Robert Scheer: Invasion of the Robot Home Snatchers

[marmar]

from truthdig:



Invasion of the Robot Home Snatchers
Posted on Oct 13, 2010

By Robert Scheer


The Titanic that is the U.S. housing market has just sprung its biggest leak, and even some of the largest banks responsible for this mess, like Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase, are now imposing a temporary moratorium on foreclosures. They have done so very reluctantly and only after courts throughout the nation, and the attorneys general of 40 states, questioned the legality of a securitized system of homeownership that has impoverished tens of millions.

How do you foreclose on a home when you can’t figure out who owns it because the original mortgage is part of a derivatives package that has been sliced and diced so many ways that its legal ownership is often unrecognizable? You cannot get much help from those who signed off on the process because they turn out to be robot signers acting on automatic pilot. Fully 65 million homes in question are tied to a computerized program, the national Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems (MERS), that is often identified in foreclosure proceedings as the owner of record.

MERS was the result of a partnership formed back during the Clinton years between Fannie Mae, an ostensibly government-sponsored agency that morphed into a very much for-profit mega-Wall Street hustler, and Countrywide, the largest and most rapacious of the private mortgage marketers. The scam of computerized credit approval and mortgage certification they came up with was subsequently embraced by Freddie Mac, the other huge housing agency, and the leading Wall Street banks joined in the feeding frenzy. MERS owners now include Wells Fargo, AIG, GMAC, Citigroup, HSBC, the two housing agencies and Bank of America. But the courts are increasingly challenging MERS claims to the right of foreclosure since this whole racket, which bypasses the power of counties to register property ownership, was never authorized in the law.

Yet the White House on Tuesday once again manifested an indifference to the suffering of victimized homeowners when press secretary Robert Gibbs warned of the “unintended consequences to a broader moratorium.” Which presumably would be worse in his view than the intended consequence of evicting people from their homes, which has already affected some 20 million Americans and threatens many more. What arrogance for an administration featuring Timothy Geithner and Lawrence Summers, who created this mess back in the Clinton era, to evidence such slight compassion for the victims of their folly. .........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/invasion_of_the_robot_home_snatchers_20101013/

[madrchsod]

1. obama hired the people who created the problem...

[zeemike]

2. I know I am ignorant and stupid when it comes to hi financial trans.

But what would happen if we just said fuck it and declared all debts cancled....if investors loose their ass so what.
Oh yes I know Chaos would ensue but so what....we can survive it.

[northernlights]

4. could you wait until I take out a honkin' pile o'debt first?

I want to replace my very old car with a less old car and also put in a windmill. Maybe some solar panels too.

Then by all means cancel debt for everybody. Including my student loans. :D

[fasttense]

3. I think the scheme with MERS was to avoid taxes and filing fees.

The direct result (aside from vague titles and unknown owners of debt) was an avoidance of local, and possibly federal, taxes and fees.

One big scam. The average American citizen is nothing but bait for schemes and plots of fraud for corporations, banksters and organized crime bosses.