Who Else Relied on Mortgage Assignments From Lender Processing Services to Foreclose?
In the past few weeks, Fraud Digest has reported on NovaStar, Bear Stearns and WaMu Trusts. These trusts almost always do not have the critical loan documents needed to foreclose so they turned to Lender Processing Services to manufacture mortgage assignments for them.
Like these trusts, Maiden Lane Asset-Backed Securities Trust 2008-1 (“Maiden Lane”) most often uses Mortgage Assignments from LPS to foreclose.
Maiden Lane is “a special purpose vehicle consolidated by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.” Maiden Lane was put together by some of the best and the brightest in banking – but when it came to seeing that the mortgage files contained the critical documents, Maiden Lane was no better than Countrywide or WaMu or Long Beach.
And to facilitate foreclosures, Maiden Lane uses Mortgage Assignments – that also purport to assign the NOTE – from Lender Processing Services. These Assignments were most often made in 2009 – and filed in 2009 and 2010.
Here is a partial list of Mortgage Assignments to Maiden Lane ABS Trust 2008-1. Note in particular the number of MERS titles claimed by LPS employees Greg Allen and Liquenda Allotey.
From Hillsborough County, Florida Official Records:
Instrument#: 2010265459
Assignor: MERS as nominee for Bear Stearns Residential Mortgage Corp., by Greg Allen, VP
Date of Assignment: 7-20-2009
Instrument #: 2010072578
Assignor: MERS as nominee for Solstice Capital Group, Inc., by Liquenda Allotey, VP
Date of Assignment: 7-20-2009
Instrument #: 2009383278
Assignor: MERS as nominee for Bravo Credit, by Greg Allen, VP
Date of Assignment: 11-2-2009
Instrument #: 2009316873
Assignor: MERS as nominee for GreenPoint Mortgage Funding, Inc., by Christine Allen, VP
Date of Assignment: 9-14-2009
Instrument #: 2009314046
Assignor: MERS as nominee for Bayrock Mortgage Corp. by Liquenda Allotey, VP and Greg Allen, VP
Date of Assignment: 9-16-2009
Instrument #: 2009043801
Assignor: MERS as nominee for GreenPoint Mortgage Funding by Greg Allen, VP and John Cody, VP
Date of Assignment: 1-13-2009
Instrument #: 2009017120
Assignor: MERS as nominee for Bravo Credit by Christine Anderson, VP and Greg Allen, VP
Date of Assignment: 12-9-2008
From Lee County, Florida Official Records:
Instrument #: 2009000111365
Assignor: MERS, by Liquenda Allotey, VP
Date of Assignment: 4-20-2009
Instrument #: 2009000033548
Assignor: MERS as nominee for Amerimortgage Bankers, LLC by Greg Allen, VP
Date of Assignment: 1-12-2009
From Palm Beach County, Florida Official Records:
Instrument #: 20080419438
Assignor: MERS as nominee for First Guaranty Financial Corp., d/b/a Phoenix Funding by Liquenda Allotey, VP and Mathew Casey, VP
Date of Assignment: 10-15-2008
Instrument #: 20080435965
Assignor: MERS as nominee for Geneva Mortgage Corp. by Liquenda Allotey, Assistant Secretary and Christine Anderson, VP
Date of Assignment: 11-11-2008
Instrument #: 20090055586
Assignor: MERS as nominee for American Home Mortgage Acceptance, Inc. by Liquenda Allotey, VP and Greg Allen, VP
Date of Assignment: 1-20-2009
Instrument #: 20090076228
Assignor: MERS as nominee for AMPRO Mortgage by Liquenda Allotey, VP and Greg Allen, VP
Date of Assignment: 2-3-2009
Instrument #: 20090096176
Assignor: MERS as nominee for Equifirst Corp. by Liquenda Allotey, VP and Greg Allen, VP
Date of Assignment: 2-24-2009
From Martin County, Florida Official Records:
Instrument #2132924
Assignor: MERS as nominee for GE MoneyBank by Greg Allen, VP
Date of Assignment: 2-4-2009
From Broward County, Florida Official Records:
Instrument #108479192
Assignor: MERS as nominee for Bravo Credit by Greg Allen, VP
Date of Assignment: 2-6-2009
Instrument #108878042
Assignor: MERS as nominee for Hometown Mortgage Services, Inc. by Greg Allen, VP
and Liquenda Allotey, VP
Date of Assignment: 9-9-2009
Instrument # 108819366
Assignor: MERS as nominee for Home Loan Center, Inc. d/b/a Lendingtree Loans by Greg Allen, VP and Liquenda Allotey, VP
Date of Assignment: 8-24-2009
This section of the website provides detailed information about the liquidity and credit programs and other monetary policy tools that the Federal Reserve used to respond to the financial crisis that emerged in the summer of 2007. These programs fall into three broad categories–those aimed at addressing severe liquidity strains in key financial markets, those aimed at providing credit to troubled systemically important institutions, and those aimed at fostering economic recovery by lowering longer-term interest rates.
