Who Owns The Property If There Is No Note Associated With The Deed?

My dumb-ass speculation on the Foreclosure Crisis, based upon my limited understanding of the legal issues at hand.

From the New American:

Beginning in the 1990s, it became fashionable to sell mortgages to other parties, and the mortgage securitization industry was born. Mortgages were sold, repackaged, and sold again, and a bewildering array of mortgage-backed securities was created to underwrite this new market. The United States mortgage business not only went national but international as investors worldwide rushed to get a piece of the lucrative American real estate sector.

To help streamline the process, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac created a national mortgage electronic registry called MERS (Mortgage Electronic Registration System, Inc.), whose purpose was to streamline the transfer of mortgages by helping mortgage securitizers to avoid the costs and inconveniences of recording mortgages at local courthouses.

Unfortunately for the mortgage sector, there were two big problems with that approach. In the first place, mortgages and mortgage transfers are governed by state, not federal laws. By providing a means to circumvent the hassles of state laws and local jurisdictions, MERS effectively ran roughshod over state authority. The other, potentially greater, problem, is that the critical document in a mortgage transaction — the one that empowers the creditor to enforce the terms of the mortgage on a delinquent homeowner — is the note, in 45 out of 50 states. A note, like any claim on assets, must be properly signed to have the force of a title. If it is sold to a new owner, it must be signed again, and so forth. Only thusly can what is called the “chain of title” be legally established.

This is a very interesting case. Two issues need to be balanced, one of which could lead to our economic collapse, and the other of which could lead to our collapse into lawlessness.

The first is the moral issue of the individual's responsibility to pay off his debts. If individuals do not pay off debts they owe, our country will collapse economically.

However, the second issue, the legal issue, is even bigger (and when is the legal bigger than the moral?) If our government does not enforce the law when it comes to property, we will no longer have a free nation.

If the banks have chosen not to follow the legal procedures required to establish and maintain ownership of property, then IT IS THEIR FAULT that they would lose control of that property.

An individual would be required to follow through on the legal procedures to maintain his control of his property; he would have to fill out the necessary paperwork, and pay his mortgage and his taxes, or he would surely lose his property. Likewise, the banks must be held to the same standard, or we will collapse into lawlessness.

Thinking this through further, though, it is clear that if the banks don't own the property, NEITHER DO THE INDIVIDUALS, because the ownership agreement has not been followed through by the establishment of the proper paperwork. (It could be said, the individuals have more claim on ownership of the property then do the banks, because they were not the one's who initiated a change in ownership of the note. However, they did authorize such a sale, when they signed the mortgage papers.)

So, here's a question to ponder, and in the question lies a very heavy warning:

If neither the banks nor the individuals own the property, then who does own the property?

Do we follow the thread back to the last owner established by a deed?

Or, is the property ceded to the public good, to then be redistributed,

and, if so, by whom?

Or, is the property simply seized by the government outright, to be redistributed as the government sees fit.

Given the nature of our current administration and Congressional representatives, what do you think the solution would be?

Want to know how STUPID the banks are? Mortgages? Bail Outs? Darwin denied? STOP WHAT YOU ARE DOING RIGHT NOW, and READ THIS

Free enterprise, regulation and COMMON SENSE are not mutually exclusive properties.

This is way past unbelievable. This is THIRD WORLD STUFF.

Greed. Incompetence. Crime. Criminal winking at crime by banks, regulators, law firms, and the individuals who caved in to this.

To be more specific, a mortgage has two basic components. One is the deed of trust attached to the property itself, and the other, called a note, is the homeowner's IOU. Gardner's lawyers have yet to find a single note that correctly documents the path the IOU has taken to arrive at

the bank trying to foreclose. The notes were the things getting robo-signed during the housing bubble, not by foreclosure mills but by mortgage mills. And the signing was even more robotic because it could be done electronically through a system called Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems (MERS). When a note was sold into the system, "ownership" of the note could be traded via computer. Unfortunately for MERS, the law requires the physical note to prove ownership, so none of these trades were exactly what one might call legal, or even what one might call real

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2010/10/14/thedc-op-ed-one-nation-under-fraud/print/#ixzz12LP4Hubb

READ IT.

STOP WHAT YOU ARE DOING AND READ IT.

