Loads of Bank Foreclosures Went Unchecked

[Letsbereal]

Foreclosure Fiasco Trail Leads to Washington: Jonathan Weil
14 October 2010, by Jonathan Weil (Bloomberg)
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-14/foreclosure-fiasco-s-trail-leads-to-washington-jonathan-weil.html

Excerpt:

What were banking regulators doing while some of the biggest U.S. lenders routinely filed false foreclosure documents in local courthouses around the country? In the case of IndyMac Federal Bank, it turns out the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. was running the joint.

This may help explain why the mortgage-servicing industry got away with such misbehavior for so long. The government, in one form or another, was doing it, too.

The facts are there for anyone to see in the records of a circuit-court lawsuit against Israel and Neena Machado, a West Palm Beach, Florida, couple who last year beat back IndyMac’s attempts to foreclose on their home mortgage. They even won a judgment ordering IndyMac to pay $38,117 in legal fees.

IndyMac sued the Machados in November 2008, four months after the government closed its predecessor, Pasadena, California-based IndyMac Bank, which had $32 billion in assets when it was seized. The FDIC formed IndyMac Federal in July 2008 as the successor to the failed bank, and continued operating it in conservatorship before selling it in March 2009.

Among the sworn statements IndyMac filed with the court was a December 2008 affidavit by an IndyMac vice president, Erica Johnson-Seck, who said she had personal knowledge of the amount of money the Machados owed on the mortgage. That wasn’t true, she later testified in a deposition. To be fair, there’s every reason to believe the old IndyMac was engaged in this sort of conduct already, before it was shut down.

‘False Affidavit’

“There’s a lie in the affidavit,” the judge in the case, Meenu Sasser, said at a September 2009 court hearing, where she dismissed IndyMac’s complaint. “It’s a false affidavit.”

[Letsbereal]

Wells adds to crisis over home seizures
14 October 2010, by Suzanne Kapner in New York (The Financial Times)
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/ed4aa856-d70b-11df-9cd5-00144feabdc0.html

Excerpt:

The US mortgage foreclosure crisis deepened as it emerged that Wells Fargo may have used practices that prompted rivals to halt home repossessions, and JPMorgan Chase said banks might be fined over the issue.

Bank of America, JPMorgan and GMAC have halted foreclosures after learning that “robo signers” had rubber-stamped thousands of mortgage documents without checking their accuracy. Attorneys-general in 50 states have launched a joint investigation into the matter.

Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan chief executive, on Wednesday became the first top banking executive to say some attorneys-general may levy penalties on banks for their foreclosure practices.

Legal documents obtained by the Financial Times suggest that Wells Fargo, the second-largest US mortgage servicer, also used a “robo signer”.

Unlike its rivals, Wells Fargo has not halted foreclosures. The San Francisco-based bank said on Tuesday it was reviewing some pending cases, but it has maintained that it has checks and balances designed to prevent serious procedural lapses.

In a sworn deposition on March 9 seen by the FT, Xee Moua, identified in court documents as a vice-president of loan documentation for Wells, said she signed as many as 500 foreclosure-related papers a day on behalf of the bank.

Ms Moua, who was deposed as part of a foreclosure lawsuit in Palm Beach County, Florida, said that the only information she verified was whether her name and title appeared correctly, according to the document.

Asked whether she checked the accuracy of the principal and interest that Wells claimed the borrower owed – a crucial step in banks’ legal actions to repossess homes – Ms Moua said: “I do not.”

Ms Moua nevertheless signed affidavits that said she had “personal knowledge of the facts regarding the sums of money which are due and owing to Wells Fargo”. The affidavits were used by the bank in foreclosure proceedings.

Ms Moua added that before reaching her desk, it was her understanding that the foreclosure documents had been reviewed by outside lawyers.

[Letsbereal]

And Now Let's Think About What Foreclosure-Gate Will Do To House Prices...
11 October 2010, by Henry Blodget (Business Insider)
http://www.businessinsider.com/and-now-lets-think-about-what-foreclosure-gate-will-do-to-house-prices-2010-10

Excerpt:

But what does it mean for the housing market? And the banks?

For those who are praying for higher (or at least stable) house prices in the near-term, foreclosure-gate is good news: By stopping the flood of foreclosures onto the market, foreclosure-gate will reduce inventory-for-sale, which will likely act as a temporary positive for house prices.  So homeowners may get one more temporary gift at the expense of house buyers.

Of course, when the foreclosure-gate moratorium ends, which it inevitably will, a sudden flood of foreclosures will hit the market, as the banks try to make up for lost time. And when that happens, prices will likelytemporarily plunge. 

So sell while you can.


And what about the banks? What will happen to them now that they've stopped foreclosures?

Well, the banks will spend another few weeks or months eating the non-interest payments of folks they might otherwise have foreclosed on.  Over time, if the foreclosure blockage remains in place, the number of non-payers will increase.  Eventually, moreover, when the foreclosure block ends, the banks will likely suddenly have to play catch-up here, too, which will mean big write-offs and loan losses.

Overall, as bank analyst Chris Whalen recently observed, banks are quietly moving into the "non-operating REIT business"--owning a lot more real estate than they ever intended to.  As anyone who has been stuck with an underwater investment property can attest, the carrying costs of holding distressed real-estate are significant.  And Whalen believes that this will soon begin to eat into banks' profit margins.  It will also continue to represent a huge "shadow inventory" that will keep the pressure on housing prices for years.

