47% pay payroll taxes that the rich don’t pay, have incomes under $50,000 per year, and one third of them are seniors and disabled with incomes lower than $20,000 per year getting Social Security and similar benefits that they paid for when they were working. But isn’t really the problem.

The problem is that what Romney gave voice to was a feeling amongst the elite Democrats and Republicans who look at the bottom economic half of the country with disdain. Although they are working, paying Social Security and Unemployment taxes most of these people are treated as though they are trash to be taken out and cleaned somehow. Those taxes amount to over 12% of their income whereas the income from wealth, escape those taxes altogether.

And THAT is the reason it is so easy for banks to manipulate politicians, law enforcement and regulators into doing nothing about the cancer growing on our society — fake mortgages, fake foreclosures, fake evictions, and fake income and assets reported for the banks. Some of the media are picking up on the fact that the stolen money from investors is not being recognized as taxable income, which it is, and that the IRS isn’t pursuing hundreds of billions of income taxes that are due from the Banks. Talk about getting a free ride.

Today’s conference call (7 PM EDT) with members will touch on this along with the usual report on what is getting traction and what tactics and strategies might be used to confront the banks who are faking ownership of the loans when they neither loaned the money nor purchased the loan with money.

My take on the political landscape is this: I speak with people from the so-called far right political spectrum to the far left political spectrum. I speak to members of fringe groups too.

The overwhelming consensus amongst all of them from one end to the other is that government is corrupt, banks are corrupt and that our society is in the wrong hands mostly without candidates who will speak to these issues. We need a new crop of politicians who are no so encumbered with loyalties to the bank oligopoly because at some time, the ticking time bomb is going to blow. I speak of economic meltdown, caused by fabricated transactions and assets that our counted as part of our national wealth and GDP.

If you ask people specific questions about what is fair, just, moral, ethical and legal nearly all of them respond with the same answers. So why are we a divided nation? Why to we listen to sound bites instead of forcing the candidates to speak to us about our issues, about our stress and anxiety — whether we will have a roof over our heads, whether we will have food on the table, whether our children will be educated well enough so that they can fill the jobs that are ready to be filled. Right now there are 3 million such jobs.

You would think that someone would want to do something about it. Obama tried to put through a bill to do something about that but he didn’t push hard enough. Republicans scoffed at it because of their allegiance to the super rich whose boatloads of money are floating nearly all the republicans and many of the democrats in local, state and Federal elections.

But we can’t blame one or even a group of politicians if we, the Boss, as the voters who control who governs us, don’t do our job and get educated about issues, educated about candidates and exercise our absolute right to vote in the elections.

The current crop of incumbents doesn’t worry about our reaction because we don’t have any reaction tot heir stupid policies, bills and laws. We are a nation of apathy where vote turnout has been going lower and lower. The reason is the same as the unemployment situation. The figures would be worse if we added those back who simply gave up. Don’t give up your vote. Use it and mean it!

Filed under: bubble, CDO, CORRUPTION, currency, Eviction, foreclosure, GTC | Honor, Investor, Mortgage, securities fraud | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , | 21 Comments »

GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS NEGOTIATING (SELL-OUT!) WITH BANKS AND TAKING POLITICAL CONTRIBUTIONS SIMULTANEOUSLY

Posted on August 9, 2011 by Neil Garfield

MOST POPULAR ARTICLES

COMBO Title and Securitization Search, Report, Documents, Analysis & Commentary GET COMBO TITLE AND SECURITIZATION ANALYSIS – CLICK HERE

SELL-OUT!

EDITOR’S COMMENT: WHAT ARE THEY NEGOTIATING ABOUT AND WITH WHOM ARE THEY NEGOTIATING? This is theater in the most absurd. Our government is negotiating with the very people who have demonstrated that they must fabricate and forge documents in order to establish their authority to do anything. Even in hostage negotiations we don’t give as much as we are giving to the servicers. They have no authority.

By definition they don’t own the obligation which means the obligation of the borrower is not owed to them. They are not the authorized agent of the real owner of the obligation until the real owner is identified and says they give authority to the agent to negotiate on their behalf.

Those documents don’t exist because those facts don’t exist. The investors are not going to give the servicers anything. If they were going to do that it would have happened en masse and avoided lots of paperwork problems for the banks. If it were not for political contributions, thousands of people would be headed for jail cells.

Instead we are negotiating away the future of America — for what? All homeowners are affected by these negotiations because when the so called honest Joe Homeowner goes to sell his home he is going to be hopping mad that not only can’t he deliver marketable title, he now has nobody to sue because the government sold him out. AND he still can’t sell his house because there is no way to clear up title.

These negotiations are a farce because down the road, they will be meaningless except that they will have added time to the already corrupted title registries across the country.

Mortgage servicers spend millions on political contributions

Banks under scrutiny as housing crisis festers

Posted Aug 8, 2011, 2:55 pm

Michael Hudson & Aaron Mehta Center for Public Integrity

As the financial markets roil, one of the critical factors weighing down the U.S. economy is the flood of home foreclosures. Thursday’s crash underscores how difficult it will be for the economy to make significant strides while the housing market is still in tatters.

The pace of the housing market recovery may depend in part on the outcome of intense negotiations underway among state and federal authorities and the nation’s five largest mortgage servicers.

