“Conversion” of the Note to a Bond Leaves Confusion in the Courts

Posted on May 21, 2013 by Neil Garfield
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Brent Bentrim, a regular contributor to the dialogue, posed a question.

I am having some trouble following this.  The note cannot be converted any more than when a stock is purchased by a mutual fund (trust) it becomes a mutual fund share.

You’re close and I understand where you seem to be going…ie, the loans were serviced not based on the note and closing documents, but on the PSA.  What I do not understand is the assumption that the note was converted.  From a security standpoint, it cannot.

You are right. When I say it was “converted” I mean in the lay sense rather a legal one. Of course it cannot be converted without the borrower signing. That is the point. But the treatment of the debt was as if it had been converted and that is where the problem lies for the Courts — hence the diametrically opposed appellate decisions in GA and MA. Once you have pinned down the opposing side to say they are relying on the PSA for their authority to bring the foreclosure action, and relying on the “assignment” without value, the issue shifts —- because the PSA and prospectus have vastly different terms for repayment of interest and principal than the note signed by the borrower.There are also different parties. The investor gets a bond from a special purpose vehicle under the assumption that the money deposited with the investment bank goes to the SPV and the SPV then buys the mortgage or funds the origination. In that scenario the payee on the note would either be the SPV or the originator. But it can’t be the originator if the originator did not fulfill its part of the bargain by funding the loan. And there is no disclosure as to the presence of other parties in the securitization chain much less the compensation they received contrary to Federal Law. (TILA).

Under the terms of the PSA and prospectus the expectation of the investor was that the investment was insured and hedged. That is one of the places where there is a break in the chain — the insurance is not made payable to either the SPV or the investors. Instead it is paid to the investment bank that merely created the entities and served as a depository institution or intermediary for the funds. The investment bank takes the position that such money is payable to them as profit in proprietary trading, which is ridiculous. They cannot take the position that they are agents of the creditor for purposes of foreclosure and then take the position that they were not agents of the investors when the money came in from insurance and credit default swaps.

Even under the actual money trail scenario the same holds true — they were acting as agents of the principal, albeit violating the terms of the “lender” agreement with the investors. Here is where another break occurred. Instead of funding the SPV, the investment bank held all investor money in a commingled undifferentiated mega account and the SPV never even had any account or signatory on any account in which money was placed.

Hence the SPV cannot be said to have purchased the loan because it lacked the funding to do it. The banks want to say that when they funded the origination or acquisition of the loan they were doing so under the PSA and prospectus. But that would only be true if they were following the provisions and terms of those instruments, which they were not. The banks funded the acquisition of loans directly with investor money instead of through the SPV, hence the tax exempt claims of the SPV’s are false and the tax effects on the investors could be far different — especially when you consider the fact that the mega suspense account in the investment bank had funds from many other investors who also thought they were investing in many different SPVs.

The reality of the money trail scenario is that the SPV can’t be the owner of the note or the owner of the mortgage because there simply was no transaction in which money or other consideration changed hands between the SPV and any other party. The same holds true for all the parties is the false securitization trail — no money was involved in the assignments. Thus it was not a commercial transaction creating a negotiable instrument.

In both scenarios the debt was created merely by the receipt of money that is presumed not to be gift. The question is whether the note, the bond or both should be used to re-structure the loan and determine the amount of interest, principal, if any that is left to pay.

The further question is if the originator did not loan any money, how can the recording of a mortgage have been proper to secure a debt that did not exist in favor of the secured party named on the mortgage or deed of trust?
And if the lender is determined by the actual money trail then the lenders consist of a group of investors, all of whom had money deposited in the account from which the acquisition of the loan was funded. And despite investment bank claims to the contrary, there is no evidence that there was any attempt to actually segregate funds based upon the PSA and prospectus. So the pool of investors consists of all investors in all SPVs rather just one — a factor that changes the income and tax status of each investor because now they are in a common law general partnership.

Thus the “conversion” language I have used, is merely shorthand to describe a far more complex process in which the written instruments were ignored, more written instruments were fabricated based upon nonexistent transactions, and no documentation was provided to the investors who were the real lenders. That leaves a common law debt that is undocumented by any promissory note or any secured interest in the property because the recorded mortgage or deed of trust was filed under false pretenses and hence was never perfected.

The conversion factor comes back in when you think about what a Judge might be able to do with this. Having none of the documentation naming and protecting the investors to document or secure the loan, the Judge must enter judgment either for the whole amount due, if any (after deductions for insurance and credit default swap proceeds) or in some payment plan.

If the Judge refers to the flawed documentation, he or she must consider the interests and expectation s of both the lender (investors) and the borrower, which means by definition that he must refer back to the prospectus and PSA as well as the promissory note.
The interesting thing about all this is that homeowners are of course willing to sign new mortgages that reflect the economic reality of the value of their homes, and the principal balance due, as well as money that continued to be paid to the creditor by the same same servicer that declared the default (and was therefore curing the default with each payment to the creditor).
The only question left is where did the money come from that was paid to the creditor after the homeowner stopped making payments and does that further complicate the matter by adding parties who might have an unsecured right of contribution against the borrower for money  advanced advanced by an intermediary sub servicer thereby converting the debt (or that part that was paid by the subservicer from funds other than the borrower) from any claim to being secured to a potential unsecured right of contribution from the borrower.
To that extent the servicer should admit that it is suing on its behalf for the unsecured portion of the loan on which it advanced payments, and for the secured portion they claim is due to other parties. They obviously don’t want to do that because it would focus attention on the actual accounting, posting and bookkeeping for actual transfers or payments of money. The focus on reality could be devastating to the banks and reveal liabilities and reduction of claimed assets on their balance sheets that would cause them to be broken up. They are counting on the fact that not too many people will understand enough of what is contained in this post. So far it seems to be working for them.Remember that as to the insurance and credit default swaps there are express waivers of subrogation or any right to seek collection from the borrowers in the mortgages. The issue arises because the bonds were insured and thus the underlying mortgage payments were insured — a fact that played out in the real world where payments continued being made to creditors who were advancing money for “investment” in bogus mortgage bonds. This leaves only the equitable powers of the court to fashion a remedy, perhaps by agreement between the parties by which the lenders are made parties to the action and the borrowers are of course parties to the action but he servicers are left out of the mix because they have an interest in continuing the farce rather than seeing it settled, because they are receiving fees and picking up property for free (credit bids from non-creditors).

This is precisely the point that the courts are missing. By looking at the paperwork first and disregarding the actual money trail they are going down a rabbit hole neatly prepared for them by the banks. If there was no commercial transaction then the UCC doesn’t apply and neither do any presumptions of ownership, right to enforce etc.

The question of “ownership” of the note and mortgage are a distraction from the fact that neither the note or the mortgage tells the whole story of the transaction. The actions of the participants and the real movement of money governs every transaction.

Whether the courts will recognize the conversion factor or something similar remains to be seen. But it is obvious that the confusion in the courts relates directly to their ignorance of the the fact that the actual money transaction is not brought to their attention or they are ignoring it out of pure confusion as to what law to apply.

Now UCC Me, Now You Don’t: The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Ignores the UCC in Requiring Unity of Note and Mortgage for Foreclosure in Eaton v. Fannie Mae
http://4closurefraud.org/2013/05/20/now-ucc-me-now-you-dont-the-massachusetts-supreme-judicial-court-ignores-the-ucc-in-requiring-unity-of-note-and-mortgage-for-foreclosure-in-eaton-v-fannie-mae/

High court rules in favor of bank in Suwanee foreclosure case
http://www.gwinnettdailypost.com/news/2013/may/20/high-court-rules-in-favor-of-bank-in-suwanee/

Wells Fargo slows foreclosure sales, BofA not so much
http://www.bizjournals.com/orlando/morning_call/2013/05/wells-fargo-slows-foreclosure-sales.html

Filed under: CDO, CORRUPTION, foreclosure, GARFIELD GWALTNEY KELLEY AND WHITE, GTC | Honor, Investor, Mortgage, securities fraud | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , | 39 Comments »

Deny and Discover Strategy Working

Posted on September 20, 2012 by Neil Garfield

For representation in South Florida, where I am both licensed and familiar with the courts and Judges, call 520-405-1688. If you live in another state we provide direct support to attorneys. call the same number.

Having watched botched cases work their way to losing conclusions and knowing there is a better way, I have been getting more involved in individual cases — pleading, memos, motions, strategies and tactics — and we are already seeing some good results. Getting into discovery levels the playing field and forces the other side to put up or shut up. Since they can’t put up, they must shut up.

If you start with the premise that the original mortgage was defective for the primary reason that it was unfunded by the payee on the note, the party identified as “Lender” or the mortgagee or beneficiary, we are denying the transaction, denying the signature where possible (or pleading that the signature was procured by fraud), and thus denying that any “transfer” afterwards could not have conveyed any more than what the “originator” had, which is nothing.

This is not a new concept. Investors are suing the investment banks saying exactly what we have been saying on these pages — that the origination process was fatally defective, the notes and mortgages unenforceable and the predatory lending practices lowering the value of even being a “lender.”

We’ve see hostile judges turn on the banks and rule for the homeowner thus getting past motions to lift stay, motions to dismiss and motions for summary judgment in the last week.

The best line we have been using is “Judge, if you were lending the money wouldn’t you want YOUR name on the note and mortgage?” Getting the wire transfer instructions often is the kiss of death for the banks because the originator of the wire transfer is not the payee and the instructions do not say that this is for benefit of the “originator.”

As far as I can tell there is no legal definition of “originator.” It is one step DOWN from mortgage broker whose name should also not be on the note or mortgage. An originator is a salesman, and if you look behind the scenes at SEC filings or other regulatory filings you will see your “lender” identified not as a lender, which is what they told you, but as an originator. That means they were a placeholder or nominee just like the MERS situation.

TILA and Regulation Z make it clear that even if there was nexus of connection between the source of funds and the originator, it would till be an improper predatory table-funded loan where the borrower was denied the disclosure and information to know and choose the source of a loan, thus enabling consumers to shop around.

In order of importance, we are demanding through subpoena duces tecum, that parties involved in the fake securitization chain come for examination of the wire transfer, check, ACH or other money transfer showing the original funding of the loan and any other money transactions in which the loan was involved INCLUDING but not limited to transactions with or for the fake pool of mortgages that seems to always be empty with no bank account, no trustee account, and no actual trustee with any powers. These transactions don’t exist. The red herring is that the money showed up at closing which led everyone to the mistaken conclusion that the originator made the loan.

Second we ask for the accounting records showing the establishment on the books and records of the originator, and any assignees, of a loan receivable together with the name and address of the bookkeeper and the auditing firm for that entity. No such entries exist because the loan receivable was converted into a bond receivable, but he bond was worthless because it was based on an empty pool.