[Letsbereal]

It's Time For Criminal Charges To Be Filed Over Foreclosure-Gate
14 October 2010, by Barry Ritholtz, The Big Picture (Business Insider)
http://www.businessinsider.com/time-for-criminal-charges-to-be-filed-over-foreclosure-gate-2010-10

Excerpt:

The absurdity of illegal activity, criminal conduct, rampant fraud has reached a point where the nation much declare “No More.”We must begin the process of identifying criminal actors — and prosecuting them.

The latest twist on the criminality / foreclosure fraud: The hiring of untrained, incompetent burger flippers to act as lawyers or paralegals in the processing of foreclosures:

“At JPMorgan Chase & Company, they were derided as “Burger King kids” — walk-in hires who were so inexperienced they barely knew what a mortgage was.

At Citigroup and GMAC, dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s on home foreclosures was outsourced to frazzled workers who sometimes tossed the paperwork into the garbage.

And at Litton Loan Servicing, an arm of Goldman Sachs, employees processed foreclosure documents so quickly that they barely had time to see what they were signing.

“I don’t know the ins and outs of the loan,” a Litton employee said in a deposition last year. “I’m not a loan officer.”

This is a degree of reckless previously unseen in American jurisprudence.

My advice: If you have been in any way personally harmed by the illegal actions of any bank, law firm, process server, or loan servicing agency, you MUST file criminal charges.

[Letsbereal]

How Wall Street Shafted Main Street
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1j2esw2B8TI

[Letsbereal]

Sorry Folks, The Put-Back Apocalypse Ain't Gonna Happen
15 October 2010, by John Carney (CNBC)
http://www.cnbc.com/id/39686897/

Excerpt:

Here’s what is going to happen: Congress will pass a law called something like “The Financial Modernization and Stability Act of 2010” that will retroactively grant mortgage pools the rights in the underlying mortgages that people are worried about. All the screwed up paperwork, lost notes, unassigned security interests will be forgiven by a legislative act.

----

The put-back crisis is not driven by economics. It is driven by legal rights. And there’s simply zero probability that the politicians in Washington are going to let Bank of America or Citigroup or JP Morgan Chase fail because of a legal issue.

So here’s what I expect will happen. The lame duck session of Congress will pass a bill that essentially papers over the misdeeds of the banks that originated mortgage securities. Every member of Congress and every Senator who has been voted out of office will cast a vote for the bill. And the President will sign it.

Will the public be outraged? Probably. Financial bloggers will scream from the high heavens against another bailout of the banksters. Congress may try to create some cost for banks in exchange for the forgiveness, perhaps requiring more mortgage modifications.

But the much feared put-back apocalypse will be laid to rest.

If you’re skeptical about the possibility that this will happen, you have greater faith than I do in the ability of the political system to resist doing favors for bankers.

[Paranoid Puppet Master]

Nice to see how our leaders in congress can come together, putting partisan politics aside and getting things done when something is truly important to them.

[Letsbereal]

Nice to see how our leaders in congress can come together, putting partisan politics aside and getting things done when something is truly important to them.

Yeah right! Good thinking.

[Letsbereal]

Washington Resists Calls for Big Fix on Foreclosures


Washington Resists Calls for Big Fix on Foreclosures
15 October 2010, by Lorraine Woellert and Phil Mattingly (Bloomberg)
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-15/u-s-policy-makers-resist-calls-for-big-fix-in-housing-foreclosure-crisis.html

Excerpt:

Washington policy makers, who moved swiftly to calm markets during the subprime mortgage crisis in 2008, have resisted calls for similarly broad steps in response to concern that banks may have acted illegally to seize homes.

President Barack Obama and the federal agencies that share responsibility for housing finance are opposing calls for a nationwide foreclosure freeze, fearing further damage to the housing market. Even as bank stocks tumbled yesterday on concern that the mishandled loans will increase costs for lenders, the White House and federal regulators avoided any grand gestures designed to reassure investors.

Obama this week endorsed a coordinated investigation by attorneys general from all 50 states into whether lenders used false documents to justify foreclosures. Mounting a response on the federal level is complicated by the fact that responsibility for overseeing housing finance and foreclosure law is fragmented among U.S., state and local agencies, with no single regulator shaping policy.

“We can see all too painfully the results from that gap,” said Clifford V. Rossi, executive-in-residence at the Center for Financial Policy at the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland.

U.S. regulators say they are aggressively investigating whether employees of lenders including Ally Financial Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Bank of America Corp. have falsified documents used in foreclosure proceedings.

[Letsbereal]

Foreclosure Error May Lead to Break-In by Bank: Ann Woolner
15 October 2010, by Ann Woolner (Bloomberg)
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-15/foreclosure-error-may-lead-to-break-in-by-bank-commentary-by-ann-woolner.html

Excerpt:

For all the scandalous news about systemically sloppy foreclosure documentation, bankers are trying to reassure the public that no undeserved evictions resulted.

“At the end of the day, the underlying substance was accurate,” JPMorgan Chase Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon told reporters on a conference call this week.

“There’s almost no chance that we’ve made a mistake.”

That misses a key point, which I’ll get to shortly.

But first, consider the words, “almost no chance.” I wrote about one homeowner faced with foreclosure even though he didn’t have a mortgage, having paid cash for his house. He can’t be the only one.

Foreclosure documents show bank employees didn’t get their own names, titles or employer names right or figure out who owned the note. Does it make sense that the only thing these folks got correct in thousands of foreclosures was each borrower’s payment record?

Secondly, there’s no way to know how substantial the errors were until the banks sift through their work, with the feds and state attorneys general looking over their shoulders.

There are many cases where homeowners were seeking loan modifications so that they could make good on their mortgages when they found themselves in foreclosure proceedings.

