Posted on 10/08/2010 1:21:45 AM PDT by paudio
President Barack Obama plans to veto a bill whose opponents say would make it harder for homeowners to stop foreclosures.
The move marks the Obama administration's most direct intervention so far into a growing debacle tied to how banks foreclose on homes, and the first effective veto of Mr. Obama's presidency. The veto could make it more difficult for banks to complete paperwork and speed the foreclosure process, and could give homeowners more time to rework loans.
Several of the country's largest banks, including Bank of America Corp., J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and Ally Bank, have moved in recent weeks to halt thousands of foreclosures in 23 states amid revelations that the banking industry had used "robo-signers," people who sign hundreds of documents a day without reviewing their contents.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
The big issue in this bill, as I understand it, is the forcing of states to accept notarizations from out of state where they can’t be verified. This bill was pushed through as cover for the “Robosigner” mess that is currently happening with the foreclosures.
Check out Denningers Market-Ticker - he’s all over it.
Thanks, you did a much better job of explaining this than I did :).
Excellent explanation of how the system worked and why there is big trouble ahead. No folks, the CDO melt down is not over, the after affects will be long felt.
Meanwhile, as a later commenter posted, a group of bums who are not paying their mortgages are awaiting for a day of reconing while they use their former mortgage payment to finance their current life styles. What a country and who says being a dead beat does not become rewarding.
This part of the story was not covered in Lewis’s book, The Big Short. As Paul Harvey used to say: and that is the rest of the story.
The borrower does have rights and protections under the law. Those are not eliminated by a mortgage.
Things like forgery, perjury and fraud by the banks are not protected by loaning money.
“That is to say if you pay your debts, there are no problems.”
False, banks are foreclosing on paid off homes. Homes they don’t even have mortgages on.
Then there is the argument that the economy wouldn’t be in this mess if it weren’t for the banks and their illegal & immoral actions.
Senate staffers familiar with the judiciary committee's actions said the latest one passed by the House seemed destined for the same fate. But shortly before the Senate's recess, Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy pressed to have the bill rushed through the special procedure, after Leahy "constituents" called him and pressed for passage.
http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=168500
HR 3808: You Must Veto It
Posted 2010-10-07 11:58
by Karl Denninger
(Snip)
Now the banks are at it again, and they will once again abuse the law.
Once this law is passed they will find some state that needs jobs, and bribe the legislature to enact ridiculously loose notary laws, such that a notary signature will become effectively meaningless.
This law will force every other State in the Union to accept that signature even though it signifies nothing.
Notarization is an extremely important legal protection. It provides verification that the person who is alleged to have signed a document in “wet ink” actually did so, and actually made a personal appearance in front of the Notary.
Further, land titles and land transactions, along with the private property rights that vest thereupon, are inherently a state function, and their protection and verification is also a state function.
We must not allow “foreclosure mills” - or any other scheme - to destroy these protections. HR 3808, while appearing to be innocent and intended to promote commerce, will instead promote and elevate fraud through our financial and land title system.
For this reason you must not sign it.
Update: Report on CNBC now that it will be “pocket vetoed”; since Congress is not in session this effectively kills the bill, since Congress cannot vote to override it, unless Congress was to call itself back into session prior to the expiration of October 10th - which looks darn unlikely.
But, there's a problem: Congress is still in session. The Senate has not adjourned -- and will not adjourn. They are staying in session throughout the October recess to prevent Obama from making recess appointments.
In other words, the gutless wonder's refusal to explicitly veto the bill is not Constitutional.
The House bill is also sponsored by Rep. Bruce Braley (D-Iowa), Rep. Mke Castle (R-Del.) and Rep. Arthur Davis (D-Ala.).
In the interests of full disclosure, I have been a “banker” for eleven years. That is to say a volunteer (no pay or emoluments save one free meal at our annual meeting) on the loan committee of a small credit union. In that time, I have reviewed several thousand loans.
I’m also on the board of directors, so I get to know all about foreclosures, late payments, write-offs and deadbeats.