Worst of all, the bailouts of these institutions who dealt in these mortgages as tools for the real commerce in the bonds they represented en masse has clearly ACHIEVED NOTHING. These criminal RETARDS are now protected by Dodd-Frank.

The mortgages appear to be not legally bought and sold, in order to easily gather them together in bonds for further sale, whose ratings were manipulated by these same banks and investment houses, the insurance on which would then break the entire financial system requiring the bailouts to save the men and women who engaged in these very crimes to create the market that broke the system.

Related articles

• JPMorgan exits electronic mortgage tracking system (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• The tangled web they wove (economist.com)
• Foreclosure Crisis May Well Be Catastrophic in Any Case (emptywheel.firedoglake.com)
• Did Robo-Signing Lawyers Knowingly Commit Fraud in the Foreclosure Fiasco? (dailyfinance.com)
• "Foreclosure Fraud: 6 Things You Need To Know About The Crisis That Could Potentially Rip The US Economy To Shreds" and related posts (dailymarkets.com)

What Eloquence! NOT!

Hat tip to The Lonely Conservative, where I found the following video:



Did you hear that stammer toward the beginning of his answer? Talk about a “tell,” as in poker.

Then, he followed up with saying “I” several times.

He also said “you guys” and “where we’re at.” From a Harvard grad? Sheesh.

WSJ - The job making machine is GONE!

It Isn't Just Lost Jobs
It's the Lost Jobs
Machine

Two basic facts will tell you most of what you need to know about the political picture today.

Fact One: The unemployment rate is the most important of all leading political indicators.

Fact Two: If the August unemployment number to be announced Friday tops 9%--which seems highly likely--the jobless rate will have been above that level for 16 straight months. Already, the U.S. is mired in the longest such stretch of 9%-plus joblessness in more than a quarter of a century.

There is little mystery, then, about why Democrats are in trouble. The party in power is inevitably blamed for so much bad news on the one economic subject that most concerns average Americans.

Yet the political debate on this point, which focuses on what can be done to get Americans back to work right now, is missing a deeper and more troubling reality: The American economy hasn't been a very robust jobs-producer for quite a while. That's the broader question that needs to be discussed, even as we work on the immediate problem.

Indeed, it has been perhaps four decades since America's economy has been the kind of roaring jobs machine that average Americans, aspiring politicians and ambitious business leaders all would like to see. Consider a few historical unemployment-rate numbers--one way to gauge the economy's performance on the jobs front.

Between 1966 and 1970, the U.S. experienced a phenomenal stretch of 48 straight months in which the unemployment rate was at or below 4%--that is to say, a stretch of four straight years when the rate was less than half of what it has been for the past year.

In the three decades since 1970, the rate has fallen below 4% for exactly four months, in the final months of 2000.

Instead, the norm has become unemployment rates in the 5%-to-7% range. When the recession of 1981 hit, the unemployment rate stood at 7.2%. It began to rise, and it took three full years before it was brought back down to that level once again--a depressing thought about how stubbornly high the rate may be as a result of the recession the U.S. is now exiting. During that stretch, the rate was at or above 9% for 19 straight months at one point.

The last two years of the 1990s were a period of consistently low unemployment, ranging between 4% and 5%. After that, job growth was only sluggish to moderate for most of this decade, even before the recession hit at the end of 2007.

It would be nice to pull out of the current jobs rut, of course. But it would be nicer still to figure out what combination of public policies and private initiatives would help the national jobs machine rev up to a higher, sustained level.

"It's an economy that hasn't been growing fast enough for a long time," says Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a Republican economist who advised Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign.

The debate over short-term fixes is familiar by now: Is stimulus spending helpful or not? Are tax cuts better than sending aid to the states? Is it better to spend federal dollars to juice the economy or to attack the deficit?

But solutions to long-term job lethargy are equally important.

There are plenty of ideas. Liberal economist Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, for example, says the key is attacking America's long-term trade imbalance. That requires expanding manufacturing, which, in turn, argues for pushing the value of the dollar down to make American exports cheaper. That isn't politically easy, because driving down the dollar also would drive up the cost of all those imports Americans love. Mr. Baker argues that it's a long-term job creator.