[Letsbereal]

How Wall Street Shafted Main Street
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1j2esw2B8TI

[Letsbereal]

45.5 TRILLION DOLLAR LOSS
http://www.blacklistednews.com/index.php?news_id=11092&utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

Transcript:

>>> global celebrity in minermania continues. the show starts right now.

>>> nice to see you. up first, fighting fraudclosure. fed up ? americans are taking back their homes. case in point, the earl family in california. changed the locks, kicked them to the curb. th the earls, just one of the millions of stories out there. nine children, six of them adopted and they regularly took in foster kids until their lawyer claims they were wrongfully evicted. the earls did fall behind on their payments. now according to the earls, the banks instead of conducting the work out, tried to pull a fast one. bilked them for tens of thousands more than they believed they owned. there was never the need to illustrate the necessary paperwork and basically, were able to finish the deed, change the locks, sell the house before anyone was able to put two and two together. clearly desperate times as banks try to avoid dealing with their inability to prove who owns the house and potential threat they may have to reveal trillions or hundreds of billions that were stuck at fannie and freddie, not in compliance with the government standards set for those loans in the first place cht but more importantly, desperate times for the families who no longer have a place to call home. why our politicians and bankers play dodge ball with the issue. the earls are one family who is fighting back. danielle joins us alongside her attorney and i thank both of you. tell us in your own words what happened here.

>> well, we were trying to make payments, trying to get caught up on everything. and we thought we were just about there. and when i called to get the amount that we still owed, it was a lot more than i thought it was and then when i ended up making a large sum payment and the amount didn't change, i ? demanded an account iing for where the money went. they sent me a notice of default.

>> michael, is this story common in your experience?

>> very common. it happens all the time. as bad as you think it is, it's probably about 1,000 times worse.

>> what we're suggesting, i don't care the number, $25,000, $100,000 owed, you make a payment to that number, thinking it's going to go down. look the next month and the number hasn't changed. is that a good characterization?

>> yes, it is.

>> actually, the number went up.

>> would you elaborate?

>> the number went up. they kept increasing, as she made payments instead of decreasing the amount they claim she owed, they kept increasing it.

>> did they ever address that?

>> no. they didn't. no, and when we got the notice of default like he said, i had just talked to them on the phone a few days before and somewhere in that two days, i owed an almost additional $20,000. so i don't know what happened over those two days. but it seems a lot more than just a regular payment missed. so something went terribly wrong.

>> did the --

>> the banks aren't owed. it's irrelevant to them. they keep increasing the amount they claim is owed in the hope that the borrower will keep sending them more and more money, become more frightened and that's what they keep doing. they never send an accounting because they can't. they're making it all up and they just pull these numbers out of somewhere and nobody knows where and they keep claiming the homeowner owes more and more money. she sent them a lot of money. over $100,000. she kept sending the money and every time, instead of crediting the loan, they just increased the amount shed and would never explain to her where the money went, how it was applied because they can't. they're just making it all up. bank here and do they offer any explanation other than we're making it up?

>> no. they offered no explanation whatsoever. they didn't admit they were making it up. we don't know who the bank is and nobody knows. the lender, you know when you say there was an originator of this loan, and when you talking about the banks, you would need to define that because we're talking about financial institutions and as danielle will tell you, she began investigating this herself by going to the public records and all these entities she had never heard of that had nothing to do with her loan whatsoever kept popping up. the name of some are -- any way, people nobody ever heard of. she was rude enough to ask them who they are and it was never answer answered.

>> i want to ask you guys to hang on for a second. i want to introduce another voice to this conversation. from california to florida we go. we introduced you to nancy. nancy was struggling with her mortgage payments, but not yet at the foreclosure stage, so you can imagine her terror when the bank came to change the locks on her house. in your instance, you do not have to image that it played out on this 911 call. stories like nancy's leading florida's attorney general to start issues subpoenas demanding documentation. matt widener is nancy's lawyer. he says to expect bombshell details once these documents see the light of day. what information do you believe will be disclosed?

>> i think we're going to continue to find that what these banks have done across this country and the way they victimize consumers is going to fundamentally destabilize real estate markets across the country. i want to give you a lot of credit because you first brought this story to the nation's attention and about the same time, congressman ? allen grayson has been calling for attention on these issues, but i want to make it clear that you brought this to the attention of america. since then, congressman grayson has ramped up the heat. we just had a press conference at nancy's property where he demanded investigations of these institutions.

>> danielle, if you were to look at real life, aside from the lawyers and politicians, can you just give us a sense of how disruptive this has been to your family and life? this is not some sort of tv drama. this is the lives of not only you, but millions of americans.

>> oh, absolutely. it has been terribly disruptive. for the last year, we have not known when we are going to be out on the street. where we're going to go when we are and just listening to the coverage that you just did, i had chills and just because we live that, too. that was just -- it's just very scary. and we still --

>> i just wanted to follow up on what mr. widener said. i've heard of him and am glad to put a face with a name. i want to say this as clearly as i can. i don't think i'm overstating the case. this is not only residential. this is commercial. and i say with a high degree of confidence that nobody in this country knows for sure who owns any real estate, residential or commercial. the only real estate that we can be sure of where we know who the owner is perhaps somebody who paid off their property before the 1980s when securization started and passed it down. other than that, in my opinion, any property sold from the 1980s until now, nobody knows who owns that property. nobody.

>> the banks argue --

>> and -- ? according to gretchen morganstern at "the new york times," the total amount of money involved is $45.5 trillion. roughly twice the of the u.s. stock market and my suspicion is that lawyers will be arguing for the next two, three, four decades about who should pay for that. i don't know that we have that much money, that the government can fund that $45.5 trillion while they try to figure that out. i'm sure that's what they're trying to figure out now.