And third we ask for the documentation, correspondence and all other communications between the originator and the closing agent and between each “assignor” and “assignee” which, as we have seen they are only too happy to fabricate and produce. But the documentation is NOT supported by underlying transactions where money exchanged hands.

The net goals are to attack the mortgage as not having been perfected because the transaction was and remains incomplete as recited in the note, mortgage and other “closing” documents. The “lender” never fulfilled their part of the bargain — loaning the money. Hence the mortgage secures an obligation that does not exist. The note is then attacked as being fatally defective partly because the names were used as nominees leaving the borrower with nobody to talk to about the loan status — there being a nominee payee, nominee lender, and nominee mortgagee or beneficiary.

The other part, just as serious is that the terms of repayment on the note do NOT match up to the terms agreed upon with the institutional investors that purchased mortgage bonds to which the borrower was NOT a party and did not issue. Hence the basic tenets of contract law — offer, acceptance and consideration are all missing.

The Deny and Discover strategy is better because it attacks the root of the transaction and enables the borrower to deny everything the forecloser is trying to put over on the Court with the appearance of reality but nothing to back it up.

The attacks on the foreclosers based upon faulty or fraudulent or even forged documentation make for interesting reading but if in the final analysis the borrower is admitting the loan, admitting the note and mortgage, admitting the default then all the other stuff leads a Judge to conclude that there is error in the ways of the banks but no harm because they were entitled to foreclose anyway.

People are getting on board with this strategy and they have the support from an unlikely source — the investors who thought they were purchasing mortgage bonds with value instead of a sham bond based upon an empty pool with no money and no assets and no loans. Their allegation of damages is based upon the fact that despite the provisions of the pooling and servicing agreement, the prospectus and their reasonable expectations, that the closings were defective, the underwriting was defective and that there is no way to legally enforce the notes and mortgages, notwithstanding the fact that so many foreclosures have been allowed to proceed.

Call 520-405-1688 for customer service and you will get guidance on how to get help.

  1. Do we agree that creditors should be paid only once?
  2. Do we agree that pretending to borrow money for mortgages sand then using it at the race track is wrong?
  3. Do we agree that if the lender and the borrower sign two different documents each containing different terms, they don’t have a deal?
  4. Can we agree that if you were lending money you would want your name on the note and mortgage and not someone else’s?
  5. Can we agree that banks who loaned nothing and bought nothing should be worth nothing when the chips are counted in mortgage assets?

 

Filed under: bubble, CDO, CORRUPTION, currency, Eviction, foreclosure, GTC | Honor, Investor, Mortgage, securities fraud | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 39 Comments »

Appraisal Fraud: Triaxx Inching Toward the Truth

Posted on September 9, 2012 by Neil Garfield

Editor’s Comment: At the heart of the entire scam called securitization was the abandonment — in fact the avoidance of repayment of the loans. The idea was to make bigger and bigger loans without due any evidence of due diligence, so that the “lender” could claim plausible deniability and more importantly, make a claim for losses that were insured many times over. It was the perfect storm. Banks were using investor money to make bad loans on which the banks were raking in huge profits through multiple sales or insurance of the same loan portfolio. The only way the plan could fail was if the loans performed and the loan was in fact repaid.

For years, I have been pounding on the fact that the root of the method used was appraisal fraud, which as far as I can tell was present in nearly 100% of all loans subject to securitization, where loans were NOT bundled, and the securitization documents were ignored.

Now ICP Capital managing a vehicle called Triaxx, has countered the mountain of documents with real data sifted through algorithms on computers and they have come to the conclusion that loans were far outside the 80% LTV ratio that was presented to investors, that loans were never paid from the start (not even the first payment) and that probability of repayment was about zero on many loans. Soon, with some tweaking and investigation they will discover that repayment was never in the equation.

Thanks again to the learning curve of Gretchen Morgenson of the New York Times and her excellent investigations and articulation of her findings, we are all catching up with the BIG LIE. Banks made loans to lose money because they the money they were losing was the money of investors — pension funds etc. And at the same time they bet against the loans that were guaranteed to fail and put the money in their own pockets.

In classic PONZI scheme methodology, they used the continuing sales of false mortgage bonds to pay investors until the inevitable collapse.

Once this is established 2 things are inevitable — the investors will prove their case that they the mortgage bonds were fabricated and based upon lies, deceit and cheating.

And the other inevitable conclusion is that the money came from the investors and not from the named payee, lender or secured party on the notes and mortgages that were executed in the tens of millions during the mortgage meltdown decade.

But did the investor money come to the closing through the REMIC? The answer appears to be a big fat “NO” based upon a big fat LIE. And THAT is where the problem is that caused the banks and servicer to fabricate, forge, robo-sign, lie, cheat and steal in court the same way they did when they sold the investors and sold the borrowers on a deal doomed from inception.

Legally and practically all that means that the borrowers were equally defrauded by the false appraisals that are legally the representation of the “lender” not the borrower. But even more importantly it means that Wall Street cannot show that the money for funding or purchase of the loans ever actually came from the investment pools.

It turns out that the Wall Street was telling the truth when it denied the existence of the pools and the switched to a lie which we forced on them because it never occurred to us that they would blatantly cheat huge institutions that could do their own digging and litigating. 

The legal and accounting effect of all this is enormous. The Payees, Lenders and Secured Parties named in the closing were not the source of funding and therefore the documents that were signed must be construed as referring to a transaction that has never been completed because it was never funded.

The deception was complete when Wall Street investment bankers sent money down to closing agents without regard to any pool, REMIC, SPV or other specific collection of investors. The funding arrived from Wall Street a the same time as the papers were signed.

But in order to prevent allegations of false appraisals and predatory and deceptive lending from moving up the ladder, Wall Street made sure that there was NO CONNECTION between the PAYEE, LENDER or SECURED PARTY and either the investment bank or the so-called unfunded pool into which no assets were placed other than the occasional purchase or sale of a credit default swap.

FREE HOUSE?: As Arthur Meyer is fond of pointing out in his history of banking every 5 years, bankers always manage to step on a rake. The banks had severed the connection between the funding and the documents.

If the court follows the documents a windfall goes to someone in the alleged securitization documents WHO HAS ALREADY BEEN PAID.

If he follows the money, the loan is not secured by a perfected mortgage lien, which means that (1) the unsecured debt can be wiped out in its entirety by bankruptcy AND/or (2) with investors slow on the uptake, there might not be a creditor left to make a claim.

THE ULTIMATE AND RIGHT APPROACH TO PRINCIPAL REDUCTION: But as pointed out previously, there is a Tax liability that would put the federal, state and local budgets back in balance due from homeowners who got their “free house.” It would be a small fraction of the balance claimed on the original loan, but it would reflect the real valuation of the house, the real terms that should have applied, and a deduction for the predatory and deceptive lending practices employed.

BOA ET AL DEATHWATCH: The political third rail here is that 5-6 million homeowners might well have a right to return to their old homes with no mortgage — an event that would put our economy on steroids, end joblessness and crush the mega banks whose accounting and reporting to the SEC and shareholders has omitted the huge contingent liability to pay back the ill-gotten funds from reselling the same portfolio AS THEIR OWN  loans dozens of times.

Too Big to Fail may well be amended to “Too Fat to Jail”, a notion with historical traction even in our own society corrupted by money, influence peddling and lying politicians.

See Gretchen Morgenson’s Article at How to Find the Weeds in the Mortgage Pool

How to Find Weeds in a Mortgage Pool
By GRETCHEN MORGENSON, NY Times

IT sounds like the Domesday Book of the housing bust. In fact, it is a computerized compendium of millions of housing transactions — a decade’s worth from across the country — that could finally help us get to the bottom of troubled mortgage investments.

The system is an outgrowth of work done by a New York investment manager, Thomas Priore. In the boom years, his investment firm, ICP Capital, navigated the dangerous waters of collateralized debt obligations via an investment vehicle called Triaxx. Buyers of Triaxx C.D.O.’s did better than most, but Triaxx still incurred losses when the bottom fell out.

Now Triaxx’s database could help its managers and other investors identify bad mortgages and, perhaps, learn who snookered whom when questionable home loans were bundled into investments that later went bad.

Triaxx’s technology came to light only last month, in court documents filed in connection with the bankruptcy of Residential Capital. ResCap was the mortgage lending unit of GMAC, now known as Ally Financial. As an investor in mortgage securities, Triaxx gained access to a lot of information about loans that were pooled, including when those loans were made, where the properties are and how big the mortgage was, relative to the property’s value. After Triaxx fed such details into its system, dubious loans popped out.

Granted, Mr. Priore is no stranger to controversy. He and ICP spent two years defending themselves against a lawsuit by the Securities and Exchange Commission, which accused them of improperly generating “tens of millions of dollars in fees and undisclosed profits at the expense of clients and investors.” On Friday, ICP and Mr. Priore settled the matter. As is typical in such cases, they neither admitted nor denied the accusations. Mr. Priore paid $1.5 million. He declined to discuss the settlement.

But he did say that, looking ahead, he believed that Triaxx’s technology would help its investors recover money they deserved. Many other investors, unable or unwilling to dig through such data, have settled for pennies on the dollar.

“Our hope is that the technology will level the playing field for mortgage-backed investors and provide a superior method to manage residential mortgage risk in the future,” Mr. Priore said.

A step in that direction is Triaxx’s recent objection to a proposed settlement struck last May between ResCap and a group of large mortgage investors. Triaxx, which invested in mortgage loans originated by ResCap, criticized that settlement because it was based in part on estimated losses. Triaxx said the estimates had assumed that all the trusts that invested in ResCap paper were the same. Triaxx argued that a settlement based on estimated losses, rather than one based on an analysis of actual misrepresentations, unfairly rewards investors who bought ResCap’s riskier mortgages.

ResCap replied that it would be a herculean task to examine the loans in the trusts to determine the validity of each investor’s claims. But Triaxx noted that it took only seven weeks or so to do a forensic analysis of the roughly 20,000 loans held by the trusts in which it is an investor. Of its investments in loans with an original balance of $12.8 billion, Triaxx has identified approximately $2.17 billion with likely breaches. A lawyer for ResCap did not return a phone call on Friday seeking comment about problem loans.

John G. Moon, a lawyer at Miller & Wrubel who represents Mr. Priore’s firm, said: “Large institutions have been able to hide behind the expense of loan file review to evade responsibility for this very important national problem that we now have. Using years of data and cross-referencing it, Triaxx has figured out where the bad loans are.”

