MERS cannot foreclose

This is a quote from an email I have just received --
I presume the guy who sent it will be happy for me to spread it around.

http://mandelman.ml-implode.com/2010/07/...'t-foreclose-citibank-can't-collect/

"Any attempt to transfer the beneficial interest of a trust deed without ownership of the underlying note is VOID under California Law."

If you read that sentence and thought… "MERS," then you're already in the club. If you've never heard of MERS, and have no idea what is meant by being "in the club," don't worry, this is a club that just about every homeowner is invited to join. In fact, you may already be a member and not even know it.

MERS is the acronym used to describe Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc. Best I can tell, our friends in the mortgage banking industry created MERS to make it easier for banks and servicers to sell and transfer our mortgages at the speed of light during the real estate bubble. According to the company's Website:

MERS was created by the mortgage banking industry to streamline the mortgage process by using electronic commerce to eliminate paper. Our mission is to register every mortgage loan in the United States on the MERS® System.

MERS acts as nominee in the county land records for the lender and servicer. Any loan registered on the MERS® System is inoculated against future assignments because MERS remains the nominal mortgagee no matter how many times servicing is traded.

I have to tell you… I hate these guys already. Their attitude alone bothers me. I looked at pictures of their three top executives on their Website and thought to myself… "No way I'd be friends with these guys." Probably not very fair of me, but as far as I'm concerned, when it comes to anything that talks like that and was created by the mortgage banking industry… "fair," is where you go on Sunday to have popcorn and cotton candy. Just so we're clear.

MERS, which is a company that I hear doesn't even have employees, has been about as controversial as you get ever since houses started dropping like flies into foreclosure back in 2007-08. God forbid you find yourself losing your home to foreclosure, you'll very likely find a representative from MERS looking smug and acting like the owner of your mortgage. But, MERS is not the owner of your mortgage, of course, and now a bankruptcy court judge in the Eastern District of California has officially said that he agrees.

MERS is a relatively new development in the mortgage world, and as the foreclosure crisis began the courts pretty much let them do whatever they wanted to do, as the party in interest in a foreclosure action.

But, that was before the foreclosures became a full fledged tsunami, and homeowners watched the bankers first get bailed out, and then pay out billions in bonuses before treating every single American homeowner/taxpayer who applied for a loan modification like insignificant garbage.

In response, homeowners, having been trained for over 200 years in the fine art of pushing back when shoved, went to their lawyers, and those lawyers started asking questions, as they are prone to do. Many started with questions like: "Who the heck is this MERS guy and why does he think he has any right to be foreclosing on my client's home?"

For almost two full years, it seemed to me that judges, who frankly weren't used to foreclosures being challenged, basically yawned and gave the house back to the bank. Then, starting about a year ago, give or take, things started to change. Judges started to listen to the points being raised as related to MERS showing up as the party in interest ready to foreclose, and the more the judges learned, the more they saw problems with what MERS was doing. As time went on the tide seemed to shift a bit and several decisions weren't falling as MERS would have liked for one reason or another.

According to the company's Website, MERS "is a proper party that can lawfully foreclose as the mortgagee and note-holder of a mortgage loan." Here's what it says on the MERS Website:

FORECLOSURES

("MERS") is In mortgage foreclosure cases, the plaintiff has standing as the holder of the note and the mortgage. When MERS forecloses, MERS is the mortgagee and it is the holder of the note because a MERS officer will be in possession of the original note endorsed in blank, which makes MERS a holder of the bearer paper.

But, in this latest decision, the bankruptcy judge in California didn't agree, writing in his opinion:

"Since no evidence of MERS' ownership of the underlying note has been offered, and other courts have concluded that MERS does not own the underlying notes, this court is convinced that MERS had no interest it could transfer to Citibank. Since MERS did not own the underlying note, it could not transfer the beneficial interest of the Deed of Trust to another. Any attempt to transfer the beneficial interest of a trust deed without ownership of the underlying note is void under California law."

Did you get that? Since MERS didn't own the underlying note, it couldn't transfer the beneficial interest of the Deed of Trust to Citibank.

Healthcare

the only way to fix the situation ... is not going to happen ....

