Via: Virginia

This is exactly what I have been saying. If 500,000 mortgages = $80 Billion (source: Taylor Bean complaint)… what do 67 million MERS mortgages equal? Is anybody doing the math in Washington, DC?

http://us1.irabankratings.com/pub/IRAMain.asp

In testimony before the House Financial Services Committee in February 2010, Michael A.J. Farrell, Chairman, CEO, Annaly Capital Management, provided an excellent overview of the current market for RMBS. People involved in the discussions about housing market reform should read Farrell’s testimony carefully. He notes that of $7.5 trillion in RMBS funded by private investors, $5.5 trillion is held by rate sensitive investors in Agency MBS, with about $2 trillion in credit sensitive private label MBS. He also stated that:

“The balance, or about $2.5 trillion, is held in raw loan form, primarily on bank balance sheets. Since our country’s banks have about $12 trillion in total assets, there is not enough money in the banking system to fund our nation’s housing stock, at least not at current levels. It is thus axiomatic that without a healthy securitization market our housing finance system would have to undergo a radical transformation.”

And this is why the states should takeover the loans from 2003-2008. The banks HAVE to foreclose. They cannot hold all the mortgages. They wrote more than they can hold.

By using MERS and other special purpose vehicles to hold mortgages rather than keep them on the banks’ books, the banks lived in a fantasyland. They insured their risk which was a double edge sword; however, they took no responsibility for the volume of loans they wrote.

It’s akin to taking the pill, having numerous partners and thinking you can’t get VD. Only the banks weren’t naive – they were greedy and irresponsible.

It’s only a matter of time before the fact that these banks collected insurance and TARP on these loans and then continued to try and collect from the borrowers starts to come to light – and that would appear to be insurance fraud… probably the main reason for the foreclosures in the first place.