THE FORECLOSURE-TO-RENT SCREWJOB

Weekend Edition January 13-15, 2012

Bernanke's Double-Whammy

The Foreclosure-to-Rental Screwjob

by MIKE WHITNEY

Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke wants US taxpayers to purchase more of the garbage loans and mortgage-backed securities (MBS) that the big banks still have on their books. (Cash for trash) That’s the impetus behind the Fed’s 26-page white paper that was delivered to Congress last Wednesday. The document outlines the Fed’s plan for ‘stabilizing the housing market’, which is a phrase that Bernanke employs when he wants to provide more buy-backs, giveaways, subsidies and other corporate welfare to big finance.

“Restoring the health of the housing market is a necessary part of a broader strategy for economic recovery,” Bernanke opined in a letter to the Senate Banking and House Financial Services committees.

Indeed. The housing depression continues into its 5th year with no end in sight, mainly because the people who created the crisis are still in positions of power. And, they’re still offering the same remedies, too, like handing the banks another blank check to save them from losses on their bad bets. That’s what this new “housing stabilization” boondoggle is really all about, bailing out the bankers. Here’s a summary from Bloomberg:

“Bernanke’s Fed study said “more might be done,” including eliminating entirely the reduced fees for risky loans, “more comprehensively” cutting lenders’ put-back risks; and further streamlining refinancing for other Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac borrowers. The U.S. also should consider having Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac refinance loans not already backed by the government, which would add credit risk for the companies, according to the report….” (Bloomberg)

First of all, Fannie and Freddie only return loans (“put-backs”) that don’t meet their standards and which the banks foisted on them so they wouldn’t have to face the losses. The idea that the publicly-funded GSE’s should just “eat the losses” is ridiculous.

And, why–in heaven’s name–would congress want to take on more risk when they can keep millions of people in their homes by simply reducing the principle on their mortgages to the present value of the house? (aka–”Cramdowns”) Naturally, the losses would have to be absorbed by the banks who – by everyone’s admission – were responsible for the present crisis due to their lax lending standards and, oftentimes, fraudulent behavior. This would lead to a restructuring of the country’s biggest banks through a Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC) so their toxic assets and backlog of foreclosed properties can be auctioned off as soon as possible.

This is a straightforward way to fix the housing market and it should have been done long ago. Bernanke’s solution is not only unreasonable, it’s also deceitful. Here’s more from the Fed’s paper: “Continued weakness in the housing market poses a significant barrier to a more vigorous economic recovery”..(without action)…“the adjustment process will take longer and incur more deadweight losses, pushing house prices lower and thereby prolonging the downward pressure on the wealth of current homeowners and the resultant drag on the economy at large.”

Did it really take Bernanke 5 years to figure out that housing is a “drag on the economy”?

No, of course not. So, what’s going on now that has suddenly spurred him to act?

Well, for one thing, the banks are losing a great deal of money on the mortgage-backed securities (MBS) that they bought in the last few years. Here’s the story in the Wall Street Journal:

“After flickering to life early in 2011, the market for subprime- and other risky residential-mortgage bonds has returned to its comatose state. And many investors believe a revival could be years away.

Prices on some bonds, which are backed by mortgages that don’t meet the standards needed to get backing from government-controlled companies like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, plummeted as much as 30% last year. The ABX, an index that tracks the value of subprime bonds, ended the year at 43.44 cents on the dollar, down from 59.90 cents at year-end 2010 and a peak of 62.68 cents in February 2011

While that decline pushed yields up to as much as 17% — bond yields rise as prices fall — many fund managers have pulled out of the market due to worries about further price declines. Moreover, repeated downgrades have left too few investment-grade securities for them to own. Wall Street banks, which traditionally have played a key role in the market matching buyers and sellers, are backing away ahead of new regulations that will make it more expensive to hold riskier assets.” (Investors Sour on Subprime Bonds, WSJ)

So, Wall Street’s financial geniuses got back into the MBS-biz (for a second time) and got whacked again? That’s right; and now they want John Q. Public to pay for it with another bailout.

And, there’s more to this story, too. European banks own roughly $100 billion of these mortgage-backed turkeys which they’re presently shedding like crazy in order to meet new capital requirements. That means US bank balance sheets are dripping red as the value of their financial asset-stockpile continues to plunge. That’s why Sugar Daddy Bernanke has stepped in, because it’s time for another multi-billion dollar bank rescue.