>> i think it's important to note that the american people have.

>> reporter:  already paid. what's important to urns is that when the government set aside$50 billion, that was intended to provide homeowners assistance, support to get those mortgages modified. instead, we're finding the servicers pocketed that money. the american people gave them support. we bailed they will out and what they're doing is choking consumers all cross the country with that lifeline now. that's got stop and it's only because people like you reporting this and congressman grayson talking about it that consumers are understanding how violated our rights are.

>> the same time, i want to address what michael pines just said, a large magnitude statement to say the least, which is it's important to all of us, we must have a courage to face the truth of the structure of our housing market, the collaboration of the banking system and federal government need to you said that as we revolve this, this, more than anything we have been through so far, including the entire 2008 financial crisis may be the basis for which we will need a resolution trust to reform those banks that have been pretending to be solvent at the taxpayers expense for years and that it is this foreclosure chain that will ultimately reveal the insolvency that has been covered up by the absorption of that bad debt into fannie mae, freddie mac? and into the federal reserve. matt, do you think the attorney's general, allen grayson, our political leaders are prepared to look into this crisis, which is a cover up for the real issue, which is the housing finance chain coming out of washington, d.c. do you feel there's a political leader ready to do the hard work working this out in an honest and compassionate way in a need to reshuckture this system?

>> they're not prepared to do that until they do what you're doing. the quicker we come to grips with this problem and stop avoiding the major problems that exist within our financial system and real estate markets, the quicker we'll be on the road to recovery, but the longer we deny this both at the state and national level, the longer this crisis is going to play out. this is an onion and every time you peel back the layer, it just gets stinkier, so what americans have to understand is this is not just about these home e owners in foreclosure. this is about every single american. this is not a republican crisis or democratic crisis. it's an american crisis. we all need to be part of this.

>> and a crisis of property right, which is the core prince principle upon which this country was founded. it will be very interesting to see whether the tea party finally steps forward where they refused to an objection to the financial reform fight and step forward to defend property rights at a time when they are clearly in need to have some defense. danielle, my greatest sympathies for the suffering in your family as a result of this and compliments to you for the courage to do what you're doing and come out in public and to have the conversation with us. mr. pines, mr. widener, keep us posted on your legal efforts. have a good afternoon. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/39676183#39676183

[Letsbereal]

Banks Restart Foreclosures – BofA and GMAC Lift Their Freeze in a Counterattack Against Allegations of Fraud
19 October 2010, by Jessica Silver-Greenberg, Robbie Whelan and Dan Fitzpatrick (The Wall Street Journal)
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304410504575560634267416838.html

Excerpt:

Two major lenders at the center of the foreclosure crisis took steps Monday to put the mess behind them by restarting home seizures that were frozen by documentation concerns.

Bank of America Corp. reopened more than 100,000 foreclosure actions, declaring that it had found no significant problems in its procedures for seizing homes. GMAC Mortgage, a lender and loan servicer, said that it also is pushing ahead with an unspecified number of foreclosures that came under intense pressure.

Monday's moves are part of a growing counterattack by lenders scrambling to stem a financial and political threat over allegations that certain employees signed hundreds of documents a day without carefully reviewing their contents when foreclosing on homes.

Bank of America, the nation's largest bank in assets, which imposed on Oct. 8 a nationwide moratorium on the sale of foreclosed homes, said it has begun preparing new affidavits for pending foreclosures in 23 states where a judge's approval is required. The paperwork will be submitted to courts by next Monday, and foreclosure sales will resume in those states starting in November, according to the bank.

[Letsbereal]

BOMBSHELL: Check Out This Industry Catalog And Price Sheet For FABRICATED Foreclosure Documents
18 October 2010, (The Daily Bail)
http://dailybail.com/home/bombshell-check-out-this-industry-catalog-and-price-sheet-fo.html

[Letsbereal]

Whistleblower Speaks On Fraudclosure
19 October 2010, by Tyler Durden (Zero Hedge)
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/whistleblower-speaks-fraudclosure

[Letsbereal]

When all Else Fails, Find the Foreclosure Facts
19 October 2010, (Chaostheorien)
http://www.chaostheorien.de/artikel/-/asset_publisher/haR1/content/when-all-else-fails-find-the-foreclosure-facts?redirect=%2F

Excerpt:

Former banking regulator William K. Black reminds us that the financial crisis and the Great Recession in the U.S. began with the “f” word and continues with the “f” word: FRAUD.

The newest up-date of the “f“ word saga is “Foreclosure Gate.“

[Letsbereal]

This Administration Still Doesn't Have A Clue About The Foreclosure Crisis
19 October 2010, by Bill Black (Business Insider)
http://www.businessinsider.com/obama-administration-foreclosure-crisis-2010-10

Excerpt:

Sheila Bair, who has chaired the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) since her appointment by President Bush on June 26, 2006, has been the only top federal banking regulator willing to upset the industry she regulates. Reuters reports on her less than vigorous reaction to the disclosure of endemic foreclosure fraud.

"We have been told that this is a process issue - that all of the information is in the file, the problem is the person who needed to sign the affidavit had not been looking at the file before they'd done so. So we need to independently verify that," Bair said.

"Foreclosure is a very serious thing and it should only being undertaken after loan modification efforts are not feasible. And that the files are fully documented."

In addition, Bair urged banks to do "rigorous internal analysis" about the range of possible risk exposures.

"We need to get a full handle on all of these issues," she said. "If it turns out this is just a process issue then I don't anticipate the exposures to be significant.

