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(Admin Moderator- This sounded worthy of the Breaking News Sidebar. Apologies if it is not.)

The only thing that the foreclosure mess exposes is that there is a much bigger tinfoil flake component in the citizenry than previously recognized. Their lament “Those evil banksters made me borrow when I didn’t want to .... WAHHHHHHHHHHHHH...... and now they should hang.”

There is no hope for the USA. None.

FBI can look here, HT Market Ticker.

In no particular order:

In 2004 The FBI said there was an "epidemic" of mortgage fraud. The government ignored it and in fact reassigned FBI agents away from investigating.
In the 2000s The Federal Government intervened and prevented States from enforcing their own anti-predatory-lending laws, which at the time would have put a stop to many of the no-doc and other "serial refinance" lending practices - practices that by any reasonable person's interpretation were intended as fraudulent asset-stripping schemes.
The banks created "No Doc" and "Option ARM" loans, along with 2/28 and 3/27 "Teaser" subprime lending. Borrowers didn't ask for this, they were fed it by the financial industry. The industry lied to consumers about their ability to afford what they were purchasing by qualifying borrowers at these teaser rates, not to mention further abuse when, once they had the mortgage, selling them car loans and such but only counting their current "teaser" payment in their debt service requirements. I have long argued that these programs were fraudulent from the start as none were intended to result in payments for 30 years ending in the ownership of a house without a note; their intent was to strip fees by forcing serial refinancing.
Property appraisers were involved as early as 2000 and threatened with black-balling if they did not play along with ever-higher "valuations." There are over 10,000 appraiser signatures on a petition from the early 2000s asking the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council to stop this abuse. It was ignored. Intentionally inflating appraisals is fraud.
The securitizers - all big banks - packaged loans they knew were trash into securities that ratings agencies blessed with "AAA" approvals, and by their own admission those agencies worked with the securitizers to give the ratings desired, never looking at the loan detail tapes. We now know that this packaging of trash in violation of the offering prospectus was known at the time it was done because testimony in front of the FCIC by Clayton under oath has documented same. Further, FHLB lawsuits have documented that huge percentages of the loans in pools they were sold violated the guidelines in the prospectuses. Intentionally putting loans you know violate guidelines you claim the loans conform to into a security would appear to be securities fraud.
Bill Black has repeatedly stated that the big banks were all run by management as "control frauds" - that is, they used accounting tricks to manufacture false profits which they then paid out in bonuses to top management and "talent." The latest data, showing well over $100 billion in compensation for this calendar year, is evidence that this is still going on. This continues unabated and was covered up with $700 billion of taxpayer funds along with "gun-to-the-head" accounting changes forced through FASB by Congress.
Foreclosuregate has documented hundreds of thousands of "robosigned" documents where the person attesting to the truth of the contents is a "special signer" that allegedly works for a dozen parties at interest yet doesn't seem to be paid by most (if any) of them, and sometimes is paid by both parties to a suit at once, a clear conflict of interest and disqualifying act, never mind that they never read the material attested to. To add to it, notary signatures appear to have been forged. That appears to be forgery, fraud upon the court, and perjury - all rolled into one. Many people were evicted from their homes based on these documents. Whether the homeowner was paying or not they are entitled to due process of law - a civil right guaranteed in The Constitution that is wantonly violated when "robosigned" documents are filed with courts.
It appears to now be established that at least some of the notes that are required to be conveyed in wet signature - that is, original documents - to the Trusts for these MBS never were. If the note is not conveyed by the closing date of the trust, the securities issued are no good - they're an empty box and worse, are disqualified for IRS tax pass-through treatment. This is not some pesky regulator's rule, this is black-letter IRS code. I have on good information and belief from multiple original sources as well as media reports that the notes are in fact sitting in originator's warehouses or were intentionally destroyed. Indeed, in 2009 it was confirmed that Florida Banks intentionally destroyed originals. There are thus no endorsements and the trustees do not have the notes. How is this not "Tax Fraud" along with fraud upon the purchasers of those MBS when you represented in the Prospectus and/or Pooling and Servicing agreements that you had actual conveyance of the notes?
