NJ MILL LAWYERS FORECLOSURES READ THIS HOME OWNERS
MILL LAWYERS CAUGHT LYING TO THE COURT
U R Home had opportunity to observe some courtroom cases this past few weeks on foreclosures.
During our interviews and observations we heard and saw some interesting facts and insights and have decided to share a few. In Central Jersey:
Mill Lawyers still continue to present False information to the Court, YES,
How does U R Home know this? They got Caught and on Record had to admit it to the Judge they Lied!!! Not once but Twice!!!! Pro Se's who work hard at their paperwork and study the law and above all are not afraid to face the courtroom can fight and win!...
Lawyer's who want to really work to see justice served for the Home Owner who got wronged by the Banks, Did Great, Those who just wanted to drag it til the Home Owner could save enough, or possibly modify their loan did NOT impress us.
Fight for your Rights!!!
NJ HOME OWNERS PLEASE LEARN THE Mill Lawyers,List!!!
They are NOT Great Lawyers They are Lier Lawyers Tell they Judge They are Lying,
One Lie usually means, One lie all lies in the court of Law..
***************
Promissory Notes are Key to Foreclosure
Defense
The following was copied from 4closureFraud.. it was too eye opening Not too.. please read ............
IN THE MATTER OF CARLOS MOTA: ADVERSARY COMPLAINT AGAINST WELLS FARGO AND ITS FORECLOSURE ‘FRAUD’ MANUAL
IN THE UNITED STATES BANKRUPTCY COURT
SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK
MANHATTAN DIVISION
——————————————————————-X
IN THE MATTER OF
CARLOS MOTA, CASE NO: 10-13989(shl)
DEBTOR
——————————————————————-X
CARLOS MOTA,
Plaintiff
v.
WELLS FARGO BANK, NA, and
HSBC BANK USA NATIONAL
ASSOCIATION AS TRUSTEE FOR
WELLS FARGO ASSET SECURITIES
CORPORATION, MORTGAGE
PASS-THROUGH CERTIFICATES
SERIES 2006-8
COMPLAINT
Defendants.
—————————————————————-X
MANHATTAN DIVISION
——————————————————————-X
IN THE MATTER OF
CARLOS MOTA, CASE NO: 10-13989(shl)
DEBTOR
——————————————————————-X
CARLOS MOTA,
Plaintiff
v.
WELLS FARGO BANK, NA, and
HSBC BANK USA NATIONAL
ASSOCIATION AS TRUSTEE FOR
WELLS FARGO ASSET SECURITIES
CORPORATION, MORTGAGE
PASS-THROUGH CERTIFICATES
SERIES 2006-8
COMPLAINT
Defendants.
—————————————————————-X
COMPLAINT OF THE PLAINTIFF PURSUANT TO 11 U.S.C. SECTION 506(A) AND BANKRUPTCY
RULE 3012 TO DETERMINE THE VALUE OF SECURITY AND CREDITOR’S ALLOWED SECURED
CLAIMAND COMPLAINT FOR DAMAGES, SANCTIONS AND INJUNCTIVE RELIEF
RULE 3012 TO DETERMINE THE VALUE OF SECURITY AND CREDITOR’S ALLOWED SECURED
CLAIMAND COMPLAINT FOR DAMAGES, SANCTIONS AND INJUNCTIVE RELIEF
Excerpts from the Complaint:
1.3 This Complaint focuses on the fraud perpetrated on the Court and the Plaintiff by the Defendants filing a false proof of claim together with fraudulent documents in support thereof and the Defendants’ fraudulent misrepresentation of the owner of the Plaintiff’ Mortgage Loan and the identity of the real party in interest.
1.4 This Complaint focuses on the fraud perpetrated by the Defendant Wells Fargo by way of its fabrication of documents and unauthorized rubber stamp endorsements.
…
3.9 On or about July 24, 2010 the Plaintiff filed a petition for Chapter 13 Bankruptcy in the Southern District of New York, Manhattan Division and was assigned case number 10-13989 13-01553-alg (hereinafter the Plaintiff’s Bankruptcy Case).