In all that eleven years, I nor any of the other folks at the credit union have ever held a gun to anyone and made them walk in the door and fill out a loan application.
So this Marxist bullsqueeze about the “evil bankers” is a bit tiresome to me.
Yes, borrowers have rights. And so do the owners of the capital.
Furthermore, a paid off loan cannot be foreclosed upon. Merely show up with the documentation and that will be the end of that.
And if bank personnel are forging documents and perjuring themselves, lawyers will be lined up to go to court.
There is a huge difference between small banks and what the large banks are doing and have done.
The big banks are largely run by socialists who fully support redistribution of wealth. They openly support BO and his agenda.
In your time as a ‘banker’ how many times have you forged someones signature? How many times have you submitted fraudulent documents that you attest too but have not even read to a court?
Do you think those 3 major banks would have frozen foreclosures if they didn’t have major problems? I’ve worked with them and have seen their lack of morals first hand.
It wasn’t necessarily fraud but sometimes was the result of confusion because of competing claims. I think the purpose of the bill was to establish a clear title by accepting the signatures as genuine.
Not only can’t banks foreclose, but you can’t even sell your house or buy another’s house without a clear title.
The problem of perjury and forgery by the banks are but isolated incidents, I submit.
This veto is but one more step toward the Marxist Utopian dream of no private capital.
Something for nothing writ large.
As a home owner and soon to be refinancer, I must disagree. Let's get to the basic issue here, the rule of law. To me this law is equivalent to Congress passing a law the home owners are only obligated to pay their mortgage with a copy of dollar bills.
The mortgage industry ignored the law in persuit of profits. Now that the money-merry-go round has stopped, the mortgage industry wants Congress to change the law. If the mortgage industry is being torn down it is their own doing. Conservatives should ask their Republican Congressmen just why they voted for this bill.
“Conservatives should ask their Republican Congressmen just why they voted for this bill. “
That was my thinking also.
“The problem of perjury and forgery by the banks are but isolated incidents, I submit.”
JPMorgan admitted their people did not read the documentation for 56,000 cases. Thats 56,000 individual cases.
One lawyer, who was fired by one of the large banks, has stated they set up assembly lines to process 250 packages a day. Fake notaries, fake signatures, nobody had time to read anything. Just sign and send to the next station.
There are tens of thousands of these cases. Under marxism state approved or connected organizations don’t have to abide by the law. They receive special exemptions which is what has been granted to these big banks.
As a banker you should be aghast at the business practices of these big banks and not defending them. Nobody held a gun to their head and forced them to make ALL of those bad loans. CRA certainly did not apply to all of these loans.
So then the deadbeats should then be allowed to live in the house rent free?
Once again I repeat - the surest way to avoid foreclosure is to stay current with the terms of the loan.
It really is amazing to see here on FRee Republic - arguably the most rock-ribbed conservative/free market/libertarian bastion on the face of planet earth - how readily the populist/Marxist theory is adopted.
“Malefactors of great wealth,” was the term the progressive Theodore Roosevelt used.
“Evil bankers,” “predatory credit card companies,” “loan sharks” and on and on and on.
If you cannot handle debt, then don’t use it. But if someone is willing to lend someone money, he should have the expectation of being repaid.
I have a coworker who is on time with his mortgage until the servicer representing his mortgage on the MERS went out of business. His taxes and home insurance payments were always late. Finally a new bank own his mortgage note, but they could not find the title and numerous documents were messed up by the former servicer. If this bill went thru the servicer located in another state could gin up a copy of all the missing documents but they may not meet local state standards. This may come back to haunt the homeowner when he attempts to sell his property and the buyer does a title search and comes up with problems because his title is not original and clear. I don’t care how many times the note is sold off, the supporting property documents must be properly maintained and handed off. We have been doing this since the founding of our country. Go to most county court houses and you will find property records that can be traced back scores of decades and even a century or more. Now the bankers want to scramble this legal process so they want the ability to trade mortgage notes like stocks.
Which is why it is important for the borrower to keep his own documentation on significant financial transactions.
Trust but verify.
Yes, that is correct. Next question please.
America, the land of opportunity.........
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