Triaxx, for example, said it had found loans that probably involved inflated appraisals. Those appraisals led to mortgages far exceeding the values of the underlying properties. As a result, investors who thought they were buying mortgages that didn’t exceed 80 percent of the properties’ value were instead buying highly risky loans that totaled well over 100 percent of the value.

Triaxx identifies these loans by analyzing 50 property sales in the same vicinity during the same period that the original mortgage was given. Then it compares the specific mortgage to 10 others that are most similar. The comparable transactions must involve the same type of property — a single-family home, for example — of roughly the same size. They must also be within a 5.5-mile radius. If the appraisal appears excessive, the system flags it.

Phony appraisals in its ResCap loans likely resulted in $1.29 billion in breaches, Triaxx told the court. Triaxx cited 50 possible cases; one involved a mortgage written in November 2006 on a home in Miami. It was a 1,036-square-foot single-family residence, and was appraised at $495,000. That appraisal supported a $396,000 mortgage, reflecting a relatively conservative 80 percent loan-to-value ratio.

But an analysis of 10 similar sales around that time suggested that the property was actually worth about $279,000. If that was indeed the case, that $396,000 mortgage represented a 142 percent loan-to-value ratio.

Perhaps the home had gold-plated bathroom fixtures and diamond-encrusted appliances. Probably not.

Triaxx’s system also points to loans on properties that were not owner-occupied, a breach of what investors were told would be in the pool when they bought it, Triaxx’s filing said. Such misrepresentations in loans underwritten by ResCap amounted to $352 million, Triaxx said.

The technology also kicks out mortgages on which borrowers failed to make even their first payments, loans that should never have wound up in the pools to begin with.

Although Triaxx is using its technology to try to recover losses, that system could also help investors looking to buy privately issued mortgage securities. After all, investors’ inability to analyze the loans in these pools during the mania led to enormous losses in the collapse. Now, deeply mistrustful of such securities, investors have pretty much abandoned the market.

Lenders and packagers of mortgage securities will undoubtedly fight the use of any technology like Triaxx’s to identify questionable loans. That battle will be interesting to watch. But investors should certainly welcome anything that brings transparency to this dysfunctional market.

Filed under: bubble, CDO, CORRUPTION, currency, Eviction, foreclosure, GTC | Honor, Investor, Mortgage, securities fraud | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 11 Comments »

THE QUESTION NOBODY IS ASKING

Posted on March 11, 2011 by Neil Garfield

COMBO Title and Securitization Search, Report, Documents, Analysis & Commentary COMBO TITLE AND SECURITIZATION SEARCH, REPORT, ANALYSIS ON LUMINAQ

EDITOR’S ANALYSIS: WHAT IS THE EFFECT OF TRADING, BUYBACKS, RECONSTITUTED “TRUSTS” ON THE CLAIMS OF “OWNERSHIP” OF THE LOANS?”

Up in the clouds of finance and trading desks they are creating accounting entries indicating transfers of mortgage backed bonds. AIG announced it is “buying back” $17 billion worth of the worthless stuff. Industry insiders estimate that more than 50% of all Special Purpose Vehicles (SPV) have been “reconstituted” into new vehicles and sold again. And then you have “trading” as investors purchase and sell MBS speculating on their eventual value, which I contend is zero.

Meanwhile on the ground, 7 million foreclosure sales have been conducted at auctions at the behest of people and parties who claim they have the right to foreclose. The only way that could be true is if they are the lender or creditor or they have acquired the receivable without conditions or other provisions. But we all know that the trading activity, bailouts, insurance, credit default swaps, and other third party transactions either paid the obligation, or transferred it. In the case of AIG, who insured MBS values, and the contracts written for credit default swaps, they specifically waived the right to subrogation, so they obviously didn’t buy the MBS or the SPV, they simply paid the liability.

Yet in courts and non-judicial proceedings, “foreclosures” have been conducted as though they are real, even though the highest probability is that the claimant is not in the least related to the loan or the purchase of the loan, and the party for whom they claim the position as “agent” has long since been dissolved or has transferred its claims to interests in the loans.

Then, to top matters off, somebody, not necessarily the party that started or ordered the foreclosure, makes a “credit bid” at the foreclosure auction. This means that instead of paying cash for the house they use a piece of paper that says they are the creditor, when everyone knows that at the very least they are not and never were in the position of a creditor because they neither loaned any money nor purchased any receivables with actual money. They were appointed by unnamed authorities to start the foreclosures and “bid” on the property like mobsters order hits through intermediaries so they can’t be charged with murder.

The fact remains that the shell game on the ground, in the court system is merely a reflection of the shell game in the clouds where they are pretending that the MBS actually are backed by loans even though the borrower never agreed to the terms that the investor received when they advanced the money. It is also true that the investor never agreed to the terms of the loans that were funded or the manner in which they were executed, and that transfer of the loans, in any form, were never made.

So why are we pretending that we know who owns the loan and that the documents proffered are accurate representations of the funded loans? Why are we pretending that the credit bid is valid and why are we pretending that the claims of foul predatory lending, along with investors’ claims of predatory proprietary trading by investment houses are “irrelevant.” The answer can only be that when somebody is paid not to see something they don’t see it. When their job depends upon them being ignorant of the facts, then they know nothing. And that is why we have this huge market of predatory loans and predatory foreclosures by people who are knowingly committing fraud on the homeowners and investors — from the ground up to the sky.

For example: There were several “Maiden Lane” entities named for a small street dating back 200 years right off Wall Street. These were created during the bailouts and other chicanery to create the impression that the mega banks were in stable condition. These Maiden Lane Entities were said to own the mortgage-backed securities, which is to say, they were now in the position of the “lender” on loans that were funded to homeowners.

How they came to own those loans is a mystery because there is no document in any public record that effectuates the transfer but it has been widely announced, thus giving actual notice to anyone who is involved with those loans that any particular loan can and probable was the subject of some sort of transfer. None of these entities ever show in foreclosure proceedings, nor do you ever see AIG, the U.S. Treasury, or the investment houses, some of whom were stuck with MBS that had not quite made it to sale.

Now here is the kicker — The price, although not publicly disclosed yet, is 100 cents on the dollar — on securities of no value or if you want to twist things around, on securities of at best dubious value. Why would they do that, what assets are they buying, and what is the effect on foreclosures of loans held in those “portfolios”? DEFINE THE ASSET!!

LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL

NY Times

A.I.G. Offers to Buy Back Securities for $15.7 Billion

By MICHAEL J. DE LA MERCED

9:12 a.m. | Updated with New York Fed statement

The American International Group offered on Thursday to pay $15.7 billion to buy back mortgage securities held in an investment fund set up as part of its huge government bailout.

The move is intended to further simplify what remains of the rescue package granted to A.I.G., the insurance company, before it begins selling off the government’s 92.1 percent stake in an offering that will probably be held in May.

Under the offer, outlined in a letter A.I.G. sent on Thursday, it would buy back securities held in an investment fund financed primarily by a loan from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

That vehicle, known as Maiden Lane II, originally held about $30 billion worth of securities, though its portfolio value now stands at $15.9 billion. Through principal and interest payments from the securities’ underlying mortgages, the balance of the New York Fed’s loan to the fund has fallen to $13.2 billion from $19.5 billion.

It was set up to buy securities that A.I.G. had acquired through a subsidiary that lends stocks owned by the insurer to other investors for purposes like short-selling. While stock-lending businesses normally invest in safe instruments like Treasury securities, A.I.G.’s unit invested in higher-yielding mortgage-backed securities — which soured as the housing market collapsed, costing A.I.G. money.

To pay for the transaction, A.I.G. will draw upon cash held in its insurance subsidiaries, which would then hold the securities and profit from the coupons they pay out. The company said it believed that the securities would actually generate more income than the low-yield investments those subsidiaries hold, said a person with direct knowledge of the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.

A.I.G. is offering to buy the securities at an average of 50 cents on the dollar, this person added.

A.I.G. consulted credit ratings agencies to ensure that taking on the securities would not substantially affect its debt ratings, the letter said. In the letter, A.I.G.’s chief executive, Robert H. Benmosche, said the New York Federal Reserve would reap a $1.5 billion profit on the loan it made to Maiden Lane II.

Jeffrey Smith, a spokesman for the New York Fed, declined to comment.

Update: The Federal Reserve Bank of New York said in a statement:

The Federal Reserve has received a formal offer from AIG to purchase the assets in Maiden Lane II, LLC (MLII). The Fed has been aware of AIG’s interest in those assets for some time. Any decision on a possible disposition of these assets will be made in a way that maximizes the proceeds to the taxpayer and that is consistent with the goal of fostering financial stability.

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Shareholders Sue Goldman, Blankfein Confirming Trusts Do NOT Own the Loans

Posted on April 27, 2010 by Neil Garfield
Leo II
bgitt47@verizon.net
Editor’s Note: I believe Leo is right. These suits allege that the SPV do not own the loan portfolios. They also allege directly that the Trust Assets included insurance — payments from credit default swaps.

Two revealing lawsuits filed against Goldman-Sachs that I believe further support arguments that most, if not all Subprime securitized Notes that went into default should be considered as satisfied by virtue of default and the ensuing payment to holders of the Credit Default Swaps (Puts) created for each such Note.

And then there’s the issue of TARP funds, ($10 billion of which went to Goldman-Sachs alone), which, along with the CDO payments should have been utilized to compensate the investors who purchased the Notes

All of which, taken as a whole, lends support to the assertion that the Notes are Satisfied..

All that remans is for the Courts to order firms like Goldman-Sachs to distribute the money to the investors, declare satisfaction of the underlying Notes and Order the quiting of the titles securing said Notes.

Agree? Disagree?

http://solari.com/blog/articles/2010/Goldman-Rosinek_v_Blankfein.pdf

http://solari.com/blog/articles/2010/Goldman-Spiegel_v_Blankfein.pdf

Filed under: CASES, CDO, CORRUPTION, Eviction, expert witness, Fannie MAe, foreclosure, foreclosure mill, Forensic Analysis Workshop, GTC | Honor, HERS, investment banking, Investor, MODIFICATION, Mortgage, Motion Practice and Discovery, politics, securities fraud, Securitization Survey, Servicer, STATUTES, trustee, workshop | Tagged: , , , , , , , | 11 Comments »

Forensic Analysis: Unions Amass Armory of Research on Foreclosures of Securitized Mortgages

Posted on March 30, 2010 by Neil Garfield
“We did not service the loan,” Mr. Dale said. “We did not originate the loan, and we were not the financial entity that placed it into foreclosure. Do you understand what a trustee does?”
Editor’s Note: Well, Yes Mr. Dale, we do understand what a trustee does and can do —- nothing. So why are you initiating foreclosures if you say that a trustee doesn’t do that?
Mr. Dale is reading from the end of the enabling documents instead of the first page where it looks like Trustee is really a trustee and that there really is a trust and that the trust holds assets. But by the time you read to the end of the document, the trustee is not a trustee, there is no trust and even if there was, there is nothing in the trust.
It is all an illusion. The “Trustee” is a “contingent agent” for a “conduit” (REMIC) that holds nothing. The enabling document is nothing more than the equivalent of an operating agreement in an LLC.
The “pool of loans” is owned by the investors who, as creditors, purchased mortgage backed derivative securities whose value is derived SOLELY from the promise to pay executed by the homeowners.
March 24, 2010

Unions Make Strides as They Attack Banks

By STEVEN GREENHOUSE and LOUISE STORY

When the city of Los Angeles started looking into its complex financial contracts with banks earlier this year, some council members turned to an unusual corner for financial advice: labor unions.