3.10 On or about July 19, 2010, Proof of Claim Number 3-1 was filed in the Plaintiff’s bankruptcy case identifying the Defendant HSBC as the creditor and further identifying Defendant Wells Fargo, as the party to contact for notice purposes. (Hereinafter the “Proof of Claim 3-1” or “Claim Number 3-1”)
3.11 The Plaintiff believe and therefore allege that at the time of filing the proof of claim 3-1 the law firm of Steven J. Baum, P.C. represented both the Defendant Wells Fargo and Defendant HSBC.
3.12 The Proof of Claim 3-1 was signed by Michelle Marans, Esq. of the law firm of Steven J. Baum, P.C.as attorney for the named purported Creditor, Defendant HSBC.
3.13 Attached to Proof of Claim 3-1 was a copy of a promissory note as between Plaintiff Carlos Mota and MLD bearing a specific endorsement payable to “Wells Fargo Bank, NA” and not the purported creditor, HSBC.
3.14 Proof if Claim 3-1 Further attached a copy of a mortgage as between Plaintiff Carlos Mota and MLD.
3.15 Proof of Claim 3-1 further attached a post-petition Assignment of Mortgage signed by Mr. John Kennerty (“Kennerty”) as a MERS officer acting as “nominee” for “MLD Mortgage, Inc.” on August 13, 2010 which purports to assign both the promissory Note and Mortgage from MLD to the Defendant HSBC.
3.16 Mr. Kennerty does not identify himself as a Wells Fargo employee on the Assignment of Mortgage.
3.17 As set forth more completely herein below, the Plaintiff avers that the Kennerty Assignment is a bogus assignment manufactured by Wells Fargo for the purpose of enticing reliance by the court and the parties in interest.
3.18 Kennerty lacked any personal knowledge regarding the Plaintiff’s mortgage loan and further lacked any personal knowledge to determine that MLD Mortgage, Inc., the entity for which Kennerty was acting as nominee, had any ownership or control over the debtor’s mortgage loan or had the right to transfer theloan.
…
3.24 On or about December 8, 2010 the Plaintiff filed a Motion Objecting to Claim 3-1 with this court which appears as Document Number 18 on the court’s ECF system. The Objection to Proof of Claim 3-1 is based in part on the questionable authenticity, origin, purpose and effectiveness of the assignment of mortgage.
3.25 Based upon information and belief, the Plaintiff aver that John Kennerty was actually employed by Defendant Wells Fargo and that the Assignment is not valid, it is a false and/or otherwise fraudulent document.
3.26 The Assignment of Mortgage was notarized by Carolyn M. Evans, Notary Public in York County, South Carolina.
3.27 Based upon information and belief, the Plaintiff avers that John Kennerty did not execute the Assignment of Mortgage in the presence of the Notary, Carolyn Evans.
3.28 Based upon information and belief, at the time of the assignment Carolyn Evans was employed by Defendant Wells Fargo and that the notary acknowledgement as well as the Assignment of Mortgage, is not valid, it is a false and/or otherwise fraudulent notarization and fraudulent document.
3.29 The Plaintiff aver that the Assignment presented in this case at the direction of one or more of the Defendants and/or at the request and direction of agents and/or attorneys for Defendant Wells Fargo and/or the Defendant HSBC was manufactured and/or fabricated by the Defendant Wells Fargoat the direction of and with the knowledge and consent of the Defendant HSBC.
…
3.35 The Note affixed to the proof of claim as per FRBP 3001(c) and FRBP 9011 is required to be a true copy of the original. The Note attached to the proof of claim in this case is not endorsed to the named Creditor, the Defendant HSBC.
3.36 The Defendants omitted to advise the court, the Plaintiff, the Chapter 13 Trustee and other creditors who rely on the integrity of the documents filed by Defendant Wells Fargo and Defendant HSBC and their attorneys, in the Plaintiff’s bankruptcy case, that the purported Assignment of Mortgage submitted in support of the Proof of Claim is a bogus document.
3.37 On or about January 21, 2011 Attorney Natalie Grigg of the law firm of Steven J Baumattempted to amend Proof f Claim 3-1 by filing Claim 3-2 which included a copy of the Note bearing an additional endorsement in blank which did not exist on the promissory note at the time the proof if claim 3-1 was filed.
