12 QUESTIONS THAT COULD END THE CASE

Posted on May 31, 2013 by Neil Garfield

http://dtc-systems.net/2013/05/top-democrats-introduce-legislation-protect-military-families-foreclosure/

CALL OR WRITE TO FLORIDA GOVERNOR — THE CLOCK IS TICKING

Veto Clock Ticking on Florida Foreclosure Bill HB 87
http://4closurefraud.org/2013/05/30/veto-clock-ticking-on-florida-foreclosure-bill-hb-87/

DISCOVERY TIP: Has anyone asked for a received the actual agreement between the party designated as “lender” and MERS? Please send to neilfgarfield@hotmail.com.

Questions for interrogatory and request to produce, possible request for admissions:

(1) If we accept the proffer from opposing counsel that the transaction (i.e, the loan) was done for the express purpose of fulfilling an obligation to investors for backing mortgage bonds through a REMIC asset pool, then why was MERS necessary?

(2) Why wasn’t The asset pool disclosed to the borrower?

(3) Why wasn’t the asset pool made the payee on the promissory note at origination of the loan?

(4) Why wasn’t the asset pool shown on a recorded assignment immediately after closing as the new payee and secured party?

(5) What was the business purpose of using MERS?

(6) Was the lender the source of funding on the loan or was it too just another nominee?

(7) Is there any identified real party in interest on the note and mortgage as the creditor?

(8) If there is no real party in interest on the note and mortgage, then how can the mortgage be considered perfected when nobody has notice of who they can go to for a satisfaction or release or rescission of the mortgage?

(9) In which document and what provision are the parties at the loan “closing” empowered to identify a party other than the source of funds as the payee and secured party?

(10) Who were the parties to the loan? — (a) the borrower and the source of funds or (b) the borrower and the holder of paper documenting a transaction that is incomplete (the payee and secured party never fulfilled their obligation to fund the loan)?

(11)If the servicer’s scope of employment, authority or apparent authority was limited to tracking the payments of the borrower only, and did not include accounting for the creditor, then how does the servicer know what is contained in the creditor’s accounting records? — Since the creditor in any loan subject to claims of securitization received a bond whose indenture provided repayment terms different than those terms signed by the borrower to another party entirely, how can any finding of money damages be determined by any court without a full accounting for all transactions relating to the loan?

(12) What is the identity of the party who was injured by the refusal of the borrower to make any further payments? To what extent were they injured? Are they qualified to submit a “credit bid” or must they pay cash for the property at auction? If they are not qualified to submit a credit bid then (see below) then under what legal theory should they be permitted to foreclose or for that matter seek any collection? Are these intermediary parties violating the FDCPA because they are neither the creditor nor the agent of the creditor and yet demanding payment for themselves?

THE COURTS ARE STARTING TO GET THE POINT:

FLORIDA 5th DCA: To establish standing to foreclose, Plaintiff must show that it acquired the right to enforce the note before it filed suit to foreclose. Important: the right to enforce the note means either they were the injured party or they represent the injured party. An assignment from a party who is proffered to be the injured party must be established with proper foundation from a competent witness.

GREEN V CHASE 4-5-2013

————-

FLORIDA 4TH DCA: DATES MATTER: While the note introduced had a blank endorsement (note conflict with PSA, which is supposedly source of authority to represent creditor: note may not be endorsed in blank and in fact must be endorsed and assigned in recordable form and recorded where the law allows or requires it) and was sufficient [under normal rules governing commercial transactions — except if the parties agree otherwise which they certainly did in the PSA) to prove ownership by appellee, who possessed the note, nothing in the record (e.s) shows that the note was endorsed prior to filing of the complaint (or if you want to use this decision by analogy prior to initiation of the notice of default and notice of sale in non-judicial states). The endorsement did not cotnain a date, nor did the affidavit filed in support of the motion for summary judgment contain any sworn statement that the note was owned by the Plaintiff on the date that the suit was filed. [PRACTICE TIP: THEY DON’T WANT TO GIVE A DATE BECAUSE THAT WILL LEAD TO YOU ASKING FOR DETAILS OF THE TRANSACTION, PROOF OF PAYMENT, THE ASSIGNMENT AND WHETHER THE TRANSACTION CONFORMED TO THE PSA, NONE OF WHICH WILL BE PRODUCED. But  considering past behavior it is highly probable that they will fabricate documents that ALMOST give you a copy of the canceled check or wire transfer receipt but don’t quite get them to the finish line. Being aggressive on this point will clearly  put them on the defensive].

4th DCA Cromarty v Wells Fargo 4-17-2013

2d DCA: IS THE TRANSACTION GOVERNED BY THE UCC PROVISIONS EVEN IF THE PARTIES HAVE AGREED OTHERWISE? This is the nub of the issue in the Stone case (link below). We think that the courts are confused i applying ordinary rules from the UCC regarding the negotiation of commercial instruments and certainly we understand why — the UCC is the basis upon which we can conducted trusted business transaction and maintain liquidity in the marketplace. But if the party attempting to foreclose derives its powers from the Prospectus, PSA,or purchase and Assumption Agreement, then they cannot invoke the powers in those instruments on the one hand and disregard the provisions that prohibit blank endorsements of loans of dubious quality without an assignment that can only be accepted by the supposed creditor if it complies with the assignment provisions of the agreement under which the foreclosing party is claiming to have authority to enforce the note and mortgage. And this is precisely the risk and consequences of a lawyer not understanding claims of securitization and the reality of what the UCC means when it says things like “unless otherwise agreed” and “for value.” Without raising those issues on the record, the homeowner was doomed:

Stone v BankUnited May 3 2013

OCC: 13 Questions to Answer Before Foreclosure and Eviction

Posted on May 22, 2013 by Neil Garfield | Edit

13 Questions Before You Can Foreclose

foreclosure_standards_42013 — this one works for sure

If you are seeking legal representation or other services call our South Florida customer service number at 954-495-9867 and for the West coast the number remains 520-405-1688. In Northern Florida and the Panhandle call 850-765-1236. 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.

SEE ALSO: http://WWW.LIVINGLIES-STORE.COM

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.

Filed under: CDO, CORRUPTION, Eviction, foreclosure, GARFIELD GWALTNEY KELLEY AND WHITE, GTC | Honor, Investor, Mortgage | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 136 Comments »

Chorus of Whistles as the Blowers Get Ignored or Shutdown

Posted on January 17, 2013 by Neil Garfield

CHECK OUT OUR EXTENDED 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).

