Lenders say ‘dual tracking’ protects their investment if the homeowner is unable to qualify for new loan terms. But regulators seeking to ban the practice say it lulls some borrowers into thinking they won’t have their homes taken away.
Before StopForeclosureFraud puts up posts it tries its best to research sources and is not quick to rush to post what may not seem right for its readers. SFF had several tips of such Mass Joinder request to post but refrained from doing so for the following reasons and please make sure you read both articles below to fully understand.
Martin who runs Mandelman Matters was first to post an alert warning homeowners about Mass Joinder lawsuits in which he states
Last week I posted a “Homeowner Warning” about a mailer I’d received from a homeowner promoting participation in a lawsuit, referred to as a “Mass Joinder” lawsuit, being filed against several major banks on behalf of homeowners by the law firm of Kramer & Kaslow. Before I posted the “warning” I spoke with several attorneys I know that are well-versed in law firm marketing compliance, and I made two attempts to contact the Kramer & Kaslow attorneys at the number provided on the mailer, but received no response.
Everyone who follows Mandelman Matters knows Martin puts an enormous amount of effort into his investigative reports.
Today Reuters is reporting the same, warning homeowners
The scam is particular elaborate since a federal ban went into effect earlier this year against requiring up-front payments to those offering mortgage relief. Rules being what they are, there is an exception to it — for lawyers. While the terms are a bit more specific than that, it opened the door to people supposedly working on behalf of lawyers to still preying on those whose homes are being foreclosed.
“Those who continue to prey on and victimize vulnerable homeowners have not given up,” the warning by Wayne S. Bell, chief counsel of the California Department of Real Estate, says. “They just change their tactics and modify their sales pitches to keep taking advantage of those who are desperate to save their homes. And some of the frauds seeking to rip off desperate homeowners are trying to use the lawyer exemption above to collect advance fees for mortgage assistance relief litigation.”
Long story short do your homework so you don’t fall victim to scams.
Readers of my articles will recall that I have warned as far back as December 2006, that the global banks will collapse when the Financial Tsunami hits the global economy in 2007. And as they say, the rest is history.
Quantitative Easing (QE I) spearheaded by the Chairman of delayed the inevitable demise of the fiat shadow money banking system slightly over 18 months.
That is why in November of 2009, I was so confident to warn my readers that by the end of the first quarter of 2010 at the earliest or by the second quarter of 2010 at the latest, the global economy will go into a tailspin. The recent alarm that the US economy has slowed down and in the words of Bernanke “the recent pace of growth is less vigorous than we expected” has all but vindicated my analysis. He warned that the outlook is uncertain and the economy “remains vulnerable to unexpected developments”.
Obviously, Bernanke’s words do not reveal the full extent of the fear that has gripped central bankers and the financial elites that assembled at the annual gathering at Jackson Hole, Wyoming. But, you can take it from me that they are very afraid.
Why?
Let me be plain and blunt. The “unexpected developments” Bernanke referred to is the collapse of the global banks. This is FED speak and to those in the loop, this is the dire warning.
So many renowned economists have misdiagnosed the objective and consequences of quantitative easing. Central bankers’ scribes and the global mass media hoodwinked the people by saying that QE will enable the banks to lend monies to cash-starved companies and jump start the economy. The low interest rate regime would encourage all and sundry to borrow, consume and invest.
This was the fairy tale.
Then, there were some economists who were worried that as a result of the FED’s printing press (electronic or otherwise) working overtime, hyper-inflation would set in soon after.
But nothing happened. The multiplier effect of fractional reserve banking did not take off. Bank lending in fact stalled.
Why?
What happened?
Let me explain in simple terms step by step.
1) All the global banks were up to their eye-balls in toxic assets. All the AAA mortgage-backed securities etc. were in fact JUNK. But in the balance sheets of the banks and their special purpose vehicles (SPVs), they were stated to be worth US$ TRILLIONS.
2) The collapse of Lehman Bros and AIG exposed this ugly truth. All the global banks had liabilities in the US$ Trillions. They were all INSOLVENT. The central banks the world over conspired and agreed not to reveal the total liabilities of the global banks as that would cause a run on these banks, as happened in the case of Northern Rock in the U.K.