Turns out that union leaders had amassed an armory of research on derivatives, mortgage foreclosures and even Wall Street pay as part of their effort to hold bankers accountable for the economic pain they helped cause in Los Angeles and across the country.

Unions have criticized Wall Street before. But their attacks have taken on a new shape, both in ferocity and style, over the last 18 months, ever since the federal government doled out billions of dollars in bank bailouts.

Why? Labor leaders say the fortunes of banks and unions are linked more than people realize. Wall Street manages union pension portfolios worth hundreds of billions of dollars. Much of that is invested in financial institutions, giving unions a loud voice as shareholders.

Then there are all the unionized workers whose fates are indirectly shaped by the world of high finance. The jobs of hundreds of thousands of union members, like police officers and teachers, have been threatened by municipal budget cuts, made worse in some cases by exotic investments gone bad.

More abstractly, union leaders are framing their fight against Wall Street as a symbolic one, underscoring America’s large disparities in wealth and wages.

“Many unions see that they need to be responsible for not just members’ needs at the bargaining table, but other hardships in their lives, like foreclosures and high mortgage costs,” said Peter Dreier, a political science professor at Occidental College in Los Angeles.

Unions are holding up many of their own members as victims of the banks’ bad bets, like subprime mortgages, and are providing a steady stream of research in an effort to demystify the exotic financial products that they say are harming dozens of cities. Unions have also helped underwrite Americans for Financial Reform, a prominent group pushing for further bank regulation.

Labor leaders were among the first to call for the resignation of Bank of America’s chief executive, who did retire months later. Unions issued a scathing report on bank bonuses, months before the federal pay czar presented his findings, and they criticized Goldman Sachs’s bonus pool just before the bank said its chief would receive only stock.

This month, the A.F.L.-C.I.O., the nation’s main labor federation, has organized 200 protests nationwide to publicly shame bankers, calling for new taxes on bankers’ bonuses and on speculative short-term financial transactions — in the hope of collecting tens of billions of dollars to finance a job creation program.

“They played Russian roulette with our economy, and while Wall Street cashed in, they left Main Street holding the bag,” Richard L. Trumka, the A.F.L.-C.I.O.’s president, said last Friday at a rally in Philadelphia. “They gorge themselves in a trough of taxpayers’ dollars, while we struggle to make ends meet.”

Labor is directly at odds with Wall Street on unionization drives and many other matters. Banks and private equity firms own stakes in many businesses that unions would like to unionize, like nursing home chains and food service companies. Labor groups like the Service Employees International Union and the A.F.L.-C.I.O. are pressuring financial companies not to oppose union membership drives.

It is hard to know for certain whether the unions’ efforts have affected decisions made by Wall Street firms. But for cities like Los Angeles, feeling the squeeze of lower tax receipts, the service employees’ pressure campaign seemed to have had an impact.

“They knew more about our own water deal than I knew,” said Richard Alarcón, a Los Angeles councilman, referring to an interest-rate swap between the city’s water system and the Bank of New York Mellon that converted the system’s variable-rate bonds into bonds with a fixed rate. “They also knew the dynamics of swap deals, and they were very helpful.”

As the city faces a deficit of nearly $500 million, the council was unhappy that Los Angeles would have to pay Bank of New York millions of dollars a year.

“Our members don’t like it any more than other Americans when cities have less firefighters, less teachers or less police officers,” said Andy Stern, president of the service employees’ union.

The labor protests against the banks sometimes have murky targets. This month, service employees joined community leaders on the City Hall steps in Oakland, Calif., to denounce Goldman Sachs for arranging interest-rate swaps that have the city paying the bank millions a year.

After that rally, union leaders led a march to a local Citigroup branch. Goldman declined to comment, but a Citigroup representative scoffed.

“We weren’t even involved in those deals,” said Alex Samuelson, a Citigroup spokesman. “We were just a symbolic place to go and rail against Wall Street. You can’t go to a Goldman Sachs branch.”

Many bankers criticize the protests, saying they make lots of noise but often accomplish little. Steve Bartlett, president of the industry’s Financial Services Roundtable, who has been the target of several union-led protests, including one outside his home on a Sunday morning, said, “Protests can be misguided or even damaging to your cause.”

While union leaders say they are championing the concerns of Main Street, their antibank campaign has certainly advanced some of labor’s longtime objectives, like unionizing workers.

For instance, the S.E.I.U. has pressed several banks and private equity firms to agree to allow card check — a process that makes unionization easier — at companies in which they own stakes.

Service employees officials say they urged Goldman Sachs, which owns part of the food service company Aramark, to get Aramark to accept card check and not oppose an organizing drive. In December, the union’s president, Mr. Stern, even met with Goldman’s chief executive, Lloyd C. Blankfein, about universal health care and other labor-related issues.

Labor unions are using some of their members’ hard-luck stories to frame their battle as one between the haves and the have-nots, and in some cases that tactic is advancing the unions’ traditional goals in contract talks.

In February, for example, the service employees’ union publicized that one of its members cleaned the office of U.S. Bank’s chief in Minneapolis. That janitor, Rosalina Gomez, was facing foreclosure, and the union publicized that U.S. Bank had purchased her home in the foreclosure.

Steve Dale, a spokesman for the bank, said the union was attacking U.S. Bank even though JPMorgan Chase was the bank servicing Ms. Gomez’s mortgage. U.S. Bank, he said, was just the trustee, holding the loan for a mortgage bond.

“We did not service the loan,” Mr. Dale said. “We did not originate the loan, and we were not the financial entity that placed it into foreclosure. Do you understand what a trustee does?”

That aside, when the union threatened to have Ms. Gomez approach U.S. Bank’s chief, Richard K. Davis, at an awards luncheon, the bank rushed to set up a meeting between Ms. Gomez and JPMorgan. Fifty union supporters were at the site of the luncheon to conduct a silent vigil, with several reporters on hand.

Also at that time, the union was in contract negotiations with Ms. Gomez’s employer, the janitorial company that cleans U.S. Bank’s headquarters. Javier Morillo-Alicea, a leader of the union’s Minneapolis local, said its effort to embarrass the bank helped persuade the cleaning company to reach a contract that raised wages and provided better health insurance for the janitors.

“We put a lot of pressure on the bank,” he said, “and that led to a really good contract settlement in a tough economy.”

Filed under: bubble, CDO, CORRUPTION, currency, Eviction, foreclosure, GTC | Honor, Investor, Mortgage, securities fraud | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Trusts, Trustees and Beneficiaries

Posted on March 18, 2010 by Neil Garfield

From http://www.mattweidner.com

These statutes provide numerous regulations and requirements that entities engaging in trust activities should comply with, but the regulations are largely being ignored by the entities engaging in trust activities and both courts and the enforcing agency, the Florida Department of Financial Services,

Editor’s Note: Matt Weidner is onto something here that has been pointed out by many lawyers across the country. His central point is that if you want to call yourself a Trustee in foreclosures then there had better be a trust. If there is a trust the state laws, rules and regulations govern them and the trustees. Most of these laws are being ignored by the pretender lenders with impunity — Judges routinely ignore arguments concerning the authority of the Trust to do business in the state, the right of the Trustee to proceed with foreclosure, and the accountability to both the borrower and the investor, both of whom might be beneficiaries under the Trust. Greenwich Financial filed suit against Countrywide and BOA to underscore the point that the investors are the creditors and that if there is a trust, it is the investor who is the beneficiary. Yet, as Charles Koppa has pointed out numerous times, the prices on the courthouse steps are routinely manipulated against the interests of any beneficiaries.

But the real question in my mind is whether these “trusts” actually meet the definition of that term. for there to be a working trust and an authorized trustee, there must be a trustor (the one who creates the trust), a beneficiary (the one who receives the benefits from the trust) and a “res” which is something of value that is put into the trust and which is owned, rather than passed through the t rust.

The trustor must have some property interest (tangible or intangible) that is being conveyed to the trustee to hold in trust for the beneficiaries. I’ve looked at the pooling and services agreements, prospectuses, assignments and assumption agreement and individual assignments, alleged powers of attorney and the promotional literature of the Special Purpose vehicles that issued mortgage backed securities (bonds) to investors who end up holding a piece of paper called a “certificate.”

In my opinion, there is no trust, even though one is named. In my opinion there is no trustee, even though one is named. Beneficiaries are not named and the res of the trust which supposedly is a pool of loans has been conveyed in percentage slices to the investors who bought the certificates.

There is no Trustor identified in most cases although there have been arguments of the pretender lenders that the investors are the trustors and the beneficiaries. There is also the argument that the pooling and service agreement allocating a “pool” which more often than not initially contains fictitious assets contains a  Trustor somewhere in the document.

In my opinion the party designated as a Trustee is merely a candidate for an agency relationship that might arise if several conditions are met, as defined in the prospectus. The agent has no liability or obligations of any kind until those conditions happen at some time in the future.

And since the res of the trust allegedly includes a pool of loans that was owned by some vaguely defined pool aggregator or “trustee” and since the percentage interests in that pool was conveyed to the investors, it is my opinion that there is no res in the so-called trust (i.e., there is nothing being held in trust). If there is nothing held in trust, then even if the trust technically exists, the trustee has no powers. This is congruent with the REMIC provisions of the Internal Revenue Code that allow the SPVs to be formed as pass through entities in which no tax event occurs and therefore no tax applies.

So back to Weidner’s point, if the trust is real, it isn’t following the laws governing their creation and use, OR, to my point, the trust isn’t real anyway. It is for these reasons, among others, that you MUST identify the investors, get in touch with them, compare notes and get an accounting from them. If the Courts ever force the pretender lenders to disclose the identity of these creditors and allow you to pursue interaction with them, then, and only then, will the alleged default be validated, the demand on the note verified, and the possibility of financial double jeopardy eliminated.