The more conservative Mr. Holtz-Eakin suggests a three-pronged attack. First, he would stop using the tax system to achieve social goals and change it to focus, almost obsessively, on fostering economic growth. Second, he would liberate corporations to devote more capital to jobs by curbing the use of them as "vessels for social benefits" such as health insurance, which would be provided in other ways. And third, he would radically improve the American education system, which is "failing to a remarkable degree in delivering to the labor force people with the skills needed to compete."

Centrist Democrat Robert Shapiro, chairman of the economic advisory firm Sonecon, says the job-creation problem arises because a globalized economy has brought an explosion of competition for American firms, limiting their ability to raise prices precisely when their fixed costs have started soaring in the areas of health, energy and pensions.

"This is a deep structural problem," Mr. Shapiro says. Its solution, he says, lies in public policies to help the private sector address those three big cost drivers.

Write to Gerald F. Seib at jerry.seib@wsj.com

The importance of solving this issue is WAY, WAY past
ANY
partisan political consideration

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It Begins… Soros Bailing Out of US Stock Market

From Gateway:


Far Left billionaire, democratic donor and Obama supporter, George Soros is bailing out of the US stock market. The value of billionaire investor George Soros’s hedge fund dropped by 42% to $5.1 billion at the end of the second quarter.
Economic Policy Journal reported, via Free Republic:

Billionaire trader and political manipulator,George Soros, is clearly not optimistic. The latest SEC filings are out on the Soros hedge fund, Soros Fund Management.
Between the end of March and the end of June, Soros lowered his stock investments from $8.8 billion to $5.1 billion in the fund, Soros Fund Management.
He sold most of his positions (over 95%) in Wal-Mart, J.P. Morgan Chase and Pfizer.
His biggest positionb at the end of June was in the gold ETF which accounted for 13% of his equity portfolio at $638 million.

Unemployment Since 1995

From Pirate's Cove.

The Change Is Beginning To Take Hold

Obama: “The Change is Beginning to Take Hold”…

This Administration Giveth, And This Administration Taketh Away

(hat tip to Yid With Lid)

According to the LA Times, Cash for Clunkers, apparently a stimulus that really worked, may be suspended:

White House reviewing 'cash for clunkers' program

WASHINGTON — The White House said Thursday it was reviewing the government's popular "cash for clunkers" program amid concerns the $1 billion budget for rebates for new auto purchases may have been exhausted in only a week.

Transportation Department officials called lawmakers' offices earlier Thursday to alert them of plans to suspend the program as early as Friday....

The White House said auto dealers and consumers should have confidence that transactions under the program that already have taken place would be honored.

The program, called the Car Allowance Rebate System, known as CARS, offers owners of old cars and trucks $3,500 or $4,500 toward a new, more fuel-efficient vehicle.

Congress last month approved the program to boost auto sales and remove some inefficient cars and trucks from the roads. The program kicked off last Friday and was heavily publicized by car companies and auto dealers.

Through late Wednesday, 22,782 vehicles had been purchased through the program and nearly $96 million had been spent. But dealers raised concerns about large backlogs in the processing of the deals in the government system, prompting the suspension....

But, hey, I got my new car last week, when Cash for Clunkers first began, traded in an old truck for $4500, and got this 2009 Hyundai Elantra:



Sticker price = $17,725

I paid $10,412.80, which includes upcoming protective treatment for the seats and the exterior -- some kind of armor, I think.

My first brand new car! Probably my last, but whatever.

As part of the Cash for Clunkers deal, I traded in my nearly-25-year-old Dodge Ram pickup truck, given to me outright in over a decade ago by my dad. The truck had low mileage on the odometer, but was suffering from wiring problems and not enough power to get out of its own way (slant 6 engine). No AC. Real gas mileage was about 10 to the gallon. Some lights didn't work, and the carburetor was screwed up beyond repair. In fact, that truck was a lemon from the git go, but Dad put up with all the towing bills as it was his one and only red truck.

You should have seen the looks on the faces of the dealership's personnel when I drove that truck up to the door: bird droppings all over the vehicle, dessicated and staining wild black cherries from bumper to bumper, body parts rattling, valves rattling, exhaust smoking, rust -- the whole nine yards.

The truck had been parked in the back yard for so long that an ant colony was living in the truck bed.

No, I'm not giving thanks to the BHO administration for my new car. Call me "Ingrate!" and I don't care.

This article in the Washington Post covers the down side of Cash for Clunkers - for the car dealers:

Tammy Darvish, another major auto dealer in the Washington area, said her more than two dozen dealerships have had lots of interest in the program but its success has left dealers strapped for money as they wait for payments from the government.

Under the program, dealers credit the amount of the voucher to customers who buy new cars. They then get reimbursed by the government.

"There's a whole lot of money out there that dealers haven't collected on," said Darvish, who noted that she's taken in about 200 clunkers. "We've sold the cars and we've processed the paperwork, but we haven't been reimbursed. I'm out about $1 million. The government is supposed to reimburse me for that."

Some Not So Dumb Questions….

I’d like to have answers to these and why they were not considered as solutions to some of the problems we face today. I won’t hold my breath.

Yes, dumb questions – then again maybe not so dumb -- maybe just common sense.

First: Why not give the $850 million dollars of stimulus money directly to the people?

We have approximately 250 million people in this country. Let’s say a third of that population belongs to families. 250 million divided by 3 = about 84 million families. Divide $800 billion by 84 million families and you get about $9600 per family. Some of that will be used to pay off debt by the family but a lot would be used to purchase things, thus stimulating the economy directly.

Yeah, I know. One answer is that the government doesn’t give a crap about helping on controlling. But I wonder if there are economic reason – not political.

Second: We’ve spent less than 10 percent of the allocated stimulus money. Why?

BHO cried that if we didn’t stimulate the economy IMMEDIATELY we would have a disaster of unprecedented proportions. Yet, we have spent less than 10 percent of the $800 billion dollars allocated.

Has the Administration or Congress second thoughts? Did China more or less threaten to not buy the hundreds of billions of dollars of our stimulus debt? Or has it been just pure incompetence on the part of the bureaucracy?

Third: Why not give citizenship to illegal aliens if the serve in the US Armed Forces?

This is an idea right out of Robert Heinlein’s’ book Starship Troopers.

If an illegal alien enlists for 4 years (I did – not for 2 years at the time because I enlisted with a special arm of the Army – the Army Security Agency. This would be a special enlistment too) and is discharged honorably, he or she gains immediate citizenship.

You would think by serving four years honorably in the Army it would make a good citizen out of them. One plus is that they would have to learn English to serve properly.

There you go. Anyone have any answers?

Will SCOTUS stand up for Jefferson, Adams, Madison and Hamilton? Chrysler on hold

High court justice delays Chrysler sale

Associated Press

WASHINGTON - Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg yesterday delayed Chrysler's sale of most of its assets to a group led by Italy's Fiat, but didn't say how long the deal would remain on hold.

Ginsburg said in an order that the sale was "stayed pending further order," indicating that the delay may only be temporary.

Chrysler L.L.C. has said the sale must close by June 15, or Fiat Group SpA has the option to walk away, leaving the Auburn Hills, Mich., automaker with little option but to liquidate.

A federal appeals court in New York approved the sale Friday but gave opponents until 4 p.m. yesterday to try to get the Supreme Court to intervene. Ginsburg issued her order right before the deadline.

Ginsburg could decide on her own whether to end the delay, or she could ask the full court to decide.

Bloomberg: "The plan is to enact policies that are so anticompetitive that every firm needs a bailout"

I've finally figured out the Obama economic strategy. President Barack Obama and his team have been having so much fun wielding dictatorial power while rescuing "failed" firms, that they have developed a scheme to gain the same power over every business. The plan is to enact policies that are so anticompetitive that every firm needs a bailout.

Once that happens, their new pay czar Kenneth Feinberg can set the wage for everybody and Rahm Emanuel can stack the boards of all of our companies with his political cronies.

I know, it sounds like an exaggeration. But look at it this way. If there were a power ranking of U.S. companies, like the ones compiled by football writers for National Football League teams, Microsoft would surely be first or second to Google. But last week, Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer came to Washington to announce what Microsoft would do if Obama's multinational tax policy is enacted.

"It makes U.S. jobs more expensive," Ballmer said, "We're better off taking lots of people and moving them out of the U.S." If Microsoft, perhaps our most competitive company, has to abandon the U.S. in order to continue to thrive, who exactly is going to stay?