3) A devious scheme was devised by the FED, led by Bernanke to assist the global banks to unload systematically and in tranches the toxic assets so as to allow the banks to comply with RESERVE REQUIREMENTS under the fractional reserve banking system, and to continue their banking business. This is the essence of the bailout of the global banks by central bankers.
4) This devious scheme was effected by the FED’s quantitative easing (QE) – the purchase of toxic assets from the banks. The FED created “money out of thin air” and used that “money” to buy the toxic assets at face or book value from the banks, notwithstanding they were all junks and at the most, worth maybe ten cents to the dollar. Now, the FED is “loaded” with toxic assets once owned by the global banks. But these banks cannot declare and or admit to this state of affairs. Hence, this financial charade.
5) If we are to follow simple logic, the exercise would result in the global banks flushed with cash to enable them to lend to desperate consumers and cash-starved businesses. But the money did not go out as loans. Where did the money go?
6) It went back to the FED as reserves, and since the FED bought US$ trillions worth of toxic wastes, the “money” (it was merely book entries in the Fed’s books) that these global banks had were treated as “Excess Reserves”. This is a misnomer because it gave the ILLUSION that the banks are cash-rich and under the fractional reserve system would be able to lend out trillions worth of loans. But they did not. Why?
7) Because the global banks still have US$ trillions worth of toxic wastes in their balance sheets. They are still insolvent under the fractional reserve banking laws. The public must not be aware of this as otherwise, it would trigger a massive run on all the global banks!
8) Bernanke, the US Treasury and the global central bankers were all praying and hoping that given time (their estimation was 12 to 18 months) the housing market would recover and asset prices would resume to the levels before the crisis. .
Let me explain: A House was sold for say US$500,000. Borrower has a mortgage of US$450,000 or more. The house is now worth US$200,000 or less. Multiply this by the millions of houses sold between 2000 and 2008 and you will appreciate the extent of the financial black-hole. There is no way that any of the global banks can get out of this gigantic mess. And there is also no way that the FED and the global central bankers through QE can continue to buy such toxic wastes without showing their hands and exposing the lie that these banks are solvent.
It is my estimation that they have to QE up to US$20 trillion at the minimum. The FED and no central banker would dare “create such an amount of money out of thin air” without arousing the suspicions and or panic of sovereign creditors, investors and depositors. It is as good as declaring officially that all the banks are BANKRUPT.
9) But there is no other solution in the short and middle term except another bout of quantitative easing, QE II. Given the above caveat, QE II cannot exceed the amount of the previous QE without opening the proverbial Pandora Box.
10) But it is also a given that the FED will embark on QE II, as under the fractional reserve banking system, if the FED does not purchase additional toxic wastes, the global banks (faced with mounting foreclosures, etc.) will fall short of their reserve requirements.
11) You will also recall that the FED at the height of the crisis announced that interest will be paid on the so-called “excess reserves” of the global banks, thus enabling these banks to “earn” interest. So what we have is a merry-go-round of monies moving from the right pocket to the left pocket at the click of the computer mouse. The FED creates money, uses it to buy toxic assets, and the same money is then returned to the FED by the global banks to earn interest. By this fiction of QE, banks are flushed with cash which enable them to earn interest. Is it any wonder that these banks have declared record profits?
12) The global banks get rid of some of their toxic wastes at full value and at no costs, and get paid for unloading the toxic wastes via interest payments. Additionally, some of the “monies” are used by these banks to purchase US Treasuries (which also pay interests) which in turn allows the US Treasury to continue its deficit spending. THIS IS THE BAILOUT RIP OFF of the century.
Now that you fully understand this SCAM, it is left to be seen how the FED will get away with the next round of quantitative easing – QE II.
Obviously, the FED and the other central banks are hoping that in time, asset prices will recover and resume their previous values before the crisis. This is a fantasy. QE II will fail just as QE I failed to save the banks.
The patient is in intensive care and is for all intent and purposes brain dead, although the heart is still pumping albeit faintly. The Too Big To Fail Banks cannot be rescued and must be allowed to be liquidated. It will be painful, but it is necessary before there is recovery. This is a given.
Warning:
When the ball hits the ceiling fan, sometime early 2011 at the earliest, there will be massive bank runs.