"If it turns out to be something more fundamental then we'll have to deal with that. But I think we need to get all the information before we jump to any conclusions."

http://www.zimbio.com/Sheila+Bair/articles/nklV_gJMar7/trying+assess+foreclosure+crisis+scope+FDIC

[Letsbereal]

Dylan Ratigan Show
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/39582228#39582228

Democratic congressman Brad Miller calls for an audit of all the loans at Fannie and Freddie to see if they were conforming to the standards necessary to get government backing.


Partial Transcript http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2010/10/pimco-blackrock-ny-fed-seek-to-force.html

[Letsbereal]

Jim Rickards on Forclosuregate
20 October 2010, (King World News)
http://kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/Broadcast/Entries/2010/10/20_Jim_Rickards.html

Download MP3 from site

[Kilika]

Dylan Ratigan Show
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/39582228#39582228

Democratic congressman Brad Miller calls for an audit of all the loans at Fannie and Freddie to see if they were conforming to the standards necessary to get government backing.


Partial Transcript http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2010/10/pimco-blackrock-ny-fed-seek-to-force.html

That's a huge angle to this whole mess. Look at all those loans that Fanny and Freddy took off the hands of the servicers. Hundreds of thousands of mortgages? I'd venture to say that anywhere from 20% to as much as 60% of those notes are not binding due to faulty process of paperwork.

Think about this; if a couple gets a divorce, and then years later they discover there was a mixup with the paperwork so the divorce isn't official, then the divorce legally never took place, and the courts uphold that all thie time. The couple would have to re-file everything. The state won't just say, "Oh, our bad, no worries, we'll just send you the corrected papers and that will make it all legal". Uh, no. That is not legally how it works. Tha's why criminals walk on technicalitites and DA's have to refile charges all over again. Basic law, and that basic law should also apply to every mortgage because the servicers are using the court system against the homeowners, so it's only fair that the coourts also demand that the servicers abide by the law as well.

Bank of America recently restarting foreclosure in some states makes it clear they know they have a real legal issue on their hands that they cannot explain, so they are now trying to make it look like some are bad and will "look into it", but in general because most are good notes, things will move forward on "legitimate" foreclosures. They are clearly doing a preemptive seeding of their case. Ask yourself, "Why in only 23 states are they restarting foreclosures?"

A side note...the Federal Reserve recently reported a $45 BILLION dollar profit. And if your interested, check out what the Washington Post slant had to say...(All I can say is WOW!)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/11/AR2010011103892.html

Are they trying to say the Federal Reserve is basically a non-profit that gives all it's excess to the US government? Did they not bother to read the other section of the balance sheet where it mentions all that US debt the Fed holds? The article mentions interest payments on two debts totalling about 4.5B, and that the Fed gave the US around 45B last year as a supposed return on investments by the US. Yet how does that compare to the 45B that just GM still owes the US, not counting the other debtors? Where did the US get the cash to loan GM anything? The Federal Reserve, and we had to pay a fee to the fed just to print the cash.  And so now they say the fed is making record profits and the US is reaping their rewards with a paulrty 45B? How does that ROI compare to the undisputed US debt of well in excess of 10+ TRILLION? We even paid Bank of America to bail out or rather gobble up other banks, and even "making" Wells Fargo to gobble up Wachovia, the very same people that are now under the foreclosure microscope, after they dumped all those bad notes on the government while getting paid for it.

And now we have bankers scrambling to avoid due process of law by just "resubmitting" paperwork as Bank of America is now claiming they will start doing. Uh, no. You can't do that contractually as I understand it. Anything in the legal process of transfere of ownership of title must be correct or it makes the whole contract null and void. It's a total loss, and the homeowner now has a legally free and clear title to the house with no legal mortgage to pay. Case closed......BUT, history shows us they will likely get a deal from the government somehow with some kind of monetary guarantee to the servicers that the US will go into more debt with the Federal Reserve so that the Feds little minion branch banks won't take a total loss on the bad notes.

There is a cash outflow problem! And the stench of outright theft is ripe in the air.

[Letsbereal]

Bank of America Accused of Racketeering in Foreclosure Lawsuit in Indiana
20 October 2010, by Andrew M. Harris (Bloomberg)
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-19/bank-of-america-s-countrywide-accused-of-racketeering-in-homeowners-suit.html

Excerpt:

Bank of America Corp. and its Countrywide Home Loans unit were accused of racketeering in a lawsuit filed by two Indiana residents claiming that perjured affidavits were used to foreclose on their home.

Dwayne Ransom Davis and Melisa Davis filed the complaint yesterday in federal court in Indianapolis. Their lawyer, Irwin Levin, confirmed the filing in a phone interview. The filing couldn’t be independently verified.

“The defendants and their cohorts engaged in a pattern of racketeering activity in which they routinely and repeatedly prepared perjured affidavits in order to rapidly churn foreclosures,” the couple said in the complaint.

Bank of America, the largest U.S. lender, resumed foreclosures on Oct. 18, after a 10-day nationwide pause to review more than 100,000 cases.

----

The Davises accuse the lenders of using “robo-signers,” people who sign affidavits attesting to facts underlying foreclosures without actual knowledge of those facts, to push through paperwork to take their home in Knightstown, Indiana.

While the borrowers aren’t asking the court to reverse their foreclosure, they’re seeking compensatory damages tripled under federal racketeering laws, as well as class action, or group, status to sue on behalf of anyone whose home was allegedly taken since October 2006 under similar circumstances.

Levin said the group might include hundreds of thousands of people.

