POSTED: January 1, 1:25 PM EDT | By Matt Taibbi

Happy New Year, America…

Have multiple relatives en route to my home this morning, but wanted to post a few thoughts on an interesting story that came out this week before I disappear into a weekend of overeating and meaningless NFL games.

The piece, which came out Thursday, is the Washington Post’s feature on MERS, the electronic mortgage registration company that is at the center of the foreclosure/mortgage bubble mess. MERS is the brainchild of the mortgage-lending industry and is essentially an effort at systematically evading taxes (more on that in a moment) and hiding information from homeowners in ways that enabled the Countrywides of the world to defraud investors and avoid legal consequences for same.

The idea behind MERS was to wipe away centuries of legal tradition that mandated the physical transfer of loan notes and ownership information. Whereas lenders once were required to physically register with county clerk offices every time a mortgage loan was extended or re-sold, MERS provided an “electronic registry” of mortgage notes where all such transfers were recorded in the wiry brain of a giant computer instead of on paper.

Scratch this record!!!!! Need help go to MERS!!

Last week Fannie Mae asked treasury for $1.5 billiion in assistance …now comes Freddie with loss and seeks aid.

You know this is outrageous! They applaud MERS and write recommendations of how they are excited with MERS but yet MERS does nothing but conceal information from the borrowers and has secret agreements with the possible beneficiaries of these loans. MERS takes tax dollars away from our schools, children, counties etc.

While we are on this subject of counties and states, why are they crying bankruptcy and major cut backs…how about ending the MERS sham and go after the fees that you cry about with them? Who does this benefit? Not us but the Mortgage Banking Industry and Wall Street so called Lending Institutions.

All these problems came about the same time MERS came to existence…now tell me something? Isn’t this a tad of a coincidence these issues became at the same time sub-prime loans hit peak?

By now we all have witness the Foreclosure Barons you have as designated counsel and what do you plan to do about it? No matter what dots there are, both Fannie and Freddie have a connection?

Why was all this NEVER a REAL PROBLEM in the past with assignments…lets say prior to 1998? Hmmm…

We are no fools.