I expect that the FED and other central banks will pre-empt such a run and will do the following:
1) Disallow cash withdrawals from banks beyond a certain amount, say US$1,000 per day; 2) Disallow cash transactions up to a certain amount, say US$10,000 for certain transactions; 3) Transactions (investments) for metals (gold and silver) will be restricted; 4) Worst-case scenario – the confiscation of gold AS HAPPENED IN WORLD WAR II. 5) Imposition of capital controls etc.; 6) Legislations that will compel most daily commercial transactions to be conducted through Debit and or Credit Cards; 7) Legislations to make it a criminal offence for any contraventions of the above.
Solution:
Maintain a bank balance sufficient to enable you to comply with the above potential impositions.
Start diversifying your assets away from dollar assets. Have foreign currencies in sufficient quantities in those jurisdictions where the above anticipated impositions are least likely to be implemented.
CONCLUSION
There will be a financial tsunami (round two) the likes of which the world has never seen.
DinSFLA here: MEDIATION without the true lenders disclosed may be an issue later…these mills have no right to play middlemen to no one! You must make sure who the real parties are before, during and after foreclosure!
Florida Default Group is emailing foreclosure defense attorneys with emails stating “Per your request, conciliation will be scheduled for your client…” that is how the are scamming even REPRESENTED defendants out of their right to a third party mediation (not that they are going to work anyway).
As I myself have witnessed on many occasions, some mill attorneys, or LOCAL COUNSEL, like Peter Porcaro local counsel for Stern’s office, bring pro se defendants out of the courtroom, smooth talk them into an agreement where there is an “extended sale date 120 days into the future, and an agreement for “conciliation” (which differs from mediation because mediation for primary residences cost the plaintiff $750 each and also there is a mediator) and a waiver of mediation. Conciliation is at no cost to the plaintiff and is between the two parties without a mediator. There is no explanation of mediation vs conciliation and no telling that the FL Supreme Court mandates mediation unless it is waived. There is no acknowledgment of months if not years of frustrated attempts at “conciliation” in terms of loan mods or short sales or deeds in lieu and how the defendants have a right to mediation. If any issues regarding the veracity and/or authenticity of the documents in the court file are raised, the answer given in these hallway dirty dealings, is “I’m not involved with that. I don’t work for their office.”
The same thing happens with all the mills. Attached is what the defendant in a Marshall Watson case walked away with…..just read it to see …………
See for yourselves. Stand outside of courtroom 10H or the other “foreclosure mill courtrooms” and watch this play out.
I guess this isn’t that rare. Take a look what a $3,000 unpaid water bill can do if you DO NOT HAVE ANY MORTGAGE.
One raw day in early February, Vicki Valentine stood by helplessly as real estate investors snatched her West Baltimore home over what began with an unpaid city water bill of $362. Valentine lost the property after the city sold her debt to investors through a contentious and byzantine legal process called a tax sale. This little-known type of foreclosure can enrich investors as growing numbers of property owners struggle to pay their bills.
Individual does not want to disclose their name. I have authenticated this to be true.
I have spoke to others and this has happened to them …but without ANY violations.
Could this be the way that the MBA might get around to allow banks to foreclose on “Non-Homestead” properties?? Just CURIOUS?
“DISTURBING BEHAVIOR”
1. Non-Creditor places a Lis Pendens
2. County/City revokes your HOMESTEAD
3. County/City issues code violations
4. County/City places a lien on the subject property
5. County files a Foreclosure Notice for unpaid Code Violations (ie: not getting a $2-3K sewer connected that turns into $67K FASTand growing …while in Lis Pendens)
6. County sends you a letter letting you know that they CANNOT foreclose on a homestead residence.
GUESS WHAT? They revoked it! So now they can foreclose and get in first place of the bank(s) foreclosing… Kick you to the CURB!
Bank now pays the “County/ City” off. It can be any violation…Did you clean your pool? mow the lawn? ANYTHING!
“DISTURBING BEHAVIOR”
But why you ask…
It’s the only property you own!
It’s the only “Primary” residence you have!
It’s the only mortgage in the Country….So why is this not your Homestead property?
The Duval County Clerk’s Office has offered online bidding for foreclosed properties for some time, and now Jacksonville-based Lender Processing Services is bringing bank-foreclosures all over the U.S. online.
Through its LPSAuctions.com Web site, LPS is to open bidding on single-family homes, condominiums and town homes from Coral Springs to Tacoma, Wash. The bid deadline for the homes listed in the “Spring Clearance” auction on the site is May 10.
