New York sues banks over foreclosures

[No Elephants]

Source: cnn

New York sues banks over foreclosures

By Jennifer Liberto @CNNMoney February 3, 2012: 3:15 PM ET


Attorney General Eric Schneiderman on Friday sued Bank of America (BAC, Fortune 500), Wells Fargo (WFC, Fortune 500), JPMorgan Chase (JPM, Fortune 500), as well as the Mortgage Electronic Registration System Inc. (MERS) in New York state court.

Schneiderman says that the banks created the electronic registry as an "end-run" around the public property recording system to help them more quickly buy and sell parts of mortgages. He said the system helped banks create "deceptive and fraudulent court submissions" and improperly foreclose on homeowners.

<snip>

The New York suit alleges that the database was used by the big banks to transfer ownership of mortgage debt without paying government registration fees and properly recording the transactions. The system also concealed the identities of the holders of mortgage debt from borrowers, the suit claims.

"MERS' conduct, as well as the servicers' use of the MERS System, has resulted in the filing of improper New York foreclosure proceedings, undermined the integrity of the judicial process, created confusion and uncertainty concerning property ownership interests, and potentially clouded titles on properties throughout the State of New York," according to a statement by the New York Attorney General.

Read more: http://money.cnn.com/2012/02/03/news/economy/banks_sued/index.htm?iid=Popular

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It's class warfare, all right--against the 99%.

The story says that similar suits have been filed, most of which the industry has been winning.

[chill_wind]

1. That can't be making TPTB very happy

including any in the Obama admin who've always wanted him to play nicer:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=433x752576

but win or lose, I'm rooting for him all the way. He's in rare company.

[No Elephants]

2. Obama admin pressuring Schneiderman not to prosecute!

:banghead:

[chill_wind]

3. Yes, just a few mere months ago, Shaun Donovan and high-level Justice

were reportedly all over him-

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/22/business/schneiderman-is-said-to-face-pressure-to-back-bank-deal.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

We're to believe there's been a sudden new change of heart and direction (some interesting anecdotal stuff about the S.O.U and the First Lady's Box):

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/eric-schneiderman-new-york-ag-shaped-drive-to-hold-banks-accountable/2012/01/30/gIQAjWxCgQ_story.html

All we can do is hope he'll continue to be not all that easily politically co-opted (by those predisposed to bringing the trouble makers officially inside, keeping them busy, "better to have them inside the tent p*ssing out".) I always felt that was somewhat at operation with Warren. She was brought "inside the tent" and then was essentially sandbagged and neutered from getting anything really dangerous done for a critical period of time.

As for the parade of other investigation/prosecution-minded SigTarp types (remember Barofsky), well there are other ways of dealing with them. You just get your deputy communications to trash and kneecap them when they start taking their job too seriously:

The White House trashed Barofsky in a blog on its site written by Jen Psaki, deputy communications director.

"Some people don't like movies with happy endings," she wrote. "How else to explain this week's report by Sigtarp? Rather than focusing on the growing evidence we've seen in recent months that TARP will be far less costly than anyone expected, Sigtarp instead sought to generate a false controversy over AIG to try and grab a few, cheap headlines."

THE NAME-CALLING AND vilification continued for seven more paragraphs. In so many words, she called Barofsky an ignoramus who doesn't comprehend simple multiplication. But her biggest gripe concerned Barofsky's rejection of stand-alone, pro forma accounting. Psaki wrote that Sigtarp's report demonstrated "a fundamental misunderstanding of the difference between audited financial results—which are backward-looking and represent a snapshot in time—and forward-looking valuations of future profits."

http://online.barrons.com/article/SB50001424053111904757804575576510791797970.html?mod=BOL_twm_col

Good luck to the man. Hard to believe he has too many allies in high places in reality. Seriously.

[KoKo]

4. Thanks for those links and snips...

Good Reads...

[KoKo]

5. "chill_wind" That WaPo article is an excellent read!

Very interesting about Schneiderman's last minute includsion in the First Lady Box...and the hopefullness of the investigation going forward being real. We shall see but, it was encouraging.

I called my State Attorney General when the alarm/alert went out about the "settlement" (and efforts for us to call our AG's) before the SOU. Hopefully others did also and that increased the pressure to investigate rather than settle. Have to hope it was "People Power" and "OWS" pressure for good.

[chill_wind]

6. MERS- Frankenstein's Lab

and the biggest fraud in the history of the capital markets (Janet Tavakoli)

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=9560185#top

Fraud. PERVASIVE fraud. One of the most redemptive and cleansing things we could do in this country right now is prosecute a whole lot of it.

(Two or three other things and America might start looking like a nation of semi-sane people again--
gut Citizens United, the Patriot Act, and bring war criminals and torturers to justice. Only then could "We The People" begin to vaguely start meaning anything again.)

[KoKo]

7. Agree....MER's violated centuries of Property Law.. Deeds to land now in dispute.

The criminality is incredible and it did bring down our economy. It affected so many people that even BCCI and S&LOAN disasters didn't. This was MASSIVE and it built on the other Financial Shenanigans and Criminality they had done before!

:banghead:

[No Elephants]

9. Yep, they quietly privatized the Registry of Deeds, something that had function here quietly and

remarkably well for centuries, as part of their crap mortgage derivatives, which bankrupted nation after nation.

I remember buying a house that had been built in Victorian times and being able to see a lot of what happened to the family of the original owner, just by reviewing what the title examiner found in the public record.

Now, it's FUBAR. And they want to do this to our Post Office, which is enshrined in the Constitution and has somehow managed to get mail door to door for centuries.

And look how well Fannie and Freddie did!

[No Elephants]

10. Government is not the entity to look to if we want "we the people" to mean anything.

[No Elephants]

8. Geithner, Summers, Goolsbee, etc. have been in the tent pissing out since before

Obama's inauguration.

Mother Jones did an article relatively early on in the Obama Admnistration about just how many Republican and DLC banksters were in the Obama administration and the dear, departed PBS show, Bill Moyers Journal, had the writers on to discuss the article, which is how I became aware of it. http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/01082010/profile.html

(Glad that Moyers is back on public TV, albeit not as prominently as before).

Since then, Mother Jones has done a number of articles on the same or closely related subjects. (They came up when I googled for the link to the first article.)




At this point, I'd like to see populist economists in the tent, not pissing anywhere. Because when Washington D.C. pisses out, it's us that get pissed on, not them or their lobbyist financiers.

(BTW, I know that Summers and Goolsbee are no longer in the administration--well, not officially. Geithner sure is, though.)