The emergency liquidity programs that the Federal Reserve set up provided secured and mostly short-term loans. Over time, these programs helped to alleviate the strains and to restore normal functioning in a number of key financial markets, supporting the flow of credit to businesses and households. As financial markets stabilized, the Federal Reserve closed most of these programs. Indeed, many of the programs were intentionally priced to be unattractive to borrowers when markets are functioning normally and, as a result, wound down as market conditions improved. The programs achieved their intended purposes with no loss to taxpayers.
The Federal Reserve also provided credit to several systemically important financial institutions. These actions were taken to avoid the disorderly failure of these institutions and the potential catastrophic consequences for the U.S. financial system and economy. All extensions of credit were fully secured and are in the process of being fully repaid.
Finally, the Federal Reserve provided economic stimulus by lowering interest rates. Over the course of the crisis, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) reduced its target for the federal funds rate to a range of 0 to 1/4 percent. With the federal funds rate at its effective lower bound, the FOMC provided further monetary policy stimulus through large-scale purchases of longer-term Treasury debt, federal agency debt, and agency mortgage-backed securities (agency MBS). These asset purchases helped to lower longer-term interest rates and generally improved conditions in private credit markets.
The links to the right provide detailed information about the programs that were established in response to the crisis. Details for each loan include: the borrower, the date that credit was extended, the interest rate, information about the collateral, and other relevant terms. Similar information is supplied for swap line draws and repayments. Details for each agency MBS purchase include: the counterparty to the transaction, the date of the transaction, the amount of the transaction, and the price at which each transaction was conducted. The transaction data are provided in compliance with the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010. The Federal Reserve will revise the data to ensure that they are accurate and complete.
No rules about executive compensation or dividend payments were applied to borrowers using Federal Reserve facilities. Executive compensation restrictions were imposed by statute on firms receiving assistance through the U.S. Treasury’s Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). Dividend restrictions were the province of the appropriate supervisors and were imposed by the Federal Reserve on bank holding companies in that role, but not because of borrowing through the facilities discussed here.
Fed Reveals Bear Stearns Assets It Swallowed in Firm’s Rescue (Bloomberg)
By Craig Torres, Bob Ivry and Scott Lanman
April 1 (Bloomberg) — After months of litigation and political scrutiny, the Federal Reserve yesterday ended a policy of secrecy over its Bear Stearns Cos. bailout.
In a 4:30 p.m. announcement in a week of congressional recess and religious holidays, the central bank released details of securities bought to aid Bear Stearns’s takeover by JPMorgan Chase & Co. Bloomberg News sued the Fed for that information.
The Fed’s vehicle known as Maiden Lane LLC has securities backed by mortgages from lenders including Washington Mutual Inc. and Countrywide Financial Corp., loans that were made with limited borrower documentation. More than $1 billion of them are backed by “jumbo” mortgages written by Thornburg Mortgage Inc., which now carry the lowest investment-grade rating. Jumbo loans were larger than government-sponsored mortgage buyers such as Fannie Mae could finance — $417,000 at the time.
“The Fed absorbed that risk on its balance sheet and is now seen to be holding problematic, legacy assets,” said Vincent Reinhart, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington who was the central bank’s monetary- affairs director from 2001 to 2007. “There is both an impairment to its balance sheet and its reputation.”
The Bear Stearns deal marked a turning point in the financial crisis for the Fed. By putting taxpayers at risk in financing the rescue, the central bank was engaging in fiscal policy, normally the domain of Congress and the U.S. Treasury, said Marvin Goodfriend, a former Richmond Fed policy adviser who is now an economist at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.
‘Panic’ Cause
“Lack of clarity on the boundary between responsibilities of the Fed and of the Congress as much as anything else created panic in the fall of 2008,” Goodfriend said. “That created a situation in which what had been a serious recession became something near a Great Depression.”
Central bankers also created moral hazard, or a perception for investors that any financial firm bigger than Bear Stearns wouldn’t be allowed to fail, said David Kotok, chief investment officer at Cumberland Advisors Inc. in Vineland, New Jersey.
Policy makers’ resolve was tested months later by runs against the largest financial companies. Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. collapsed into bankruptcy in September 2008. The ensuing panic caused the Fed to take even more emergency measures to push liquidity into markets and institutions. It rescued American International Group Inc. from collapse and allowed Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley to convert into bank holding companies, putting them under greater oversight by the central bank.
Early Failure
“Letting somebody fail early would have been a better choice,” Kotok said. “You would have ratcheted moral hazard lower and Lehman wouldn’t have been so severe.”
The Bear Stearns assets include bets against the credit of bond insurers such as MBIA Inc., Financial Security Assurance Holdings Ltd. and a unit of Ambac Financial Group, putting the Fed in the position of wagering companies will stop paying their debts.