So now it’s official they have they’re hands in all Real Estate! My question is how…why would any state permit them to sell anything if they are under the scope of the FEDS?? Take a look below.
Wouldn’t it just be easier to work with the homeowner than go this route? Does this make any sense at all? I mean you foreclose and try to sell the property for less than half in many instances when not sold you leave it “vacant”…I mean really M&M? Do any of you smell a SCAM?
Wednesday, 09 September 2009
Robert Klein, CEO of Safeguard Properties, contributed an article to Mortgage Banking magazine about the impact that the Mortgage Electronic Registration System (MERS) is having on the management of REO and bank-owned vacant properties across the country.
The MERS Alternative to Vacant-Property Registration Ordinances
The hopeful news of 2009 is that many indicators point to the likelihood that the U.S. economy may finally have scraped bottom and could be heading upward.
The stock market has seen fairly steady gains since it hit its early-March low. The Wall Street Journal reported that the number of workers filing state unemployment claims at the beginning of June fell by its largest amount since November 2001. And RealtyTrac Inc., Irvine, California, reported that in May, foreclosure filings decreased by 6 percent from the previous month.
Now for the more sobering news. The Wall Street Journal reported that new jobless claims increased slightly from May to June. In June, Standard & Poor’s (S&P), New York, downgraded ratings for 22 banks nationwide, expecting loan losses to worsen before they improve. And the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) reported in late May that the level of foreclosures started in the first quarter of 2009 hit a record high.
What does this all mean? Even though the economy is showing some glimmers of recovery, high rates of default and foreclosure are likely to continue for the foreseeable future. As a result, cities around the country will continue to struggle with the challenges that vacant properties pose in their communities.
A proliferation of vacant-property registration ordinances
To address the problems associated with vacant properties — from vandalism and crime to safety and maintenance issues — cities across the country have been considering or enacting vacant-property registration ordinances.
From the municipality’s perspective, the goal in enacting ordinances is to have the ability to track down a contact to serve notice when code violations occur and to hold that party responsible when violations go unresolved for periods of time.
In part, registration ordinances attempt to fix a problem with property records across the country. In many cases those records are not up-to-date, and usually they don’t identify a property-preservation contact within the lender or servicer organization responsible for a vacant property. As a result, when cities issue code-violation notices based on public records, the notices go unheeded for long periods of time because they either fail to reach the right person or take a long time getting there.
From a servicer’s perspective, the basic notion of vacant-property registration ordinances is positive — by registering vacant properties, lenders and servicers are more likely to receive prompt notification when issues arise with properties. This allows them to address problems quickly, preserve the value of their collateral asset, and avoid both negative community backlash and potentially expensive fines for failure to comply with code requirements.
The concern with vacant-property ordinances among ser-vicers is the administrative challenge of complying with potentially thousands of different municipal ordinances around the country. The more ordinances — and more individual nuances — the more resources will be needed and the greater the risk of fees and penalties for failing to comply.
Finding common ground
Municipalities and servicers share common interests with regard to vacant properties. Both have an interest in ensuring that properties are well maintained, safe and secure. Both benefit when cities have accurate and updated contact infor-mation to serve notice when issues arise.
A few years ago, MBA took an important first step in providing contact information to cities when it posted property-preservation contacts for major mortgage servicers on its Web site for code-enforcement officials to access. While that was helpful, not enough cities were aware of the resource, and both city code-enforcement officials and servicers recognized a need to do more.
In 2008, MBA convened a Vacant Property Registration (VPR) Committee, comprised of lenders, mortgage servicers and the field servicers who represent them. The committee met by phone on a weekly basis for nearly a year, and also met with mayors and other officials in cities that were considering vacant-property legislation.
The committee listened carefully to the cities’ concerns, and offered insights regarding the challenges they face to inspect, secure and maintain growing numbers of vacant properties throughout the country.
In 2008, representatives from MBA and the VPR Committee were invited to address the U.S. Conference of Mayors, describing the challenges of securing and maintaining vacant properties in cities across the country, and listening to the feedback of mayors.
At the June 2009 U.S. Conference of Mayors’ Annual Meeting, MBA and VPR Committee representatives were again invited and had the opportunity to update mayors on their efforts.