[Letsbereal]

Banks unlikely to quell foreclosure-document mess
19 October 2010, by Alan Zibel (AP)
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Banks-unlikely-to-quell-apf-3419464958.html?x=0

Excerpt:

Big lenders unlikely to quell foreclosure-document mess as opponents step up attacks

Big lenders are trying to move past the foreclosure-document mess, saying they're now confident their paperwork is accurate.

Yet they face so much organized resistance that they can't just snap up their briefcases, declare the crisis over and move on.

Consider the opposition:

-- Attorneys general in all 50 states are jointly investigating whether lenders violated state laws.

-- Lawyers for evicted homeowners are preparing lawsuits against major lenders.

-- State judges have signaled they will review the banks' foreclosure documents with skepticism.

-- Lawmakers on Capitol Hill plan to hold hearings.

The document crisis, in other words, appears far from over.

[Letsbereal]

Fidelity National to Require Banks to Sign Foreclosure Warranty
20 October 2010, by Danielle Kucera (Bloomberg)
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-20/fidelity-national-to-require-banks-to-sign-warranty-for-foreclosure-sales.html?cmpid=yhoo

Excerpt:

“It’s just the prudent thing to do,” Peter Sadowski, executive vice president and chief legal officer for Fidelity National, said in an interview. “It is important for the servicers and the lenders to represent to us and to the people we are going to be insuring that there are no problems.”

Bank of America Corp., the biggest U.S. lender, agreed to a similar contract with Fidelity National on Oct. 8, the same day it extended a freeze on foreclosures to all states amid concern by federal and state officials that lenders are seizing homes without properly reviewing documents. The bank plans to start resubmitting foreclosure affidavits next week. Attorneys general across the country have opened a joint investigation into foreclosures, saying they will seek an immediate halt to any improper practices at mortgage lenders and loan servicers.

Title insurers use their records and public documents to verify a seller is the home’s true owner and that the property is free from liens. They collect a one-time premium at the closing of the purchase and pay costs that may arise if someone disputes the new owner’s right to the property.

The indemnity agreement requires lenders to protect title insurers at their own expense from “any and all liability, loss, costs, damage and expense of every kind” if errors arise in foreclosure procedures, according to the document.

The expenses may include attorney’s fees, a decrease in the property’s value and inability to sell the title, Fidelity said in the document. The lender must also notify the insurer in each case that a foreclosure complies with state laws and regulations, according to the agreement.

The indemnity agreement is available for use by all title insurers, Fidelity National said.

----

“This is a standard all lenders should follow,” said Kurt Pfotenhauer, chief executive officer of the American Land Title Association, a Washington-based trade group. “The sooner that indemnification agreement is adopted market-wide, the more confidence investors can have in this foreclosure market.”

[Letsbereal]

Banks Face Two-Front War on Bad Mortgages, Foreclosures
21 October 2010, by John Gittelsohn and Jody Shenn (Bloomberg)
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-21/banks-face-two-front-war-on-bad-u-s-mortgages-flawed-foreclosure-process.html

Excerpt:

While federal regulators and state attorneys general have focused on flawed foreclosures, a bigger threat may be the cost to buy back faulty loans that banks bundled into securities.

U.S. homeowners challenging the right to foreclose and mortgage-bond investors demanding refunds that could approach $200 BILLION!!!!!

Investors such as Bill Gross’s Pacific Investment Management Co. contend that sellers are obligated to repurchase some mortgages because of misrepresentations such as overstatements of borrowers’ income or inflated appraisals.

Their case may be bolstered by probes in 50 states into whether banks used documents that were also flawed to conduct foreclosures.

Neither dispute is likely to be resolved quickly.

[agentbluescreen]

Fidelity National to Require Banks to Sign Foreclosure Warranty
20 October 2010, by Danielle Kucera (Bloomberg)
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-20/fidelity-national-to-require-banks-to-sign-warranty-for-foreclosure-sales.html?cmpid=yhoo

Excerpt:

“It’s just the prudent thing to do,” Peter Sadowski, executive vice president and chief legal officer for Fidelity National, said in an interview. “It is important for the servicers and the lenders to represent to us and to the people we are going to be insuring that there are no problems.”

There has always been plenty good to say about Fidelity

[Letsbereal]

FRAUDCLOSURE: "MBS INVESTORS ARE CALLING THEIR LAWYERS" 10-18-2010
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_i9DO0BRdk

Link From: http://www.newzzcafe.com/

Christopher Whalen, managing director of Institutional Risk Analytics, talks with Bloomberg's Mark Crumpton about the impact of U.S. mortgage foreclosures on banks and the housing market and the outlook for the economy.

Whalen is author of the book "Inflated: How Money and Debt Built the American Dream." (Source: Bloomberg)

[Letsbereal]

White House sees no ‘structural’ foreclosure issue - Nation’s top housing official repeats opposition to foreclosure halt
20 October 2010, by Steve Goldstein (MarketWatch)
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/white-house-sees-no-structural-foreclosure-issue-2010-10-20

Excerpt:

There’s no “structural” issue requiring a halt to foreclosures and the government won’t interfere with Bank of America’s decision to resume them, the nation’s top housing official said Wednesday.