Look, the Fed has already purchased over $1.25 trillion of these toxic MBS which represents humongous long-term losses for the taxpayer. Do we really need more of this sludge?

Bernanke promised that the first round of quantitative easing (QE1) would boost employment (It hasn’t) and improve housing sales (it never happened) The only uptick in sales occurred because the colluding banks deliberately reduced the supply of foreclosed homes they put on the market. The reduction has led to a massive 1.7 million backlog of housing units (shadow inventory) that will eventually be dumped onto the market triggering another sharp decline in housing prices. Bernanke wants to do something about the bulging inventory as well as prop up the value of sagging MBS. So, the Fed’s plan actually has two main objectives; in other words, it’s the double whammy. Here’s more from Bloomberg:

“Since the Fed started buying $1.25 trillion of mortgage bonds in January 2009, the value of U.S. housing has fallen 4.1 percent, and is down 32 percent from its 2006 peak, according to an S&P/Case-Shiller index. The central bank is poised to buy about $200 billion this year, or more than 20 percent of new loans, as it reinvests debt that’s being paid off. Some Fed officials have said they may support additional purchases that Barclays Capital estimates could total as much as $750 billion.”

Did you catch that? Taxpayers are going to get slammed for another $750 billion. That’s nearly as much as Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), the fiscal stimulus that added 2 percent to GDP and kept unemployment from rocketing to 13 percent. Bernanke wants to throw that same amount down a Wall Street sinkhole.

So maybe you think this won’t happen, after all, could Congress really be so gullible as to fall for Bernanke’s fearmongering flim-flam again?

Maybe and maybe not. But there are some pretty wealthy and well-connected people who are betting that the Fed will do as it’s told and pave the way for another hefty bailout. In fact, the world’s largest bond fund (Pimco) has stumped up a mountain of cash betting that good buddy Bernanke will get the printing presses whirring sometime in mid-January. Here’s the story from Zero Hedge:

”….in December the fund (Total Return Fund or TRF) doubled down on its QE3 all in bet, by “borrowing” even more cash, or a record $78 billion, using the proceeds to buy even more MBS, as well as Treasurys, which hit a combined 31% of the TRF’s holdings. In other words, between MBS and USTs, Pimco holds a whopping 79% of total, mostly in very long duration exposure. In fact, this combination of long duration and pre-QE exposure has not been seen at PIMCO since late 2008, early 2009, meaning that as many banks have been suggesting, (Bill) Gross is convinced that the Fed will announce if not outright QE3 this January, then at least intimate it is coming.”(“Pimco Doubles Down On All In Bet Fed Will Monetize MBS”, Zero Hedge)

So what does Pimco know that we don’t know? More importantly, from whom are they getting their information?

And, there’s another thing, too. This whole deal about converting foreclosed homes into rental properties is another scam. Here’s the scoop from another article in the Wall Street Journal:

“The paper also signaled that the Fed…. will try to involve banks more directly in housing-revival approaches… One area involves efforts to turn foreclosed homes into rental properties….

Banking regulations typically direct banks to sell foreclosed homes quickly, although the rules do recognize this isn’t always practical and so these properties can be held up to five years. The Fed said it is now “contemplating issuing guidance” to banks and regulators that would possibly allow banks to turn some of these foreclosed homes into rental properties…..The hope is this may help stanch the flow of foreclosed properties into markets…” (“Fed Up With the Depressed State of Housing”, Wall Street Journal)

Bingo. The banks are not only sitting on 1.7 million shadow inventory of homes they’ve stockpiled to keep prices artificially high. They also have millions more in the pipeline when a settlement is finally reached on the robo-signing scandal. So, what are they going to do with all that backlog?

That’s easy. They’ll schluff it off on the taxpayer by creating a foreclosure-to-rental swindle where the government provides lavish incentives for banks and private equity scavengers to buy the homes (in bulk) for pennies on the dollar with loans provided by–you guessed it–Uncle Sam. Here’s a summary of what’s going on behind the scenes:

“As the Obama administration and federal regulators work on a program to sell government-owned foreclosures in bulk to investors, those investors aren’t wasting any time stockpiling cash and buying foreclosed properties at auction and from the major banks.

Oakland, California-based Waypoint Real Estate Group, a major acquirer of so-called “REO to Rental” (Real Estate Owned) just announced a partnership with a private equity firm, Menlo Park, California-based GI Partners, to buy foreclosed properties….