3.38 Based upon testimony of Wells Fargo’s own employee obtained during the course of litigating the Objection to Claim, Wells Fargo maintains an “endorsement team” to conveniently indorse promissory notes using robo signers and rubber stamp endorsements.
…
6.3 The Defendants knowingly made a false misrepresentation to the court;
To Wit, the Defendants knowingly fabricated an assignment of mortgage to present to the courtand such act of presenting a false fabricated document was committed for the purpose of enticing the reliance of the Court the Chapter 13 Trustee, the Plaintiff and the other creditors in the bankruptcy case;
To Wit, the Defendants knowingly fabricated an assignment of mortgage to present to the courtand such act of presenting a false fabricated document was committed for the purpose of enticing the reliance of the Court the Chapter 13 Trustee, the Plaintiff and the other creditors in the bankruptcy case;
6.4 The Defendants knowingly made a false misrepresentation to the court;
To Wit, the Defendants knowingly claimed unsubstantiated monies alleged to be owed by the Plaintiff and presented the same to the court. Such act was committed for the purpose of enticing the reliance of the Court, the Chapter 13 Trustee, the Plaintiff and the other creditors in the bankruptcy case and for thefinancial gain of the Defendants;
To Wit, the Defendants knowingly claimed unsubstantiated monies alleged to be owed by the Plaintiff and presented the same to the court. Such act was committed for the purpose of enticing the reliance of the Court, the Chapter 13 Trustee, the Plaintiff and the other creditors in the bankruptcy case and for thefinancial gain of the Defendants;
6.5 Defendants omitted material, crucial information and facts from the court regarding the Note and Assignment of Mortgage at issue;
To Wit, the Defendants knowingly submitted a Note to the Court which is neither indorsed to the Claim and Defendant HSBC nor is it validly assigned to the Defendant HSBC
To Wit, the Defendants knowingly submitted a Note to the Court which is neither indorsed to the Claim and Defendant HSBC nor is it validly assigned to the Defendant HSBC
6.6 The Plaintiff has been damaged by the actions and omissions of the named Creditor, Defendant HSBC and the Defendant Wells Fargo;
To Wit, in that he has been and continues to be forced to expend his time and expenses toward the defense of this contested matter to protect their rights.
To Wit, in that he has been and continues to be forced to expend his time and expenses toward the defense of this contested matter to protect their rights.
6.7 All parties of interest in the Plaintiff bankruptcy case are harmed by the actions and omissions of the named Creditor, Defendant HSBC and the Defendant Wells Fargo;
================================================================
To Wit, in that the integrity of the judicial process relied upon has been compromised by the fraudulent acts, fraudulent documents and omissions of the Defendants.
Some courts may also challenge MERS’ ability to transfer the promissory note, since it likely has been sold to a different entity, or in most cases, securitized (pooled with other loans) and sold to an unknown number of entities. In the U.S. Supreme Court case Carpenter v. Longan, it was ruled that where a promissory note goes, a deed of trust must follow. In other words, the deed and the note cannot be separated.
If your note has been securitized, it now belongs to someone other than the holder of your mortgage. This is known as bifurcation — the deed of trust points to one party, while the promissory note points to another. Thus, a foreclosure defense claims that since the relationship between the deed and the note has become defective, it renders the deed of trust unenforceable.
Your promissory note must also have a clear chain of title, according to the nation’s Uniform Commercial Code (UCC), the body of regulations that governs these types of financial instruments. But over and over again, borrowers have been able to demonstrate that subsequent assignments of promissory notes have gone unendorsed.
In fact, it has been standard practice for banks to leave the assignment blank when loans are sold and/or securitized and, customarily, the courts have allowed blank assignment to be an acceptable form of proof of ownership. However, when the Massachusetts Supreme Court in U.S. Bank v. Ibenez ruled that blank assignment is not sufficient to claim perfection, it provided another way in which a foreclosure can be challenged.
In their most egregious attempts to remedy these glaring omissions, some banks have actually tried to reverse-engineer chains of title, using fraudulent means such as:
- Robo-signing of documents.
- False notary signatures.
- Submission of questionable, inaccurate or patently counterfeit affidavits.