There is also a competing theory that the notes weren't assigned because MERS was used to try to dodge REMIC rules - that is, at default the note would be assigned to the lower-rated tranche that is to bear the loss. However, this also appears to contravene IRS regulations, and worse, they still don't have the original paperwork bearing the original conveyances as required. To top it off some courts have held that since MERS never receives any payment stream or other pecuniary interest in the mortgage it cannot be a grantee - that is, the assignment is invalid.
Banks have hired people to go "secure" property they have no legal right to enter. As a consequence people have had their homes broken into and locks changed even though no foreclosure action had yet given the bank possession, and in at least one case no foreclosure was active against the property at all. This is a felony - breaking and entering - as the person being hired has no legal right to be there nor to enter the premises.
Banks conspired with corrupt officials in Jefferson County Alabama on their sewer system and the result has been cost overruns that have hit the population with an escalation in sewer costs of more than four hundred percent. Several officials have been convicted or pled guilty to crimes, but not one bank officer or bank has been indicted, even though the record appears to show, and it has been reported in the media, that at least one bank was "bought off" by another to prevent it from competitively bidding the debt contracts! That sure looks like bid-rigging and bribery at minimum - all forms of fraud.
Friday a Tampa-area mortgage banker went to prison for up to 15 years for 150 fraudulent loans. On the same day Angelo Mozilo was fined $67 million, but will only pay $20 million himself - Bank of America will pay the rest. Mozilo will keep more than $100 million he gained from knowingly selling his Countrywide stock while the all of the above was going on. Sarbanes-Oxley required him to know of these frauds, both perpetrated on others and in control of the firm, and carries criminal (imprisonment) penalties. Yet Mozilo skates with a fine where he pays less than a third of it himself, he keeps nearly all of the loot, and a guy who executed just one hundred and fifty (not the millions that Mozilo did) fraudulent loans goes to prison for 15 years. That's outrageous - if the Tampa guy got 15 years, why didn't Mozilo get 150 or more?
The Federal Reserve has responded to the "malaise" caused by these frauds not with enforcement actions against the banks but rather by intentionally destroying the return available to savers on fixed incomes, attempting to force the people to pay for the banker's schemes. They even admit intending to force people to spend instead of save, and to "force them out the risk curve" - that is, force people to risk losing their wealth in a stock market collapse so as save those who committed the acts above. This is an outrage and one that our government has every right and ability to put a stop to right now - but instead of doing so, they smugly let Bernanke talk about "Quantitative Easing" while grains skyrocket in price - basic foodstuffs that everyone needs, and those on fixed incomes are especially hard-pressed to absorb.
In addition The Federal Reserve's acts have destroyed capital formation. With the threat of monetary debasement, inflation, and no intent or action to stop the above schemes and scams nobody in their right mind would place their capital at risk to create jobs when they are forced to deal with a banking system and banks that have a track record of stealing anything that is not nailed down so they can bonus it out to their "talent."

There has been no criminal prosecution of any of these frauds or schemes - not even the outrageously easy to prove ones such as the "robosigning", where each individual act constitutes a separate offense and documentation of the event has been available in the form of depositions for months.

The FBI needs to focus on

Chris Dodd
Barney Frank
Franklin Raines
Maxine Waters
Tom Donilon
Gregory Meeks
Lacy Clay
Arthur Davis

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MGT_cSi7Rs

And they will get to root causes of the foreclosure crisis quickly.

The people listed above conspired in one of the most damaging fraud cases and cover-up in American history while enriching themselves to the tune of tens of millions of dollars. These are the criminals the FBI should seek out and prosecute.

From the article:

The official says the question is whether financial institutions were acting with criminal intent or were simply overwhelmed by events in the wake of the housing market's collapse. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation is just getting under way.

This is why we need a French revolution in this country, with guillotines and all. Do you think a regular person would get anything like that kind of benefit of the doubt from the FBI or the police?

"Sorry, officer, I was only speeding because I was overwhelmed by the situation, specifically how late I was for this meeting."

or...

FBI Agent: We chose not to bring criminal charges in this case, since even though the defendent stole a car, he was just overwhelmed by losing his job and having his old car repo'd.