The mayors received a briefing on the committee’s solution — now referred to as “The MERS Initiative.” This initiative is a collaboration between MBA and the Mortgage Electronic Registration System (MERS), Reston, Virginia. Working with MBA, MERS developed a process by which government entities across the country can have access to the MERS system, which contains information on more than 60 million loans through more than 2,500 lenders that use the system. The MERS system was enhanced to store property-preservation contact information for the properties registered on the system.
MERS implementation under way nationally
In the fall of 2008, the committee enlisted five municipalities to serve as pilots for the program: Chula Vista, Sacramento County and Stockton in California; Boston; and St. Louis.
Code-enforcement officials who used the system reported that they were impressed with quality and quantity of data available to them. The pilot was deemed a success and the MERS Initiative was officially launched in late spring. To date, hundreds of cities have signed on to the program.
In many cases, the cities signing on are utilizing the MERS system and their vacant-property registration ordinances in tandem. Those cities will consider a loan servicer compliant with their vacant-property ordinances if their properties are registered on the MERS system. The vacant-property ordinances remain in place for properties that are not registered on the system — primarily those in the hands of property “flippers” and non-responsive property owners who fail to act responsibly.
Even though a majority of loan servicers are members of MERS, not all of their loans are currently on the system. To motivate servicers to register all of their loans, MERS has developed special registration products and incentives for servicers to register their full portfolios on the system.
A valuable resource for cities
The MERS system is proving to be a valuable tool for resource-challenged cities, especially those with the highest volumes of vacant and abandoned properties.
With access to MERS, cities don’t have to create a registration system from the ground up. They have free access to an existing system and receive free training for their users. They have a system that is proven and uniform across the country. That uniformity helps to ensure that servicers can more readily comply with registration requirements. And the system reduces administration and paperwork, because cities can exempt the vast majority of MERS-registered lenders and servicers from additional registration requirements and target their resources to address the most challenging issues.
Those familiar with the Pareto principle recognize that 20 percent of an organization’s most challenging needs consume 80 percent of its resources, while the other 80 percent require only 20 percent of its resources. This is the advantage of resource allocation that the MERS system provides to cities.
No one expects the MERS system alone will address all of the challenges regarding vacant and abandoned properties for municipalities and servicers. But the initiative is a tremendous example of what can be accomplished when interested parties come together in a spirit of collaboration to solve a problem.
In this case, success was built on three proven strategies:
Engaging in dialogue and identifying mutual interests. MBA took the initiative to form a Vacant Property Registration Committee that reached out to cities and code-enforcement officials to understand their concerns. In turn, the cities were open to better understanding the challenges faced by servicers.
Building on proven success. Instead of building individual registration processes from the ground up, cities have immediate and free access to a proven system that will allow them to address vacant-property issues more immediately and effectively.
Maximizing limited resources. By offering cities an efficient process to track properties that are being managed responsibly, code-enforcement officials can focus their attention on the properties that are the most challenging to them.
No one knows when the current housing crisis will subside, but until it does, municipalities and servicers have demonstrated their willingness and commitment to face the challenges together. As an industry, we are especially grateful to the code-enforcement community for its partnership and collaboration in producing the MERS initiative.
The TRILLION dollar question – if the Fed bought those *securities*, who is the Real Party in Interest/Holder in Due Course of the right to *foreclose*?
And were the assignments legally enforceable and *recorded*?? (Obviously not!!!!!!)
By: Carrie Bay (DSNEWS)
The Federal Reserve’s role as buttress, crutch, and benefactor of the nation’s mortgage debt market came to an end Wednesday. Since November 2008, the central bank has been the market’s No. 1 patron, buying up $1.25 trillion in mortgage-backed securities (MBS) from Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and Ginnie Mae.
There’s been chatter that the Fed’s exit could leave a gaping hole in the secondary market for mortgage bonds, causing interest rates for home loans to spike and buyer demand to dwindle. But the central bank has been prepping the market for its absence for some time now in the hopes of diminishing such effects, and has indicated that it will be keeping a close eye on market reactions, hinting that it could step back in if conditions begin to falter.
Most market observers, though, are predicting that won’t be necessary. It appears that private investors’ appetites for agencies’ mortgage bonds are piquing. Analysts are
saying private equity will step in to pick up the slack and mortgage interest rates will rise less than a quarter of a percentage point over the next quarter.
It’s expected that there may be some price volatility in the mortgage securities space after the Fed’s withdrawal, but analysts don’t expect prices to plunge or issuers’ yields to start heading upwards. One reason for this assumption is that traditional MBS buyers now have money to burn.