“Our approach to buying distressed single-family houses, renovating them, and leasing to residents who are committed to a path to future home ownership is a viable solution to our nation’s housing crisis,” said Colin Wiel, managing director and co-founder of Waypoint in a press release. “Our partnership with GI Partners ensures we can take the next step in our company’s evolution.”

GI is taking an increasingly popular bet on distressed real estate, closing on a $400 million fund with Waypoint, which has plans to purchase $1 billion in distressed real estate assets over the next two years, according to its release. (“Private Equity Readying a Run on Foreclosures”, Diana Olick, CNBC)

So, what do these guys know that we don’t know? And why are they plunking down big money when the details have not even been released yet?

None of this really passes the smell test, does it? The only thing we know for sure is that the “fix is in” and that Bernanke will do what he always does when the banks are in a pinch. Throw them a lifeline.

MIKE WHITNEY lives in Washington state. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion, forthcoming from AK Press. He can be reached at fergiewhitney@msn.com

Banks responsible for the mortgage crisis sold the same mortgages to multiple buyers at the same time.

Monday, October 18, 2010

Mortgages Were Fraudulently Pledged to Multiple Buyers at the Same Time

Bank of America alleged in a court filing this June:

It appears as though many loans and other mortgage-related assets have been double and even triple-pledged to various constituencies.

Boa Answer to Freddie Objection in Re Taylor Bean & Whitaker Mortgage Corp.

April Charney - a consumer lawyer with Jacksonville Area Legal Aid - and CNBC's Dennis Kneale noted in February 2009 that courts have found that some mortgages have been sold again and again to different trusts, when they should have only been sold once.

Kneale explained that that is the reason that two different banks sometimes try to simultaneously foreclose on the same home:

Bloggers Note: In the video below, Dan Mitchell from the Cato Institute disburses disinformation. He begins by deflecting the discussion of bank culapility by accusing "groups like ACORN" (a poor people's advocacy group now defunct due to false accusations made against them on Fox News) of "practicing extortion." In response to reports that banks pledge mortgages multiple times to different buyers, he says "Banks make technical mistakes" (like they never commit fraud). But "If home owners get away with not paying their mortgages that would be a very bad message to send." (Classic blame the victim.)

And today, Chris Whalen told CNBC's Larry Kudlow that Bear Stearns will be exposed as having sold the same loan to different investors on numerous occasions:


(6:45 into video).

As I have repeatedly pointed out, the failure of the mortgage originators and banks to prepare and record proper documentation has led to an epidemic of fraud. The pledging of the same mortgage again and again to different trusts related to mortgage backed securities is just one result.

And as long-time foreclosure investigator Nye Lavalle writes:

On thousands of occasions I stated to regulators, CEOS, banks, Fannie and Freddie that the practices of the banks were that they were double and multi-pledging assets and pledging paid off and refinance notes to securitizations. This is something April, Max and I have discussed for years now. Now, they come and admit that each of my allegations were true Without analyzing the deal, as complex as they are, you WILL NEVER KNOW IF THE FORECLOSING PARTY HAS “ANY” RIGHT TO FORECLOSE!!!

The motives I identified for the “Blank Endorsements” and missing assignments and "pre-notarized" “Blank Assignments” and “Blank Allonges” that “were placed into the “custodial/collateral” files were to be able to:

Multi-pledge collateral (Notes) so as to cook the books ....

Update: Bank of America has sued the FDIC in connection with claims that:

Executives at Taylor Bean, Colonial and Platinum ... fraudulently schemed to "double- and triple-pledge mortgages and steal assets" to hide their faltering conditions as the housing market declined.

Ellen Brown: The big banks responsible for the current mortgage crisis "are concealing massive fraud." "What we need to avoid at all costs is 'TARP II' – another bank bailout by the taxpayers."

FORECLOSUREGATE AND OBAMA'S 'POCKET VETO'

Ellen Brown, October 7th, 2010
http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/foreclosuregate.php

Amid a snowballing foreclosure fraud crisis, President Obama today blocked legislation that critics say could have made it more difficult for homeowners to challenge foreclosure proceedings against them.

The bill, titled The Interstate Recognition of Notarizations Act of 2009, passed the Senate with unanimous consent and with no scrutiny by the DC media. In a maneuver known as a "pocket veto," 

President Obama indirectly vetoed the legislation by declining to sign the bill passed by Congress while legislators are on recess.