Government officials are negotiating with the firms — Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase & Co., Citigroup, Wells Fargo & Co. and Ally Financial Inc. — over allegations of widespread abuses in the foreclosure process. State attorneys general around the country have been investigating evidence that the big banks used falsified documentation to process foreclosures.

Four of the five companies under scrutiny—Bank of America, JP Morgan, Wells Fargo and Citigroup — are major donors for state and federal political campaigns. Between them, they have donated at least $8 million since the start of 2009 to candidates, party committees and other political action committees, according to an iWatch News analysis of campaign finance data.

(Ally Financial hasn’t given money during that period to campaigns under its current name or is previous name, General Motors Acceptance Corp., or GMAC).

The fate of foreclosure negotiations could go a long way toward determining where the housing market will go in the next few years.

Normally, the housing market plays a leading role in any economic recovery. But that hasn’t been the case in the aftermath of the U.S. financial crisis of 2008.

“It’s has been a negative factor in this recovery — or lack of recovery,” housing economist and consultant Michael Carliner said.

Generally, when interest rates go down, that spurs the mortgage and housing markets and helps move the economy in the right direction. But that hasn’t happened this time around, said Carliner, a former economist for the National Association of Home Builders. “We have lowest mortgage rates since the early 1950s and it’s not doing anything,” he said.

Interest rates on 30-year fixed rate mortgages averaged 4.39 percent for the week ending Aug. 4, according to a survey by mortgage giant Freddie Mac.

What’s holding back the housing market, Carliner said, is a glut of available homes for sale, due in part to overbuilding during the housing boom and to continuing foreclosure woes. An “excess inventory” of perhaps 2 million homes is making it hard for the housing market to get going again, he said.

The inventory of foreclosures continues to grow. In June, one out of every 583 housing units in the United States received a foreclosure notice, according to data provider Realty Trac. The numbers are even worse in the hardest hit markets, where housing prices climbed the fastest during the housing boom and fell the most when the housing crash came. In Nevada, one out of every 114 housing units was the subject of a foreclosure filing in June.

Investigations and negotiations over allegations of fraudulent foreclosure practices by big banks have helped slow down the foreclosure process, making it harder for the market to work through defaults and readjust, Carliner said.

He would like to see a deal between government officials and mortgage servicers that would pave the way to swifter foreclosures that would help put the foreclosure problem in the past. “If people haven’t paid their mortgages in two years, they shouldn’t be able to keep their house,” Carliner said.

Not everyone agrees.

Ira Rheingold, executive director of the National Association of Consumer Advocates, a consumer attorneys group, argues that any national settlement should be about keeping people in their homes. He wants a settlement that would require banks to reduce the amount of mortgage debt held by distressed homeowners.

Reducing their payments and overall debts would help keep them in their homes and reduce the number of foreclosures, he said. It would also provide a measure of justice, he said, for homeowners who were defrauded via bait-and-switch salesmanship, falsified documentation and other predatory tactics that were common during the mortgage frenzy of the past decade.

Rheingold acknowledges, though, that extracting large concessions from big banks will be a “tough slog.”

Concerned about keeping quality reporting alive in Tucson?
A metro area of nearly 1 million deserves a vital & sustainable source of news that’s independent and locally run.
The banks have high-powered legal talent and lobbyists on their side, and four of the top five mortgage services have given generously to state and federal political campaigns, according to an iWatch News analysis of election data provided by the subscription-only CQMoneyLine. 

  • Since the start of 2009, Bank of America has donated at least $3.2 million to candidates, party committees and other PACs. Among the top recipients was Rep. Jeb Hensarling (at least $17,500), a Texas Republican who is vice chairman of the House Financial Services Committee. Another Texan Republican, Randy Neugebauer , received at least $16,000 from the financial giant. Neugebauer also serves on the Financial Services Committee, and chairs the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations.
  • JPMorgan Chase has donated over $ 2.8 million to candidates, party committees and other PACs since the start of 2009. The firm has made donations to the Republican Governors Association (at least $50,000), the National Republican Senatorial Committee (at least $45,000) and the National Republican Congressional Committee (at least $45,000), the Democratic Governors Association (at least $25,000) and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (at least $15,000). The firm also donated at least $15,000 to the Blue Dog PAC, the fundraising arm of the Blue Dog Democrats who were vital to financial corporations when the Democrats controlled the House.
  • and ranking member on the financial services committee’s Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit.
  • Wells Fargo gave over $1 million to candidates, party committees and other PACs since the start of 2009. Wells Fargo has given at least $45,000 each to the NRCC and NRSC and at least $30,000 each to the DSCC and DCCC. It also donated at least $17,000 to Rep. Ed Royce , a California Republican who serves on the Financial Services committee. Another top recipient was Democrat Carolyn Maloney of New York, the vice chair of the Joint Economic Committee
  • Citigroup has given $850,000 to candidates, party committees and other PACs since the start of 2009. Among its top individual recipients is Democrat Gregory Meeks of New York. Meeks, who sits on the House Committee on Financial Services, has received at least $10,000 from Citi. Another is Ohio Republican Rep. Pat Tiberi (at least $15,000), a member of the powerful Ways and Means committee. Tiberi is currently the Chairman of the Subcommittee on Select Revenue, which has jurisdiction over federal tax policy.

Related stories

More by Michael Hudson

Filed under: bubble, CDO, CORRUPTION, currency, Eviction, foreclosure, GTC | Honor, Investor, Mortgage, securities fraud | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 31 Comments »

%d bloggers like this: