if this story doesn't give you chills up your spine and raise the hairs on the back of your neck....

[no_more_yesterdays]

(edited for copyright purposes-proud patriot Mdoerator Democratic Underground)

- The Big Picture – <http://www.ritholtz.com/blog> -
Posted By Guest Author On October 14, 2010 @ 4:00 pm In Humor,Think Tank |


Bank of America Announces That It Has Discovered Some Trivial Technical Problems with a Small Number of its Mortgages
Bank of America announced that it has discovered a few trivial, easily-remedied technical problems with some of its mortgages. “We will stop foreclosure sales in some states until our assessment has been satisfactorily completed, or until the politicians whom we have compensated so generously do their damn jobs and get rid of those pesky laws and rights that are slowing us down. Our ongoing assessment shows the basis for foreclosure decisions is accurate, except in those few regrettable cases where we repossessed a house that actually had no mortgage on it whatsoever—hey, nobody’s perfect, ha ha,” a Bank of America spokescreature said. “It’s really quite a lot of trouble to verify the address before we take someone’s house,” the spokescreature continued. “Comparing addresses on two documents slows us up by a good fifteen seconds. After all, we have a lot of houses to foreclose on. Anyway, many of those people actually do owe money to us, or to somebody, anyway. I know it is a bit confusing to citizens when our competitor HSBC and another bank simultaneously try to foreclose on the same property, especially when they are in a federal foreclosure prevention program. It’s sort of like one of those programs on Animal Planet where each hyena grabs a leg of the still twitching gazelle and tries to pull it away from the other hyenas. But that’s the way nature works—nobody asks those hyenas petty-minded questions about whether title to the gazelle was properly transferred, and to which hyena, and whether the title was properly notarized by an authorized local cheetah. Sometimes a company just has to sink its fangs into a customer, lock its jaws, which can exert a pressure of 1,000 pounds per square inch, brace its legs, yank, and see what tears loose. If we get the wrong gazelle, we will make every effort to compensate it for our erroneous gnawing, bone-crushing, and marrow-sucking.”
“It appears that some of our process servers may not have actually served the owners with notice of our intent to foreclose. But, honestly, wouldn’t warning them make it a whole lot harder to catch them? It is a myth that hyenas giggle and cackle before they attack. Actually, they are usually quite silent until they get close enough to bite. On the Serengeti, due process means that the gazelle runs as fast as it can and the pack keeps ripping small chunks off until the gazelle collapses due to shock and blood loss and inability to pay for a lawyer. There may have been some trivial, unimportant problems with the relevant documents, but we are confident that many of those gazelles really did owe us money, and we believe that our ripping them into pieces, digesting them, and regurgitating their horns and hooves is ecologically sound and generally in accord with the law of nature. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I will have to go mark the boundaries of my pack’s territory with the musk from my anal scent gland. We don’t want other hyena packs like J.P. Morgan invading our turf. That could be a real mess—those guys know how to sink their fangs in, and they know how to break down the door of a house and change the locks even when they haven’t foreclosed on the property.”
(snip)
________________________________________
Article printed from The Big Picture: <http://www.ritholtz.com/blog>
URL to article: <http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2010/10/bank-of-america-announces-that-it-has-discovered-some-trivial-technical-problems-with-a-small-number-of-its-mortgages/>

[TheCowsCameHome]

1. Well structured and easy to read article

the only thing missing is all CAPS.

[eridani]

4. Note to OP; the RETURN key is your friend!

Use it to create paragraphs!

[monmouth]

2. There is nothing funny about this, just ask anyone who was then or

now involved in a foreclosure. My dear friend has lost everything and if not for good friends would be living in her car. Don't know who this author is and don't much care, but disgusting would be my critique.

[geckosfeet]

3. Krugman's editorial - same topic - less widlwlife - 'The Mortgage Morass'

The Mortgage Morass

...an awful truth is becoming apparent: In many cases, the documentation doesn’t exist. In the frenzy of the bubble, much home lending was undertaken by fly-by-night companies trying to generate as much volume as possible. These loans were sold off to mortgage “trusts,” which, in turn, sliced and diced them into mortgage-backed securities. The trusts were legally required to obtain and hold the mortgage notes that specified the borrowers’ obligations. But it’s now apparent that such niceties were frequently neglected. And this means that many of the foreclosures now taking place are, in fact, illegal.

This is very, very bad. For one thing, it’s a near certainty that significant numbers of borrowers are being defrauded — charged fees they don’t actually owe, declared in default when, by the terms of their loan agreements, they aren’t.

More -

True to form, the Obama administration’s response has been to oppose any action that might upset the banks, like a temporary moratorium on foreclosures while some of the issues are resolved. Instead, it is asking the banks, very nicely, to behave better and clean up their act. I mean, that’s worked so well in the past, right?

The response from the right is, however, even worse. Republicans in Congress are lying low, but conservative commentators like those at The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page have come out dismissing the lack of proper documents as a triviality. In effect, they’re saying that if a bank says it owns your house, we should just take its word. To me, this evokes the days when noblemen felt free to take whatever they wanted, knowing that peasants had no standing in the courts. But then, I suspect that some people regard those as the good old days.

The Mortgage Morass

What's a poor peasant to do?

[dixiegrrrrl]

5. Buy lots of insurance and let the kids play with matches?

[geckosfeet]

6. No. Just stop paying the mortgage.

:hi:

[dixiegrrrrl]

7. Wel, stop paying AFTER CYA via lawyer.

[geckosfeet]

8. Of course. Need to keep the banks in line.