The swift passage and the President's subsequent veto of this bill come on the heels of an announcement that Wall Street banks are voluntarily suspending foreclosure proceedings in 23 states.

By most reports, it would appear that the voluntary suspension of foreclosures is underway to review simple, careless procedural errors. Errors which the conscientious banks are hastening to correct. 

Even Gretchen Morgenson in the New York Times characterizes the problem as “flawed paperwork.”

But those errors go far deeper than mere sloppiness. They are concealing a massive fraud.

They cannot be corrected with legitimate paperwork, and that was the reason the servicers had to hire “foreclosure mills” to fabricate the documents.

These errors involve perjury and forgery -- fabricating documents that never existed and swearing to the accuracy of facts not known.

Karl Denninger at MarketTicker is calling it “Foreclosuregate.”

Diana Ollick of CNBC calls it “the RoboSigning Scandal.” On Monday, Ollick reported rumors that the government is planning a 90-day foreclosure moratorium to deal with the problem.

Three large mortgage issuers – JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and GMAC -- have voluntarily suspended thousands of foreclosures, and a number of calls have been made for investigations.

Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray announced on Wednesday that he is filing suit against Ally Financial and GMAC for civil penalties up to $25,000 per violation for fraud in hundreds of foreclosure suits.

These problems cannot be swept under the rug as mere technicalities. They go to the heart of the securitization process itself. The snowball has just started to roll.

You Can’t Recover What Doesn’t Exist

Yves Smith of Naked Capitalism has uncovered a price list from a company called DocX that specializes in “document recovery solutions.” DocX is the technology platform used by Lender Processing Services to manage a national network of foreclosure mills. The price list includes such things as “Create Missing Intervening Assignment,” $35; “Cure Defective Assignment,” $12.95; “Recreate Entire Collateral File,” $95. Notes Smith:

[C]reating . . . means fabricating documents out of whole cloth, and look at the extent of the offerings. The collateral file is ALL the documents the trustee (or the custodian as an agent of the trustee) needs to have pursuant to its obligations under the pooling and servicing agreement on behalf of the mortgage backed security holder. This means most importantly the original of the note (the borrower IOU), copies of the mortgage (the lien on the property), the securitization agreement, and title insurance.

How do you recreate the original note if you don’t have it? And all for a flat fee, regardless of the particular facts or the supposed difficulty of digging them up.

All of the mortgages in question were “securitized” – turned into Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS) and sold off to investors. MBS are typically pooled through a type of “special purpose vehicle” called a Real Estate Mortgage Investment Conduit or “REMIC”, which has strict requirements defined under the U.S. Internal Revenue Code (the Tax Reform Act of 1986). The REMIC holds the mortgages in trust and issues securities representing an undivided interest in them.

Denninger explains that mortgages are pooled into REMIC Trusts as a tax avoidance measure, and that to qualify, the properties must be properly conveyed to the trustee of the REMIC in the year the MBS is set up, with all the paperwork necessary to show a complete chain of title. For some reason, however, that was not done; and there is no legitimate way to create those conveyances now, because the time limit allowed under the Tax Code has passed.

The question is, why weren’t they done properly in the first place? Was it just haste and sloppiness as alleged? Or was there some reason that these mortgages could NOT be assigned when the MBS were formed?

Denninger argues that it would not have been difficult to do it right from the beginning. His theory is that documents were “lost” to avoid an audit, which would have revealed to investors that they had been sold a bill of goods -- a package of toxic subprime loans very prone to default.

The Tranche Problem

Here is another possible explanation, constructed from an illuminating CNBC clip dated June 29, 2007. In it, Steve Liesman describes how Wall Street turned bundles of subprime mortgages into triple-A investments, using the device called “tranches.” It’s easier to follow if you watch the clip (here), but this is an excerpt:

How do you create a subprime derivative? . . . You take a bunch of mortgages . . . and put them into one big thing. We call it a Mortgage Backed Security. Say it’s $50 million worth. . . . Now you take a bunch of these Mortgage Backed Securities and you put them into one very big thing. . . . The one thing about all these guys here [in the one very big thing] is that they’re all subprime borrowers, their credit is bad or there’s something about them that doesn’t make it prime. . . .

