The electronic world has been the main cause of this all. This confusion would not have been made possible if they never created MERS and gave anyone (20,000+) a license to sign. No supervision, no guidance, lack of regulations…no excuses.

Two Financial Services subcommittees held a joint hearing on Thursday, July 7 to review the role of Federal regulators in the ongoing mortgage servicing settlement negotiations and the development of new mortgage servicing standards.  Witnesses included regulators from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the FDIC, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and two state attorneys general.

@ 3:12:30 Mr. Stevens: on Document Mills and Robo-Signing “Laws were violated” “Legal Violations” “Card Table with Burger King Kids” “Laws Broken by some Institutions not all”

@ 3:17:50 Mr. Manzullo: on Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems (MERS) “By-Pass local recorder” “That’s the reason now a lot of people who don’t know who owns the NOTE, don’t know who owns the mortgage” “Automation thing made it worse”

Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit
Oversight and Investigations

Click here for the Archived Webcast of this hearing.

WITNESS LIST

Panel I

Ms. Julie Williams, First Senior Deputy Comptroller and Chief Counsel, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency

Mr. Mark Pearce, Director, Division of Depositor and Consumer Protection, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation

Mr. Raj Date, Associate Director of Research, Markets and Regulations, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, U.S. Department of the Treasury

Hon. Luther Strange, Alabama Attorney General

Panel II

Mr. David Stevens, President, Mortgage Bankers Association

Mr. Michael Calhoun, President, Center for Responsible Lending

************

Joint Hearing To Examine Mortgage Servicing Negotiations

Thomas A. Cox is a retired bank lawyer in Portland, Maine who serves as the Volunteer Program Coordinator for the Maine Attorney’s Saving Homes (MASH) program. He represents homeowners in foreclosure, and assists and consults with other volunteer lawyers in providing pro bono legal services to these Maine homeowners.

Another Super Tremendous Job! Listen to her carefully for those of you who may not be aware of the secrets behind the modification game. She tells exactly how it’s playing out.

“Moratorium Now”

SANDRA HINES the voice of foreclosed America! Sandra is a Detroit resident who lost her home that was in her family for 37 years to foreclosure.

Watch this in it’s entirety! It gets explosive and will leave you either in tears or leave you wanting more!

“I came to tell the

Story of The People”

United States House of Representatives
Committee on the Judiciary
Hearing on: “Foreclosed Justice: Causes and Effects of the Foreclosure Crisis” Pt 2

Witness List

United States House of Representatives
Committee on the Judiciary
Hearing on: “Foreclosed Justice: Causes and Effects of the Foreclosure Crisis”

Written Testimony of
Christopher L. Peterson
Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Professor of Law
University of Utah, S.J. Quinney College of Law
Salt Lake City, Utah
December 2, 2010
10:00 a.m.

It is an honor to appear today before this Committee. Thank you for the opportunity to share some thoughts on our national foreclosure crisis. My name is Christopher Peterson and I am the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and a Professor of Law at the University of Utah where I teach contract and commercial law classes. I commend you, Chairman Conyers, Representative Smith, and other members of the Committee for organizing these hearings and for providing an opportunity to discuss this important and timely national issue.

The foreclosure crisis is an extremely complex problem. With so many fundamental changes, opportunities for moral hazard, agency cost problems, consumer abuses, and impending lawsuits, it is easy to lose track of some of the basic legal and business practice problems that departed from past traditions and helped bring us to our present situation. In particular, it is somewhat perplexing that relatively little attention has been paid to the one company that has been a party in more problematic mortgage loans than any other institution. Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc., commonly known as MERS, is a corporation registered in Delaware and headquartered in Reston, Virginia.1 MERS operates a computer database that includes some information on servicing and ownership rights of mortgage loans.2 Originators, servicers, and other financial institutions pay membership dues and per?transaction fees to MERS in exchange for the right to use and access MERS records.3 In addition to operating its computer database, MERS also pretends to own mortgage loans in order to help its members avoid paying fees to county governments.

My testimony is largely derived from two scholarly articles I have written on this topic which I invite the committee to review for further information.4 My prepared statement today will: (1) discuss the Origin and Business Practices of MERS; (2) explore the problematic legal foundation of MERS; (3) suggest that MERS is a deceptive and anti?democratic institution designed to deprive county governments of revenue; (4) explain how MERS is undermining mortgage loan and land title record keeping; (5) argue that MERS was a contributing factor in the foreclosure crisis and has made resolving foreclosures more difficult; and (6) propose some solutions for the committee to consider.