CHAPTER 650 & 660 FLORIDA STATUTES AND FORECLOSURE IN FLORIDA
Florida Statutes Chapters 658 which regulates Banks and Trust Companies and can be found at http://www.leg.state.fl.us/Statutes/index.cfm?App_mode=Display_Statute&URL=Ch0658/titl0658.htm&StatuteYear=2009&Title=-%3E2009-%3EChapter%20658 and chapter 660, the section of Florida Statutes which specifically regulates trust business in Florida and which can be found at http://www.leg.state.fl.us/Statutes/index.cfm?App_mode=Display_Statute&URL=Ch0660/titl0660.htm&StatuteYear=2009&Title=-%3E2009-%3EChapter%20660 are two important consumer protection statutes that are being widely ignored by regulators and courts across the state.

The definition of trust activities provided in statute is very broad and specifically includes many of the activities national banks and foreign corporations engage in related to mortgage foreclosure activities. An analysis of foreclosure cases filed in counties across the state will reveal that a recognizable percentage of the cases are filed “as trustee” for some other party or entity.http://www.myfloridacfo.com/are ignoring the laws and the application of these laws to entities that are violating them. These statutes provide numerous regulations and requirements that entities engaging in trust activities should comply with, but the regulations are largely being ignored by the entities engaging in trust activities and both courts and the enforcing agency, the Florida Department of Financial Services,

Homeowners who are subject to foreclosure and foreclosure defense attorneys are encouraged to carefully review the cited statutes and consider the application of the statutes to each individual case. Lenders who are engaging in trust activities but who are not properly licensed or registered to do business in the state should be prevented from prevailing in foreclosure actions on equitable grounds based on their failure to comply with these important consumer protection and state interest laws.

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Trust, Trustees, Constructive Trust, Fiduciary Duties

Posted on March 9, 2010 by Neil Garfield
Editor’s Note: I am currently working on the issue of fiduciary duty, so I would appreciate receiving material from any of you that have submissions on the subject.
There is an article in the Florida Bar Journal this month on this topic. “If a fiduciary has special skills or becomes a fiduciary on the basis of representations of special skills or expertise, the fiduciary is under a duty to use those skills” . P. 22 Florida Bar Journal March, 2010 , “Understanding Fiduciary Duty” by John F Mariani, Christopher W Kammerer and Nancy Guffey Landers. So if a party presents itself to a borrower as a “lender” one would reasonable presume that they employed one or more underwriters who would perform due diligence on the loan, property and viability of the transactions including borrower’s income, affordability etc. A borrower would NOT reasonably presume that the “lender” didn’t care whether or not they would make the payments now or at some time in the future when the loan reset.
It is a fascinating subject, but the area I am centering in on, is the presumption of a trusted relationship giving rise to a fiduciary duty where (1) the superior party takes on MORE tasks than called for by the contractual relationship between the two would normally imply, and (2) where the transaction is so complex and the knowledge one of the parties so superior, that the injured party is virtually forced to rely on the superior party.
It doesn’t hurt either where the borrower is told not to bother with an attorney (“You can’t change anything anyway,” or “These documents are standard documents using Fannie Mae, FHA, HUD, Freddie Mac forms” etc.). Trust me, nobody who wrote those forms had nominees or MERS in mind when they were prepared.
The issue is particularly important when we look at the layers of Trustees (implicit or explicit) in each of the securitized transactions. Whether it is the Trustee on the Deed of Trust who obviously has duties to both the Trustor (homeowner) and beneficiary (?!?), the Trustee for the aggregate pool under the pooling and service agreement, The Trustee of the Structured Investment Vehicle which typically off shore, the so-called Trustee for the SPV (REMIC) that issued the mortgage backed securities, each of whom presumptively is the successor to the “Trustees” before it, we are stuck with layers upon layers of documents that contain discrepancies within the documents and between the provisions of the documents and the actions of the parties.
You also have the key issue that the true chronology of events differs substantially from the apparent chronology, starting with the fact that the mortgage backed securities were sold prior to the funding of the loan, the assignment and assumption agreement was executed prior to the borrower being known, and the pooling and service agreement also executed prior to any transaction with the borrower.
The use of “close-out” dates and the requirement that assignments be recorded or in recordable form creates another layer of analysis. On the one hand you have clear provisions that explicitly state that the “loan” is not accepted into the alleged “trust” while on the other hand you have the parties acting as though it was accepted into the “trust.”
You have entities described as trusts that have no property, tangible or intangible in them, and “trustees” named where the enabling documents chips away relentlessly at the powers and duties of the trustee leaving you with an agent whose powers are so limited they could be described as a candidate to be an agent rather than one with actual agency powers.
The laws allowing the borrower to claw back undisclosed fees and profits are obviously based upon the presumption that the party who received those fees had some duty toward the borrower to act in good faith, knowing that the borrower was relying upon them to advise them correctly. Steering them into a loan that is likely or guaranteed to put them into foreclosure is obviously a breach of that trust, and taking compensation to act against the interest of the borrower is exactly what Truth in Lending and deceptive lending laws are all about.
The article below clearly highlights the issues. The agent or broker gets paid only upon “closing the sale.” The agent gets paid a standard industry fee for doing so. But when the fee is a yield spread premium or some other form of kickback or rebate undisclosed to the borrower, the debtor ends up in a product that is not easily understood and is probably better for the “ledner” than the loan product that would have been offered if the “lending parties” were acting in good faith.
So this article should be read with an eye toward applying similar fact patterns to the securitized loan situation where the loan originator was in many cases not even a bank but looked like a bank to the borrower.
In the securities industry the issue is in flux more than the laws applying to mortgages where the investment represents the entire wealth of many borrowers. The stakes are usually much higher than in an individual stock purchase transaction.
March 4, 2010

Trusted Adviser or Stock Pusher? Finance Bill May Not Settle It

You have probably seen the television commercial, the one where you seem to be watching an intimate conversation between family members. But at the end, you learn that the conversation was actually between a broker and his client.

The advertisement is meant to evoke the idea of financial adviser as confidant, and is part of brokerage firms’ broader effort in recent years to recast their image — from mere stock pushers to trustworthy advisers.

But in interviews, former and current brokers said the ad told only part of the story. All said their jobs depended less on giving advice and more on closing sales. The more money they brought in, the more they, and their firms, would earn.

“I learned a lot about being a good salesman at Merrill,” said David B. Armstrong, who left Merrill Lynch after 10 years and with partners started an advisory firm in Alexandria, Va. “The amount of training I sat through to properly evaluate investment opportunities was almost nonexistent relative to the training I got on how to sell them.”

While the issue of broker responsibility is not new, it has resurfaced as Congress has been considering financial overhaul legislation. In his original draft, Senator Christopher J. Dodd, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, proposed requiring brokers to put their customers’ interests first — what is known as fiduciary duty — when providing investment advice. But in recent weeks, the chances of this proposal’s making it into the bill began to dim.

Senator Tim Johnson, a South Dakota Democrat on the Banking Committee, has proposed an 18-month study of the brokerage and investment advisory industries, an effort that would replace Senator Dodd’s provision.

Imposing a fiduciary requirement could have an impact on investment firms’ profits. Guy Moszkowski, a securities industry analyst at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, said that the impact of a fiduciary standard was hard to determine because it would depend on how tightly the rules were interpreted. But he said it could cost a firm like Morgan Stanley Smith Barney as much as $300 million, or about 6 to 7 percent of this year’s expected earnings, if the rules were tightly defined. “It’s very nebulous, but I think that is a reasonable estimate,” he added.

In a research report about Morgan Stanley last year, Mr. Moszkowski wrote, “Financial advisers will be expected to take into account not just whether a product or investment is suitable for the client, but whether it is priced favorably relative to available alternatives, even though this could compromise the revenue the financial adviser and company could realize.”

Technically speaking, most brokers (including those who sell variable annuities or the 529 college savings plans) are now only required to steer their clients to “suitable” products — based on a customer’s financial situation, goals and stomach for risk.

But Marcus Harris, a financial planner who left Smith Barney 10 months ago to join an independent firm in Hunt Valley, Md., said the current rules leave room for abuse. “Under suitability, advisers would willy-nilly buy and sell investments that were the flavor of the month and make some infinitesimal case that they were somehow appropriate without worrying,” he said.

Kristofer Harrison, who spent a couple of years at Smith Barney before leaving to work as an independent financial planner in Clarks Summit, Pa., said the fact that brokers were paid for investments — but not advice — also fostered the sales mentality.

“The difficulty I had in the brokerage industry” he said, “is that you don’t get paid for the delivery of financial advice absent the sale of a financial product. That is not to say the advice I rendered was not of professional quality, but in the end, I always had the sales pitch in the back of my mind.”

Mr. Armstrong, Mr. Harris and Mr. Harrison all said they had decided to become independent because they felt constrained by their firms’ emphasis on profit-making and their inability to provide comprehensive advice.

A current branch manager of a major brokerage firm who did not want to be identified because he did not have his employer’s permission to speak to the media, confirmed that “you are rewarded for producing more fees and commissions.” While he said that “at the end of the day, I think that the clients’ interests are placed first and foremost by most advisers,” he added that “we are faced with ethical choices all day long.”

Brokers are typically paid a percentage of fees and commissions they generate. The more productive advisers at banks and big brokerage firms could collect 50 percent of the fees and commissions they generate, said Douglas Dannemiller, a senior analyst at Aite Group, a financial services research group.

The firms may also make money through other arrangements, including what is known as revenue sharing, where mutual fund managers may, for instance, agree to share a portion of their revenue with the brokerage firm. By doing this, the funds may land on the brokerage firm’s list of “preferred” funds. Some brokerage firms, including Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley Smith Barney disclose their revenue sharing information on their Web sites, or at the point of sale. Edward Jones discloses it as well, as the result of a settlement of a class-action lawsuit. UBS and Wells Fargo Advisors declined to comment on whether it discloses this information.

Unlike fiduciaries, brokers do not have to disclose how they are paid upfront or whether they are have incentives to push one investment over another. “The way the federal securities law regulates brokers, it does not require the delivery of information other than at the time of the transaction,” said Mercer E. Bullard, an associate professor at the University of Mississippi School of Law who serves on the Securities and Exchange Commission’s investment advisory committee.

The legislative language on fiduciary responsibility was one part of the financial overhaul bill aimed at protecting consumers’ interests. Another part, setting up an independent consumer protection agency, may also be watered down.

The study proposal by Senator Johnson may be included in the actual bill, which means it would not be subject to debate. And consumer advocates contended that the study would stop regulators from making any incremental consumer-friendly changes until the study was completed. The study would also require the S.E.C. to go over territory already covered in a 228-page study, conducted by the RAND Corporation in 2008 at a cost of about $875,000, the advocates said.