Christian Cooper, an interest rate strategist at Royal Bank of Canada’s RBC Capital Markets, explained to American Banker, “As the [U.S.] government has become the world’s largest buyer of mortgage securities in the last year, they’ve effectively squeezed all other buyers out of the market. The natural mortgage-backed securities buyer has been accumulating cash, effectively waiting for the program to end.”
Economists also say that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s decision to pull seriously delinquent loans from securitized pools, which they announced in February, is making the prospect of purchasing such bonds more appealing to investors. Over the next few months, the GSEs plan to buy back loans in MBS that are 120 days or more overdue – some $127 billion in loans for Fannie, and $70 billion for Freddie.
The New York Times noted that while the mortgage market appears to be taking the end of the Federal Reserve’s MBS buying in stride, any talk from the central bank about actually selling its recently-acquired holdings should be a cause for greater concern than the Fed simply ending further purchases, since the Fed now owns about 25 percent of the outstanding stock of mortgage bonds.
Florida has been aptly dubbed one of the nation’s foreclosure hotspots, regularly posting foreclosure rates among the highest four of all the states for several years now – and its courts have a wall of foreclosure cases to back up those numbers.
In a so-called judicial state like Florida – and a good many others across the country – a foreclosure must get a judge’s stamp of approval. But the backlog has gotten so bad in the Sunshine State, that it’s pushed the Florida State Courts Administration to ask legislators for $9.6 million to bring in additional case managers and judges to help clear the still-growing glut of case files.
A recent study by Barclays Capital concluded that Florida has one of the most swollen pipelines of foreclosure cases in the nation, with Miami in particular having liquidated just 18 percent of its delinquent loans – the lowest percentage in the country. By comparison, Barclays said Las Vegas, which has the largest share of loans that are seriously delinquent, has pushed about 38 percent through liquidation.
Estimates from Florida’s court administrators put the number of pending foreclosure cases at 500,000.
According to the Palm Beach Post, it’s routine in Florida for foreclosures to take more than a year to settle, leaving properties to deteriorate, association fees to go unpaid, and families to be in limbo.
The local newspaper says judges there fear that without additional resources to clear the cases, the bottleneck will continue to drag down home values, which aren’t expected to stabilize until the backlog of distressed properties can be moved through the system.
“We want to be good partners in the economic recovery, not part of the problem,” Peter Blanc, chief judge of the 15th Judicial Circuit Court in Palm Beach County, told the Palm Beach Post. “We want to get properties through the courts and back onto the market. The numbers are just overwhelming.”
The Florida Bankers Association in January succeeded in lobbying lawmakers to introduce a bill that would clear the way for non-judicial foreclosures unless the borrower requests an appearance in court. Under the legislation, foreclosures could be concluded in as little as 90 days.
March 20 (Bloomberg) — The Federal Reserve Board removed an exemption it had given to six banks at the start of the crisis in 2007 aimed at boosting liquidity in financing markets for securities backed by mortgage- and asset-backed securities.
The so-called 23-A exemptions, named after a section of the Federal Reserve Act that limits such trades to protect bank depositors, were granted days after the Fed cut the discount rate by half a percentage point on Aug. 17, 2007. Their removal, announced yesterday in Washington, is part of a broad wind-down of emergency liquidity backstops by the Fed as markets normalize.
The decision in 2007 underscores how Fed officials defined the mortgage-market disruptions that year as partly driven by liquidity constraints. In hindsight, some analysts say that diagnosis turned out to be wrong.
“It was a way to prevent further deleveraging of the financial system, but that happened anyway,” said Dino Kos, managing director at Portales Partners LLC and former head of the New York Fed’s open market operations. “The underlying problem was solvency. The Fed was slow to recognize that.”
The Fed ended the exemptions in nearly identical letters to the Royal Bank of Scotland Plc, Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co., Deutsche Bank AG, and Barclays Bank Plc posted on its Web site.
Backstop Liquidity
The Fed’s intent in 2007 was to provide backstop liquidity for financial markets through the discount window. In a chain of credit, investors would obtain collateralized loans from dealers, dealers would obtain collateralized loans from banks, and then banks could pledge collateral to the Fed’s discount window for 30-day credit. In Citigroup’s case, the exemption allowed such lending to its securities unit up to $25 billion.