At issue is Obama's policy to end the deferral of multinational taxation.

The U.S. now has about the highest combined corporate tax rate, second only to Japan among industrialized countries. That rate is so high that U.S. firms have an enormous disadvantage versus competitors. The average corporate tax rate for the major developed countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in 2008 was about 27 percent, more than 10 percentage points lower than the U.S. rate.

Weak towards sons of bitches overseas, and perceived as even weaker

Insulting towards not only allies, but those who share our interests, and wish us well.

PERSONALLY insulting towards valuable allied leaders in a repeated and undeniable fashion

Exhibiting a NEED to be loved by those who hate the American people and our values.

Politically motivated with force as no president has been since Nixon.

A believer in government force over individuals

A believer in domestic central control based on HIS VALUE SET, which views opponents as EVIL

A believer that government can do better than individuals at nearly everything individuals can do.

A believer that what the founders created WAS LARGELY IN ERROR, and must be radically changed.

A denier .. of brutal reality.

How long until the American people realize?

Right now his approval rating is 67%, though his handling of the economy falls below 50% for the first time.

Dealergate: Texas Rep. Accuses Dems of Closing GOP-Donating Chrysler Dealerships

From Gateway:

Using the list of all 789 dealerships to be closed, WND found that owners contributed $450,000 to GOP presidential candidates; $7,970 to Sen. Hillary Clinton; $2,200 to John Edwards and $450 to Barack Obama.

Map of Chrylser closings
Hat Tip to Gwynne from Texas

Rep. Poe asks the tough questions about the Chrysler dealership closings:

It's not surprising that now that the cat is out of the bag democrats are expressing concern over the closing of dealerships.

No wonder these democratic dealerships on the Chrysler National Dealer Council supported the closings:

The ratio of donations for dealers that were shuttered was 42 to 1, GOP to Democrat.

Again here is what we know so far--
** Earlier it was reported that the Obama Administration may have targeted GOP donors in deciding which Chrysler dealerships would have to close their doors.
** Later it was discovered that a Big Dem Donor Group was allowed to keep all 6 Chrysler dealerships open.... And, their local competitors wereeliminated.
** The Auto Task Force, which includes Obama cabinet members, is reportedly calling the shots on which dealerships will close and stay open.
** Steven Rattner leads The Auto Task Force and is married to the former National Finance Chair of Democratic Party, Maureen White.
** The closings in several instances appear to benefit Dem donating dealers where local GOP-linked dealerships were closed.
** Even Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-Fla) lost his Chrysler dealership in Florida and found out from a colleague on the House floor.
** Lithia Motor Group's owners gave $15,000 to two Democrat candidates and support nationalized healthcare. They will likely lose just two of 29 dealerships and gain 5 more.
** One report claims the odds that these Chrysler closings occurred without partisan bias are less than 1%.
** After closing the 789 dealerships Chrysler announced that they are already looking to open new franchises.
** Chrysler dealership owners donated to Republicans over Democrats by a ratio of 76% to 24%.
** Using the list of all 789 dealerships to be closed, WND found that owners contributed $450,000 to GOP presidential candidates; $7,970 to Sen. Hillary Clinton; $2,200 to John Edwards and $450 to Barack Obama.
** 40 Democrat-friendly dealerships will become 42 dealerships after the dust settles. Their competition gutted as well.
** Quantitative analysis determined that the process to determine which dealerships were going to close indeed favored democrats.

Previously:
Hope, Change & Marxism: Did Obama Target GOP Donors In Chrysler Dealer Closings? (Video)
Shock! Big Dem Donor Group Allowed to Keep Their 6 Chrysler Dealerships Open 
More On Chrysler Closings-- Did Team Obama Target Red Counties? 
Even GOP Congressman Loses Chrysler Dealership 
Dealergate: Mapping the Chrysler Closures 
Unreal. After Weeding Out Dealers Chrysler Looking To Open New Dealerships 
Car Czar Behind Chrysler Closings Married to Former Dem Party Leader 
Dealergate Number Crunching: Looking at US Dealership Political Donations 
Gibbs Denies Politics In Chrysler Dealership Closings **MAP** 
Dealergate Update: Corrupt Dem-Donating Auto Group Keeps Dealerships 
Shock. Dem Dealers Support Chrysler Closing Plans