“In my opinion, the Johnson study is a stalling tactic that will either substantially delay or totally prevent a strong fiduciary standard from being applied,” said Kristina Fausti, a former S.E.C. lawyer who specialized in broker-dealer regulation.

“The S.E.C. has been studying issues related to investment-adviser and broker-dealer regulation and overall market conditions for over 10 years,” she said. “It’s puzzling to me why you would ask an agency to conduct a study when it is already an expert in the regulatory issues being discussed.”

Even after the study was completed, legislation would still need to be passed to give the S.E.C. authority to create a fiduciary standard for brokers who provide advice. “As we all know, the appetite for doing this in one or two years is certainly not going to be what it is today,” said Knut Rostad, chairman of the Committee for the Fiduciary Standard, a group of investment professionals advocating the standard. His group circulated an analysis that tried to illustrate where answers to the study’s questions could be found.

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Semantics: What a difference a word makes — Creditor — Trustee

Posted on January 13, 2010 by Neil Garfield

Using the voluminous amount of feedback to Livinglies.wordpress.com, some observations about the words you use in litigation and in your correspondence, QWR and DVL might well be of some assistance.

  1. CREDITOR: It seems that using the word creditor has much more power than lender, pretender lender or even holder in due course. I’ve been told that the word “creditor” conveys a relationship of business vs. consumer that is a lot closer to the truth than “lender” which implies that the party who initiated the foreclosure was a bank and that the homeowner is trying to get out of a legitimate debt. A creditor is one who has advanced money, goods or services with the intention of getting it back through the payment of money, the delivery of services or goods or the return of what was extended by the creditor. The simple statement is that the Plaintiff (in judicial states) or party initiating foreclosure proceedings is NOT the creditor and that the obligation you signed for calls for you to pay money to the creditor, not the opposing party in your foreclosure. The party you are up against has advanced no funds, goods or services. Thus they are not the creditor. Ask them in open court if you need to do so. Yet they want the court to pretend that they are a creditor anyway — or phrased another way, they want to assert that they have the right to collect on the obligation and foreclose on the home even though they are NOT the creditor. If their position is that they are foreclosing on behalf of the creditor, your answer would be that they must then disclose the creditor and name them as nominal plaintiffs, and show how they, as non-creditors, have the right to sue on behalf of the creditor. You must be given the chance to inquire in discovery whether this revelation is in fact the creditor and if so, you must be given a chance under Federal Law to attempt modification or mediation with the real decision-maker — i.e., the creditor. BEWARE: Attorney representations in or out of court are not evidence and should be objected to, pointing out that such representations raise an issue of fact that you deny and therefore you have a right to at least inquire through discovery the truth or falsehood of those representations.
  2. SPV MBS POOL: There are at least two pools of assets in every securitization scheme involving home mortgages — the aggregator’s pool which is made up of multiple assets usually all home mortgages, and the SPV or MBS Pool which receives an assignment from the aggregator. Don’t use the word “TRUST” to describe the second pool (the one that goes into the pool of assets that is then fractionally sold to buyers of certificates in which the ownership is conveyed in fractional interests and the promise to pay comes from the SPV in the form of a note or bond). Since the SPV or MBS pool is part of a REMIC transaction, it may be fairly assumed and argued that the equitable and legal owners of the assets in the pool are actually the certificate holders. In addition, the holders of a certificate are not described as beneficiaries, which would be the words associated with a trust. Since the SPV pool is a REMIC (Real Estate Mortgage Investment Conduit)under the Internal Revenue Code the reference to the existence of a trust is a reference in name only. In fact, there is no trust and there are no beneficiaries. The owners of the pool are quite clearly the certificate holders of mortgage backed securities (MBS). The pool is owned by those owners of the certificates not by some non-existent trust.
  3. AGENT With Limited Power of Attorney: Examination of the enabling documents in their totality clearly shows that the party named as “Trustee” is not a trustee and has no trustee powers. This was done intentionally by the investment banks so that they could avoid the implication of a fiduciary duty of a Trustee, which would have included telling the investors the truth about the crap they were buying. So you might want to say that (a) there is no trust, there is just a pool owned by investors. (b) You might want to say the Conduit status of the SPV (Special Purpose Vehicle) mandates that no actual transactions are occurring in the name of the REMIC (SPV) or else it loses its “tax-exempt” status, something that would be contrary to the interests of the investors. (c) you might want to say that therefore there is nothing in any trust, so even if it DID exist, it has no assets. And (d) you might want to say that the party designated as “TRUSTEE is in reality merely an agent for the certificate holders and that the indentures or enabling documents simply appoint the Agent to act with limited power of attorney under certain circumstances. Remember that neither the “TRUSTEE” nor the “TRUST” ever physically receives the notes, mortgages or assignment or any other pieces of paper except for the mortgage backed security. The paper is held elsewhere, which is where the investment banks actually had the opportunity to trade and bet on those securities, since they were the ones (directly or indirectly) who always controlled the possession and distribution of the actual notes, mortgages, assignments or other paper documents.

More to come

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Payback TimeMany See the VAT Option as a Cure for Deficits

Posted on December 11, 2009 by Neil Garfield

The value added tax (VAT) has been around for decades in other countries. It is predicated on the  idea that ALL people should share in the cost of government. The way it works (see below) is that the government picks up 10% (for example) of each stepof the production and sales process. It is normally reserved for hard goods instead of services.

I think that is is the only good idea around topay down the deficit IF it is applied to Wall Street. In addition to raising money it would force all intermediaries to report every transaction and their profit on it. It would force them todeclare the profit (VAT) and pay the income taxes from the fees and profits.

Let’s look at the way this would work in the derivative market. Better yet let’s look at the derivative market over the last 10 years. Maybe you’ll fee outrage when you read this somewhat over simplified version of the way things REALLY work. 

  1. Mortgage Bonds are sold  to investors by a “seller.” Who gets the selling fee? How much was it? Where did it go? Even under current rules most of this money went untaxed for income tax because by playing the shell game cleverly you can create a question of tax jurisdiction and end up paying no tax and  not even reporting it.
  2. The Seller of the mortgage bonds (and a percentage interest in the underlying notes and mortgages) received a stack of certificates from the Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV/Trust)at a cost of  less than what the certificates were sold for. The great thing for the seller is that the Selling Agent is allowed to “sell forward” to investors, thus knowing exactly6 what his profit is going to be when he takes the stack of bond certificates. The VAT tax would apply here and perhaps result, heaven forbid, in a double tax of VAT and income taxes. Criminal law enforcement could beeefed up on the VAT so that the intermediary parties in the securitization chain have nowhere to hide — if the government does its job in enforcement which would mean training special VAT agents who can understand the workings of securities transfers on Wall Street and can enforce the jurisdicitional issue thaty has been the favorite tool of investment banks working both sides of the Atlantic and Pacific.
  3. The SPV has received an assignment (of dubious legality) from an aggregator pool. It is paying a huge premium over the true value fhe pool, and thus, so are the investors who buy the bonds. In the presence of a government doing its job to enforce tax liability —VAT and Income Tax — the fraud of the entire mortgage meltdown wouldhave been exposed, the government would have taken possession of the investment banks running these pools, and taxpayers would have received in their coffers huge amounts of money paid in taxes from this yield spread premium. But alas,Wall Street continues to get its way and this is considered no a profit or a fee but instead it is either not shown at all as this yield spread profit from sale of ggregator to SPV or it is actually shown as an expense. On an average basis the YSP on the sale from aggregator to SPV was about 80% of the mortgage funding amount. This is where the toxicity of the mortgages and notes was hidden.
  4. And then you continue down the line with the usual undisclosed YSP between mortgage broker and”lender” (actually a straw man through whom the transaction passes etc.

If you put pencil to paper you’ll see that Wall Street didn’t  just dodge responsibility for the mess they created, they dodged the taxes too. If the government was enforcing our existing tax laws through this process, the entire stimulus and other lines of credit from the Federal government would have been paid by the culprits who did this to us.

