The shit is wide, the shit is deep, but one man has employed a boat full of lawyers to fight the power:
This shit is global
“Countrywide’s lawsuit was filed in the name of Countrywide as loan servicer, and MERS as mortgagee. I thought it strange that some unknown entity (MERS) was in a fight with me. I started doing research. This is what I found (explained in layman’s terms). Countrywide had sold the note to a trust that had been set up by the gurus on Wall St. There were 16,000 notes in the trust owned by god knows how many investors. They of course could do this because for the first time in the history of world finance, these “gurus” had separated the mortgage (collateral) from the note. MERS holds my mortgage which is recorded per law at my county court house. They don’t and will never be my, or your, note holder. This separation of the note and mortgage gives Wall St. the ability to “transfer/sell” my note at a click of a mouse thus circumventing the age old process of recording the transfer in my county court house. This slight of the hand is the fraud that created the entire secondary mortgage market and eventually the trouble we are in today. Countrywide is my loan servicer…which means they are nothing but a bookkeeper and collection agency. The holder of my note was yet to be determined.”
I think he means “sleight of hand” but pedantics aside, he absolutely nails it- that moment in time when our goose went into the oven at 450 degrees.
It is not done yet, but someone should check because I think I smell something burning.
I like the way in which the author reveals the sort of institutionalized chicanery that has evolved throughout the financial system unchecked, and employed like a truncheon on the back of the head of the unsuspecting little guy walking along Main Street.
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Additional perspectives on MERS:
Mortgage Electronic Registration System Loses Legal Shield
[ Barry Rtitholtz ]
Has a MERShole opened up?
[ Karl Denninger ]Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems (MERS): A System Designed to Create the Mortgage-Backed Security Bubble
[ Dr. Housing Bubble ]
Waking up to discover the mortgage market was a giant criminal enterprise
[ Matt Taibbi ]
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Debts are not always repaid. The financial markets are not always in equilibrium.
