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Fintan
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Joined: 18 Jan 2006
Posts: 4100
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 Posted: Mon Aug 02, 2010 8:40 pm Post subject: Wall St, Forclosure Fraud and Lots of Ferrari's |
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| Quote: | 
http://www.billwarnerpi.com/2010/07/foreclosure-attorney-david-j-stern.html |
This is mortgage-foreclosure big noise, Attorney David J. Stern.
Relaxing on his 130' foot boat which he has joking named as:
‘Su Casa es Mi Casa,’ (Your House is My House).
He may not be as relaxed as this, today.
Stern's just been hit with a RICO lawsuit over the mass scale fraud
his firm has been perpetrating for years on courts and homeowners.
This is Stern's close to $2 Million worth Bugatti Veyron:
| Quote: |  |
Stern’s other autos include:
Four Porsches,
a 2010 silver Ferrari convertible,
a 2009 red Ferrari coupe,
a 2009 black Ferrari coupe,
a 2010 white Cadillac Escalade,
a 2011 Mercedes Benz coupe,
a 2008 Bentley, a 2009 Rolls Royce,
a 2008 Aston Martin Vantage,
a 2007 Maserati Quattroporte,
as well as BMWs, Hummers and Land Rovers
All of which means Stern has plenty of happy memories packed away.
Those might be handy to while away the hours of possible incarceration.
This is Kenneth Eric Trent, Attorney at Law.
| Quote: |  |
To the best of our knowledge he has neither a yacht nor any super cars.
He just hit Stern, his law firm and the giant Merscorp, Inc.
mortgage foreclosure fraud firm with a RICO lawsuit.
Here's he is giving some background to the suit.
Here's some highlights of his RICO suit against Stern.
Ouch! :
| Quote: | Beginning in or about 1999, the Defendant Firm joined with Defendant
Merscorp, Inc., and other conspirators in the fraudulent scheme and
RICO enterprise herein complained of. The employees of the
Defendant Firm, including many licensed attorneys, have become
skilled in using the artifice of MERS to sabotage the judicial process
to the detriment of borrowers.....
The whole purpose of MERS is to allow “servicers” to pretend as if they
are someone else: the “owners” of the mortgage, or the real parties in
interest. In fact they are not.....
....The conspirators set about to confuse everyone as to who owned what.
They created a truly effective smokescreen which has left the public and
most of the judiciary operating “in the dark” through the present time.
The preparation, filing, and prosecution of the complaints to “Foreclose
Mortgage and to Enforce Lost Loan Documents” were each predicate acts
in the pattern of racketeering activity herein complained of, and were
actions taken in furtherance of the MERS enterprise.....
By engaging in a pattern of racketeering activity, specifically “mail or wire
fraud,” the Defendants subject to this Count participated in a criminal
enterprise affecting interstate commerce. In addition to the altered
postmarks described below, the mail fraud is the sending of the
fraudulent assignments and pleadings to the clerks of court, judges,
attorneys, and defendants in foreclosure cases. These Defendants
intentionally participated in a scheme to defraud others, including the
Plaintiff and the other Class Members, and utilized the U.S. Mail to do so.
These documents were executed by an “Assistant Secretary” or “Vice
President,” apparently of MERS. In reality, the person executing the
assignments had no knowledge whatsoever of the truth of their contents,
and was simply an employee of the Defendant Firm.
Altering common hardware and/or software used by the Defendant Firm
so that envelopes used to mail important legal documents, such as final
judgments, to defendants contain no date of mailing in the postmark and
intentionally delaying in sending the mail until defendants have lost their
rights. (Exhibit F). These predicate acts constitute “mail fraud.”
http://www.scribd.com/doc/34959419/
See Also:
Full Deposition of David J. Stern’s Notary | Para Legal Shannon Smith
Full Deposition of Law Office of David J. Stern’s Cheryl Samons |
Stern's firm is not the only one hitting problems. Judges across the US
are now well aware of the fraudulent basis for huge numbers of
mortgage foreclosures by firms like Stern's --on behalf of all the
top ten banks active in mopping up the remains of the sub-prime
mortgage scam. This from a few months ago:
| Quote: | American Home Mortgage Servicing
Deutsche Bank National Trust Company
Docx, LLC
Lender Processing Services
Action Date: April 13, 2010
Location: Jacksonville, FL
On April 12, 2010, Lender Processing Services closed the offices of its subsidiary, Docx, LLC, in Alpharetta, Georgia. That office was responsible for pumping out over a million mortgage assignments in the last two years so that banks could foreclose on residential real estate. The law firms handling the foreclosures were retained and largely controlled by Lender Processing Services, according to a Sanctions Order entered by U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Diane Weiss Sigmund (In re Niles C. Taylor, EDPA, Case 07-15385-sr, Doc. 193). Lender Processing Services, the largest "default management services company" in the country, has already made at least partial admissions that there were faults in the documents produced by the Docx office - although courts and homeowners were never notified. According to Lender Processing Services, over 50 major banks use their default management services. The banks that especially need the services provided by Lender Processing Services include Deutsche Bank, Citibank, Wells Fargo and U.S. Bank, acting as trustees for mortgage-backed securitized trusts. These trusts, in the rush to securitize mortgages and sell them to investors, often ignored the critical step of obtaining mortgage assignments from the original lenders to the securities companies to the trusts. Now, years later, when the companies "servicing" the trusts need to foreclose, they retain Lender Processing Services to draft the missing documents. The mortgage servicers, including American Home Mortgage Services, Saxon Mortgage Services, and American Servicing Company, never disclose that the trusts are missing essential documents - they just rely on Lender Processing Services to "fix" the problems. Although the Alpharetta office has been closed, Lender Processing Services continues to mass produce "replacement" assignments from its Jacksonville, Florida, and Dakota County, Minnesota offices. Law firms retained by Lender Processing Services also often use their own employees, posing as officer of Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, to produce the needed Assignments. Since the vast majority of homeowners do not retain counsel in foreclosure proceedings, this flawed system has worked very effectively for the last few years, with courts all over the country rarely questioning why so many mortgage companies had officers in Alpharetta, Georgia, or why Trusts that closed in 2005 and 2006 were just obtaining Mortgage Assignments in 2009 and 2010. Most courts never even questioned why companies long-dissolved, such as Option One, could still be executing documents years after the dissolution. While the closing of the Alpharetta office may be a sign that these fraudulent activities will finally be exposed and addressed, for the time being, it is just a matter of an unsatisfactory end of one small facet of an enormous and far-reaching problem.
http://frauddigest.com/news.php |
Yet even as some judges are fully awake to the massive fraud,
other judges are helping to fast-track the growing foreclosures
tide with special sittings and ask-no-questions rulings.
And there is yet no sign that the Wall Street banks who pay the
salaries of such as David J Stern will face similar RICO charges.
This report is worth checking out for a great
overview of what has been happening:
| Quote: | The Most Reviled Law Firm in Florida and the
“Unowned Mortgage Loans” Scheme
By: LYNN SZYMONIAK, ESQ. |
Jim Willie also points out more implications
of this rapidly-coming-off-the-rails scam:
| Quote: | The mortgage fraud industry suffered another major legal blow. The Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems (MERS) is an overly clever property title database. MERS was again was permitted zero legal standing, this time by California courts. Homeowners can often flaunt the banks and not pay, without risk of being expelled from their homes. The public is pulling off strategic defaults more often, and simply defying banks on an increasing basis. The potential for successful civil disobedience, Henry David Thoreau style, has never been more ripe. Already 250 thousand Bank of America mortgage holders in the United States are not paying anything in monthly payments. The US Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of California has ruled that MERS cannot transfer a note (home loan mortgage) for want of ownership. [/b]MERS has proven to be the point of extreme legal vulnerability for the Wall Street bond purveyors[/b]......
http://www.gold-eagle.com/editorials_08/willie072910.html |
By the way, Stern took his foreclosure practice public, pocketing a
little more than $50Million in the process. The DJSP shares have
been trading down of late, but despite it's now uncertain future
the firm has been plowing ahead in recent months:
| Quote: | DJSP Enterprises, Inc. Adds New President and
Chief Operations Officer to Senior Management Team
Loan processor moves to downtown Orlando
Mortgage-service company DJS Processor LLC has signed
what may be the largest lease in downtown Orlando this year. |
_________________
Minds are like parachutes.
They only function when open.