“The goal was to stop the hemorrhaging of risk capital,” said Lou Crandall, chief economist at Wrightson ICAP LLC in Jersey City, New Jersey. “Investors were being forced out of the securities market because they couldn’t fund their positions, even in higher-quality assets in some cases.”
Using mortgage bonds without government-backed guarantees as collateral for private-market financing began to get more difficult in August 2007 following the collapse of two Bear Stearns Cos. hedge funds.
As terms for loans secured by mortgage bonds got “massively” tighter, haircuts, or the excess in collateral above the amount borrowed, on AAA home-loan securities rose that month from as little as 3 percent to as much as 10 percent, according to a UBS AG report.
Lehman Collapse
By February 2008, haircuts climbed to 20 percent, investor Luminent Mortgage Capital Inc. said at the time. After Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. collapsed in September 2008, the loans almost disappeared.
“These activities were intended to allow the bank to extend credit to market participants in need of short-term liquidity to finance” holdings of mortgage loans and asset- backed securities, said the Fed board’s letter dated yesterday to Kathleen Juhase, associate general counsel of JPMorgan. “In light of this normalization of the term for discount window loans, the Board has terminated the temporary section 23-A exemption.”
The “normalization” refers to the Fed’s reduction in the term of discount window loans to overnight credit starting two days ago from a month previously.
The Fed eventually loaned directly to securities firms and opened the discount window to primary dealers in March 2008. Borrowings under the Primary Dealer Credit Facility soared to $146.5 billion on Oct. 1, 2008, following the collapse of Lehman Brothers two weeks earlier. Borrowings fell to zero in May 2009. The Fed closed the facility last month, along with three other emergency liquidity backstops.
Discount Rate
The Fed also raised the discount rate a quarter point in February to 0.75 percent, moving it closer to its normal spread over the federal funds rate of 1 percentage point.
The one interest rate the Fed hasn’t changed since the depths of the crisis is the benchmark lending rate. Officials kept the target for overnight loans among banks in a range of zero to 0.25 percent on March 16, where it has stood since December 2008, while retaining a pledge to keep rates low “for an extended period.”
Removing the 23-A exemptions shows the Fed wants to get “back to normal,” said Laurence Meyer, a former Fed governor and vice chairman of Macroeconomic Advisers LLC in Washington. “Everything has gone back to normal except monetary policy.”
This in combination with A.K. Barnett-Hart’s Thesis make’s one hell of a Discovery.
LEGAL AND ECONOMIC ISSUES IN
SUBPRIME LITIGATION
Jennifer E. Bethel*
Allen Ferrell**
Gang Hu***
Discussion Paper No. 612
03/2008
Harvard Law School Cambridge, MA 02138
ABSTRACT
This paper explores the economic and legal causes and consequences of recent difficulties in the subprime mortgage market. We provide basic descriptive statistics and institutional details on the mortgage origination process, mortgage-backed securities (MBS), and collateralized debt obligations (CDOs). We examine a number of aspects of these markets, including the identity of MBS and CDO sponsors, CDO trustees, CDO liquidations, MBS insured and registered amounts, the evolution of MBS tranche structure over time, mortgage originations, underwriting quality of mortgage originations, and write-downs of investment banks. In light of this discussion, the paper then addresses questions as to how these difficulties might have not been foreseen, and some of the main legal issues that will play an important role in the extensive subprime litigation (summarized in the paper) that is underway, including the Rule 10b-5 class actions that have already been filed against the investment banks, pending ERISA litigation, the causes-of-action available to MBS and CDO purchasers, and litigation against the rating agencies. In the course of this discussion, the paper highlights three distinctions that will likely prove central in the resolution of this litigation: The distinction between reasonable ex ante expectations and the occurrence of ex post losses; the distinction between the transparency of the quality of the underlying assets being securitized and the transparency as to which market participants are exposed to subprime losses; and, finally, the distinction between what investors and market participants knew versus what individual entities in the structured finance process knew, particularly as to macroeconomic issues such as the state of the national housing market. ex ante expectations and the occurrence of ex post losses; the distinction between the transparency of the quality of the underlying assets being securitized and the transparency as to which market participants are exposed to subprime losses; and, finally, the distinction between what investors and market participants knew versus what individual entities in the structured finance process knew, particularly as to macroeconomic issues such as the state of the national housing market.