Continue below…

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F. DANA WINSLOW
NYS SUPREME COURT JUSTICE
Before the House of Representatives
DECEMBER 2,2010
ON
CAUSES AND EFFECTS OF THE FORECLOSURE CRISIS
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY
FORECLOSED JUSTICE:
CAUSES AND EFFECTS OF THE FORECLOSURE CRISIS
Hon. F. Dana Winslow
December 2, 2010

Excerpts:

3.2.4 Robo·signing. Questionable validity of signatures on assignments and affidavits
attesting to ownership of the Note and Mortgage. Examples:

3.2.4.1 Signed by: “Duly Authorized Officer,” “Authorized Signer,” “Attomey·in·
Fact” or “Authorized Agent.” What do these titles mean? What is the function
afthe person signing the documents, and what is the basis of their personal
knowledge?

3.2.4.2 Same person signs several documents, in several different capacities: e.g.,
“Vice President of [Assignor Mortgagee)” is also the “Assistant Secretary of
the Servicer” for the Plaintiff Mortgagee, and an employee of the law firm
bringing the foreclosure action.

3.2.5 Validity of notary stamps on assignments.

3.2.5.1 Assignment documents notarized several months after the assignment was
purportedly effected.

3.2.5.2 Notarized in blank – name of the person whose signature was purportedly
witnessed is omitted.

Continue Below…

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Written Testimony of
James A. Kowalski, Jr., Esquire
Law Offices of James A. Kowalski, Jr., PL
Jacksonville, FL

Before the
Committee On The Judiciary
United States House of Representatives
“Foreclosed Justice: Causes and Effects of the Foreclosure Crisis“

Excerpt:

The focus on speed is part of the business model for the servicers. As those of us
who have litigated these cases for years now, and as all of us now know as a result of the
robo-signing scandals, most of the servicers use “Signing Officers” – rows of individuals
who sit before reams of documents prepared by others, with not even a modest wink at
the business records exception to the hearsay rule, and who sign the documents only to
have the document transported across the business campus to rows of notaries, who attest
to the signatures without ever complying with the basics of their state’s notary laws.

Some of the mill firms now employ their own “Signing OffIcers” – individuals
who will sign Assignments of Mortgage on behalf of the owners of the pool, supposedly
authorized by the servicer pursuant to the Pooling and Servicing Agreement which
applies to the particular securitized trust. The documents are prepared entirely by the
servicer.

On occasion, the law fIrm employees also sign the AffIdavits in support of
motions for summary judgment fIled by the law fIrms – here, the lawyer’s offIce staff
becomes the material witness for the lawyer’s client.

Continue reading below…

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August 6, 2010

The government’s $182 billion bailout of insurance giant AIG should be seen as the Rosetta Stone for understanding the financial crisis and its costly aftermath. The story of American International Group explains the larger catastrophe not because this was the biggest corporate bailout in history but because AIG’s collapse and subsequent rescue involved nearly all the critical elements, including delusion and deception. These financial dealings are monstrously complicated, but this account focuses on something mere mortals can understand—moral confusion in high places, and the failure of governing institutions to fulfill their obligations to the public.

Three governmental investigative bodies have now pored through the AIG wreckage and turned up disturbing facts—the House Committee on Oversight and Reform; the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, which will make its report at year’s end; and the Congressional Oversight Panel (COP), which issued its report on AIG in June.

The five-member COP, chaired by Harvard professor Elizabeth Warren, has produced the most devastating and comprehensive account so far. Unanimously adopted by its bipartisan members, it provides alarming insights that should be fodder for the larger debate many citizens long to hear—why Washington rushed to forgive the very interests that produced this mess, while innocent others were made to suffer the consequences. The Congressional panel’s critique helps explain why bankers and their Washington allies do not want Elizabeth Warren to chair the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

The most troubling revelation in this story is the astonishing weakness of the Federal Reserve and its incompetence as a faithful defender of the public interest.

The report concludes that the Federal Reserve Board’s intimate relations with the leading powers of Wall Street—the same banks that benefited most from the government’s massive bailout—influenced its strategic decisions on AIG. The panel accuses the Fed and the Treasury Department of brushing aside alternative approaches that would have saved tens of billions in public funds by making these same banks “share the pain.”

Bailing out AIG effectively meant rescuing Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America and Merrill Lynch (as well as a dozens of European banks) from huge losses. Those financial institutions played the derivatives game with AIG, the esoteric practice of placing financial bets on future events. AIG lost its bets, which led to its collapse. But other gamblers—the counterparties in AIG’s derivative deals—were made whole on their bets, paid off 100 cents on the dollar. Taxpayers got stuck with the bill.

“The AIG rescue demonstrated that Treasury and the Federal Reserve would commit taxpayers to pay any price and bear any burden to prevent the collapse of America’s largest financial institutions,” the COP report said. This could have been avoided, the report argues, if the Fed had listened to disinterested advisers with a less parochial understanding of the public interest.

Continue Reading…The Nation

or Alternet