Editors Comment and Analysis: Chorus of whistles around the country and indeed around the world is going over the administration’s handling of the wrongful foreclosure claims and the outright bullying, intimidation and lying that lies at both the root of the false securitization scheme for residential mortgages and the false foreclosure review process supposedly designed to correct the problem. The plain truth, as pointed out in the article below and the Huffington Post, is that the reviews were never intended to work.

Take a step back for perspective. The news is being carefully managed by Wall Street just as Congress is being carefully manipulated by Wall Street. But for the inquiring mind, the data is right there in front of everyone and is being ignored at the peril of the future of the real estate industry which depends upon certainty that the title intended in the transaction is actually conveyed without undisclosed or “unknown” liabilities. The title companies are greasing the rails with their
“Guarantee of Title” but that doesn’t fix the corrupted title records.

We know that every study done shows collectively that

  1. Strangers to the transaction dominate the foreclosure activity — i.e.,  entities that are not injured or even involved with eh funding of the original loan or the payment of the price of the loan on assignment, endorsement or transfer of the alleged loan.
  2. In virtually ALL cases of securitization, regardless of whether the securitization started at the origination of the loan, or later, the use of nominees rather than actual parties was the rule, and the documents misrepresent both the parties and terms of repayment.
  3. The Banks are slowly prolonging the process to be able to assert the statute of limitations on criminal or civil prosecution but that wouldn’t protect them if law enforcement would dig deeper and find that there was nothing but fraud at the origination and all the way up the “Securitization” chain — all of which transactions were unsupported by consideration.
  4. We know the Banks know that they are exposed to awesome liability equaling the whole of the mortgage market from 1996 to the present. If that were not true they would be announcing settlements every day where some bank is paying hundreds of millions or billions or tens of billions of dollars “without admitting liability.”
  5. We know that in ALL foreclosures where a loan was claimed to be securitized or even where it was hidden tactically (like Chase does), the “credit bid” at auction was not submitted by an injured party. Thus the party who submitted the credit bid was not a creditor and everyone of those foreclosures — millions of them — can be and should be overturned.
  6. We know that at origination the money came from a controlled entity not of the originator but of the aggregator. The originator was not permitted to touch the money nor did the originator ever have any risk of loss. Hence the originator was a nominee with no more rights or powers than MERS. The borrower was left with the fact that he was dealing with unknown parties whose “underwriting process” was designed to get the deal done and allow the originator to proceed.
  7. We know that without the approval from the aggregator, the originator would not have announced approval of the loan. At no time did the Borrower know that they were actually dealing with Countrywide or other aggregators and that the money was coming through an entity (credit warehouse) set up by Countrywide for the origination of loans, with the caveat being that the money for funding would NOT go through the hands of the originator.
  8. We know that the mortgage liens were not perfected.
  9. We know that the note describes a transaction that never occurred — wherein the originator loaned money to the borrower. (No consideration) and that the originator never had any risk of loss.
  10. We know that the actual transaction was from an aggregate fund in which investments from multiple investors in what the investors thought were discreet accounts for each REMIC trust but where the Trust was ignored just as the requirements of state law or ignored by using nominees without disclosure of the principal on the note, mortgage or deed of trust.
  11. We know the losses on the bogus mortgage bonds were taken by the injured parties — the investors (pension funds) who put up the money.
  12. We know that the investment bank, aggregator and Master Servicer were in control of all transactions and that the subservicers were nominees for the Master Servicer whose name is kept out of litigation.
  13. We know the despite the loss hitting the investors because it was after all their money that funded this PONZI scheme, it was the banks who were allowed to take the insurance, proceeds of credit default swaps and federal bailouts leaving the investors twisting in the wind.
  14. We know that the investment bank, Master Servicer and aggregators were in privity, owed duties and were agents of the investors when they received the insurance and bailout money.
  15. We know that the banks kept the money from insurance and bailouts instead of paying the investors and reducing the balance due to the investors.

We know all these things, and much more, with whistle-blowers stepping up every day. The day of reckoning is coming and the announcement of BofA about another hidden earnings hit is only 2-3% of the actual number as shown on their own statements and probably more like 1/10 % of their real liability.

The term “Zombie” is being used to describe many features of our financial landscape. Truth be told it ought to be used to describe our entire financial system. If the actual corrections were made in accordance with existing law and existing equitable doctrines applied in hundreds of millions of other individual cases, we would be working on plans to wind down the mega banks, wind down household debt, falsified by the banks, and wind down the efforts to derail appropriate lawsuits by real injured parties.

The more you understand about what REALLY happened, the more you will see the opportunity for relief. I can report to you that I am receiving daily reports of multiple cases in which the borrower is winning motions. Even a year ago that was unthinkable.

The Judges are starting to catch on and some lawyers are realizing that this is just like any other case — their client is subject to enforcement of an alleged debt or foreclosure action and their answer is to deny the allegations, the documents and make them prove up their status as injured party on a perfected mortgage lien securing the promises on a valid note for a debt created by actual payment of the named party to the borrower.

The assumption by Judges and lawyers that there wouldn’t be a foreclosure if the facts didn’t support it is going down fast. Judges are realizing that title is being corrupted by bad presentations made by pro se litigants and many lawyers in which they admit the essential elements of the foreclosure and then try to get relief. Deny and Discover covers that. Deny anything you can deny as long as you have no reason to believe it to be true beyond a reasonable doubt. Let them, force them to prove their case. They can’t. If you press discovery you will be able to show that to be true.  File counter motions for summary judgment with your own affidavits and attack the affidavits of the other side in support of their motions.

More Whistleblower Leaks on Foreclosure Settlement Show Both Suppression of Evidence and Gross Incompetence

No wonder the Fed and the OCC snubbed a request by Darryl Issa and Elijah Cummings to review the foreclosure fraud settlement before it was finalized early last week. What had leaked out while the Potemkin borrower reviews were underway showed them to be a sham, as we detailed at length in an earlier post. But even so, what actually took place was even worse than hardened cynics had imagined.

We are going to be reporting on this story in detail, since we are conducting an in-depth investigation. But this initial report by Huffington Post gives a window on a good deal of the dubious practices that took place during the foreclosure reviews. I strongly suggest you read the piece in full; there is a lot of nasty stuff on view.