Exposure of these dishonest methods halted many foreclosures in their tracks and helped increase governmental scrutiny of banks’ foreclosure procedures.
Many People will have you think your end result is to have the bank lower your interest or forgive some of your debt. Well maybe in fact this is true, if so GREAT, however if the bank has committed fraud, counterfeit, deceit, robbed you in some way, falsified documents etc. fight them, seek help by way of an Attorney, free legal advice, Government agencies, etc. We cannot let this keep going, by letting settlement after settlement continue. IF again We say IF in fact the Banks have committed the above.
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In the Light of Foreclosuregate There Are Thousands of Bad Judges. But See the New Update in the News
In the light of Foreclosuregate, not so named by CNBC and the bankster crowd, there are many bad judges. In fact, the definition of a bad judge isone who fails to protect the unrepresented. Many people are being foreclosed on. And they are not being represented, as the alleged holder of the mortgage and IOU actually gets the judge to look the other way, as it is found that the servicer of the mortgage does not have the IOU. Foreclosures have been allowed by crooked judges in cases where the IOU has been lost! And why were they lost? Well, it was because of the need for companies to hide the crap loans put together in the MBS bankster scam.
So, the problem is that you have very unethical judges who are rubber stamping a foreclosure without the IOU being in anyone's possession. There are two issues that make this a serious offense:
1. The courthouse does not have the IOU. The courthouse has a copy of the deed, but not the IOU. But the IOU is required in order to determine the terms of the loan, and the owner of the mortgage.In many cases, the IOU has been lost, and in many cases was hidden or lost on purpose in order to fool investors into buying mortgage backed securities, you know, the crap bonds that were rated AAA but that really had junk attached!
2. Since the IOU has to be registered with the trustee of the MBS at the investment bank within a certain period, Title is clouded and broken when the investment bankster wants to hide this bad loan from potential investors. As it turns out, the investment banksters never bothered to convey the documents to the trustee of the Mortgage Backed Securities in the first place. This is both mortgage and securities fraud and it breaks the Title. In reality, these trustees don't own these mortgages because the IOU's cannot be reconstituted.
Warning: Sheila Bair, FDIC chairwoman wants a global solution, which means some foreclosure victims may get some dubious modifications in exchange for legal immunity for the TBTF banks. But what about all the folks already unjustly evicted? What about justice for past and future abuses. Tell Sheila you don't want this! Tell your state attorney general that you oppose the global solution.
Update: According to Business Insider, the Massachusetts Supreme Court has ruled against the banksters for failing to have the necessary paperwork to foreclose, hence no foreclosure is possible. A little justice can happen once in awhile. I hope the sorry judges in states where this just ruling is not law will be ashamed of themselves and forced to act! I am happy Massachusetts was first because this is where the Revolutionary War started to rid the colonies of the oppressive money changing from the Bank of England, a private central bank. The founding fathers would have put the banksters in jail who allowed the ponzi lending scam with the blessing of the central bankers at Basel 2 in 1998. Through off balance sheet banking, the money changers were permitted to hide bad loans from investors, bondholders and all manner of unsuspecting people.
It Is Difficult to Sue Judges Without First Exposing Them
The first part of the process is to expose judges. If there is a judge that allows a phony IOU, list that judge with Caught.net.
Judges who are doing fraudulent things at the state level, like foreclosures, can be sued in Federal Court. It is difficult to sue a judge. And yet, perhaps a class action against judges would at least publicize their behavior so that they would be more reluctant to go along with the bankster claims of title.
However, it is possible to appeal. And people with the means who want to make the court own up to injustice can do so.
We know that Florida has a bunch of Kangaroo courts, rubber stamping foreclosures that have no clear title. Naked Capitalism Blog has been at the forefront of this exposure of judicial misconduct.
In order to buy some time for the borrower, it is time to clog the courts with paper. I advocate clogging the courts with all manner of lawsuits and motions. People need to stay in their houses as long as they can, because they have been scammed in the first place. Yes, the scam is primarily an injustice against investors, but no one can doubt that borrowers have been scammed by this process as well. Just learning about Foreclosuregate will make it clear that borrowers have been victims of a process that would have been stopped dead in its tracks had investors had access to the IOU's showing how bad the loans were that went into the MBS's. Investors would have stopped buying these fraudulent bonds long ago.
