A couple of times a week a get some great emails from Matt Stoller (who I deeply admire) whereby he keeps me up to date on what is going on behind the scenes in the ongoing Foreclosure/Fraud/Mortgage fiasco and how our so called 'Corporate Overlords,' who keep trying, and trying over and over again to make these huge, outrageous sleazy deals to get them out of the fix that they refuse to own up to.
I in turn send Matt back any new stories I've found, including some of the outstanding diaries that are done on DailyKos, to share information he may not know about. Matt has been a great source of information, and I consider him a wonderful mentor and friend.
Recently, he sent me yet another story on someone I've been keeping my eye on (now know as the 'the Sheriff of Wall St.') That man is NY AG Eric Schneiderman, who has refused to sign on to the bullshit agreement that AG Tom Miller, who was supposedly heading up the other 49 State AG's agreement to propose just another crappy deal, that sold American's out in favor of the Banks.
Below is an excerpt of the article that Matt sent to me:
William Greider | June 28, 2011
The most powerful Wall Street banks are used to getting their own way, especially with politicians, but New York’s attorney general is trying to turn the tables on them. Eric Schneiderman is digging into the accumulating evidence of massive fraud and false documentation revealed by the foreclosure mess and asks a potentially explosive question: How bad is it?
The answer could prove devastating for some of the largest financial institutions in the land, confronting them with huge new losses and maybe renewing the banking crisis the Obama administration thought it had resolved. Perhaps that’s why law-enforcement agencies, state and federal, have not undertaken a thorough investigation of the scandal—they’re afraid of what they might find. The newly elected New York AG has been obliquely warned that his inquiry could “blow up the economy,” but he ignores the scare talk. If the evidence is there, it should definitely put the banks on the defensive, for a change.
snip....
Banks have naturally resisted any settlement like this (so has Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner). Maybe the banks and their political cheerleaders will be softened up if Eric Schneiderman and other AGs begin to nail them with hard facts and costly legal judgments. Which poison do they prefer? The housing crisis is not going away until some political force finds a way to move it off dead center....If the federal government muscles state governments into accepting a cheap settlement, that still doesn’t relieve the banking industry of treacherous legal threats. As Damon Silvers has pointed out, the core problem in this mess involves property rights—rights that belong to citizens and cannot be given away by government. If necessary, people themselves will continue their fight with the bankers, with gathering force and ingenuity. Bankers may eventually decide they are better off settling. If government fails to moderate the suffering and steer the economy toward a gentler recovery, sooner or later the markets will solve things for us, perhaps violently and irrationally. If that happens, the next crisis will not be about debt and deficits but about the gradual unraveling of the entire financial system.
http://www.thenation.com/...
The full original article is long and involved, but is well worth to read because the implications of these upcoming decisions are huge, and could well subterfuge centuries of what is known as basic property rights and legal precedents that in fact, could fully destroy what is left of own own 'States Rights,' and hand them to over the the same Wall St./Bankstas who made out like bandits in the first place, and are now simply pushing for more and more of the same. And make no mistake about it, in most instances, these agreements give the Banks FULL IMMUNITY, that will still not address the bullshit MERS WHITEWASH, which still will not prove that your home does not have a cloudy title. That is bullshit.
Another article that I find rather remarkable is how former President Clinton is now essentially acting as a Lobbyist to push through yet another 'bullshit deal,' that is trying to go down by Bank of American. I mean, why in the hell is Bill Clinton involved in this in the first place?
As usual, the great Yves Smith, pulls the 'dead smelly rat' out of this story, which she has been following this new 'bullshit deal,' by BOA from the get go, and here are a few remarks she made today that just are a total bulls eye, and what is really going down here:
Bank of America is participant in the Clinton Global Initiative meeting which is underway in Chicago. I assume that requires a financial commitment of some sort, although not at the level of a sponsor. The The mayor of Charlotte, North Carolina, which is where BofA is headquartered, was a “featured participant”. The CGI website lists only a sampling of “Notable Members: Private Sector” and they include Lloyd Blankfein, Jamie Dimon, Jeff Immelt, and Warren Buffett. His CEO is a former Goldman partner.
In addition, while we do favor mods, the idea that they will promote lending is questionable. First, banks have tons of reserves sitting at the Fed and could be lending if they cared to. The big constraint on lending now is not bank capacity, but the lack of willing and able borrowers, The head of MM&T Bank, which is respected for its savvy in middle market lending, says he can’t find businesses that are strong enough to be good borrowing candidates. Consumers are for the most part in retrenchment mode, trying to pay down debt. The missing part of this equation is not credit, it’s lower unemployment and a real economic recovery.
And even if you took the Clinton theory at face value, it does not hold water. If banks (or those magical special servicers) do mods, that will force the biggest four retail banks (BofA, Citi, JP Morgan, and Wells) to take losses on their home equity portfolios, which total roughly $400 billion among them. Meaningful writedowns on these holdings would result in a major hit to their equity, and these banks are also expected to take losses on commercial real estate soon (certain accounting practices that have allowed for valuation gamesmanship will no longer be permitted after the third quarter of this year). Lower equity capital levels mean less, not more, lending. The top four banks don’t want to recognize the losses of the magnitude that any sort of market clearing event will achieve. The strategy has been extend and pretend: use regulatory forebearance to keep from showing how sick the banks are, and let them earn easy yield curve profits while the Fed keeps short term rates low. The hope is the banks will earn their way back to health. It might help if the banks would play along with this strategy and quit using these government gimmies to fund big bonuses.
