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Post by MMM on Oct 19, 2010 5:15:35 GMT 4
>>> global celebrity in minermania continues. the show starts right now.
>>> nice to see you. up first, fighting fraudclosure. fed up ? americans are taking back their homes. case in point, the earl family in california. changed the locks, kicked them to the curb. th the earls, just one of the millions of stories out there. nine children, six of them adopted and they regularly took in foster kids until their lawyer claims they were wrongfully evicted. the earls did fall behind on their payments. now according to the earls, the banks instead of conducting the work out, tried to pull a fast one. bilked them for tens of thousands more than they believed they owned. there was never the need to illustrate the necessary paperwork and basically, were able to finish the deed, change the locks, sell the house before anyone was able to put two and two together. clearly desperate times as banks try to avoid dealing with their inability to prove who owns the house and potential threat they may have to reveal trillions or hundreds of billions that were stuck at fannie and freddie, not in compliance with the government standards set for those loans in the first place cht but more importantly, desperate times for the families who no longer have a place to call home. why our politicians and bankers play dodge ball with the issue. the earls are one family who is fighting back. danielle joins us alongside her attorney and i thank both of you. tell us in your own words what happened here.
>> well, we were trying to make payments, trying to get caught up on everything. and we thought we were just about there. and when i called to get the amount that we still owed, it was a lot more than i thought it was and then when i ended up making a large sum payment and the amount didn't change, i ? demanded an account iing for where the money went. they sent me a notice of default.
>> michael, is this story common in your experience?
>> very common. it happens all the time. as bad as you think it is, it's probably about 1,000 times worse.
>> what we're suggesting, i don't care the number, $25,000, $100,000 owed, you make a payment to that number, thinking it's going to go down. look the next month and the number hasn't changed. is that a good characterization?
>> yes, it is.
>> actually, the number went up.
>> would you elaborate?
>> the number went up. they kept increasing, as she made payments instead of decreasing the amount they claim she owed, they kept increasing it.
>> did they ever address that?
>> no. they didn't. no, and when we got the notice of default like he said, i had just talked to them on the phone a few days before and somewhere in that two days, i owed an almost additional $20,000. so i don't know what happened over those two days. but it seems a lot more than just a regular payment missed. so something went terribly wrong.
>> did the --
>> the banks aren't owed. it's irrelevant to them. they keep increasing the amount they claim is owed in the hope that the borrower will keep sending them more and more money, become more frightened and that's what they keep doing. they never send an accounting because they can't. they're making it all up and they just pull these numbers out of somewhere and nobody knows where and they keep claiming the homeowner owes more and more money. she sent them a lot of money. over $100,000. she kept sending the money and every time, instead of crediting the loan, they just increased the amount shed and would never explain to her where the money went, how it was applied because they can't. they're just making it all up. bank here and do they offer any explanation other than we're making it up?
>> no. they offered no explanation whatsoever. they didn't admit they were making it up. we don't know who the bank is and nobody knows. the lender, you know when you say there was an originator of this loan, and when you talking about the banks, you would need to define that because we're talking about financial institutions and as danielle will tell you, she began investigating this herself by going to the public records and all these entities she had never heard of that had nothing to do with her loan whatsoever kept popping up. the name of some are -- any way, people nobody ever heard of. she was rude enough to ask them who they are and it was never answer answered.
>> i want to ask you guys to hang on for a second. i want to introduce another voice to this conversation. from california to florida we go. we introduced you to nancy. nancy was struggling with her mortgage payments, but not yet at the foreclosure stage, so you can imagine her terror when the bank came to change the locks on her house. in your instance, you do not have to image that it played out on this 911 call. stories like nancy's leading florida's attorney general to start issues subpoenas demanding documentation. matt widener is nancy's lawyer. he says to expect bombshell details once these documents see the light of day. what information do you believe will be disclosed?
>> i think we're going to continue to find that what these banks have done across this country and the way they victimize consumers is going to fundamentally destabilize real estate markets across the country. i want to give you a lot of credit because you first brought this story to the nation's attention and about the same time, congressman ? allen grayson has been calling for attention on these issues, but i want to make it clear that you brought this to the attention of america. since then, congressman grayson has ramped up the heat. we just had a press conference at nancy's property where he demanded investigations of these institutions.
>> danielle, if you were to look at real life, aside from the lawyers and politicians, can you just give us a sense of how disruptive this has been to your family and life? this is not some sort of tv drama. this is the lives of not only you, but millions of americans.