As it is, since these securities, the MBS's, are fraudulent, I hope investors seek major damages from the investment banksters. The entire credit crisis and private MBS scam was caused by lax regulation and a plan instituted by Basel 2. Confronting this system in court will be a start. We need to discuss whethersecuritization for mortgages is something that should even be permitted.
Squat In Your Own Home. Don't Pay. Show Me the Note!
The Financial System is Still Behaving Criminally Against Mainstreet
- Wells Fargo Bank Leads Securitization Attack On Taxpayers
Wells Fargo bank wants the government to guarantee all mortgages and has threatened to make the 30 year mortgage obsolete if the bank doesn't get what it wants. I have been writing about this subject of...
Here Are Deceitful Practices Foreclosure Attorneys Should Not Be Engaged In.
I found this comment at this article at Business Insider:
-Deliberately use defunct lenders, lenders without "standing" for false civil and bankruptcy foreclosure proceedings
-Create and conceal malpractice foreclosure delays and engineer billable litigation
-Orchestrate sham foreclosure auctions; property never acquired by lenders, but 'straw buyers'
-Commit actionable wrongs (unfair debt collection, fraud, various torts) that create lawsuits
- Foreclosures naming defunct lenders, illegally recorded property deeds, flipping, blighted communities
-Unconscionably create false deficiency judgments against property owners after straw buyers acquire homes for pennies on the dollar
-Intentionally false Bankruptcy court "Motion to Lift" and "Proof of Claim" on behalf of non-existent lenders which conceals fact of a "non-secured" mortgage debt
-Involved in fraudulent collection of property damage insurance, as well as mortgage-default insurance
- Fraudulent foreclosures abet loss of property taxes to city revenue, and invites rodents, vagrants
- Thousands of families made unlawfully homeless from null foreclosure proceedings
-Deliberately use defunct lenders, lenders without "standing" for false civil and bankruptcy foreclosure proceedings
-Create and conceal malpractice foreclosure delays and engineer billable litigation
-Orchestrate sham foreclosure auctions; property never acquired by lenders, but 'straw buyers'
-Commit actionable wrongs (unfair debt collection, fraud, various torts) that create lawsuits
- Foreclosures naming defunct lenders, illegally recorded property deeds, flipping, blighted communities
-Unconscionably create false deficiency judgments against property owners after straw buyers acquire homes for pennies on the dollar
-Intentionally false Bankruptcy court "Motion to Lift" and "Proof of Claim" on behalf of non-existent lenders which conceals fact of a "non-secured" mortgage debt
-Involved in fraudulent collection of property damage insurance, as well as mortgage-default insurance
- Fraudulent foreclosures abet loss of property taxes to city revenue, and invites rodents, vagrants
- Thousands of families made unlawfully homeless from null foreclosure proceedings
So How Does the UCC Code Affect Foreclosures.
First a disclaimer, this is not legal advice. This webpage does not in any way tell you how to proceed but rather gives some possible suggestions that you may be able to explore with your attorney.
So, as it turns out, the UCC Code generally requires that the proof of transfer from the lender to the investment bank can be proven. The IOU can be reconstructed if this link can be proven. There may be other laws which say title is broken, and in those cases, Title Insurance Companies may choose to hold off. But UCC requires a connection regarding transfer. This is where the banksters made a major fraud. The investment bankers who took these mortgages from the lenders never conveyed the documents. Since there was no proof of transfer, the bonds or I should say the trust for the bonds do not own the mortgages. This is major mortgage and securities fraud. This is where the court has to be careful that there are not a lot of phony documents. Congress should pass a law with serious penalties for those caught forging documents, getting fake notaries, etc. But congress was intent on doing just the opposite, as Diana Olick exposed regarding the robo signatures.
The courts that refuse to require proof of this transfer link must be exposed and their judges held up to severe ridicule. Lets hope that happens in the coming months.
Judge Ignorant of UCC Rules Against Borrower
Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan meets with the editorial board of the Boston Globe.