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December 11, 2009 Payback TimeMany See the VAT Option as a Cure for Deficits By CATHERINE RAMPELL Runaway federal deficits have thrust a politically unsavory savior into the spotlight: a nationwide tax on goods and services. Members of Congress, like their constituents, are squeamish about such ideas, instead suggesting spending cuts or higher taxes on the rich. But with a lack of political will to do the former, and a practical ceiling to how much revenue can be milked from the latter, economists across the political spectrum say a consumption tax may be inevitable once the economy fully recovers. “We have to start paying our bills eventually,” said Charles E. McLure, a tax economist who worked in the Reagan administration. “This strikes me as the best and most obvious way of doing it.” The favored route of economists is known as a value-added tax, which is a tax on goods and services that is collected at every step along the production chain, from raw material to a consumer’s shopping bag. Similar to a sales tax, it generally results in consumers paying more for the things they buy. The revenues could be used to pay for health care or other social programs, or just to pay down existing debt. Like universal health care, every other industrialized country in the world already has a value-added tax (as do about 100 emerging countries). And also like universal health care, this once-taboo policy option has recently been invoked, at times begrudgingly, by many prominent Washingtonians, including the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi; John Podesta, who was co-chairman of President Obama’s transition team; and two former Federal Reserve chairmen, Alan Greenspan and Paul A. Volcker Introducing such a tax would probably require an overhaul of the entire federal tax code, no small order, and something the government last did in 1986. At the time the goal was to simplify the tax system, to raise money more efficiently and with fewer headaches for taxpayers. Since then, federal spending has ballooned, while the government’s ability to raise taxes has become increasingly inefficient. Consider the page length of the tax code and tax regulations, which has expanded by more than 70 percent, according to Thomson Reuters Tax and Accounting. (There are more words crammed onto each page, too.) The tax system is now a compendium of lobbied-for ifs, ands and buts. As the tax code has been embellished and then Swiss-cheesed, the portion of Americans footing the nation’s income tax bill has shrunk. “There are many more deductions and credits, which can often encourage inefficient behavior such as tax shelters,” said Leonard E. Burman, a public affairs professor at Syracuse University, about the changes to the tax system since the 1986 reform. “The ideal tax system has a broad base — few deductions or exemptions — and low rates.” Most of the rest of the industrialized world — including, most recently, Australia — has already taken this lesson to heart by imposing value-added taxes. Unlike income taxes, which are often front-loaded on the rich, then subsequently diluted, a value-added tax is paid by almost everybody. That broad base is one of its major advantages, and why the International Monetary Fund frequently recommends it to countries that need to raise money quickly. What is good for economic purposes, however, can be bad politics, especially since Mr. Obama pledged not to raise taxes on the bottom 95 percent of Americans. (And many Republicans have pledged not to raise taxes on the bottom 100 percent of Americans.) The value-added tax is also the darling of many economists for its bounce-a-quarter-off-its-abs efficiency. Its administrative costs to the government are generally low. It is also considered less of a drag on the economy over the long run than raising income taxes, which discourage people from saving money and thereby making capital available to businesses. To understand why a value-added tax is considered so efficient, you have to understand how it usually works. Imagine the production of a new dress, in three steps: ¶A fabric store sells a tailor enough silk to make one dress, at a total price of $10 before taxes; ¶The tailor sews a dress and sells it to Macy’s for $30 before taxes; ¶Macy’s then sells the dress to a shopper for $50, before taxes. Let’s say the value-added tax is 10 percent. The government will collect some tax revenue in each step of the production process, from roll of fabric to cocktail-party scene-stealer, but each business in the chain gets credit for the tax already paid by other suppliers. When selling the cloth to the tailor, the fabric store adds a tax of 10 percent, or $1 on the $10 of supplies the tailor purchases. The tailor pays the fabric store $11, and the store remits $1 to the government. When the tailor sells his dress to Macy’s, he calculates the value-added tax as $3, or 10 percent of his $30 pretax price. Macy’s pays the tailor $33. But instead of sending the full $3 to the government, the tailor gets to subtract the $1 of taxes he had already paid to the fabric store. So he sends $2 to the government. When Macy’s sells the dress to a shopper, it adds another 10 percent, so the shopper pays $55, or $50 plus $5 in tax. That would be in addition to any state or local sales taxes consumers have to pay, depending on the locale. Macy’s checks to see how much the previous companies in the supply chain — the fabric store and the tailor — have already paid the government in value-added taxes, and subtracts that from the $5. Macy’s ends up remitting just $2 to the government. The government receives $5 total, or 10 percent of the final purchase price, but from three different businesses. Although more complicated, value-added taxes are considered better than equivalent sales taxes — where the tax is levied only when the consumer buys a product — for two main reasons. First, if a single business evades the value-added tax, the government does not lose a large portion of money, because it will collect taxes at other stages of production. Since companies usually get credit for taxes already paid by their suppliers, companies will pressure other businesses in the production chain to prove they paid their taxes. That means the system is somewhat self-policing. To some foes of big government, though, the efficiency of the tax is also its fatal flaw. Conservatives worry that it enables the government to raise money with such little effort that it will encourage Washington to spend even more. On the other hand, liberals are wary of value-added taxes because they are regressive. Poor people spend a higher portion of their income buying things than the rich, meaning lower-income people would be disproportionately hurt. That is why countries often make other major changes to their tax code at the same time. In Australia, the government imposed a value-added tax in the middle of an overhaul of the system in 2000, which included making the income tax system more progressive. “Many countries with VATs have income taxes that start out at higher income thresholds,” said James Poterba, an economics professor at M.I.T. Combining a broad-based VAT with a steeply progressive income tax, he said, avoids affecting the poor too much. But just as the income tax has been hollowed out by countless loopholes, so could a value-added tax. Many European countries, for example, have counteracted the regressive qualities of the tax by exempting broad categories of goods, like groceries and children’s clothing. This always creates problems, economists say. Companies are tempted to mislabel their products so they can avoid the tax. “What really is the difference between prepared food versus nonprepared food?” said Alan J. Auerbach, an economics professor at the University of California, Berkeley. “You start having to split hairs, and that can become quite complicated.” Besides cheating the government of revenue, this sort of behavior also distorts what people choose to buy, causing a drag on economic development, Mr. Auerbach said. Moreover, in some industries — like financial services — it is difficult to evaluate how much value is added because of the way they make their money. The solution in many places, like New Zealand, is to exempt the financial services industry. But that might not go over well in a country whose federal debt has recently swelled precisely because of a major banking crisis. Such political hurdles, along with a still-tentative economic recovery, make a consumption tax — or a tax increase of any kind — unlikely in the immediate future. But with economists like Kenneth Rogoff of Harvard predicting that federal tax revenues will need to rise by 20 to 30 percent in the next few years, politicians may hold their noses and decide this tax is the least worst option. “Of course, we want to take down the health care cost, that’s one part of it,” Ms. Pelosi told Charlie Rose of PBS. “But in the scheme of things, I think it’s fair to look at a value-added tax as well.” Kitty Bennett contributed reporting.

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How to Search for the Trust or SPV Claiming Your Loan to Be Part of the SPV Pool

Posted on December 5, 2009 by Neil Garfield

Thank You ABBY!

This post is from Abby. You can catch her email in comments where she originally posted. Just one word of caution: Just because the Trustee or officer of the SPV pool claims to have your loan doesn’t mean they really do. In fact they may only have a spreadsheet with no documentation, no original notes, no copies of the note, no copy of the deed, deed of trust or mortgage deed. They may have something they called an allonge and are treating it as though it was an assignment. The attempted transfer will almost ALWAYS violate the terms of the the SPV mortgage backed bonds and almost certainly violate the terms of the pooling and service agreement which is the document governing the pools created by aggregators before they were “sold” to the SPV. For one thing these documents usually state that the execution of the transfer documentation must be in recordable form and some of them even say they should be recorded. There are many other terms as well that conflict with each other and conflict with the actions of the intermediary participants in the securitization chain.

This is why this research is so important — but you should not be doing it to prove your case. You should be doing it to make them justify their position.

By delving deep in discovery or seeking an order compelling them to answer the QWR or DVL, they will eventually anger the judge by their stonewalling. Judicial anger is behind some of the most favorable decisions on record so far. The Judge gets there by recognizing that he/she has been duped and now the truth is coming out that these foreclosing parties are illegiitimate: they are not creditors, they are not lenders, they are not beneficiaries. They are simply interlopers seeking a windfall leaving the homeowners and the investor who advanced the funds in the dark. Shine the light and they scatter like roaches in the middle of the night.

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WANT TO SEARCH FOR THE TRUST YOUR LOAN WENT INTO??

Some steps below to use the SEC website to locate your loan and the trust it is in (mortgage pool).

This example uses WAMU (Washington Mutual).
Typically, Chase had JPMAC (JP Morgan Acquisition Corp) as the name of trusts.

http://www.sec.gov/

1. click on above link
2. if you have not yet created a free account and it asks you for login info…create the account
3. click on ’search’ in upper right corner
4. in the blue area, type in WAMU in the ‘company name’ field
5. click find companies at bottom
6. this brings up all the WAMU filings
7. search around for one that is the year you got your WAMU refi
8. it will be tedious, but you have to click on each CIK number (in red) over on left, and that will take you to a whole big list of more filings for that particular trust
9. go through and click on any ‘fwp’….read/scan to see if it lists any loan numbers….some will….check to see if your loan number is in it.
10. when you click on an ‘fwp’, which means free writing prospectus, you will see even more files…try to avoid looking at the ones that have .txt ending (the other, usually an html file, will have any infor you may need.

Note: you may want to also search around in years just prior to or just after your loan was done.

Some of these deals were set up even prior to you getting your loan.

Again, another place you may find the trust name is on your recorded docs, in MERS or on a Power of Attorney filed at the county recorder by the Securities trustee in your local county (if required by law).

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Foreclosure Defense: Losts/Destroyed Note is No Accident

Posted on June 24, 2008 by Neil Garfield

AS YOU CAN SEE FROM THE NEWEST ENTRIES TO GARFIELD’S GLOSSARY, WE HAVE PIECED TOGETHER THE REASONS FOR THE METEORIC RISE IN LOST NOTES. WE ARE FAST ARRIVING AT THE CONCLUSION THAT FATAL DEFECTS IN THE LOAN UNDERWRITING AND SECURITIZATION PROCESS HAVE EVISCERATED THE SECURITY PROVISIONS OF THE MORTGAGE AND THE OBLIGATIONS UNDER THE NOTE.

See GARFIELD’S GLOSSARY

LOST NOTE, DESTROYED NOTE: SEE EARLY AMORTIZATION EVENT, TOXIC WASTE, SECURITIZATION

In prior times, the possibility of a note being accidentally lost or destroyed was protected by statutes providing for proving the note and mortgage without the original. These statutes and rules of procedure are now being invoked by nominal lenders and assignees of nominal lenders to escape or navigate around a much deeper problem for them.

It is the opinion of this editor that the original notes were not accidentally destroyed or lost. There either intentionally destroyed or hidden in some trustee’s vault in an off shore structured investment vehicle. The reason is simple: the terms of the note and mortgage do not match the narrative or representations of the parties in the securitization process culminating in the sale of ABS instruments.

The nominal lender or assignee will claim that they did not lose or destroy the note and that might be true. That is why the SINGLE TRANSACTION theory must be invoked in foreclosure defense. Someone in the securitization process was responsible for the fact that between 40%-90% of the notes have vanished, whereas prior to the Mortgage Meltdown era the percentage of lost notes was less than 1/2 of one percent.

Since the promissory note is a thing of value and in fact is considered “money” in many economic models, it is a challenge to come up with reasons why anyone would “rip up a ten dollar bill.” The only reasonable answer is that if someone actually saw the $10 bill they would know it wasn’t a $100 bill, which is what they thought it was when they bought a piece of paper that referred back to the fictional “$100” bill.

The effect of this destruction and the reasons for it add considerable weight to the argument that there is no longer any enforceable mortgage, that the rescission rights of the borrower have been deflected into an abyss for lack of a real party in interest, and that the SINGLE TRANSACTION theory is the only one that accounts for everything that went bad in the Mortgage Meltdown era. In the context of multiple assignments and parsing of the notes and mortgage in the securitization, the lost or destroyed note takes on a whole new meaning.

NOMINAL LENDER: SEE LENDER, ASSET BACKED SECURITY (ABS), CDO, Early Amortization Event

A conduit or party acting as Mortgage Broker under false pretenses to the borrower giving the impression that it is has performed ordinary due diligence and applied ordinary underwriting standards to the approval of the loan, the appraisal, the borrower’s qualifications and ability to pay and the fees at closing.

The Nominal Lender is the party named on the mortgage as the mortgagee and named on the note secured by the mortgage as the payee. It is usually a front for some larger entity or financial institution. In virtually all cases from 2001-2008 the party so named on the closing documents was a Nominal Lender. The nominal lender abandoned virtually all underwriting standards and assessment of risk of loss or default because the nominal lender was not assuming those risks. In all cases, the nominal lender had already pre-sold the or assigned rights under the mortgage and note before execution of the underlying documents (mortgage and note) or immediately after under the expectation and agreement, tacit or written, that the nominal lender would receive a fee or profit from closing the loan and that the actual funds would come from third parties involved in the securitization process eventually culminating in the issuance of ABS instruments.