[Letsbereal]

Randy Kelton Returns: How to Take Back What They Took From You - Alex Jones Tv 1/6
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lm_qmqwigyI

Randy Kelton Returns: How to Take Back What They Took From You - Alex Jones Tv 2/6
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELv16o-mEQY

Randy Kelton Returns: How to Take Back What They Took From You - Alex Jones Tv 3/6
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bSqYPnwZ4g

Randy Kelton Returns: How to Take Back What They Took From You - Alex Jones Tv 4/6
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUpMByv0Wj0

Randy Kelton Returns: How to Take Back What They Took From You - Alex Jones Tv 5/6
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpI7oAHQTpM

Randy Kelton Returns: How to Take Back What They Took From You - Alex Jones Tv 6/6
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLOUJBk89aE

[Letsbereal]

Banks Face Two-Front War on Bad Mortgages, Foreclosures
21 October 2010, by John Gittelsohn and Jody Shenn (Bloomberg)
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-21/banks-face-two-front-war-on-bad-u-s-mortgages-flawed-foreclosure-process.html

Excerpt:

While federal regulators and state attorneys general have focused on flawed foreclosures, a bigger threat may be the cost to buy back faulty loans that banks bundled into securities.

U.S. homeowners challenging the right to foreclose and mortgage-bond investors demanding refunds that could approach $200 BILLION!!!!!

Investors such as Bill Gross’s Pacific Investment Management Co. contend that sellers are obligated to repurchase some mortgages because of misrepresentations such as overstatements of borrowers’ income or inflated appraisals.

Their case may be bolstered by probes in 50 states into whether banks used documents that were also flawed to conduct foreclosures.

Neither dispute is likely to be resolved quickly.

More Documentation on Bogus Loans
21 October 2010, by Karl Denninger (Market-Ticker)
http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=169874

Excerpt:

EIGHTY PERCENT?

Oh my..... let's see, that was over $1 trillion in production, so if that's a reasonable number for the entire thing, that's $800 billion with a loss severity of about 50.....

Uh, people thinking that this is a $200 billion might be a bit light; I come up with $400 billion or so for just one year, and we all know this wasn't a one-year problem...

[Letsbereal]

Mortgage Mess: Shredding the Dream
21 October 2010, by Peter Coy, Paul M. Barrett and Chad Terhune (Bloomberg Businessweek)
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_44/b4201076208349.htm

Excerpt:

The foreclosure crisis isn't just about lost documents. It's about trust—and a clash over who gets stuck with $1.1 trillion in losses

----

Eight years after defaulting, Lents still hasn't made a payment or been forced out of his house. DLJ, whose parent, Credit Suisse, declined to comment for this story, still hasn't proved its ownership to the satisfaction of the court. Lents' debt has grown to about $2.5 million, including unpaid taxes, interest, and penalties.

As the stalemate grinds on, Lents has the comfort of knowing he's no longer alone. When he began demanding to see the I.O.U., he says, "I was looked upon like I had leprosy.

Now, I have probably 20 to 30 people a month come to me" asking for advice. Lents is irked when people accuse him of exploiting a loophole. "It's not a loophole," he says. "It's the law."

[Damascus]

Tag for later because I have been accused of lying about this. Was told they can't do this because it is illegal and that I am making it all up, along for the pension funds being "consolidated". Guess people refuse to use the internet because it is full of lies, not like the main steam media which seldom reports these things.

[Letsbereal]

Wells Fargo Foreclosure `Robo-Signer' Draws Maryland Dismissal Motion
1 November 2010, by Michael Riley (Bloomberg)
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-11-01/wells-fargo-foreclosure-robo-signer-draws-maryland-dismissal-motion.html

Excerpt:

A Maryland homeowner asked a court to dismiss any Wells Fargo & Co. foreclosure actions in the state that involve affidavits given by a bank employee who said she signed documents without completely checking their accuracy.

Susan Saidman asked a Montgomery County court to recognize as a class all defendants in Maryland cases with foreclosure papers signed by Xee Moua for Wells Fargo. In a March deposition in a Florida case, Moua said she didn’t verify all the information in filings she signed, sometimes processing as many as 500 in two hours.

To permit “foreclosure actions to proceed based upon these false and fraudulent papers would be to accept dishonest and bogus behavior in Maryland courts,” Saidman said in a motion filed Oct. 29. “Such a result would be an assault on the rule of law.”

[Letsbereal]

Mortgage Modification Failures Push Borrowers Into Foreclosure
2 November 2010, by Kathleen M. Howley, Dakin Campbell and Danielle Kucera (Bloomberg)
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-11-02/mortgage-modifications-meant-to-save-u-s-homes-push-them-into-foreclosure.html

Excerpt:

Jill Gray of Mesquite, Texas, said her three-year-old son, Anthony, often tells her before he goes to bed: “I wanna go to the other house.”

Jill, Anthony and Tiffy, their black Labrador-mix dog, moved about 12 miles to a rental home three weeks ago after their one-story brick house in Garland was auctioned in a foreclosure. Gray, 38, tried for almost a year to get her mortgage modified, only to have the approval rescinded. Bank of America Corp. said documents were missing -- papers that Gray said she sent.

Gray’s experience, in which homeowners get evicted while participating in programs designed to avert foreclosures, is being repeated thousands of times at the biggest mortgage firms, according to groups that aid borrowers. The government’s Home Affordable Modification Program came under fire at hearings last week for “trial” arrangements that allow late fees and debts to stack up and documents to disappear, triggering seizures.

“Many homeowners end up facing foreclosure solely on the basis of the arrears accumulated during a trial modification,” said Julia Gordon, senior policy counsel at the Center for Responsible Lending, in Oct. 27 Congressional testimony. “One incomplete payment or one accounting mistake can land you on an apparently unstoppable conveyor belt to eviction.”

With as many as 7 million homes facing foreclosure or already taken, according to Zillow Inc., both the government and companies such as Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase & Co., the two biggest U.S. lenders, offered programs to forestall seizures by easing mortgage terms. Changes include cutting interest rates for as long as five years and extending repayment to 40 years.