There are some issues that are highlighted in the piece, others that are implication that get somewhat lost in the considerable detail. The first, as stressed by Sheila Bair and other observers, is that the reviews were never designed to succeed. This is something we and others pointed out; this was all an exercise in show. The OCC had entered into these consent orders in the first place with the aim of derailing the 50 state attorney general settlement negotiations. This was all intended to be diversionary, but to make it look like it had some teeth, borrowers who were foreclosed on in 2009 and 2010 who thought they were harmed were allowed to request a review. If harm was found, they could get as much as $15,000 plus their home back if they had suffered a wrongful foreclosure, or if they home had already been sold, $125,000 plus any equity in the home. Needless to say, the forms were written at the second grade college level, making them hard to answer. A whistleblower for Wells Fargo reported that of 10,000 letters, harm was found in none because the responses were interpreted in such a way as to deny harm (for instance, if the borrower did not provide dates of certain incidents, those details were omitted from the assessment).

But the results were even worse than that, hard as it is to believe. For instance, even though the OCC stipulated that the banks hire supposedly independent reviewers, they were firmly in control of the process. From the article, describing the process at Bank of America, where a regulatory advisory firm Promontory was supposed to be in charge:

Bank of America contractors were reviewing Bank of America loans at a Bank of America facility under the management of full-time Bank of America employees. They were reporting those results to Promontory, the outside independent consultant, whose employees started their reviews based on what Bank of America contractors had concluded.

As the auditor, Promontory had authority to overrule any conclusion drawn by a Bank of America contractor. Promontory has defended its work as independent from influence by Bank of America. But the Bank of America contractors said it was clear to them that what they noted during their reviews was integral to the process. They continued to do substantive, evaluative review work until a few months ago, they said, when they were told that their job going forward was simply to dig up documents for Promontory.

Of course, Promontory protests that it was in charge. It is hard to take that seriously when no one from Promontory was on premises. And the proof is that the Bank of America staff suppressed the provision of information:

Another contract employee recounted the time he noted in a file that he couldn’t find vital documents, such as notice supposedly sent to a homeowner that a foreclosure was pending. “Change your answer,” he said he was told on several occasions by his manager.

Second is that the OCC was changing the goalposts as the reviews were underway. But was that due to OCC waffling or pushback by the consultants acting in the interest of the banks to derail the process by making the results inconsistent over time? If you do the first month of reviews under one set of rules and then get significant changes in month two, that implies you have to revise or redo the work in month one. That serves the consultants just fine, their bills explode. And the banks get to bitch that the reviews are costing too much, which gives them (and the OCC) a pretext for shutting them down, which is prefect, since they were all intended to be a PR rather than a substantive exercise from the outset.

Consider this section:

From the the consultants’ point of view, it was the government regulators who had some explaining to do. First there was the constant change in guidance, throughout at least the first eight months of the process, as to what they wanted the auditors to do and how they wanted them to do it, they said. The back-and-forth was so constant, one of the consultants involved with the process said that specific guidelines for determining if a mortgage borrower had been harmed by certain kinds of foreclosure fraud still weren’t in place as late as November 2012.

Huh? Tell me how hard it is to determine harm. If a borrower was charged fees not permitted by statue or the loan documents, there was harm. If the fees were in excess of costs (not permitted) there was harm. If the fees were applied in the wrong order, there was harm. If a borrower was put into a mod, made the payments as required in the mod agreement, but they weren’t applied properly and they were foreclosed on despite following bank instructions, there was harm. Honestly, there are relatively few cases where there is ambiguity unless you are actively trying to throw a wrench in the process, and it is not hard to surmise that is exactly what was happening. That is not to say there might not have been ambiguity on the OCC side, but it is not hard to surmise that this was contractor/bank looking to create outs, not any real underlying problem of understanding harm v. not harm.

It looks that some of the costly process changes were also due to the consultants being caught out as being in cahoots with their clients rather than operating independently:

The role of the Bank of America contract employees did not change to simply doing support work for Promontory until near the end of last year. That happened after ProPublica reported that Promontory’s employees were checking over Bank of America’s work, rather than conducting a fully independent review.

Finally, the article mentions (but does not dwell on) the fact that there was considerable evidence of borrower harm:

The reviewer said she found some kind of bogus fee in every file she looked at, ranging from a few dollars to a few thousand dollars. Another who looked for errors that violated state statutes estimated that 30 to 40 percent of loan files contained mistakes.

One reviewer who provided a comment that we elevated into a post was far more specific:

…in one case I reviewed the borrower paid approximately 25K to reinstate his mortgage. Then he began to make his mortgage payments as agreed. Each time he made a payment the payment was sent back stating he had to be current for the bank to accept a payment. He made three payments and each time the response was the same. Each time he wrote and called stating he had sent in the $25K to reinstate the loan and had the canceled check to prove it. After several months the bank realized that they had put the 25K in the wrong account. At that time that notified him that they were crediting his account, but because of the delay in receiving the reinstatement funds into the proper account he owed them more interest on the monies, late fees for the payments that had been returned and not credited and he was again in default for failing to continue making his payment. The bank foreclosed when he refused to pay additional interest and late fees for the banks error. I was told that I shouldn’t show that as harm because he did quit making his payments. I refused to do that.

There was another instance when there was no evidence that the bank had properly published the notice of sale in the newspaper as required by law. The argument the bank made when it was listed as harm to the borrower was “here is the foreclosure sale deed, obviously we followed proper procedure, and you should change your answer as to harm.”

Often there is no evidence of a borrower being sent a proper notice of intent to accelerate the mortgage. When these issues are noted in a file we are told to ignore them and transfer those files to a “special team” set up to handle that kind of situation. You choose whatever meaning you like for that scenario.

To add insult to injury, the settlement fiasco was shut down abruptly without the OCC and the Fed coming with a method for compensating borrowers. So the records have been left in chaos. That pretty much guarantees that any payments will be token amounts spread across large number of borrowers, which insures that borrowers that suffered serious damage, such as the case cited above, where the bank effectively extorted an extra $25,000 from a borrower before foreclosing on him, will get a token payment, at most $8,000 but more likely around $2,000. Oh, and you can be sure that the banks will want a release from private claims as a condition of accepting payment. $2,000 for a release of liability is a screaming deal, and it was almost certainly the main objective of this exercise from the outset. Nicely played indeed.

