Mortgage Crisis Act II

"But the REMICs didn't own the notes either, because of a fluke of the ratings agencies the REMICs had to be "bankruptcy remote," in order to get the precious ratings needed to peddle mortgage-backed securities to institutional investors.

"So somewhere between the REMICs and MERS, the chain of title was broken.

"Now, what does 'broken chain of title' mean? Simple: when a homebuyer signs a mortgage, the key document is the note. As I said before, it's the actual IOU. In order for the mortgage note to be sold or transferred to someone else (and therefore turned into a mortgage-backed security), this document has to be physically endorsed to the next person. All of these signatures on the note are called the 'chain of title.'

"You can endorse the note as many times as you please... but you have to have a clear chain of title right on the actual note. I sold the note to Moe, who sold it to Larry, who sold it to Curly, and all our notarized signatures are actually, physically, on the note, one after the other.

"If for whatever reason any of these signatures is skipped, then the chain of title is said to be broken. Therefore, legally, the mortgage note is no longer valid. That is, the person who took out the mortgage loan to pay for the house no longer owes the loan because he no longer knows whom to pay.

"To repeat: if the chain of title of the note is broken, then the borrower no longer owes any money on the loan.

"Read that last sentence again, please. Don't worry, I'll wait.

"You read it again? Good. Now you see the can of worms that's opening up.

"The broken chain of title might not have been an issue if there hadn't been an unusual number of foreclosures. Before the housing bubble collapse, the people who defaulted on their mortgages wouldn't have bothered to check to see that the paperwork was in order.

"But as everyone knows, following the housing collapse of 2007-2010-and-counting, there has been a boatload of foreclosures... and foreclosures on a lot of people who weren't sloppy bums who skipped out on their mortgage payments, but smart and cautious people who got squeezed by circumstances.

"These people started contesting their foreclosures and evictions, and so started looking into the chain of title issue and that's when the paperwork became important. So the chain of title became critical and the botched paperwork became a non-trivial issue.

"Now, the banks had hired 'foreclosure mills'... law firms that specialized in foreclosures... in order to handle the massive volume of foreclosures and evictions that occurred because of the housing crisis. The foreclosure mills, as one would expect, were the first to spot the broken chain of titles.

"Well, what do you know, it turns out that these foreclosure mills might have faked and falsified documentation, so as to fraudulently repair the chain-of-title issues, there by 'proving' that the banks had judicial standing to foreclose on delinquent mortgages. These foreclosure mills might have even forged the loan note itself.

"Wait, why am I hedging? The foreclosure mills did actually, deliberately, and categorically fake and falsify documents, in order to expedite these foreclosures and evictions. Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism, who has been all over this story, put up a price list for this 'service' from a company called DocX... yes, a price list for forged documents. Talk about your one-stop shopping!

"So, in other words, a massive fraud was carried out, with the inevitable innocent bystanders getting caught up in the fraud: the guy who got foreclosed and evicted from his home in Florida, even though he didn't actually have a mortgage, and in fact owned his house free-and-clear. The family that was foreclosed and evicted, even though they had a perfect mortgage payment record. Et cetera, depressing et cetera...

"Now, the reason this all came to light is not because too many people were getting screwed by the banks or the government or someone with some power saw what was going on and decided to put a stop to it... that would have been nice, to see a shining knight in armor, riding on a white horse.

"But that's not how America works nowadays.

"No, alarm bells started going off when the title insurance companies started to refuse to insure the titles.

"In every sale, a title insurance company insures that the title is free and clear... that the prospective buyer is in fact buying a properly vetted house, with its title issues all in order. Title insurance companies stopped providing their service because... of course... they didn't want to expose themselves to the risk that the chain of title had been broken, and that the bank had illegally foreclosed on the previous owner.

"That's when things started getting interesting: that's when the attorneys general of various states started snooping around and making noises (elections are coming up after all).

"The fact that Ally Financial (formerly GMAC), JP Morgan Chase, and now Bank of America have suspended foreclosures signals that this is a serious problem... obviously. Banks that size, with that much exposure to foreclosed properties, don't suspend foreclosures just because they're good corporate citizens who want to do the right thing (out of the goodness of their hearts), and who have all their paperwork in strict order... they're halting their foreclosures for a reason.

"The move by the United States Congress last week, to sneak by the Interstate Recognition of Notarizations Act? That was all the banking lobby. They wanted to shove down that law, so that their foreclosure mills' forged and fraudulent documents would not be scrutinized by out-of-state judges. (The spineless cowards in the Senate carried out their master's will by a voice vote... so that there would be no registry of who had voted for it and therefore no accountability.)

"And President Obama's pocket veto of the measure? He had to veto it... if he'd signed it, there would have been political hell to pay, plus it would have been challenged almost immediately, and likely overturned as unconstitutional in short order. (But he didn't have the gumption to come right out and veto it... he pocket vetoed it.)

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