Doctors, clinics, hospitals and homes must be made to be accountable for their procedures,
patients and parties responsible for paying must have motivation to control costs.
The only way to do that is to totally ban health insurance
and require all procedures to be paid for with cash in advance.
If you aint got the bucks, you dont get the help.

its cold I know, but its necessary.
The "profit motive has so overwhelmed the "standard operating procedures"
that the customary ways that doctors and nurses and hospitals do things
are wasteful and unnecessary and unhelpful in the extreme, motivated solely
for their self-interest.
It has been so much easier to manipulate and take advantage of a large group of people (the insured) than it is to take advantage of an individual.

Example:
I recently went to a cosmetologist with a skin problem,
its simply eczema, dry skin aggravated by stress.
But he still took a small sample to test for cancer,
even though it does not present as cancer at all.
Moreover, he put a fucking stitch in the skin where he too the 1mm square patch,
so that I had to go back to his office to get the stitch taken out two weeks later!

cost of his "surgery" --$250
cost of the biopsy -- $350
cost of the stitch removal -- $90

Now, he did not even tell me in advance what he was doing,
or else I would have blocked it.
My insurance company will go ahead and approve this "preventive medicine".

But this is the kind of thing that makes our medical system the most expensive in the world
without being anywhere close to the most beneficial system in the world.

-chiz

Advice

People have asked me why my blogs have been tapering off.
Despite a disastrous winter (it took me quite awhile to
assimilate the enormity of what the government is doing,
behind the veil.) I am still one of the top amateur investors
in the country.
About two months ago I was driving around, maybe looking for
free firewood, maybe just looking. I ran across a car with a
bumper sticker that said, "Bark less. Wag more."
Made sense to me. Still does. More and more ...

fracking

There is a new story on the NPR website
from an amateur investigator
declaiming the process of "fracking"
for extracting natural gas from shale substrate.

basically the article claims that the chemicals used,
pollute the groundwater.

I really don't know, firsthand, if there is any truth to this
or if its just muckraking and fearmongering.
I tend to doubt its veracity because the average natural gas well into shale
is 7,000 feet or more deep.

Americans are going to find that
the only energy source remaining to them
will be the predominant one now employed in Ethiopia,
where there are as many asses on the streets as cars ...

From a Distance

I am tired of talking about it. Really, I have only been talking to myself, anyway.

From the time when I was a very little boy I have been ostracized. I still
don't "get" why, but it is what it is. My own family, my work comrades, my wives, everybody; they all label me as "crazy", "different", simply damaged or wrong.

I test out as very much more intelligent than most people. I test consistently as triple sigma. Teachers, parents, mentors all my life have told me what a gift that is and that I should do something with it for mankind. But you know what? You
do not want me to. All of you are simply jealous and envious, you all put me down, spend serious time just trying to prove me wrong. The only ones who look at me eye-to-eye are cats. All of you who can read are too busy putting poison ivy leaves on my butt when I'm asleep and then accusing me of having herpes when I wake up.

And the effect of that is to give me distance. I have no vested interest in this society, in this culture. It is neither better nor worse than any other culture that has ever come along. You all are every bit as crazy as the nazi's cremating all those jews or the late romans going to the coliseum every week to watch the latest christian do battle with the most recent lion.

Every one of you knows the story of the emperor's clothes, you were taught as little children. The sad thing is that every one of you is wearing clothing that was made from little bits of the same cloth. You all are just too embarrassed to admit it. Its not just the emperor who is naked, its every single one of you.

Show is over folks.

I'm not sorry.

Prices

I went in to the local Roy Rogers fast food outlet yesterday
(never mind why, it certainly was not for myself!). On one
section of their price board, above and behind the cashiers, was
the following list:

bottled water $1.45
coffee or tea $1.25
milk $1.10
orange juice $1.35

Now, I lead a lonely life here. I insist that nearly everybody in
my culture is insane, and as a result, must people want nothing to do
with me. But am I really wrong? What am I missing?

Solution

There is one, and only one, way out of this crisis.

The crisis was brought about, slowly, over a very long period of time, by allowing for too many debts; for loaning too much money to too many people who will never be able to pay it off. (It was bad judgment on the part of the bankers,
to begin with. They created it by taking too high risks.)

It cannot be fixed the way that they are trying to fix it now;
everything that is being done is the equivalent of throwing gasoline
on the fire. It cannot be fixed any other way. Either you do it or else
it will be done to you by forces that are bigger than you are.

The only way out is for all debts, public and private, to be forgiven.
Wiped off the books. Start over.

You cannot postpone it much longer ... we are about to see civil
unrest and general social collapse ... your money is all worthless anyway,
it has no value at all ... the emperor has been quite naked for such
a very long time ...