The Fed disclosed that some of Maiden Lane’s assets were portions of commercial loans for hotels, including Short Hills Hilton LLC in New Jersey, Hilton Hawaiian Village LLC in Hawaii, and Hilton of Malaysia LLC, in addition to securities backed by residential mortgages.
More than a year after Washington Mutual, the largest U.S. savings and loan, was purchased by JPMorgan Chase in a distressed sale arranged by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., the home loans that helped bring down the Seattle-based thrift live on in the Maiden Lane portfolio.
Lending Standards
For example, 94 percent of the mortgages in one security, called WAMU 06-A13 2XPPP, required limited documentation from borrowers, meaning the lender often didn’t ask customers for proof of their incomes. Almost 10 percent of the borrowers whose mortgages make up the security have been foreclosed on, and almost a quarter are more than two months late with payments, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
The portfolio also includes $618.9 million of securities backed by Countrywide, mortgages now rated CCC, eight levels below investment grade. All the underlying loans are adjustable- rate mortgages, with about 88 percent requiring only limited borrower documentation, according to Bloomberg data. About 33.6 percent of the borrowers are at least 60 days late. Countrywide is now part of Charlotte, North Carolina-based Bank of America Corp.
CDO Holdings
Maiden Lane has $19.5 million of securities from a series of collateralized debt obligations called Tropic CDO that are backed by trust preferred securities of community banks and thrifts. CDOs are investment pools made up of a variety of assets that provide a flow of cash.
Trust preferred securities, or TruPS, have characteristics of debt and equity and their interest payments are tax- deductible.
The securities created by Bear Stearns are rated C, one level above default, by Moody’s Investors Service and Fitch Ratings.
CDO securities have tumbled in value as banks are failing at the fastest rate in 17 years, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The average price of TruPS CDO debt of this rating is pennies on the dollar, according to Citigroup Inc.
“The trust of the taxpayer was abused,” said Janet Tavakoli, president of Chicago-based financial consulting firm Tavakoli Structured Finance Inc. CDOs rated CCC and lower “have a high likelihood of default,” she said.
Bernanke Defense
Chairman Ben S. Bernanke defended the Bear Stearns deal as a rescue of the financial system. He said in a speech at the Kansas City Fed’s annual Jackson Hole, Wyoming conference in August 2008 that a sudden Bear Stearns failure would have caused a “vicious circle of forced selling” and increased volatility.
“The broader economy could hardly have remained immune from such severe financial disruptions,” Bernanke said in the speech. The Fed chief, who took office in 2006 and began his second term as chairman this year, also has repeatedly called for an overhaul of financial regulations that would allow authorities to take over a failing financial institution and oversee an orderly unwinding of its positions.
Bernanke said last year that nothing made him “more angry” than the AIG case, blaming the insurer for making “irresponsible bets” and a lack of regulatory oversight for the debacle. Officials “had no choice but to try and stabilize the system” by aiding the firm in September 2008, he said.
Yesterday’s release by the Fed, through its New York regional bank, also identified securities acquired in the bailout of AIG held in vehicles known as Maiden Lane II and III.
Market Value
Assets in Maiden Lane II totaled $34.8 billion, according to the Fed, which set their current market value in its weekly balance sheet at $15.3 billion. That means Maiden Lane II assets are worth 44 cents on the dollar, or 44 percent of their face value, according to the Fed.
Maiden Lane III, which has $56 billion of assets at face value, is worth $22.1 billion, or 39 cents on the dollar, according to the Fed’s weekly balance sheet. A similar calculation for the Bear Stearns portfolio couldn’t be made because of outstanding derivatives trades.
“The Federal Reserve recognizes the importance of transparency to its financial stability efforts and will continue to review disclosure practices with the goal of making additional information publicly available when possible,” the New York Fed said in yesterday’s statement.
Deal With Chase
The central bank said it reached agreement on “issues of confidentiality” for the assets with JPMorgan Chase, which bought Bear Stearns in 2008, and AIG. New York-based JPMorgan and AIG would incur the first losses on the portfolios.
Joe Evangelisti, a spokesman for JPMorgan, and Mark Herr, a spokesman for AIG, declined to comment.
In April 2008, Bloomberg News requested records under the federal Freedom of Information Act from the Fed’s Board of Governors related to JPMorgan’s acquisition of Bear Stearns. The central bank responded that records retained by the New York Fed “were proprietary records of the Reserve Bank, and not Board records subject” to the request, court records show.
Bloomberg filed suit in November 2008 in U.S. District Court in New York, challenging the Fed’s denial, as well as the denial of a separate request made in May 2008, seeking records of four other emergency lending programs.
The district court held that the Fed should release documents related to those four programs, and should search documents held by the New York regional bank to determine whether any of them should be considered records of the board of governors.
The U.S. Court of Appeals on March 19 upheld the district court’s ruling on the lending programs.
Representative Darrell Issa of California said in a statement that yesterday’s disclosure may “signal a new willingness to cooperate with Congress as we investigate how these bailout deals were structured and what the decision making process entailed.”
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