Category: Corporate Statism

Breaking news

~ susie ~ 7 Comments

The White House announces President Obama is refusing to sign H.B. 3808:

Today, the White House announced that President Obama will not sign H.R. 3808, the Interstate Recognition of Notarizations Act of 2010, and will return the bill to the House of Representatives. The Interstate Recognition of Notarizations Act of 2010 was designed to remove impediments to interstate commerce. While we share this goal, we believe it is necessary to have further deliberations about the intended and unintended impact of this bill on consumer protections, including those for mortgages, before this bill can be finalized.

Notarizations are important for a large range of documents, including financial documents. As the President has made clear, consumer financial protections are incredibly important, and he has made this one of his top priorities, including signing into law the strongest consumer protections in history in the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. That is why we need to think through the intended and unintended consequences of this bill on consumer protections, especially in light of the recent developments with mortgage processors.

The authors of this bill no doubt had the best intentions in mind when trying to remove impediments to interstate commerce. We will work with them and other leaders in Congress to explore the best ways to achieve this goal going forward.

UPDATE from Huffington Post:

The legislation, titled the “Interstate Recognition of Notarizations Act,” would “require any Federal or State court to recognize any notarization made by a notary public licensed by a State other than the State where the court is located when such notarization occurs in or affects interstate commerce.” The bill would also require courts to recognize electronic notarizations.

“The thing that concerns me about the bill is that the provisions in it that allow for digital notarization by electronic means,” said Gardner, “which implies that anyone with the appropriate software could notarize a digital document or image of a document, which would allow someone to notarize a document without seeing someone execute the document or doing the things a notary is supposed to do. In my mind that would lead a broad exception for more fraudulent practices.”
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Covering Up

~ susie ~ 10 Comments

It’s a sign of just how serious the mortgage foreclosure frauds are if the powers that be are indeed jumping to cover their butts with this law. Yves at Naked Capitalism has the details:

With the stakes so high for the various parties to securitizations, the first line of defense of the incumbents is to try to minimize the problem. But the fact that more extreme measures are being readied suggests they are coming to understand that this cesspool might be plenty deep.

One sighting (hat tip 4ClosureFraud) is the effort by the Ohio Secretary of State to enlist support against a proposed measure to allow for electronic notarizations. The Secretary hints strongly that this measure being put forward is directly related to the revelation of affidavit improprieties, which further suggests that the banks might regard this as a remedy for this particular, um, lapse:

H.R. 3808 is known as the “Interstate Recognition of Notarizations Act.” It passed the House under a suspension of the rules in April 2010. It requires federal and state courts to recognize any notarization that is lawful in the state where the notary is licensed. Now, in one day, it passed in the Senate.

When I learned of it last Thursday, it sounded innocuous to me, but then I started looking at the timing of the bill. GMAC, owned by Ally, had just suspended its foreclosure actions in 23 states, including Ohio. I had already referred Chase Home Finance, LLC, on August 23, 2010, to the U.S. Department of Justice, asking it to review and investigate Chase’s document notarization practices in home foreclosures (18,000 documents per month were being notarized by 8 people, along with other irregularities). I license notaries in the State of Ohio. Even though I don’t have the power under state law to investigate or prosecute, I couldn’t stand idly by without acting. That’s why I’m asking you to email or call the President at 202-456-1111 to ask him not to sign the bill.

Last Wednesday, the day before I announced the DOJ referral, JPMorgan Chase announced it was having third party counsel review its document procedures for foreclosures. Just two days before, the U.S. Senate had rushed through H.R. 3808. Something didn’t seem right. Since then others agree with me.

Yves here. This development reveals how this battle is likely to play out. Now that judges in some states are starting to take these dubious, potentially fraudulent measures seriously, the next line of attack is to get the more bought-and-paid-for Federal government to intercede on behalf of the banks. As the e-mail by the Ohio Secretary shows, this is a state versus Federal rights issue. And the problem is that these solutions will be depicted as “efficient,” just as securitizations and other “innovations” were.

And while efficiency in theory is a good thing, it must always be kept secondary to the overall integrity of the system, otherwise, you run the risk of breakdown. Using dubious arguments to overturn well settled law to get the banking industry out of a monster mess it created is a Faustian bargain. It makes it abundantly clear what is really at stake here, which is the rule of law. Banks that were quick to defend unjustifiable pay deals by invoking “sanctity of contract” have no inhibition about ignoring their own contracts to pad their bottom line, and ultimately, the wallets of top executives.

Rather than deal with the considerable consequences of these abuses, the banks are prepared to bulldoze well settled state laws to give them an easy way out. And I’m not basing my view on this story alone; I had a conversation yesterday with a Congressional staffer who matter-of-factly said (but with little understanding of the underlying issues) that Congress would intervene on behalf of the industry, via its authority over national banks.The result is that we institutionalize kleptocracy while keeping largely gutted forms of due process as theater. The powers that be hope that the broad public will remain unaware of what is really at work.