Last edited by Fintan on Tue Sep 21, 2010 4:24 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Fintan
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Joined: 18 Jan 2006
Posts: 4100
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| Posted: Fri Aug 06, 2010 3:45 pm Post subject: |
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Now a private citizen is filing suit under Qui Tam against MERS
and the big Wall St. banks behind that fraudulent firm.
Qui Tam is where a citizen can sue on behalf of the State
and claim a chunk of the award if successful. Way to go.
There's one in California:
Earlier this year he filed another in Tenn.
| Quote: | Barrett Bates, relator, is a resident of the State of Nevada and an original source of information and authorized to bring this action pursuant to Tenn. Code Ann. § 4-18-101, et seq., and as the qui tam Plaintiff because Bates has worked in the secondary mortgage market business and, during the course of his work in June 2009, became aware Defendants were concealing and avoiding the payment of recording fees or other monies to the above-named counties in this and other states.....
http://stopforeclosurefraud.com/2010/05/10/tennessee-vs-mers |
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They only function when open. |
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Fintan
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Posts: 4100
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| Posted: Tue Sep 21, 2010 4:21 pm Post subject: |
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Well, six weeks later this has finally hit the mainstream.
And how!
| Quote: | GMAC Suspends All Foreclosures Nationwide
By David Dayen Monday September 20, 2010 1:31 pm
GMAC, the struggling financing arm of General Motors, whose
mortgage arm holds $26 billion of mortgages, just suspended
foreclosures in 23 states in a harried, chaotic policy shift.
Brokers were told to stop evictions, cash-for-key transactions and
lockouts, regardless of occupant type, with immediate effect.
The company will also suspend sales of properties on which it has
already foreclosed. The letter tells brokers to notify buyers that the
company will extend the closing date on all sales by 30 days. Buyers
will be able to cancel their agreement to purchase and get their deposit
back, according to the letter.
The only thing I can think of to elicit that kind of reaction is the noose
tightening around foreclosure fraud. Federal investigators have been
probing these activities, and the New York Times just ran a major story
about foreclosure mills, where loan originators used phony documentation
to claim ownership of titles to which they had no claim. Basically, people
were getting foreclosure eviction notices from servicers who did not own
the home.
Rep. Alan Grayson recently petitioned the Florida Supreme Court to halt
all foreclosures initiated by three firms in the state, who account for
roughly 80% of all foreclosure activity.
http://news.firedoglake.com/2010/09/20/gmac-suspends-all-foreclosures-nationwide/ |
Note that GMAC, in addition to suspending foreclosures are suspending
sales of previously foreclosed properties also.
That's because it's now clear they don't have proper title to sell in many
cases. And they may have to compensate the evicted former owners
for foreclosure founded on fraud.
Nasty. Expensive nasty. Criminal sanctions nasty.
And this affects many Wall St. TBTF banks as well as GMAC.
| Quote: | "All the banks are the same, GMAC is the only one who’s gotten caught,”
said Patricia Parker, an attorney at Jacksonville, Florida-based law firm,
Parker & DuFresne. “This could be huge.” |
In the New York Times:
| Quote: | Documents showing that a note has been assigned to a foreclosing
bank are often dated after a foreclosure, meaning that the bank
bringing the case may not have the right to foreclose.
Other questions arise involving documents with improper notary stamps
and wildly different signatures on legal papers supposedly prepared
by the same person, borrowers’ lawyers say. Link |
Ouch!
Isn't that fraud?
Maybe even Rico fraud?
| Quote: | Last May, Mr. Warner filed a motion to dismiss the case, alleging submission
of a fraudulent document because Deutsche Bank was not owner of the
note. He filed another motion questioning the credibility of the Stern
firm and the lawyer on the case, he said. On June 14, Deutsche Bank
withdrew the case. Link |
Must read quick intro to
thedepth of the fraud:
More coverage:
_________________
Minds are like parachutes.
They only function when open.
Last edited by Fintan on Tue Sep 21, 2010 5:37 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Fintan
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Joined: 18 Jan 2006
Posts: 4100
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| Posted: Tue Sep 21, 2010 4:32 pm Post subject: |
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Here's what one judge had to say about this:
| Quote: | I really honestly don’t have any confidence that any of the documents
the Courts are receiving on these mass foreclosures are valid…
So I’ve said enough…
Honorable Anthony Rondolino
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_________________
Minds are like parachutes.
They only function when open.
Last edited by Fintan on Tue Sep 21, 2010 5:35 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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obitom kenobi
Joined: 18 Aug 2007
Posts: 88
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| Posted: Tue Sep 21, 2010 4:56 pm Post subject: |
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| The tides, they are a turning. =) |
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MichaelC
Joined: 06 Jul 2006
Posts: 1854
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| Posted: Wed Sep 22, 2010 5:02 am Post subject: |
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What my Dad used to say - long since discredited:
"If you can't afford to pay cash for something you can't afford to buy it".
Wise words, which I follow today. |
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Fintan
Site Admin
Joined: 18 Jan 2006
Posts: 4100
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| Posted: Sun Oct 10, 2010 1:45 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: | Momentum builds for full moratorium on foreclosures
By Ariana Eunjung Cha, Steven Mufson and Jia Lynn Yang
Washington Post Staff Writers - Saturday, October 9, 2010
Senior Obama administration officials said Friday that a nationwide moratorium on foreclosure sales may be inevitable, despite their grave reservations about the impact a broad freeze would have on the nation's housing market and economic recovery...... Link |
Just eight weeks since this thread began,
Foreclosure-Gate is now at the point where
all foreclosures are about to be suspended;
where major Wall St. banks will be sued
to death; and where only lawyers and
deadbeats will come out ahead.
All this feces hitting fans, arises suddenly
from a story which was almost invisible
in the mainstream just a few months ago....
Wash Post's Ezra Klein, with Janet Tavakoli :
| Quote: | EK: My understanding is that this now pits the banks against the investors they sold these products too. The investors are going to court to argue that the products were flawed and the banks need to take them back.
JT: Many investors now are waking up to the fact that they were defrauded. Even sophisticated investors. If you did your due diligence but material information was withheld, you can recover. It’ll be a case-by-by-case basis.
EK: Given that our financial system is still fragile, isn’t that a disaster for the economy? Will credit freeze again?
JT: I disagree. In order to make the financial system healthy, we need to recognize the extent of our losses and begin facing the fraud. Then the market will be trustworthy again and people will start to participate.
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/janet-tavakoli-biggest-fraud-history-capital-markets |
Isn't it a bummer for Wall St crooks that the
mortgage market finally melts down only a
few weeks before the mid-term elections?
The timing means that Obama et. al. will have to
walk the fine line on this issue -- with voters sure
to be watching every move...
The outright theft of homes was a knowing RICO fraud.
I wonder if that will come out in this:
| Quote: | Attorneys General in 40 States to
Initiate Joint Investigation of Foreclosures
By Dakin Campbell and Prashant Gopal - Oct 9, 2010
Attorneys general in about 40 states may announce by next week a joint
investigation into potentially faulty foreclosures at the largest banks and
mortgage firms, according to a person with direct knowledge of the
matter..... Link |
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duane
Joined: 07 Mar 2007
Posts: 511
Location: western pennsylvania
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| Posted: Sun Oct 10, 2010 5:36 pm Post subject: |
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/10/foreclosure-moratorium-obama-administration_n_757356.html
White House: No Need For National Foreclosure Moratorium
ALAN FRAM | 10/10/10 06:22 PM | AP
Read More: David Axelrod, Foreclosure Moratorium, Foreclosures, Housing Crisis, Mortgage Crisis, Mortgage Fraud, Obama Administration,
WASHINGTON — A top White House adviser questioned the need Sunday for a blanket stoppage of all home foreclosures, even as pressure grows on the Obama administration to do something about mounting evidence that banks have used inaccurate documents to evict homeowners.
"It is a serious problem," said David Axelrod, who contended that the flawed paperwork is hurting the nation's housing market as well as lending institutions. But he added, "I'm not sure about a national moratorium because there are in fact valid foreclosures that probably should go forward" because their documents are accurate.
Axelrod said the administration is pressing lenders to accelerate their reviews of foreclosures to determine which ones have flawed documentation.
"Our hope is this moves rapidly and that this gets unwound very, very quickly," he said.
With the reeling economy already the top issue on voters' minds, the doubts raised over foreclosures and evictions are becoming a political issue with the approach of Nov. 2 elections.
Underscoring those pressures, two leading lawmakers took opposing stances on the wisdom of a moratorium.
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, a top House Democrat, said she backed a foreclosure moratorium and government talks with the banking industry to concoct ways to let lenders reshape troubled mortgages. She said the foreclosure problem has been "extremely vexing" in her state.
The No. 2 House Republican, Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia, said a national moratorium would remove the protections that lenders need.
"You're going to shut down the housing industry" with a national stoppage, Cantor said. "People have to take responsibility for themselves."
Story continues below
Advertisement
In recent days, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., in a tough re-election race, urged five large mortgage lenders to suspend foreclosures in his state until they establish ways to make sure homeowners don't lose their homes improperly. Attorney General Eric Holder said that the government is looking into the matter, and Democratic lawmakers urged bank regulators and the Justice Department to probe whether mortgage companies violated laws in handling foreclosures.
The attorneys general of up to 40 states plan to announce a joint investigation soon into banks' use of flawed foreclosure paperwork, a person familiar with the investigation told The Associated Press late Saturday.
On Friday, Bank of America became the first bank to halt foreclosures in all 50 states. Three other institutions – JPMorgan Chase & Co., Ally Financial's GMAC Mortgage unit and PNC Financial – have stopped foreclosures in the 23 states where foreclosures must be approved by a judge.
President Barack Obama vetoed a bill last week that would have made it easier for banks to approve foreclosure documents, which the White House said could hurt consumers.
Axelrod spoke on CBS' "Face the Nation" while Wasserman Schultz and Cantor appeared on "Fox News Sunday."
(This version CORRECTS institution's name to Ally Financial.)
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Fintan
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| Posted: Sun Oct 10, 2010 7:30 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: | 
The Coming Middle-Class Anarchy
10/09/2010 09:17 - by Gonzalo Lira
True story: A retired couple I know, Brian and Ilsa, own a home in the Southwest. It’s a pretty house, right on the manicured golf course of their gated community (they’re crazy about golf).
The only problem is, they bought the house near the top of the market in 2005, and now find themselves underwater.
They’ve never missed a mortgage payment—Brian and Ilsa are the kind upright, not to say uptight 60-ish white semi-upper-middle-class couple who follow every rule, fill out every form, comply with every norm. In short, they are the backbone of America.
Even after the Global Financial Crisis had seriously hurt their retirement nest egg—and therefore their monthly income—and even fully aware that they would probably not live to see their house regain the value it has lost since they bought it, they kept up the mortgage payments. The idea of them strategically defaulting is as absurd as them sprouting wings.
When HAMP—the Home Affordable Modification Program—was unveiled, they applied, because they qualified: Every single one of the conditions applied to them, so there was no question that they would be approved—at least in theory.
Applying for HAMP was quite a struggle: Go here, go there, talk to this person, that person, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. “It’s like they didn’t want us to qualify,” Ilsa told me, as she recounted their mind-numbing travails.
It was a months-long struggle—but finally, they were approved for HAMP: Their mortgage period was extended, and the interest rate was lowered. Even though their home was still underwater, and even though they still owed the same principal to their bank, Brian and Ilsa were very happy: Their mortgage payments had gone down by 40%. This was equivalent to about 15% of their retirement income. So of course they were happy.
However, three months later, out of the blue, they got a letter from their bank, Wells Fargo: It said that, after further review, Brian and Ilsa had in fact not qualified for HAMP. Therefore, their mortgage would go back to the old rate. Not only that, they now owed the difference for the three months when they had paid the lowered mortgage—and to add insult to injury, they were assessed a “penalty for non-payment”.
Brian and Ilsa were furious—a fury which soon turned to dour depression: They tried contacting Wells Fargo, to straighten this out. Of course, they were given the run-around once again.
They kept insisting that they qualified—they qualified! But of course, that didn’t help at all—like a football, they were punted around the inner working of the Mortgage Mess, with no answers and no accountability.
Finally, exhausted, Brian and Ilsa sat down, looked at the last letter—which had no signature, and no contact name or number—and wondered what to do.
On television, the news was talking about “robo-signatures” and “foreclosure mills”, and rank illegalities—illegalities which it seemed everyone was getting away with. To top it off, foreclosures have been suspended by the largest of the banks for 90 days—which to Brian and Ilsa meant that people who weren’t paying their mortgages got to live rent free for another quarter, while they were being squeezed out of a stimulus program that had been designed—tailor made—precisely for them.
Brian and Ilsa are salt-of-the-earth people: They put four kids through college, they always paid their taxes. The last time Brian broke the law was in 1998: An illegal U-turn on a suburban street.
“We’ve done everything right, we’ve always paid on time, and this program is supposed to help us,” said Brian. “We follow the rules—but people who bought homes they couldn’t afford get to squat in those McMansions rent free. It would have been smarter if we’d been crooks.”
Now, up to this point, this is just another sob story of the Mortgage Mess—and as sob stories go, up to this point, it’s no big deal.
But here’s where the story gets ominous—here’s where the Jaws soundtrack kicks in:
Brian and Ilsa—the nice upper-middle-class retired couple, who always follow the rules, and never ever break the law—who don’t even cheat on their golf scores—even when they’re playing alone (“Because if you cheat at golf, you’re only cheating yourself”)—have decided to give their bank the middle finger.
They have essentially said, Fuckit.
They haven’t defaulted—not yet. They’re paying the lower mortgage rate. That they’re making payments is because of Brian: He is insisting that they pay something—Ilsa is of the opinion that they should forget about paying the mortgage at all.
“We follow the rules, and look where that’s gotten us?” she says, furious and depressed. “Nowhere. They run us around, like lab rats in a cage. This HAMP business was supposed to help us. I bet the bank went along with the program for three months, so that they could tell the government that they had complied—and when the government got off their backs, they turned around and raised the mortgage back up again!”
“And charged us a penalty,” Brian chimes in. The non-payment penalty was only $84—but it might as well been $84 million, for all the outrage they feel. “A penalty for non-payment!”
Nevertheless, Brian is insisting that they continue paying the mortgage—albeit the lower monthly payment—because he’s still under the atavistic sway of his law-abiding-ness.
But Ilsa is quietly, constantly insisting that they stop paying the mortgage altogether: “Everybody else is doing it—so why shouldn’t we?”
A terrible sentence, when a law-abiding citizen speaks it: Everybody else is doing it—so why don’t we?
I’m like Wayne Gretsky: I don’t concern myself with where the puck has been—I look for where the puck is going to be.
Right now, people are having a little hissy-fit over the robo-signing scandal, and the double-booking scandal (where the same mortgage was signed over to two different bonds), and the little fights between junior tranches and senior tranches and the servicer, in the MBS mess.
But none of that shit is important.
What’s really important is Brian and Ilsa: What’s really important is that law-abiding middle-class citizens are deciding that playing by the rules is nothing but a sucker’s game.
Just like the poker player who’s been fleeced by all the other players, and gets one mean attitude once he finally wakes up to the con? I’m betting that more and more of the solid American middle-class will begin saying what Brian and Ilsa said: Fuckit.
Fuck the rules. Fuck playing the game the banksters want you to play. Fuck being the good citizen. Fuck filling out every form, fuck paying every tax. Fuck the government, fuck the banks who own them. Fuck the free-loaders, living rent-free while we pay. Fuck the legal process, a game which only works if you’ve got the money to pay for the parasite lawyers. Fuck being a chump. Fuck being a stooge. Fuck trying to do the right thing—what good does that get you? What good is coming your way?
Fuckit.
When the backbone of a country starts thinking that laws and rules are not worth following, it’s just a hop, skip and a jump to anarchy.
TV has given us the illusion that anarchy is people rioting in the streets, smashing car windows and looting every store in sight. But there’s also the polite, quiet, far deadlier anarchy of the core citizenry—the upright citizenry—throwing in the towel and deciding it’s just not worth it anymore.
If a big enough proportion of the populace—not even a majority, just a largish chunk—decides that it’s just not worth following the rules anymore, then that society’s days are numbered: Not even a police-state with an armed Marine at every corner with Shoot-to-Kill orders can stop such middle-class anarchy.
Brian and Ilsa are such anarchists—grey-haired, well-dressed, golf-loving, well-to-do, exceedingly polite anarchists: But anarchists nevertheless. They are not important, or powerful, or influential: They are average—that’s why they’re so deadly: Their numbers are millions. And they are slowly, painfully coming to the conclusion that it’s just not worth it anymore.
Once enough of these J. Crew Anarchists decide they no longer give a fuck, it’s over for America—because they are America.
Update I:
The Center for Public Integrity has a story, written by Michael Hudson this past August 6, that shines a light on the issue of perverse incentives of the HAMP program. These perverse incentives came to light because of a whistleblower, a former employee of Fannie Mae, filing a lawsuit. Fannie Mae was so keen on being perceived as a money-maker, after the Federal government bailout, that the aid programs passed by the Congress and signed by the President were turned into profit centers.
The former executive, Caroline Herron, recounts:
“It appeared that Fannie Mae officers were focused on maximizing incentive payments available to Fannie Mae under various federal programs – even if this meant wasting taxpayer money and delaying the implementation of high-priority Treasury programs,” she claims in the lawsuit.
Herron alleges that Fannie Mae officials terminated her $200-an-hour consulting work in January because she raised questions about how it was administering the federal government’s push to help homeowners avoid foreclosure, known as the Home Affordable Modification Program, or HAMP.
Herron further alleged that “trial mods” were implemented regardless of eligibility of applicants, so that Fannie Mae would be eligible for Federal government bonuses.
Ms. Herron’s testimony in fact proves Ilsa’s suspicion that there was a scam at bottom. As Mr. Hudson writes, “Herron charges that Fannie Mae continued in headlong pursuit of ‘trial mods’ even though it knew that many had little chance of becoming permanent. [. . .] Fannie preferred doing trials, Herron alleges, because it was eligible to receive incentive payments from the Treasury Department.”
So in the pursuit of these perverse incentives, people who did not qualify for HAMP were enrolled in the program. And when their “trial mods” were up after 90 days, they would be notified that they didn’t qualify—regardless of whether they in fact did qualify, as in the case of Brian and Ilsa.
All so as to be perceived as a profitable operation, worth having been bailed out. All so as to be perceived as “returning America’s money”.
As of February, 2010, of the over one million homeowners’ mortgages under HAMP auspices, 83% were “trial mods”. One would assume that those 850,000 homeowners would also be assessed an $84 penalty for non-payment.
$84 times over 850,000? You do the math.
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/gonzalo-lira-coming-middle-class-anarchy |
( $71.4 Million )
_________________
Minds are like parachutes.
They only function when open.
Last edited by Fintan on Mon Oct 11, 2010 12:39 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Fintan
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| Posted: Sun Oct 10, 2010 7:40 pm Post subject: |
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_________________
Minds are like parachutes.
They only function when open. |
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Robert
Joined: 07 Feb 2006
Posts: 303
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| Posted: Sun Oct 10, 2010 9:05 pm Post subject: |
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yep,yep,,yep!
Those were itching to be on BFN!
I sent that Gonzalo Lira piece round to mock my anarchist friends, after years of their idealistic naive posturing, its great to see this wave breaking.
It's amazing to see these people deciding to scupper their own country.
This is the sort of bravery that's far more soul searching than the battlefield type we've been mislead into thinking is some sort of nobility.
Bruno Ganz is also one hell of an actor!
Whatever transpires, the power of the divine justice we're seeing is to quote the americanese: awesome.
R |
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MichaelC
Joined: 06 Jul 2006
Posts: 1854
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| Posted: Mon Oct 11, 2010 3:55 am Post subject: |
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| I wonder who will pick up the tab for any 'loses' suffered by the banks due to their 'generosity' in stopping foreclosures......can you say " US tax-slavers"? |
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Robert
Joined: 07 Feb 2006
Posts: 303
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| Posted: Mon Oct 11, 2010 8:17 pm Post subject: |
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Foreclosure Fraud For Dummies, 1: The Chains and the Stakes
http://rortybomb.wordpress.com/2010/10/08/foreclosure-fraud-for-dummies-1-the-chains-and-the-stakes/
I'm just about to filter a coffee and dig in on this.
It appears to be a 'text'.
........................................................
Now read through to part 4.
Excellent summary with superb insights:
"And many of these mortgage-backed securities are cheap. So in an interesting scenario you could see hedge funds buying MBS for pennies just for the option to sue firms that are likely backstopped by the government."
nice diagrams too:
though perhaps not enough profanity for Fintan's taste.
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MichaelC
Joined: 06 Jul 2006
Posts: 1854
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| Posted: Tue Oct 12, 2010 5:42 am Post subject: |
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Just many more variations and results of the crime of forcing tax-slavers at gunpoint to underwrite private enterprises.
Last edited by MichaelC on Tue Oct 12, 2010 7:51 am; edited 1 time in total |
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atm
Joined: 16 Apr 2006
Posts: 2749
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