Deal Journal has yet to read “The Big Short,” Michael Lewis’s yarn on the financial crisis that hit stores today. We did, however, read his acknowledgments, where Lewis praises “A.K. Barnett-Hart, a Harvard undergraduate who had just written a thesis about the market for subprime mortgage-backed CDOs that remains more interesting than any single piece of Wall Street research on the subject.”
A.K. Barnett-Hart
While unsure if we can stomach yet another book on the crisis, a killer thesis on the topic? Now that piqued our curiosity. We tracked down Barnett-Hart, a 24-year-old financial analyst at a large New York investment bank. She met us for coffee last week to discuss her thesis, “The Story of the CDO Market Meltdown: An Empirical Analysis.” Handed in a year ago this week at the depths of the market collapse, the paper was awarded summa cum laude and won virtually every thesis honor, including the Harvard Hoopes Prize for outstanding scholarly work.
Last October, Barnett-Hart, already pulling all-nighters at the bank (we agreed to not name her employer), received a call from Lewis, who had heard about her thesis from a Harvard doctoral student. Lewis was blown away.
“It was a classic example of the innocent going to Wall Street and asking the right questions,” said Mr. Lewis, who in his 20s wrote “Liar’s Poker,” considered a defining book on Wall Street culture. “Her thesis shows there were ways to discover things that everyone should have wanted to know. That it took a 22-year-old Harvard student to find them out is just outrageous.”
Barnett-Hart says she wasn’t the most obvious candidate to produce such scholarship. She grew up in Boulder, Colo., the daughter of a physics professor and full-time homemaker. A gifted violinist, Barnett-Hart deferred admission at Harvard to attend Juilliard, where she was accepted into a program studying the violin under Itzhak Perlman. After a year, she headed to Cambridge, Mass., for a broader education. There, with vague designs on being pre-Med, she randomly took “Ec 10,” the legendary introductory economics course taught by Martin Feldstein.
“I thought maybe this would help me, like, learn to manage my money or something,” said Barnett-Hart, digging into a granola parfait at Le Pain Quotidien. She enjoyed how the subject mixed current events with history, got an A (natch) and declared economics her concentration.
Barnett-Hart’s interest in CDOs stemmed from a summer job at an investment bank in the summer of 2008 between junior and senior years. During a rotation on the mortgage securitization desk, she noticed everyone was in a complete panic. “These CDOs had contaminated everything,” she said. “The stock market was collapsing and these securities were affecting the broader economy. At that moment I became obsessed and decided I wanted to write about the financial crisis.”
Back at Harvard, against the backdrop of the financial system’s near-total collapse, Barnett-Hart approached professors with an idea of writing a thesis about CDOs and their role in the crisis. “Everyone discouraged me because they said I’d never be able to find the data,” she said. “I was urged to do something more narrow, more focused, more knowable. That made me more determined.”
She emailed scores of Harvard alumni. One pointed her toward LehmanLive, a comprehensive database on CDOs. She received scores of other data leads. She began putting together charts and visuals, holding off on analysis until she began to see patterns–how Merrill Lynch and Citigroup were the top originators, how collateral became heavily concentrated in subprime mortgages and other CDOs, how the credit ratings procedures were flawed, etc.
“If you just randomly start regressing everything, you can end up doing an unlimited amount of regressions,” she said, rolling her eyes. She says nearly all the work was in the research; once completed, she jammed out the paper in a couple of weeks.
“It’s an incredibly impressive piece of work,” said Jeremy Stein, a Harvard economics professor who included the thesis on a reading list for a course he’s teaching this semester on the financial crisis. “She pulled together an enormous amount of information in a way that’s both intelligent and accessible.”
Barnett-Hart’s thesis is highly critical of Wall Street and “their irresponsible underwriting practices.” So how is it that she can work for the very institutions that helped create the notorious CDOs she wrote about?
“After writing my thesis, it became clear to me that the culture at these investment banks needed to change and that incentives needed to be realigned to reward more than just short-term profit seeking,” she wrote in an email. “And how would Wall Street ever change, I thought, if the people that work there do not change? What these banks needed is for outsiders to come in with a fresh perspective, question the way business was done, and bring a new appreciation for the true purpose of an investment bank – providing necessary financial services, not creating unnecessary products to bolster their own profits.”
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