Thus the nominal lender lacks legal standing to pursue enforcement of the note or mortgage because the nominal lender has no financial interest in the note or the mortgage. It is equally true, however, that the claim under TILA, RESPA, RICO etc. might not be addressed to the correct party when the mortgage audit is completed and rendered with a proper request under RESPA for resolution.

The nominal lender lacks legal authority to settle anything since it is no longer a holder in due course of the note or mortgage. In addition, the removal of the nominal lender from the actual underwriting and funding process probably extends the time for rescission indefinitely because the real parties in interest are never disclosed to the borrower. similarly it is unlikely that the nominal lender has the authority to negotiate a settlement or even execute a satisfaction of mortgage, since it cannot return the original note (see Lost, Destroyed Note).

Early Amortization Event (EAE) — SEE LOST OR DESTROYED NOTE

A type of credit “enhancement” used in asset backed securities. One or more triggers, defined in the asset backed security’s documentation require the termination of revolving periods, controlled amortization periods and/or accumulation periods.

Once triggered, the early amortization provision requires that the monthly principal payments be distributed to investors as they are received. This “enhancement” was in actuality a massive risk factor and contributed greatly to the Mortgage Meltdown period of 2001-2008. It also may have caused certain parties to be motivated to “lose” or “destroy” the original note.

The most common trigger is a measure of how the portfolio yield net of charge-offs exceeds the base rate of servicing plus the investor coupon rate. Also called a pay-out event. Another event potentially within this category is the actual payoff of the mortgage. An analysis of the the concept of an EAE demonstrates several peculiarities and a possible explanation of the promissory note being lost or destroyed:

Given that an ABS is a derivative instrument and that traders in derivatives are comfortable with the value of these securities being “derived” by “reference” to something else, the traders are accustomed to examining not the actual “asset” or evidence of the asset (e.g. the note and mortgage) but rather a narrative describing the note and mortgage (which from 2003-2008 was, for the most part, at variance with the actual terms expressed in the note — the the existence of the original physical note put the CDO a manager at risk of discovery of having misled, lied or withheld vital information (like actual cash flow based upon negative amortization versus the stated rate on the note or the elimination of escrow for taxes and insurance which degrades the safety of the an investment based upon that mortgage and note).
Hence, the traders in derivatives relied upon summaries or narratives that were not scrutinized by any securities agencies for compliance with disclosure requirements, the most important of which were the risks of the investment in an ABS.

THEY RELIED INSTEAD ON THE RATING “AGENCIES” (ACTUALLY PRIVATE COMPANIES THAT WERE THEMSELVES UNREGULATED BUT ASSUMING THE MANTLE OF PSEUDO-GOVERNMENTAL OBJECTIVITY). And of course the rating agencies, by relying upon narratives prepared by CDO managers rather than examining the underlying documentation (the notes and mortgages) didn’t see the original note or mortgage either, much less analyze, examine or otherwise perform the due diligence that constituted the condition precedent to issuing a rating of “investment grade” on any security. This failure was prompted by monetary incentives and negotiation between the “client” (the issuer of the securities being rated and the rating company (Moody’s, Fitch etc.)
The actual projected charge-off rate was known to anyone who actually saw the loan application of the borrower, and the original note and mortgage. The narrated charge-off rate upon which the ABS derived its value was based upon the opinion of the CDO manager at the investment banking firm who had no expertise in appraising or underwriting loans. Nonetheless it is certainly an arguable position that the CDO manager knew or should have known that underwriting standards at the level of the nominal lender at closing had collapsed into a rubber stamp, since the nominal lender was in actuality playing the role of a conduit or mortgage broker.  See Nominal Lender.
The structure of the SPV (see Special Purpose Vehicle) was a more formal replay of the pattern of misrepresenting the terms, risks and attributes of the note and mortgage. “Tranches” (see TRANCHE) were created within each SPV, wherein each tranche behaved more or less as separate entities providing protection to the tranche above and moving the brunt of the risk of total loss down lower and lower to the lowest tranche which in the parlance of the finance world is called “toxic waste.” (see Toxic Waste). ABS instruments were issued not on the entire SPV “portfolio” but on selected groupings of tranches within the SPV and further complicated by the trading of credit default swaps, the cross guarantees, assurances and liability of other SPVs, other individual SPV tranches, and other third parties, insurers and assurers.
Thus the EAE represented in reality an astonishing array and number of variables that could not be quantified or analyzed by purchasers of ABS instruments except on faith and confidence of the issuers, rating agencies and other parties or by performing their own due diligence (which is now proposed under new SEC rules as of the the date of this entry, June 24, 2008).
At the root of the EAE phenomenon was the conflict between the truth of what was actually presented to the borrower at closing of the loan transaction and what was represented up-line (in the securitization process) eventually to the purchasers of the ABS instruments that provided the capital to fund the alleged “loans” which are editorialized in these pages as securities in actuality that were issued by the nominal lender under false pretenses and without compliance with banking and securities laws, rules and regulations that applied.

TOXIC WASTE: SEE SPV, ABS, SINGLE TRANSACTION

The lower tranche levels of an SPV (see Special Purpose Vehicle) whose main characteristic is to take whatever revenue or principal is paid on the high-risk debt obligations contained within that tranche and pay for any short-fall in higher tranches within the same SPV or through credit default swaps effecting other SPVs. It is difficult if not impossible to trace any specific mortgage or note to any specific one or more SPVs, tranches or other cross collateralization agreements and other instruments that distributed and parsed interests in individual loans in multiple parts to multiple parties and joined co-obligors at various levels before and during the securitization process (based upon the clearance procedures and record keeping of those involved in the SINGLE TRANSACTION).

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Foreclosure Offense and Defense: DISCOVERY OF Insurance Policies and Applications Reveal ALL

Posted on June 10, 2008 by Neil Garfield

The simple mortgage on a home had been broken into many pieces (tranches — See Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV)) each having characteristics of entities unto themselves. The term “borrower” was severed from the the obligation to pay. The term “lender” was severed from the risk of loss and the right to payment from the borrower. The term “investor” was severed from the actual ownership of any asset, except one deriving its value from conditions existing between a myriad of third parties, but which nonetheless carried with it a right to receive payments from many different entities and people, the “borrower” being just one of many.

 

In the Mortgage Meltdown context, the challenge is to prove the point that this was a fraudulent scheme, a Ponzi arrangement that was a financial pandemic. You get that information through discovery, but unless you know what you are looking for, you will merely come up with volumes of paper that do not, in and of themselves reveal all the points you need to make — but they WILL lead to the discovery of admissible evidence (the gold standard of what is permitted in discovery) if you understand the scheme.

The nucleus of the scheme is the virtually unregulated creation of the Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV), which is a corporation formed by the investment banker to “own” certain rights to the loans and mortgages and perhaps other assets that were packaged for insertion into the SPV. The SPV issues securities and those securities are sold to investors with fake ratings and “assurances” and insurance that is falsely procured, but where the insurers or assurers were under common law, state law and/or federal law, required to perform their own due diligence, which they did not (in the mortgage meltdown). The proceeds of the sale of ABSs (CDO/CMO) go into the SPV.

The directors and officers of the SPV entity order the disbursement of those proceeds. (see INSURANCE in GARFIELD’s GLOSSARY).

The recipients are a large undisclosed pack of feeding sharks all claiming plausible deniability as to inflated appraisals of the residential dwelling, the borrower’s ability and willingness to pay, the underwriting standards applied (suspended because the lender was selling the risk rather than assuming it), and the inflated appraisal of the ABS (CDO/CMO) for all the same reasons — direct financial incentives, coercion (give us the appraisal we want or we will never do business with you against and neither will anyone else) or even direct threats of challenges to professional licenses.

In order to get this information, you must find the name of the SPV, which is probably disclosed in filings with the SEC along with the auditor’s opinion letter (see INSURANCE in GARFIELD’s GLOSSARY). You might get lucky and find it just by asking. Then demand production of the articles of incorporation and the minutes, agreements, signed and correspondence between the SPV and third parties and between officers and directors of the SPV. The entire plan will be laid out for you as to that SPV and it might reveal, when you look at the actual insurance contracts, cross collateralization or guarantees between SPV’s. Those cross agreements could be as simple as direct guarantees but will more likely take the form of hedge products like credit default swaps (You by mine and I’ll by yours — by express agreement, tacit agreement or collusion). 

You will most likely find that once you perform a thorough analysis of the break-up (“Spreading”) of the risk of loss, the actual cash income stream, the ownership of the note, the ownership of the security instrument (mortgage) and the ownership and source of payment for insurance and other contracts, that all roads converge on a single premise: this was a deal between the borrowers (collectively as co-borrowers) and the investors (collectively as co-investors). Everyone else was a middle man pretending to be NOT part of the transaction while they were collecting most of the proceeds, leaving the investor and the borrower hanging.

And there is no better place to start than with the insurance underwriting process — getting copies of applications, investigations, analysis, correspondence etc. Combined with the filings with the SEC you are likely to find virtual admissions of the entire premise and theme of this entire blog. I WOULD APPRECIATE YOU SENDING ME THE RESULTS OF YOUR ENDEAVORS.

INSURANCE — DEFINED

A promise of compensation for specific potential future losses in exchange for a periodic payment. Insurance is designed to protect the financial well-being of an individual,company or other entity in the case of unexpected loss. Some forms of insurance are required by law, while others are optional. Agreeing to the terms of an insurance policycreates a contract between the insured and the insurer. In exchange for payments from the insured (called premiums), the insurer agrees to pay the policy holder a sum of money upon the occurrence of a specific event. In most cases, the policy holder pays part of the loss (called the deductible), and the insurer pays the rest. IN FORECLOSURE OFFENSE AND DEFENSE, YOU WILL FIND ERRORS AND OMISSIONS POLICIES COVERING THE OFFICERS AND DIRECTORS OF THE INVESTMENT BANKING FIRM, THE SPV THAT ISSUED THE ASBs, THE RATING AGENCY FOR THE ASB (CMO/CDO), THE LENDER, THE MORTGAGE BROKER, THE REAL ESTATE AGENT, ETC. YOU WILL FIND MALPRACTICE INSURANCE FOR THE AUDITORS OF THE SAME ENTITIES WHICH RESULTED IN FALSE REPRESENTATIONS CONCERNING THE FINANCIAL CONDITION OF THE ENTITY. YOU WILL FIND LOSS COVERAGE FOR DELINQUENCY, DEFAULT OR NON-PAYMENT THAT MAY INURE TO THE BENEFIT OF THE BORROWER. By joining the borrower and the investor as victims in the fraudulent Ponzi scheme creating money supply with smoke and mirrors, it may be argued that the insurance premiums were paid by and equitably owned by the borrower and/or the investor. 

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