However, the battle is not yet lost. Elizabeth Warren has said she will stand up for consumers and is a vocal advocate of contracts as a mechanism for protecting the interests of American families. This issue could serve as an opportunity for her to demonstrate that her appointment as de facto head of the new financial services consumer protection agency is not mere Obama Administration window dressing (or more accurately, that her appointment was a PR ploy, but Warren is able nevertheless to turn it to her advantage).

In addition, an increasing number of Congressmen, as least at this juncture, are lining up in this fight in favor of borrowers and against well funded business interests who provide hefty campaign donations is a hopeful sign. It may be that there is enough left of what passes for propriety in this country that even the Congress can’t be rolled so easily on this one.

Laws are for the peasants

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

Via Raw Story, the news that JPMorganChase is apparently taking possession of foreclosed homes illegally:

In yet another sign that the foreclosure crisis in the US may be getting out of hand, a Florida woman has gone to the press about having her home broken into — by an agent of her mortgage bank.

Nancy Jacobini of Orange County, Florida, says she was three months behind on her mortgage payments, but not in foreclosure, when she heard an intruder breaking into her home.

Panicked, she called 911 and spent 10 nervous minutes on the phone with a dispatcher only to discover that the intruder was an agent of her mortgage company, JPMorganChase, who had come to change the locks on her home.”Someone is breaking … somebody broke into my house!” a frightened Jacobini can be heard saying on a 911 tape obtained by WTFV channel 9 in Jacksonville.

Listen to the whole 911 conversation at 4closurefraud.org.

According to WFTV, the bank claims Jacobini never established a mortgage payment plan, and the house was assumed to be vacant as there were no utilities at the address. But the news crew found electricity and running water in the house.

A JPMorganChase representative told the news crew that the company had made a “mistake” in attempting to change the locks, and that the company has no right to change the locks on a home that hasn’t been foreclosed and which is occupied.As some blogs were quick to point out, the bank agent’s move may have broken Florida law.

“We now have confirmed instances, including 911 calls, of banks hiring people to break into homes where the foreclosure has not yet taken place, and in some instances, they’re breaking into the wrong house,” writes Karl Denninger at the Market Ticker blog. “That’s illegal — until the bank has a court order giving them possession, they don’t have possession and they have no right to be there.”
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Another set of dominoes falling…

~ susie ~ 3 Comments

The entire house of cards constructed by the banks and the mortgage industry is falling down, and it’s not going to be pretty. By the time it’s all over, this could make 2008’s previous banking failures look mild in comparison. This latest lawsuit is a civil suit, not criminal. But that doesn’t mean the feds won’t get in on the case if it heats up — and I’m guessing it will:

Citigroup Inc. and Ally Financial Inc. units were sued by homeowners in Kentucky for allegedly conspiring with Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems Inc. to falsely foreclose on loans.

The lawsuit, filed as a civil-racketeering class action on behalf of all Kentucky homeowners facing foreclosure, also names as a defendant Reston, Virginia-based MERS, the company that handles mortgage transfers among member banks. The suit claims that through MERS the banks are foreclosing on homes even when they don’t hold titles to the properties.

“Defendants have filed foreclosures throughout the state of Kentucky and the United States of America knowing that they were not the ‘owners’ or beneficiaries of the loan they filed foreclosure upon,” the homeowners wrote in their complaint filed Sept. 28 in federal court in Louisville, Kentucky.

The homeowners claim the defendants filed or caused to be filed mortgages with forged signatures, filed foreclosure actions months before they acquired any legal interest in the properties and falsely claimed to own notes executed with mortgages.

[…] “RICO comes in because the fraud didn’t just happen piecemeal,” Heather Boone McKeever, a Lexington, Kentucky-based lawyer for the homeowners, said in a phone interview today. “This is organized crime by people in suits, but it is still organized crime. They created a very thorough plan.”

As I’ve noted previously, some of the biggest title insurance companies are refusing to insure mortgages in foreclosure — because they can’t be sure who actually has title. Because lenders won’t underwrite a mortgage without it, this will have the likely effect of driving down home prices even more.

This is as serious as it gets.

The only people happy about this are the lawyers, who will be billing for untangling this whole mess. See, this is why you want a tightly-regulated derivatives market. Now the banks don’t even know who owns the mortgages used as collateral. In fact, this can even affect homeowners who are attempting to pay off their mortgages. Who will assign them a clear title?

Watch for the banks for fight any attempt to impose a foreclosure moratorium. This mess is so bad, the administration may finally have to do what Obama was trying so hard to avoid: Nationalize the banks. Stay tuned.