[qwertypie]

The county real estate recording system is archaic and a mess. There are more modern ways of doing things rather than klunky contraptions devised 300 years ago. I’ve spent literally years of my time digging through fractured deed and indexes, so I know of what I speak.

American investors trust Brazilian or Chinese stock recording systems more than they do their dinosaur county recorders’ offices. That should tell you something. It amazes me that people (other than shysters) are defending this system, and are proposing a patchwork fix involving MORE lawyers and ADDITIONAL inefficiency. All based on a Cromagnon way of operating. It’s like going back to Windows 3.1.

[Kartographer]

The law maybe archaic, so change it, but you aren't allowed to ignore it. You would have people pick and choose what laws they would obey and what laws they won't. What legal systems the will use and what they will set-up for themselves in over words you support anarchy over a Republic. You know the courts are archaic in such matters why not just allow banks to hire a group of SEIU Thugs to go over and kick the people out. I tell you what amazes me is people who want to give the right to corporations to ignore the law as writen and allow them to make up their own as they go along. What other laws are you ready to allow them to over look? You are already want to allowing them to over look fraud, perjury, conterfiting of legal documentation, non-payment of requred taxes and fees, I am sure I left a great deal of the list. I fear people who would deny the rule of law for some in an effort to punish them for some preceived wrong doing. If history teachs us one thing is once you deny rights and the rule of law for some those rights those protections are soon lost by all.

[Kartographer]

“The county real estate recording system is archaic and a mess.”

I would also point out that such systems have always been under the control and rules of the State's, so now you wish to subjugate State's Rights farther by turning it over and placing it with the Federal Government, yeah that's always works out fine.

[NVDave]

Using an example of what “...American investors trust...” is a counter-productive example for you. On the whole, in the last 10+ years, American investors have had the collective IQ of crack-fueled howler monkeys who thought they could fly.

Sadly, monkeys have not invented jetpacks. Or wings. Neither have American investors even rented a few solid clues in the last 10 years.

Examples:

American investors trusted auction rate securities were “the same as cash.” Until they discovered that, no, in fact, they were not.

American investors thought that the “sub-prime mortgage market was contained.” Whoops, no it wasn’t.

American investors (and indeed, the Federal Reserve) thought that banks wouldn’t do anything deliberately self-destructive. Whoops. Bad assumption there.

“Professional” investors thought that credit default swaps would protect them against the default of a counterparty. Well, until they stopped to ponder whether or not the party writing the CDS contract had even a remote chance of actually, you know, paying off on the CDS contracts they had written.

When I started gently telling people here on FR to expect residential price declines in the 20% range in 2007, there were people shouting at me what a goddamn fool I was.

Well, I was wrong, so mea culpa. I apologize for predicting only a 20% decline. So I guess I was at fault as well.

On the whole, using what “American investors” believe as a yardstick of what passes for competence has been proven again and again and again over the last 10+ years to be foolhardy. Look at the number of wealthy people, hedge funds and aggregator funds that believes Bernie Madoff’s investment strategy was viable. $55+ billion gone. That’s a whole lot of incompetence right there. Look at the SEC, who was handed the evidence on Madoff no less than five times. There’s nothing in my experience in the last 10 years that tells me to use American investors as a benchmark for anything remotely resembling a bright idea.

The county-level real property recording system we have in the US is old, but it is trustworthy, if for no other reason than the 3,000+ counties in the US limit how widespread any corruption or incompetence can permeate the overall system. When we start concentrating information and assets into one big bag, failures inevitably become big enough to cause national or international consequences. MERS, by holding so many of the notes/mortgages in the US, now has the ability to compromise a huge swath of property titling as well as the ability of note-holders to foreclose.

A system devised by bankers is plainly not trustworthy, in large part because the bankers think about profits first, property rights last. The reason why this mess is coming to light is because they’re having to foreclose. If the foreclosure rate were still were it was in 2005 (eg), well below 1% overall, then we wouldn’t be hearing a peep about MERS. No one, whether plaintiff’s lawyer or law professor or investment analyst, would be examining the guts and entrails of MERS.

As it is, the system has shown that it is utterly incompetently designed, without regard for the variances in state laws on property recording, without regard for how to deliver a quiet title in a foreclosure action, etc. What the MERS system allowed bankers to do is assign a note very quickly. It does this very well, because that’s all bankers are really fixated upon: the money side of the issue.

I’ve been in county offices in rural Nevada and I’ve been able to trace titles on really old ranches back to land grants from the King of Spain, with a Spanish dictionary by my side for assistance. As far as I’m concerned, the paper system works, because I’m able to get an answer to “who owned/owns this?” in less than two days of work on my own.

I can’t get a response out of MERS that quickly, so it is therefore an inferior system.