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Editor’s Comment and Analysis: Abacus Bank has only $272 million in deposits. In rank, it is near the very bottom of the ladder. And apparently justifiably, federal prosecutors have seen fit to prosecute the bank for fraud. The quandary here is why the prosecutors are putting their muscle behind just the low-hanging fruit and why they are settling with the mega banks for the same acts — without threat of prosecution. If we could offer $17 trillion in various forms of “relief” for the banks, they certainly could pony up $1 billion and investigate the truth behind the securitization claims. The only conclusion I can reach is that the administration, so far, doesn’t want proof of the truth.
One of the things that Yves gets right here is that when Fannie and Freddie get involved, it isn’t the end of the line and it certainly does not mean that the loan was not “securitized” using the same fake documents at origination and the same fake mortgage bonds, albeit guaranteed by Fannie and Freddie who serve as “Master Trustee” of the investment pools that presumably “bought the loans with actual money. Like their cousins in the non government guaranteed loans, the money largely comes from fat accounts where the investors’ money was commingled beyond recognition and the investment bank who created and sold the bogus mortgage bonds was the “buyer” on paper so that they could bet against the same loans and bonds they were selling to investors.
Yves still refers to the scheme as reckless as though a judgment was made without knowing the consequences of the banks’ actions. Nothing could be further from the truth. This wasn’t reckless.
It was intentional because that was where the big money came from. The scheme was to take as much as possible from money advanced by pension funds and keep it, while giving the illusion of a securitization scheme for funding mortgages and reducing risk.
The mega banks even bet on their success and the investors’ loss, the borrowers’ loss and the loss shouldered by taxpayers, increasing their leverage positions up to 42 times (Bear Stearns). As we all know, the risk was magnified not reduced and the only experts that really knew were in the departments where collateralized debt obligations were packaged on paper, sold to investors and never transferred to any trust, REMIC of SPV.
With Abacus, the punch line is that their default rate was 1/10th that of the national average indicating that contrary to the practices of the mega banks, some underwriting was involved and some verification and oversight was employed.
What is avoided is that $13 trillion in loans were originated using the false securitization scheme in which the borrower was kept in the dark about who his lender was, and where upon inquiry the borrower was told that the identity of the lender was confidential and private, nearly all of which loans were classic cases of fraud in the execution, fraud in the inducement, breach of contract, slander of title, and recording false documents in the county records. The perpetrators of these schemes are settling for fractions of a penny on the dollar with full agreement that their conduct will not be reviewed.
So here is the question: If Abacus is guilty of fraud and caused minimal damage to the economy or the borrowers, isn’t the bar set higher for the mega banks. Why are they allowed to slip through without getting the same treatment as a bank whose deposits equal less than 1/10 of 1% of the size of the megabanks who caused mayhem here and around the world?
Quelle Surprise! Prosecutors Get Tough on Mortgage Fraud….At an Itty Bitty Bank
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/02/quelle-surprise-prosecutors-get-tough-on-mortgage-fraud-at-an-itty-bitty-bank.html
Filed under: bubble, CDO, CORRUPTION, currency, Eviction, foreclosure, GTC | Honor, Investor, Mortgage, securities fraud | Tagged: Abacus, Fannie, fraud, Freddie, Investigation, Naked Capitalism, Ponzi scheme, PROOF, prosecution, yves Smith | 101 Comments »