>> oh, absolutely. it has been terribly disruptive. for the last year, we have not known when we are going to be out on the street. where we're going to go when we are and just listening to the coverage that you just did, i had chills and just because we live that, too. that was just -- it's just very scary. and we still --
>> i just wanted to follow up on what mr. widener said. i've heard of him and am glad to put a face with a name. i want to say this as clearly as i can. i don't think i'm overstating the case. this is not only residential. this is commercial. and i say with a high degree of confidence that nobody in this country knows for sure who owns any real estate, residential or commercial. the only real estate that we can be sure of where we know who the owner is perhaps somebody who paid off their property before the 1980s when securization started and passed it down. other than that, in my opinion, any property sold from the 1980s until now, nobody knows who owns that property. nobody.
>> the banks argue --
>> and -- ? according to gretchen morganstern at "the new york times," the total amount of money involved is $45.5 trillion. roughly twice the of the u.s. stock market and my suspicion is that lawyers will be arguing for the next two, three, four decades about who should pay for that. i don't know that we have that much money, that the government can fund that $45.5 trillion while they try to figure that out. i'm sure that's what they're trying to figure out now.
>> i think it's important to note that the american people have.
>> reporter: already paid. what's important to urns is that when the government set aside$50 billion, that was intended to provide homeowners assistance, support to get those mortgages modified. instead, we're finding the servicers pocketed that money. the american people gave them support. we bailed they will out and what they're doing is choking consumers all cross the country with that lifeline now. that's got stop and it's only because people like you reporting this and congressman grayson talking about it that consumers are understanding how violated our rights are.
>> the same time, i want to address what michael pines just said, a large magnitude statement to say the least, which is it's important to all of us, we must have a courage to face the truth of the structure of our housing market, the collaboration of the banking system and federal government need to you said that as we revolve this, this, more than anything we have been through so far, including the entire 2008 financial crisis may be the basis for which we will need a resolution trust to reform those banks that have been pretending to be solvent at the taxpayers expense for years and that it is this foreclosure chain that will ultimately reveal the insolvency that has been covered up by the absorption of that bad debt into fannie mae, freddie mac? and into the federal reserve. matt, do you think the attorney's general, allen grayson, our political leaders are prepared to look into this crisis, which is a cover up for the real issue, which is the housing finance chain coming out of washington, d.c. do you feel there's a political leader ready to do the hard work working this out in an honest and compassionate way in a need to reshuckture this system?
>> they're not prepared to do that until they do what you're doing. the quicker we come to grips with this problem and stop avoiding the major problems that exist within our financial system and real estate markets, the quicker we'll be on the road to recovery, but the longer we deny this both at the state and national level, the longer this crisis is going to play out. this is an onion and every time you peel back the layer, it just gets stinkier, so what americans have to understand is this is not just about these home e owners in foreclosure. this is about every single american. this is not a republican crisis or democratic crisis. it's an american crisis. we all need to be part of this.
>> and a crisis of property right, which is the core prince principle upon which this country was founded. it will be very interesting to see whether the tea party finally steps forward where they refused to an objection to the financial reform fight and step forward to defend property rights at a time when they are clearly in need to have some defense. danielle, my greatest sympathies for the suffering in your family as a result of this and compliments to you for the courage to do what you're doing and come out in public and to have the conversation with us. mr. pines, mr. widener, keep us posted on your legal efforts. have a good afternoon.
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Post by lairezippert on Nov 25, 2010 0:34:09 GMT 4
Countrywide Documentation Disaster to Explode at Bank of America?
Published on 11-24-2010
Source: CNBC.com
The latest is this: Countrywide Financial, now owned by Bank of America, appears not to have properly transferred necessary mortgage documents when it sold loans to other banks, which then in turn created residential mortgage backed securities (RMBS) from the loans.
The documents Countrywide failed to provide are critical to the owners of the RMBS because without them homeowners can question the legal right of banks to foreclose on their homes.
What's new here? Based upon testimony delivered in a New Jersey bankruptcy court, this may have been a matter of policy at Countrywide—not just a case of a one-off error.
Based on Bank of America's current ownership of Countrywide Financial, it is possible that the largest bank in America, when ranked by deposits, may potentially be held liable for the problem.
Perhaps the biggest challenge in grasping the nature of the problem is that the details can overwhelm our ability to see the forest for the trees, so let's walk through it one step at a time.
To begin at the beginning: Mortgage documentation typically requires two critical documents : The deed of trust and the promissory note. The deed of trust describes facts about the lender, the borrower, the terms of the loan and payment, and assigns a legal title to the property—which is traditionally described as the 'bundle of rights' the owner of the property holds. The second document, the promissory note, obligates the owner to make payments on the loan, for which the deed of trust serves as collateral. In the event of a foreclosure, certain jurisdictions require a bank to 'produce the note' if the homeowner demands that the bank do so.
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