Read more at http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/01/more-whistleblower-leaks-on-foreclosure-settlement-show-both-suppression-of-evidence-and-gross-incompetence.html#m7aM5FACevivJMRf.99

Filed under: bubble, CDO, CORRUPTION, currency, Eviction, foreclosure, GTC | Honor, Investor, Mortgage, securities fraud | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | 255 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.

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Pension and Union Funds Were Upside Down the Moment They Bought MBS

Posted on February 5, 2012 by Neil Garfield

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SERVICE 520-405-168

Editor’s comment: Smith’s statement about the passivity of investors is well taken. Up until recently, they were content to let the Banks and servicers fight it out and they assumed they would get their fair share of the money that was due to them. Remember that these are NOT just “institutional investors” like banks — they are pension funds, unions, cities, counties and states that invested in what was thought to be investment grade securities Triple A rated and insured.

So it isn’t surprising that the investors are now going on the attack. It is obvious that the banks and servicers are having a field day feeding off the carcass of what was purported to be good collateral — the homes of the borrowers. The starting insult though was the money the banks took out of the funds advanced by investors before they started funding mortgages. In some cases the percentage is a staggering 40%. So for each million dollars that your pension fund put in, the banks immediately removed $400,000 and booked it as trading profits. Now with only $600,000 left, the pool was supposed to make enough money to pay the interest expected by investors plus the principal.

Those figures don’t work and Wall Street knew it. So all they needed was to place bets that the pool would fail and that is what they did under the guise of merely covering the “minor” risk of loss with yet another hedge. But the proceeds of insurance and credit default swaps were received by the banks who did not report those proceeds to investors, much less pay them. The whole thing was carried in a classic PONZI scheme where the money from the investor was paid to the investor without investing or funding any other income-producing asset.

So now Goldman Sachs has a genuine class action (approved by Federal Judge) on its hands, the major banks and MERS have a major lawsuit (Schneiderman) that will completely upend the mortgage transactions and foreclosures that have taken place, as well as eliminating the secured portion of the loans. The Banks are right where I predicted they would be when I projected the path of this long road. The banks and servicers are intermediaries and conduits with no interest in the loans other than some vague contractual rights that were long ago breached by the banks.

The interests of the investors and the interests of the homeowners have thus become strangely but inevitably aligned. Neither one would have entered into the deals if they knew the truth and both were defrauded by inflated appraisals, inflated securities ratings, misrepresentations about the loans, misrepresentations about the loan underwriting process, and neither want to be part of any large-scale foreclosure process. The investors want as much of their money back as possible and then the right to get the rest from the banks, who stole their money. The borrowers want to stay in their homes so much so that they are willing to accept mortgage balances in excess of the fair market value of the home.

Both the investors and the homeowners are underwater — some for the same reasons and some for different reasons. But the full accounting of all money in and all money out will restore far more of the original capital that was siphoned out of the nation’s economy than the current foreclosure process — even if the foreclosures were valid and enforceable which they clearly are not because they are based upon documentation that was intentionally fabricated, forged, misrepresented and a direct breach of the duties of the originators to perform due diligence.

The choice is the same one I stated 5 years ago — which will be more important — the power and wealth of these overs-zed banks or the rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. We can’t have both. In order to give the banks what they want, with amnesty, further bailouts etc., we must surrender our sovereignty and consent to being subject to the rule of Banks without any governing charter. In order to ratify the millions of foreclosures that have already taken place and allow the millions more to proceed, we must abandon all notions of due process, equity and fairness.

by Yves Smith

Investors (and Others) Realizing Their Ox is About to be Gored in Mortgage Settlement

Investors have been remarkably passive as banks and servicers have taken advantage of them. We’ve heard numerous reports of servicer fee abuses that amount to stealing from investors (remember, if you overcharge a stressed borrower and that borrower loses his home, the money in the end comes out of pension funds and 401 (k)s when the excessive fees are deducted from the proceeds of the sale of the home). Investors can even see suspicious patterns in investor reports. We’ve also pointed out that they are guaranteed even more pain, since $175 billion of losses that have already recorded on loans in MBS pools have not yet been allocated to the related bonds.

But the fees to manage bond funds are pretty thin, and fixed income investors are generally a risk averse lot, and are not well set up to litigate. But the biggest obstacle to them Doing Something is that they don’t want to rile the banks. They think they need them for information and transaction execution.

So it shouldn’t be surprising that investors have sat on the sidelines during the mortgage settlement and “fix the housing market” debates, even as becomes clearer and clearer that the solution envisaged is to take from investors to make the banks whole. Remember, the major banks have very large second lien portfolios that should be written down. The banks claim the second loans, almost entirely home equity lines of credit, are current, but that is often an accounting fiction. The banks are often engaging in negative amortization (as in taking any trivial amount and deeming it to be acceptable and adding any shortfall to what should be a proper minimum payment to principal) and allowing customers to borrow in order to make their payments. MBS investors have told me that realistic marks on Bank of America’s second lien portfolio would exceed the market value of its equity, and would also take a big cut out of the equity bases of Citi, JP Morgan, and Wells.

So the plan, which was messaged in an interview with William Dudley in the Financial Times in early January and is embodied in the mortgage settlement plan, is to write down first liens and leave seconds largely intact (there have been some indications that seconds might get a modest ding in the case of a principal mod on the first, but that is backwards. The second should be WIPED OUT before anything modification is made to the first mortgage). Any principal mods on the first lien that leaves the second in place amounts to a transfer from retirement plans to banks. Pensions are being raided to avoid exposing the insolvency of the big banks.

We are, rather late in the game, getting some plaintive bleats from investors as they are being led to slaughter. Reader Deontos sent us a statement from the Association of Mortgage Investors:

The state Attorneys General, federal agencies, and certain mortgage servicers have worked for approximately one year on developing a solution to address our national foreclosure crisis. The time now may be nearing for a settlement of claims of alleged wrongdoing by servicers. AMI and mortgage investors have neither been involved in the negotiations nor are aware of the ultimate settlement terms. In anticipation of a possible settlement, however, AMI cautions these negotiators not to rush into a settlement, but rather work to get a properly constructed settlement that helps distressed homeowners with the right solutions. “Investors in mortgage trusts, such as unions and pensions, do not service these loans and certainly did not create these woes for borrowers. The use of mortgage trust money (from pensions funds, unions and charities) to settle the investigation is tantamount to a bank bail-out. We expect that principal modifications of private mortgages made to satisfy any kind of settlement will involve only mortgages held by the settling parties and that the criteria for all additional principal modifications be firmly established,” explained Chris Katopis, AMI’s Executive Director.

