Matt Taibbi: Courts Helping Banks Screw Over Homeowners

[swag]

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/17390/232611

The foreclosure lawyers down in Jacksonville had warned me, but I was skeptical. They told me the state of Florida had created a special super-high-speed housing court with a specific mandate to rubber-stamp the legally dicey foreclosures by corporate mortgage pushers like Deutsche Bank and JP Morgan Chase. This "rocket docket," as it is called in town, is presided over by retired judges who seem to have no clue about the insanely complex financial instruments they are ruling on — securitized mortgages and laby­rinthine derivative deals of a type that didn't even exist when most of them were active members of the bench. Their stated mission isn't to decide right and wrong, but to clear cases and blast human beings out of their homes with ultimate velocity. They certainly have no incentive to penetrate the profound criminal mysteries of the great American mortgage bubble of the 2000s, perhaps the most complex Ponzi scheme in human history — an epic mountain range of corporate fraud in which Wall Street megabanks conspired first to collect huge numbers of subprime mortgages, then to unload them on unsuspecting third parties like pensions, trade unions and insurance companies (and, ultimately, you and me, as taxpayers) in the guise of AAA-rated investments. Selling lead as gold, shit as Chanel No. 5, was the essence of the booming international fraud scheme that created most all of these now-failing home mortgages.

The rocket docket wasn't created to investigate any of that. It exists to launder the crime and bury the evidence by speeding thousands of fraudulent and predatory loans to the ends of their life cycles, so that the houses attached to them can be sold again with clean paperwork. The judges, in fact, openly admit that their primary mission is not justice but speed. One Jacksonville judge, the Honorable A.C. Soud, even told a local newspaper that his goal is to resolve 25 cases per hour. Given the way the system is rigged, that means His Honor could well be throwing one ass on the street every 2.4 minutes.

Foreclosure lawyers told me one other thing about the rocket docket. The hearings, they said, aren't exactly public. "The judges might give you a hard time about watching," one lawyer warned. "They're not exactly anxious for people to know about this stuff." Inwardly, I laughed at this — it sounded like typical activist paranoia. The notion that a judge would try to prevent any citizen, much less a member of the media, from watching an open civil hearing sounded ridiculous. Fucked-up as everyone knows the state of Florida is, it couldn't be that bad. It isn't Indonesia. Right?

Well, not quite. When I went to sit in on Judge Soud's courtroom in downtown Jacksonville, I was treated to an intimate, and at times breathtaking, education in the horror of the foreclosure crisis, which is rapidly emerging as the even scarier sequel to the financial meltdown of 2008: Invasion of the Home Snatchers II. In Las Vegas, one in 25 homes is now in foreclosure. In Fort Myers, Florida, one in 35. In September, lenders nationwide took over a rec­ord 102,134 properties; that same month, more than a third of all home sales were distressed properties. All told, some 820,000 Americans have already lost their homes this year, and another 1 million currently face foreclosure.

[MedicalAdmin]

1. It's a land grab.

They set up the fraud, got millions of American's to improve the properties and then foreclosed on them after moving jobs overseas.

And now they bundle the properties together and sell them in blocks of 100 properties each, effectively stopping what happened during the last land grab/depression, namely that neighbors would show up at the "auction" and make sure that no one except the family about to lose their house was able to bid (even if it meant roughing up a few crooks).

We can't do that anymore.


For justice to be served either the law needs to take these sociopaths off the streets and lock them up forever, or I fear the country will need a little street justice. Maybe if Wall Street burns to the ground followed by the houses and properties of EVERY PERSON WHO WORKS ON WALL STREET then justice will be started. But neither the law or vigilante justice will happen for the little guy in America. Nothing will be done. Nothing.

[MedicalAdmin]

2. I'm current on my mortgage.

I have a fixed rate 30 year and I bought a house well within my budget (about 1/3 of what we qualified for).

And I will say this. I know that my house is not safe because the system is fraudulent and my note (theoretically) is held by Chase. They could screw me 8 ways from Sunday because they screw everyone 8 ways from Sunday.

I will say this. Come for my house and you better have your funeral arrangements in order before you bang on the door.

[October]

3. Jaw-dropping! /nt

[molly77]

4. Matt Taiibi and Rolling Stones goes where other MSM refuses to go

I subscribe. Matt called Cap and Trade what it is. Another bubble. It just leaves out the middle man. In the name of "the environment" . Nobody else understood the situation. Just as housing prices sky rocketed with that bubble, our electricity rates would do the same with Cap and Trade. It would no help the environment one iota. Just propaganda ..similar to "shock and awe".

How can the people of Florida allow this to happen? I guess the vultures know where they can feed. Guess they are too trusting of govt. to do the right thing.

[WillyT]

5. K & R !!!

:kick:

[Independem]

6. $3.4 M Jury Verdict Wrongful Foreclosure Fraud

$3.4 Million Dollar Jury Verdict In Las Vegas For Wrongful Foreclosure ..By Carmen Dellutri ,

LAW OFFICE OF DAVID J. STERN MISTAKENLY FILES FORECLOSURE ON SARASOTA FLORIDA MAN, INCLUDES FEDERAL TAX LIEN OF ANOTHER MAN WITH A DIFFERENT SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER & SERVES US ATTORNEY, HOW STUPID

http://www.zimbio.com/Buy+Foreclosure+Home+Make+Money+Buying+Foreclosure+Homes/articles/527/LAW+OFFICE+DAVID+J+STERN+MISTAKENLY+FILES


Foreclosure Fraud - Republicans Screwing America

This foreclosure fraud issue is yet another domino falling, where once again the big Wall Street banks are wreaking havoc with our economy in order to come away with outlandish profits at the expense of poor and middle-class people. These huge banks are so powerful both politically and economically that they haven't worried about playing by the rules and following the law.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mike-lux/foreclosure-fraud-shows-t_b_764622.html?ir=Politics

Once again, in keeping with the pattern Digby first reported, this is all Democrats doing the right thing, and not a single Republican lifting a finger to help.