[Kilika]

"Mortgage modification" is looking to me like nothing more than a bait and switch type operation, whereby they say to people to come on in and we'll help, but the reality is that all it's doing is getting homeowners in front of the people to verify that it is a bad debt and it needs foreclosing, now that they got all updated info from the homeowner and an obvious admission by the homeowner that they can't handle the current situation, which is actually admitting to defaulting on the note, which the servicer in turn uses as justification to foreclose. It's like they have been using this to draw out the bad debts that they created so they can collect. Once they foreclose and they have possesion of the home, then they can try to bury the fraudulent paperwork through more transfers of the title via a whole new note with a new homeowner, and so they think it all just goes away in the shuffle. It isn't going away. The jig is up.

[Letsbereal]

Banks Outsourcing Foreclosure Process To India: Insider Report
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ud7V4MyP3Nw

I recently spoke with an employee of a bank that is reporting massive shifting of data collection and power of foreclosure to foreign nationals.

Not only are the banks forging foreclosure documents, losing paperwork, unfairly negotiating harsh loan modification terms, pushing the process of taking your home…they are outsourcing it all to India.

I am speechless.

[Letsbereal]

US banks escaping big foreclosure class actions
11 November 2010, by Dan Levine (Reuters)
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN1119471520101112

Excerpt:

* Large plaintiff firms wary of foreclosure lawsuits

* Difficult to make a case for damages say some lawyers

Lenders snarled in the legal thicket over shoddy U.S. foreclosure procedures have so far avoided national class action lawsuits from homeowners, largely because borrowers cannot demonstrate economic harm, according to plaintiff lawyers.

Several large plaintiff firms circled around banks when reports of problems with foreclosure affidavits snowballed in late September.

But as servicers like Bank of America Corp (BAC.N), Ally Financial and JPMorgan Chase (JPM.N) attempt to resolve a 50-state probe into their practices -- and other legal challenges -- big class action lawyers have taken a pass on diving into the mess.

"We looked at this up one side, down the other," Joseph Cotchett, of Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy, said on Wednesday.

Ultimately, the firm decided it would not file suit over the affidavits, Cotchett said, because most borrowers are actually behind on their payments.

That makes it too difficult to make a claim for serious damages, he said. "It's about as basic as that," Cotchett said.

A public furor erupted in recent months over whether banks cut corners in the foreclosure process with so-called "robo-signers" of legal documents used to justify taking homes. Servicers briefly halted foreclosures and evictions as state and federal regulators announced investigations.

Banks have disclosed some legal challenges from homeowners, but the class action lawsuits they are facing have not been national in scope.

In defending one Indiana class action, Bank of America has echoed the conclusion reached by some plaintiff lawyers in arguing that the borrower cannot show harm because they would have lost their home anyway.

Plaintiff attorneys are usually paid a portion of the damages they recover.

Some plaintiff lawyers who have devoted resources to the issue haven't walked away yet. Bruce Simon, with Pearson, Simon, Warshaw & Penny, said this week that his firm still intends to file a national class action.

And Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein's Eric Fastiff said his firm is still examining the issue. "Investigations take time," he said.

[Letsbereal]

This is the kinda news Obama is waiting for to sign his “Pocket Veto”
http://forum.prisonplanet.com/index.php?topic=191854.msg1138609#msg1138609

'Robo-Signer' Foreclosure Scandal May Threaten Fundamental Financial Stability, Government Watchdog Warns
16 November 2010, by Shahien Nasiripour (The Huffington post)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/16/robosigners-foreclosures_n_784098.html

Excerpt:

The ongoing "turmoil" roiling megabanks and their faulty home foreclosure practices may represent deeper, more systemic problems regarding the origination, transfer and ownership of millions of mortgages, potentially putting Wall Street on the hook for billions of dollars in unexpected losses, threatening to undermine "the very financial stability that the Troubled Asset Relief Program was designed to protect," a government watchdog warns in a new report.

[Letsbereal]

Just When You Thought You Knew Something About Mortgage Securitizations
15 November 2010, by Tyler Durden (Zero Hedge)
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/just-when-you-thought-you-knew-something-about-mortgage-securitizations

Excerpt:

[Letsbereal]

The Truth About Fraudclosure and Servicing
17 November 2010, by Karl Denninger (Market-Ticker)
http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=172565

THE BANKS ARE BANKRUPT!

2010-11-17 Foreclosure Hearing http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjTZOekaQlE

From yesterday's Foreclosuregate hearing... selected bits and pieces.... the really, really important ones.

[Letsbereal]

More homes enter foreclosure process: MBA - Delinquencies, foreclosure inventory decline in third quarter
18 November 2010, by Amy Hoak (MarketWatch)
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/more-homes-enter-foreclosure-process-mba-2010-11-18

Excerpt:

A larger share of homes entered the foreclosure process in the third quarter, though the delinquency rate for mortgages dropped, the Mortgage Bankers Association reported Thursday.

Mortgages at least one payment past due or in foreclosures fell to 13.78% of all mortgages outstanding in the third quarter, down from 13.97% in the second quarter and from 14.41% a year ago, on a non-seasonally adjusted basis, according to the Washington-based MBA’s latest delinquency survey.

But foreclosure starts hit 1.34%, up from 1.11% the previous quarter and down from 1.42% a year ago. And the percentage of prime, fixed-rate mortgages entering the foreclosure process hit a record high, the MBA’s data showed.

The decline in delinquencies is a positive for the housing market, yet it reflects in large part the “natural progression” of mortgages into the foreclosure process, said Michael Fratantoni, MBA’s vice president of research and economics.