AMI would only support such a resulting settlement, if any, if appropriately designed to address such alleged wrongdoing while not implicating innocent parties. AMI is on-record as supporting long-term, effective, sustainable solutions to the housing foreclosure crisis. It is generally supportive of a settlement if it ensures that responsible borrowers are treated fairly throughout the foreclosure process; while at the same time providing clarity as to investor rights and servicer responsibilities. The settlement should be designed in a way that ensures that investors, who were not involved in the alleged activities and, who likewise were not a participant in any negotiations, do not bear the cost of the settlement. Specifically, mortgage servicers should not receive credit for modifying mortgages held by third parties, which are often pension plans, 401K plans, endowments and “Main Street” mutual funds. To do otherwise, will damage the RMBS markets further and limit the ability of average Americans to obtain credit for homes for generations to come.

Erm, the fact that you weren’t given a seat at the table means the power that be thought you were dispensable.

More amusingly, a Bloomberg report reveals what most insiders know full well, that industry associations that supposedly represent the buy side and the sell side, like the American Securitization Forum and the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, really take care only of the sell side, meaning Wall Street. SIFMA’s Asset Management Group, which represents investors, wanted to issue a statement objecting to the use of investor funds to settle bank misdeeds, but it was squelched by management:

Wall Street’s biggest lobbying group is split over a proposed settlement of state and federal foreclosure probes, after a committee of money managers signaled it opposes terms letting banks push some costs onto bondholders.

The Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association’s Asset Management Group planned to release a statement last week urging government negotiators to protect innocent investors, amid reports that banks will get credit for lowering the balances of mortgages packaged into bonds, three people familiar with the matter said. Sifma’s leadership said no. The panel’s members oversee $20 trillion and include BlackRock (BLK) Inc. and Pacific Investment Management Co.

Sifma elected not to issue the statement “because the settlement surrounds potential legal issues involving the commercial interests of many of our members,” said Cheryl Crispen, a spokeswoman for the group in New York. “Sifma generally does not intervene in such matters and remains focused on matters of policy and advocacy.”

What bullshit. This is a “all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others” statement.

Needless to say, as the propagandizing gets louder, a few lonely voices are decrying the settlement. For instance, Daily Kos had a refreshing piece, “Stop the Delusional Celebration: Victims of Foreclosure Fraud Have Little to Celebrate.” Dave Dayen gets to an aspect of the settlement that I have not had time to cover, namely, that the enforcement is a joke. A story by Loren Berlin and D.M. Levine at Huffington Post remind us “Robo-Signing Settlement Might Not Provide Homeowners With Needed Help.” The short form of their story: the deal looks to be targeting mods to not that deeply underwater borrowers. Addressing a related Administration PR effort, Alan White at Credit Slips, in The Permanent Foreclosure Crisis and Obama’s Refinancing Obsession says, in no uncertain terms, that refis won’t solve the mortgage mess.

There is a possible saving grace here. I am told by a principal that if this settlement goes through, the odds are 100% that it will be challenged on Constitutional grounds, as a violation. Taking from the first lienholders to save the second lienholders to keep otherwise insolvent banks from going under amounts to a transfer from private parties to the government, as in it saves the FDIC from needing an emergency injection from Congress, as it did in the savings and loan crisis. So as much as I’d rather see this deal scuttled, it would terribly amusing to see Obama tidy’s efforts to generate pretend to help homeowners while really helping the banks sidetracked by litigation. The courts have stymied bank efforts to get away with their heist, and they may prove to be their bane yet again.

Topics: Banana republic, Banking industry, Credit markets, Investment management, Legal, Politics, Real estate, Regulations and regulators, The destruction of the middle class

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LAWYERS TAKE NOTE! COURTS ARE ALLOWING TITLE QUESTIONS IN EVICTIONS

Posted on September 13, 2011 by Neil Garfield

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“The mere fact that the pretenders are avoiding trials at all costs is proof unto itself that they do not have the goods, they do not have title, they are not the creditor and they are merely sneaking into the system to fill the void created by the the real creditors (investor/lenders) who want no part of the foreclosure process nor any need to defend against predatory, deceptive or illegal lending practices. ” — Neil Garfield

OREGON COURT DENIES EVICTION: SHOULD HAVE BEEN A QUIET TITLE LAWSUIT

EDITOR’S NOTE: The eviction laws were mostly designed for landlord tenant situations. Once again, pretender lenders are using questionable practices using laws that don’t apply to the cases they are bringing. But ever since Judge Shack in New York and Judge Boyco in Ohio started questioning whether the homeowners were actually getting their day in court, the courts have been shifting away from the old rules.

The old rules basically prevent a tenant from questioning the title of his landlord as a defense to an eviction. The reason is obvious. You sign a lease with someone, pay them for a while and then stop paying — the issue of who has title title is  basically irrelevant. You have a  contract (lease) either oral or written, you breached it, and so the summary procedure for eviction makes it easier on landlords to get tenants out and begin renting the apartment, condo or house. The only real defense is payment and some issues like retaliatory eviction for reporting health problems, and similar landlord tenant issues. You see these laws in Arizona, Florida and every other state I’ve looked at.

Along comes massive foreclosures and instead of having a contract with the landlord you have a claim by someone you never heard of, with paperwork you’ve never seen, much of it unrecorded, and claiming default without being the creditor or even establishing that they represent the creditor. So in non-judicial states for example, this is the first time you have seen, met or had any day in court and you are told that you are in a court of limited jurisdiction and that if you want to raise issues regarding fraudulent or wrongful foreclosure you need to do it in another court. In the meanwhile, the court is going to evict you no matter how much proof you have that the party doing the evicting obtained title illegally and may never have obtained title.

As I have been saying for 4 years, eviction is not a remedy to anyone claiming to have a right to possession of a foreclosed home unless there has been an opportunity to examine all the claims of the pretender lenders to actual ownership of the obligation and the possession of the proper paperwork. Even in judicial states this is not working right because the foreclosures are considered clerical by judges and many of them don’t believe, or at least didn’t believe until recently, that the banks would be so arrogant and stupid as to make claims on mortgages that were never perfected as liens and never transferred to them or anyone else.