David L Ryan/The Boston Globe via Getty Images
Thank God for Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan. If you're a court junkie, or have the misfortune (as some of us poor reporters do) of being forced professionally to spend a lot of time reading legal documents, the just-released Moynihan deposition in MBIA v. Bank of America, Countrywide, and a Buttload of Other Shameless Mortgage Fraudsters will go down as one of the great Nixonian-stonewalling efforts ever, and one of the more entertaining reads of the year.
In this long-awaited interrogation – Bank of America has been fighting to keep Moynihan from being deposed in this case for some time – Moynihan does a full Star Trek special, boldly going where no deponent has ever gone before, breaking out the "I don't recall" line more often and perhaps more ridiculously than was previously thought possible. Moynihan seems to remember his own name, and perhaps his current job title, but beyond that, he'll have to get back to you.
The MBIA v. Bank of America case is one of the bigger and weightier lawsuits hovering over the financial world. Prior to the crash, MBIA was, along with a company called Ambac, one of the two largest and most reputable names in what's called the "monoline" insurance business.
The monolines sell a kind of investment insurance – if you invest in a municipal bond or in mortgage-backed securities backed or "wrapped" by a monoline, you have backing in case the investment goes south. If a municipality defaults on its bond payments, or homeowners in a mortgage-backed security default on their mortgage payments, the investors in those instruments can collect from the monoline insurer.
When companies like Countrywide issued their giant piles of crappy subprime mortgages and then chopped them up and turned them into AAA-rated securities to sell to suckers around the world, they often had these mortgage-backed securities insured by companies like MBIA or Ambac, to make their customers feel doubly safe about investing in their product.
The pitch firms like Countrywide made went like this: not only are these mortgages triple-A rated by reputable ratings agencies like Moody's, they're fully insured by similarly reputable insurance companies like MBIA. You can't lose!
With protection like that, why shouldn't your state pension fund or foreign trade union buy billions' worth of these mortgage-backed products? It's not like it would ever turn out that Countrywide made those products by trolling the cities of America stuffing mortgages in the pockets of anything with a pulse.
After 2007-8, when all of those mortgage-backed securities started blowing up, suddenly all of those insurance companies started having to pay out billions in claims. Ambac went bankrupt and MBIA was downgraded from AAA to near-junk status. The entire monoline industry was shattered.
The analogy one could make is that Countrywide sold a million flood-insured houses in New Orleans and Biloxi even though they could already see Katrina gathering in the Caribbean. Then, after the storm, the insurers decided to sue.
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MBIA sued Bank of America (which acquired Countrywide in 2008), claiming that Countrywide lied to MBIA about its supposedly strict underwriting standards, when in fact the firm was cranking out mortgages hand over fist, without doing any real due diligence at all. (Whether the monolines should have known better, or its agents perhaps did know better and sold the mountains of insurance anyway, is another matter). In its suit, MBIA claimed that Countrywide turned itself into a veritable machine of mortgage approvals:
Countrywide Home Loans' senior management imposed intense pressure on underwriters to approve mortgage loans, in some instances requiring underwriters to process 60 to 70 mortgage loan applications in a single day and to justify any rejections…
As a result of all of this, MBIA got stuck insuring a Himalayan mountain range of dicey mortgages. When the securities those mortgages backed started to fail, MBIA ended up paying out $2.2 billion in claims, helping crack the hull of the formerly staid, solid, AAA-rated firm.
Suits like this have the whole financial world on edge. The possibility that the banks might still have to pay gigantic claims to companies like MBIA (among a wide range of other claimants) has left Wall Street in a state of uncertainty about the future of some of the better-known, Too-Big-To-Fail companies, whose already-strained balance sheets might eventually be rocked by massive litigation payouts.
In the case of Bank of America, MBIA has long wanted to depose Moynihan because it was precisely Moynihan who went public with comments about how B of A was going to make good on the errors made by its bad-seed acquisition, Countrywide. "At the end of the day, we'll pay for the things Countrywide did," was one such comment Moynihan made, in November of 2010.
As it turns out, Moynihan was deposed last May 2. But the deposition was only made public this week, when it was filed as an exhibit in a motion for summary judgment. In the deposition, attorney Peter Calamari of Quinn Emmanuel, representing MBIA, attempts to ask Moynihan a series of questions about what exactly Bank of America knew about Countrywide's operations at various points in time.
