by Chink in The Armor– Cross Posted with Permission
On Thursday, the 16thof August, 2012, the entire western banking system experienced a 9.2 on the Richter Scale event. On that day, for the first time in the history of the United States, the Washington State Supreme Court ruled that MERS, the Mortgage Electronic Registry Service, is not, and cannot be a beneficiary under the statutes of Washington State. In a well reasoned opinion, the Justices saw through the charade that is MERS and said “no” to the lie.
Who knows what the ultimate fallout of all this will be. MERS® put out their puff piece commenting on their loss trying to spin it as a win. I read it and thought to myself, really? That’s not what I read when I read the Bain decision. I read about a trip to the woodshed. Not to worry though. They will be back. They are like the Borg from Star Trek, or at least they think they are. For them, this is a temporary setback and they are, no doubt , even now, adapting and thinking of ways to overcome. Already rumour control has it that they are planning to lobby the state legislature to change the rules so MERS is suddenly legal again.
One of the things we have learned from dealing with these characters is that we can take certain, seemingly disparate pieces of information, almost make up conclusions, and son of gun, no matter how outrageous, they turn out to be true~!
- Remember when the first person said all the REMICS are empty? Everyone scoffed in disbelief. Now it is taken as an article of faith.
- Remember when we laughed at the concept of the banks offering the really nice pads to their employees as part of their compensation plan? That one turned out to be true too.
- Remember when we were comparing their front line phone/cubicle warriors to trained monkeys with a wire up their wazoo? Turns out that one was true too. There is even a patent!
So here is my current set of outrageous predictions.
- I predict we shall soon learn that the loan agreement the homeowner made with their “pretender lender” is a total sham.
- I predict that the real borrower shall be revealed to be Countrywide, Ownit, New Century and all of their ilk and that there is some sort of “Super Loan Agreement” which lays out the real terms and conditions which we are all subject to but that we never had, nor were ever supposed to have, awareness.
- I predict that what we shall find out is that the homeowner is one of two things. We are either sureties in a very complex securities deal, or, more likely, the business partner of the true borrower whom we currently are calling the “pretender lender”.
- I predict that we shall learn that the banks, using deceptive business practices, if not outright RICO practices, induced the homeowners into their schemes while failing to disclose all of the players and agreements which they were buying into.
- I predict that someone, somewhere will unearth a document proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that the homeowner is merely part of a “borrowing base” and that MERS is the lie which allows the true lender, someone like Merrill Lynch or Morgan Stanley or some fall guy with a bizzarro name like “Continental Soldier Minute Man Express Mortgage Lender” to have a first lien position on the security.
- I predict that the true damage Bain is going to inflict on the banking side is that MERS’s loss of “Beneficiary” status will no longer provide the “pretender lender”, who is the real borrower, the ability to provide first lien position to these strange creatures from the Delaware Secretary of State’s office.
- I also predict that because of all of this, the whole house of cards will fall down.
In Washington anyway.
Outrageous? Of course. I’m making this stuff up. But if history is to be any guide, these outrageous claims will turn out to be dead nuts on, the absolute truth. Just like JP Morgan and WaMu.
I’m just waiting for the smoking gun documents.
image: blogs.salesforce.com