So here we have an Oregon judge that spots the issue and simply states that this is not an eviction, it is a quiet title issue and if you want possession you need to prove title. If you want to prove title, considering the defects that are apparent and alleged by the homeowner then you need to file a quiet title action. This is the same as I have been saying for years. If they really had the goods and they really could prove that US Bank, or BOA was going to lose money because of the alleged default on the obligation, then all they needed to do was go to trial on a few dozen of these cases and the issues raised by homeowners would go away. Instead the issues are growing in volume and sincerity.

The mere fact that the pretenders are avoiding trials at all costs is proof unto itself that they do not have the goods, they do not have title, they are not the creditor and they are merely sneaking into the system to fill the void created by the the real creditors (investor/lenders) who want no part of the foreclosure process nor any need to defend against predatory, deceptive or illegal lending practices.

Categorized | STOP FORECLOSURE FRAUD

Court rulings complicate evictions for lenders in Oregon

Court rulings complicate evictions for lenders in Oregon

“Those issues give credence to Defendan’t argument that this case is better brought as one to quiet title and then for ejectment.”

OregonLive-

Another Oregon woman successfully halted a post-foreclosure eviction after a judge in Hood River found the bank could not prove it held title to the home.

Sara Michelotti’s victory over Wells Fargo late last week carries no weight in other Oregon courts, attorneys say. But it illustrates a growing problem for banks  — if the loans’s ownership history isn’t recorded properly, foreclosed homeowners might be able to fight even an eviction.

“There’s this real uncertainty from county to county about what that eviction process is going to look like for the lender,” said Brian Cox, a real estate attorney in Eugene who represented Wells Fargo.

Michelotti’s case revolved around a subprime mortgage lender, Option One Mortgage Corp., that went out of business during the housing crisis. Circuit Court Judge Paul Crowley ruled that it was not clear when or how Option One transferred Michelotti’s mortgage to American Home Mortgage Servicing Inc., which foreclosed on her home and later sold it to Wells Fargo.

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Alabama Court: Busted Securitization Prevents Foreclosure

Posted on April 18, 2011 by Neil Garfield

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FAILURE TO COMPLETE TRANSFERS BARS FORECLOSURE FOREVER

NOTABLE QUOTE:

“the judge found the securitization of the Horace loan wasn’t done properly, so the trustee — LaSalle National Bank Association, now part of Bank of America (BAC) — couldn’t foreclose. In making that decision, the judge is the first to really address the issue, head-on: If a screwed-up securitization process meant a loan never got securitized, can a bank foreclose under the state versions of the Uniform Commercial Code anyway? This judge says no, finding that since the securitization was busted, the trust didn’t have the right to foreclose, period.”

EDITORIAL COMMENT: The fact that this case came from Alabama makes it all the more important to be watched and noted. Despite the reluctance of many Judges to give a free house to homeowners, this Judge picked up on the fact that the homeowner wasn’t getting a free house and that if he allowed the foreclosure it would have been the pretender lender getting the free house.

When it comes down to it, this really is simple: the trustee never got the loan. The asset-backed pool didn’t have it despite their claim to the contrary. Saying it doesn’t make so.

The Pooling and Service Agreement is very specific as to what can and cannot be done, it has an internal logic (the investors are expecting performing loans and are not authorizing acceptance of non-performing loans), and it specifies the manner in which the loan must be transferred. None of these things were e found in compliance. If you don’t get the deed then you don’t get the property. This is just common sense — a point disputed by securitizers who see an unparalleled opportunity to pick up trillions of dollars in homes that (a) belong to homeowners and (b) even if they were subject to foreclosure should be for the benefit of the people who put up the money — the investors who purchased bogus mortgage-backed securities.

The investors now easily recognize the invalidity of the liabilities, notes and mortgages and deed of trust, and the liability attached to wrongful foreclosure of invalid documents and making credit bids on property on which the creditor is not the bidder and has not been identified. This isn’t conspiracy theory stuff, this is application of Property 101, Contract 101, and Common sense as it has been applied in commercial and real estate transactions for hundreds of years in statutes and common law predating the creation of the United States and fully adopted by the U.S. when it came into existence.

THE CLAIM OF PRETENDER LENDERS (OR “TEMPORARY LENDERS” AS SOME WOULD CALL THEM) IS BOGUS. THE NOTE DOES NOT DESCRIBE THE TRANSACTION, WHICH TOOK PLACE BETWEEN THE BORROWER AND AN UNDISCLOSED LENDER UNDER TERMS NOT REVEALED IN THE LEGALLY REQUIRED DISCLOSURE DOCUMENTS, NOR EVEN IN THE PROMISSORY NOTE, MORTGAGE OR DEED OF TRUST. THERE IS NO CREDIBLE CLAIM TO THE MILLIONS OF FORECLOSED HOMES THAT ARE CURRENTLY HELD BY REO (BANK-OWNED) ENTITIES OR EVEN THIRD PARTIES. THE ORIGINAL HOMEOWNER STILL LEGALLY OWNS THE HOME AND FEW, IF ANY OF THE FORECLOSURES IN PROCESS OR PLANNED ARE OR EVER WILL BE VALID. THIS IS A FATAL DEFECT THAT MAKES PERFECT ECONOMIC SENSE CONSIDERING THE NUMBER OF TIMES THERE WAS PAYMENT IN PART OR IN FULL TO THE SECURITIZERS (WHO PROBABLY HAVE AGENCY RESPONSIBILITIES TO THE INVESTORS WHO ARE SUING THEM).

Court: Busted Securitization Prevents Foreclosure

By Abigail Field Posted 6:25PM 04/01/11 Columns, Bank of America, Real Estate

On March 30, an Alabama judge issued a short, conclusory order that stopped foreclosure on the home of a beleaguered family, and also prevents the same bank in the case from trying to foreclose against that couple, ever again. This may not seem like big news — but upon review of the underlying documents, the extraordinarily important nature of the decision and the case becomes obvious.

No Securitization, No Foreclosure

The couple involved, the Horaces, took out a predatory mortgage with Encore Credit Corp in November, 2005. Apparently Encore sold their loan to EMC Mortgage Corp, who then tried to securitize it in a Bear Stearns deal. If the securitization had been done properly, in February 2006 the trust created to hold the loans would have acquired the Horace loan. Once the Horaces defaulted, as they did in 2007, the trustee would have been able to foreclose on the Horaces.