Again, Ms. Smith's full article is worth reading, and please feel free to do so:
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/...
But just so you understand the full ramifications of what American's have lost in their own home equity, as Greenspan, Bernanke, the SEC, the NYSE, and Frannie and Freddie Mac, the OCC, and so many other 'in bed regulators' all turned a blind eye to, as opposed to what these Bankstas/Wall Street types are still getting away with, doing these 'shitty little deals,' to get themselves off the hook for any immunity, consider this fact:
American homeowners have lost $6.5 trillion in equity in those 57 months. Here is the data from the Fed Flow of Funds household balance sheet:
Homeowner's equity:
2006: $12.8 trillion
2011: $6.3 trillion
Net decline: $6.5 trillion
That is a big number, and the analysis I presented in The Housing Bubble Broke the Middle Class (April 27, 2011) suggested that this $6.5 trillion was roughly half of the middle class's total net assets.
http://www.oftwominds.com/...
See the difference now? Not only are they offering still a 'penny on the dollar,' but they still refuse to outlaw MERS, and they will want and are fighting tooth and to hold up MERS, so that none of these Bankers/Wall Street crooks, can be held accountable or be required to unwind their own fucking mess. MERS, was nothing more than a fake black whole, to insure that Banks/Lenders could begin the ultimate scam of all: the fake Robo-signing scam, that turned into the most outrageous and disgusting illegal movement by these crooks, to throw innocent people out of their homes, and still not be required to provide the original note on the home.
And if you think this has stopped happening? Think again. Dream on. No one is standing up for us, as usual:
Years have passed since the housing crisis first brought the U.S. economy to the brink, but reports of mortgage fraud are only increasing, up 31 percent in the first quarter of 2011, according to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, a Treasury bureau that tracks illegal financial activity.
In a report released Tuesday, FinCEN said that it had received 25,485 mortgage-loan fraud suspicious activity reports in the January-March period, up from 19,420 in the first quarter of 2010.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
Another exceptional hero, besides NY AG Eric Schneiderman, is in fact, John O’Brien, a register in Southern Essex County, Massachusetts, who is fighting this fight tooth and nail. He refused to not to record any documents he suspected of fraud. He has, in fact demanded that MERS pay millions of dollars in back recording fees which were not paid when banks tracked their own mortgage transfers on a database. But O’Brien hadn’t done the work of auditing his office, but that is now proceeding:
At the Annual Conference of The International Association of Clerks, Recorders, Election Officials and Treasurers (IACREOT), Register John O’Brien revealed the results of an independent audit of his registry. The audit, which is released as a legal affidavit was performed by McDonnell Property Analytics, examined assignments of mortgage recorded in the Essex Southern District Registry of Deeds issued to and from JPMorgan Chase Bank, Wells Fargo Bank, and Bank of America during 2010. In total, 565 assignments related to 473 unique mortgages were analyzed.
McDonnell’s Report includes the following key findings:
• Only 16% of assignments of mortgage are valid
• 75% of assignments of mortgage are invalid.
• 9% of assignments of mortgage are questionable
• 27% of the invalid assignments are fraudulent, 35% are “robo-signed” and 10% violate the Massachusetts Mortgage Fraud Statute.
• The identity of financial institutions that are current owners of the mortgages could only be determined for 287 out of 473 (60%)
• There are 683 missing assignments for the 287 traced mortgages, representing approximately $180,000 in lost recording fees per 1,000 mortgages whose current ownership can be traced.
McDonnell told O’Brien… “What this means is that the degradation in standards of commerce by which the banks originated, sold and securitized these mortgages are so fatally flawed that the institutions, including many pension funds, that purchased these mortgages don’t actually own them because the assignments of mortgage were never prepared, executed and delivered to them in the normal course of business at the time of the transaction. In a blatant attempt to engineer a ‘fix’ to the problem, the banks set up in-house document execution teams, or outsourced the preparation of their assignments to third parties who manufactured them out of thin air without researching who really owns the mortgage.”
http://news.firedoglake.com/...
As usual, I'm just keeping you all up to date and reporting the facts, because I know many people and hard working families that this has indeed happened to. My neighbors, my friends and so many others.
Just know this: if we let these rat fuckers get away with stealing our homes, then what else do you think they are coming after next? Oh, wait, that would be cuts to Social Security, Medicare, the elderly the poor, the to end unemployment benefits, and food stamps and disability payments. All to continue the meaningless endless wars, that are fully supported by the top 1 percent who are happy as pigs in shit, with their extended Bush Tax Cuts, with absolutely no takes on the Corporations, and the Oil Companies. WITH NO JOBS PROGRAMS EVER COMING BACK AT THE POINT. GOT IT.
Carry on, be strong, be informed, share the news, and hold each other up.
Wish it were not so. As usual thank you so much for everything.
Ms. B.