Watch, we’re going to make some triple A paper out of this. . . Now we have a $1 billion vehicle here. We’re going to slice it up into five different pieces. Call them tranches. . . . The key is, they’re not divided by “Jane’s is here” and “Joe’s is here.” Jane is actually in all five pieces here. Because what we’re doing is, the BBB tranche, they’re going to take the first losses for whoever is in the pool, all the way up to about 8% of the losses. What we’re saying is, you’ve got losses in the thing, I’m going to take them and in return you’re going to pay me a relatively high interest rate. . . . All the way up to triple A, where 24% of the losses are below that. Twenty-four percent have to go bad before they see any losses. Here’s the magic as far as Wall Street’s concerned. We have taken subprime paper and created GE quality paper out of it. We have a triple A tranche here.

The top tranche is triple A because it includes the mortgages that did NOT default; but no one could know which those were until the defaults occurred, when the defaulting mortgages got assigned to the lower tranches and foreclosure went forward. That could explain why the mortgages could not be assigned to the proper group of investors immediately: the homes only fell into their designated tranches when they went into default. The clever designers of these vehicles tried to have it both ways by conveying the properties to an electronic dummy conduit called MERS (an acronym for Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems), which would hold them in the meantime. MERS would then assign them to the proper tranche as the defaults occurred. But the rating agencies required that the conduit be “bankruptcy remote,” which meant it could hold title to nothing; and courts have started to take notice of this defect. They are concluding that if MERS owns nothing, it can assign nothing, and the chain of title has been irretrievably broken. As foreclosure expert Neil Garfield traces these developments:

First they said it was MERS who was the lender. That clearly didn’t work because MERS lent nothing, collected nothing and never had anything to do with the cash involved in the transaction. Then they started with the servicers who essentially met with the same problem. Then they got cute and produced either the actual note, a copy of the note or a forged note, or an assignment or a fabricated assignment from a party who at best had dubious rights to ownership of the loan to another party who had equally dubious rights, neither of whom parted with any cash to fund either the loan or the transfer of the obligation. . . . Now the pretender lenders have come up with the idea that the “Trust” is the owner of the loan . . . even though it is just a nominee (just like MERS) . . . . They can’t have it both ways.

My answer is really simple. The lender/creditor is the one who advanced cash to the borrower. . . . The use of nominees or straw men doesn’t mean they can be considered principals in the transaction any more than your depository bank is a principal to a transaction in which you buy and pay for something with a check.

So What’s to Be Done?

Garfield’s proposed solution is for the borrowers to track down the real lenders -- the investors. He says:

[I] f you meet your Lender (investor), you can restructure the loan yourselves and then jointly go after the pretender lenders for all the money they received and didn’t disclose as “agent.”

Karl Denninger concurs. He writes:

Those who bought MBS from institutions that improperly securitized this paper can and should sue the securitizers to well beyond the orbit of Mars. . . . [I]f this bankrupts one or more large banking institutions, so be it. We now have "resolution authority", let's see it used.

The resolution authority Denninger is referring to is in the new Banking Reform Bill, which gives federal regulators the power and responsibility to break up big banks when they pose a “grave risk” to the financial system – which is what we have here. CNBC’s Larry Kudlow calls it “the housing equivalent of the credit financial meltdown,” something he says could “go on forever.”

Financial analyst Marshall Auerback suggests calling a bank holiday. He writes:

Most major banks are insolvent and cannot (and should not) be saved. The best approach is something like a banking holiday for the largest 19 banks and shadow banks in which institutions are closed for a relatively brief period. Supervisors move in to assess problems. It is essential that all big banks be examined during the “holiday” to uncover claims on one another. It is highly likely that supervisors will find that several trillions of dollars of bad assets will turn out to be claims big financial institutions have on one another (that is exactly what was found when AIG was examined—which is why the government bail-out of AIG led to side payments to the big banks and shadow banks). . . . By taking over and resolving the biggest 19 banks and netting claims, the collateral damage in the form of losses for other banks and shadow banks will be relatively small.

What we need to avoid at all costs is “TARP II” – another bank bailout by the taxpayers. No bank is too big to fail. The giant banks can be broken up and replaced with a network of publicly-owned banks and community banks, which could do a substantially better job of serving consumers and businesses than Wall Street is doing now.

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Ellen Brown is an attorney and the author of eleven books. In Web of Debt: The Shocking Truth About Our Money System and How We Can Break Free, she shows how the Federal Reserve and "the money trust" have usurped the power to create money from the people themselves, and how we the people can get it back. Her websites are webofdebt.com, ellenbrown.com, and public-banking.com.