And that’s why this case is so big: the judge found the securitization of the Horace loan wasn’t done properly, so the trustee — LaSalle National Bank Association, now part of Bank of America (BAC) — couldn’t foreclose. In making that decision, the judge is the first to really address the issue, head-on: If a screwed-up securitization process meant a loan never got securitized, can a bank foreclose under the state versions of the Uniform Commercial Code anyway? This judge says no, finding that since the securitization was busted, the trust didn’t have the right to foreclose, period.

Since the judge’s order doesn’t explain, how should people understand his decision? Luckily, the underlying documents make the judge’s decision obvious.

No Endorsements

The key contract creating the securitization is called a “Pooling and Servicing Agreement” (pooling as in creating a pool of mortgages, and servicing as in servicing those mortgages.) The PSA for the deal involving the Horace mortgage is here and has very specific requirements about how the trust can acquire loans. One of the easiest requirements to check is the way the loan’s promissory note is supposed to be endorsed — just look at the note.

According to Section 2.01 of the PSA, the note should have been endorsed from Encore to EMC to a Bear Stearns entity. At that point, Bear could either endorse the note specifically to the trustee, or endorse it “in blank.” But the note produced was simply endorsed in blank by Encore. As a result, the trust never got the Horace loan, explained securitization expert Tom Adams in his affidavit.

But wait, argued the bank, it doesn’t matter if if the trust owns the loan — it just has to be a “holder” under the Alabama version of the UCC (Uniform Commercial Code), and the trust is a holder. The problem with that argument is securitization trusts aren’t allowed to simply take property willy-nilly. In fact, to preserve their special tax status, they are forbidden from taking property after their cut-off dates, which in this case was February 28, 2006. As a result, if the trust doesn’t own the loan according to the PSA it can’t receive the proceeds of the foreclosure or the title to the home, even if it’s allowed to foreclose as a holder.

Holder Status Can’t Solve Standing Problem

Allowing a trust to foreclose based on holder status when it doesn’t own the loan would seem to create yet another type of clouded title issue. I mean, it’s absurd to say the trust foreclosed and took title as a matter of the UCC, but to also have it be true that the trust can’t take title as a matter of its own formational documents. And what would happen to the proceeds of the foreclosure sale? That’s why people making this type of argument keep pointing out that the UCC allows people to contract around it and PSAs are properly viewed as such a contracting around agreement.

I’m sure the bank’s side will claim the judge was wrong, that he disagreed with another recent Alabama case that’s been heavily covered, US Bank vs. Congress. And there is a superficial if flat disagreement: In this case, the judge said the Horaces were beneficiaries of the PSA and so could raise the issue of the loan’s ownership; in Congress the judge said the homeowners weren’t party to the PSA and so couldn’t raise the issue.

But as Adam Levitin explained, the Congress decision was procedurally weird, and as a result the PSA argument wasn’t about standing, as it was in Horace and generally would be in foreclosure cases (as opposed to eviction cases, like Congress). And what did happen to the Congress proceeds? How solid is that securitization trust’s tax status now anyway?

In short, in the only case I can find that has ruled squarely on the issue, a busted securitization prevents foreclosure by the trust that thinks it owns the loan. Yes, it’s just one case, and an Alabama trial level one at that. But it’s still significant.

Homeowners Right to Raise Securitization Issue

As far as right-to-raise-the-ownership issue, I think the Horace judge was just being “belt and suspenders” in finding the homeowners were beneficiaries of the PSA. Why do homeowners have to be beneficiaries of the PSA to raise the issue of the trust’s ownership of their loans? The homeowners aren’t trying to enforce the agreement, they’re simply trying to show the foreclosing trust doesn’t have standing. Standing is a threshold issue to any litigation and the homeowners axiomatically have the right to raise it.

As Nick Wooten, the Horaces’ attorney, said:

“This is just one example of hundreds I have seen where servicers were trying to force through a foreclosure in the name of a trust that clearly had no interest in the underlying loan according to the terms of the pooling and servicing agreement. This conduct is a fraud on the borrower, a fraud on the investors and a fraud on the court. Thankfully Judge Johnson recognized the utter failure of the securitization transaction and would not overlook the fact that the trust had no interest in this loan.”

All that remains for the Horaces, a couple with a special needs child and whose default was triggered not only by the predatory nature of the loan, but also by Mrs. Horace’s temporary illness and Mr. Horace’s loss of overtime, is to ask a jury to compensate them for the mental anguish caused by the wrongful foreclosure.

Perhaps BofA will just want to cut a check now, rather than wait for that verdict. (As of publication BofA had not returned a request for comment.)

No one is suggesting the Horaces get a free house; they still owe their debt, and whomever they owe it to has the right to foreclose on it. Wooten explained to me that the depositor –in this case, the Bear Stearns entity –i s probably that party. Moreover if the Horaces wanted to sell and move, they’d have to quiet title and would be wise to escrow the mortgage pay off amount, if that amount can be figured out. But for now the Horaces get some real peace, even if a larger mess remains.

Much Bigger Than A Single Foreclosure

The Horaces aren’t the only ones affected by the issues in this case.

Homeowners everywhere that are being foreclosed on by securitization trusts — many, many people — can start making these arguments. And if their loan’s PSA is like the Horaces, they should win. At least, Wooten hopes so:

“Judge Johnson stopped a fraud in progress. I am hopeful that other courts will consider more seriously the very serious issues that are easily obscured in the flood of foreclosures that are overwhelming our Courts and reject the systemic and ongoing fraud that is being perpetrated by the mortgage servicers. Until Courts actively push back against the massive documentary fraud being shoveled at them by mortgage servicers this fraudulent conduct will not end.”

The issues stretch past homeowners to investors, too.

Investors in this particular mortgage-backed security, take note: What are the odds that the Horace note is the only one that wasn’t properly endorsed? I’d say nil, and not just because evidence in other cases, such as Kemp from New Jersey, suggests the practice was common. This securitization deal was done by Bear Stearns, which other litigation reveals was far from careful with its securitizations. So the original investors in this deal should speed dial their lawyers.

And investors in bubble-vintage mortgage backed securities, the ones that went from AAA gold to junk overnight, might want to call their attorneys too; this deal was in 2006, and in the securitization frenzy that followed processes can only have gotten worse.

Some investors are already suing, but the cases are at very early stages. Nonetheless, as cases like the Horaces’ come to light, the odds seem to tilt in investors’ favor — meaning they seem increasingly likely to ultimately succeed in forcing banks to buy back securities or pay damages for securities fraud connected with their sale. And that makes the Bank Bailout II scenario detailed by the Congressional Oversight Panel more possible.

The final, very striking feature of this case is what didn’t happen: No piece of paper covered in the proper endorsements –an allonge — magically appeared at the eleventh hour. The magical appearance of endorsements, whether on notes or on allonges, has been a hallmark of foreclosures done in the robosigning era. And investors, as you pursue your suits based on busted securitizations, that’s something to watch out for.

My, but the banks made a mess when they forced the fee-machine of mortgage securitizations into overdrive. The consequences are still unfolding, but one consequence just might be a whole lot of properties that securitization trusts can’t foreclose on.

See full article from DailyFinance: http://srph.it/fN0piz

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IBANEZ: HUGE WIN FOR BORROWERS IN MASSACHUSETTS (NON-JUDICIAL STATE) HIGH COURT

Posted on January 7, 2011 by Neil Garfield

COMBO Title and Securitization Search, Report, Documents, Analysis & Commentary COMBO Title and Securitization Search, Report, Documents, Analysis & Commentary

READ FULL DECISION HERE—-> MA S Ct 1-7-11 usbank

see ibanez-decision-analyzed

see CNN Report and Video

NOTABLE QUOTES:

“Where, as here, mortgage loans are pooled together in a trust and converted into mortgage-backed securities, the underlying promissory notes serve as financial instruments generating a potential income stream for investors, but the mortgages securing these notes are still legal title to someone’s home or farm and must be treated as such.” (e.s.)

“The executed agreement that assigns the pool of mortgages, with a schedule of the pooled mortgage loans that clearly and specifically identifies the mortgage at issue as among those assigned, may suffice to establish the trustee as the mortgage holder,” Gants wrote. “However, there must be proof that the assignment was made by a party that itself held the mortgage.“

“ The PPM, however, described the trust agreement as an agreement to be executed in the future, so it only furnished evidence of an intent to assign mortgages to U.S. Bank, not proof of their actual assignment. Even if there were an executed trust agreement with language of present assignment, U.S. Bank did not produce the schedule of loans and mortgages that was an exhibit to that agreement, so it failed to show that the Ibanez mortgage was among the mortgages to be assigned by that agreement. Finally, even if there were an executed trust agreement with the required schedule, U.S. Bank failed to furnish any evidence that the entity assigning the mortgage–Structured Asset Securities Corporation–ever held the mortgage to be assigned.”

Courts in other U.S. states are considering similar cases, and all 50 state attorneys general are examining whether lenders are forcing people out of their homes improperly.

Friday’s decision may also threaten banks’ ability to package mortgages into securities, including whether loans that were transferred improperly might need to be bought back.

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EDITOR’S COMMENT: I TOLD YOU SO!!!! This decision was inevitable. The Banks believed their political clout would outweigh the third branch of government — the judiciary — and it just doesn’t work that way. Not here in the USA.

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Top Massachusetts court rules against foreclosing banks

By Jonathan Stempel and Dena Aubin

NEW YORK | Fri Jan 7, 2011 1:10pm EST

NEW YORK (Reuters) – In a ruling that may affect foreclosures nationwide, Massachusetts’ highest court voided the seizure of two homes by Wells Fargo & Co and US Bancorp after the banks failed to show they held the mortgages at the time they foreclosed.

Bank shares fell, dragging down the broader U.S. stock market, after the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts on Friday issued its decision, which upheld a lower court ruling.

The decision is among the earliest to address the validity of foreclosures conducted without full documentation. That issue last year prompted an uproar that led lenders such as Bank of America Corp, JPMorgan Chase & Co and Ally Financial Inc to temporarily stop seizing homes.

Courts in other U.S. states are considering similar cases, and all 50 state attorneys general are examining whether lenders are forcing people out of their homes improperly.

Friday’s decision may also threaten banks’ ability to package mortgages into securities, including whether loans that were transferred improperly might need to be bought back.

Wells Fargo and U.S. Bancorp lacked authority to foreclose after having “failed to make the required showing that they were the holders of the mortgages at the time of foreclosure,” Justice Ralph Gants wrote for a unanimous court.

Wells Fargo was not immediately available for comment. U.S. Bancorp spokesman Steve Dale said the ruling has no financial impact on the bank, which has “no responsibility for the terms of the underlying mortgage or the procedure by which they were transferred” into a mortgage trust.

“What they were doing was peddling these mortgages and leaving the paperwork behind,” said Michael Pill, a partner at Green, Miles, Lipton & Fitz-Gibbon LLP in Northampton, Massachusetts, who represents homeowners and is not involved in the case.

In early afternoon trading, Wells Fargo shares were down nearly 4 percent at $30.92, while U.S. Bancorp was down 1.4 percent at $25.93.

Bank of America stock was down 2.8 percent, JPMorgan fell 3.7 percent, and the KBW Bank Index, which includes all four lenders, was down 2.3 percent. Major U.S. stock indexes were down 0.6 percent to 0.8 percent.

‘UTTER CARELESSNESS’

In the Massachusetts case, U.S. Bancorp and Wells Fargo had said they controlled through different trusts the respective mortgages of Antonio Ibanez as well as Mark and Tammy LaRace, who lost their homes to foreclosure in 2007.

The banks bought the homes in foreclosure, and sought court orders confirming they had title. A lower court judge ruled against them, and Friday’s decision upheld this ruling.

In a concurring opinion, Justice Robert Cordy lambasted “the utter carelessness” that Wells Fargo and US Bancorp demonstrated in documenting their right to own the properties.

Massachusetts is one of 27 U.S. states that do not require court approval to foreclose.

Gants did suggest in his opinion how banks might properly transfer mortgages via securitization trusts.

“The executed agreement that assigns the pool of mortgages, with a schedule of the pooled mortgage loans that clearly and specifically identifies the mortgage at issue as among those assigned, may suffice to establish the trustee as the mortgage holder,” Gants wrote. “However, there must be proof that the assignment was made by a party that itself held the mortgage.”

The cases are U.S. Bank N.A. v. Ibanez and Wells Fargo Bank NA v. LaRace et al, Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, No. SJC-10694.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel and Dena Aubin; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn and Matthew Lewis)

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