Early on, he asks Moynihan if he remembers the B of A audit committee discussing Countrywide. Moynihan says he "doesn't recall any specific discussion of it."
He's asked again: In the broadest conceivable sense, do you recall ever attending an audit committee meeting where the word Countrywide or any aspect of the Countrywide transaction was ever discussed? Moynihan: I don't recall.
Calamari counters: It's a multi-billion dollar acquisition, was it not?
Moynihan: Yes, it was. Well, isn't that the kind of thing you would talk about?
Moynihan: not necessarily . . .
Moynihan: Yes, it was. Well, isn't that the kind of thing you would talk about?
Moynihan: not necessarily . . .
This goes on and on for a while, with the Bank of America CEO continually insisting he doesn't remember ever talking about Countrywide at these meetings, that you'd have to "get the minutes." Incredulous, Calamari, a little sarcastically, finally asks Moynihan if he would say he has a good memory.
"I would – I could remember things, yes," Moynihan deadpans. "I have a good memory."
Calamari presses on, eventually asking him about the state of Countrywide when Moynihan became the CEO, leading to the following remarkable exchange, in which the CEO of one of the biggest companies in the world claims not to know anything about the most significant acquisition in the bank's history (emphasis mine):
Q: By January 1st, 2010, when you became the CEO of Bank Of America, CFC – and I'm using the initials CFC, Countrywide Financial Corporation – itself was no longer engaged in any revenue-producing activities; is that right?Moynihan: I wouldn't be the best person to ask about that because I don't know.
There are no sound effects in the transcript, but you can almost hear an audible gasp at this response. Calamari presses Moynihan on his answer.
"Sir," he says, "you were CEO of Bank Of America in January, 2010, but you don't know what Countrywide Financial Corporation was doing at that time?"
In an impressive display of balls, Moynihan essentially replies that Bank of America is a big company, and it's unrealistic to ask the CEO to know about all of its parts, even the ones that are multi-billion-dollar suckholes about which the firm has been engaged in nearly constant litigation from the moment it acquired the company.
"We have several thousand legal entities," is how Moynihan puts it. "Exactly what subsidiary took place [sic] is not what you do as the CEO. That is [sic] other people's jobs to make sure."
The exasperated MBIA lawyer tries again: If it's true that Moynihan somehow managed to not know anything about the bank's most important and most problematic subsidiary when he became CEO, well, did he ever make an effort to correct that ignorance? "Do you ever come to learn what CFC was doing?" is how the question is posed.
"I'm not sure that I recall exactly what CFC was doing versus other parts," Moynihan sagely concludes.
The deposition rolls on like this for 223 agonizing pages. The entire time, the Bank of America CEO presents himself as a Being There-esque cipher who was placed in charge of a Too-Big-To-Fail global banking giant by some kind of historical accident beyond his control, and appears to know little to nothing at all about the business he is running.
In the end, Moynihan even doubles back on his "we'll pay for the things Countrywide did" quote. Asked if he said that to a Bloomberg reporter, Moynihan says he doesn't remember that either, though he guesses the reporter got it right.
Well, he's asked, assuming he did say it, does the quote accurately reflect Moynihan's opinion?
"It is what it is," Moynihan says philosophically.
There's nothing surprising about any of this – it's natural that a Bank of America executive would do everything he could to deny responsibility for Countrywide's messes. But that doesn't mean it's not funny. By about the thirtieth "I don't recall," I was laughing out loud.
It's also more than a little infuriating. In the pre-crash years, Countrywide was the biggest, loudest, most obvious fraud in a marketplace full of them, and the legion of complainants who've since sued (ranging from the U.S. government to Norway's Sovereign Wealth Fund to state pension funds in Iowa and Oregon, among others) have found it painstaking work trying to get Bank of America to do the right thing and pay back the money its subsidiary took in its various ripoffs. And with executives boasting such poor memories, this story is going to drag on and on even longer.
Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/no-evidence-he-was-stoned-but-bank-of-america-ceo-brian-moynihan-apparently-doesn-t-remember-much-of-the-last-four-years-20121127#ixzz2MPEc1Tle
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Bank of America bought Countrywide in 2008.
9:00 p.m. | Updated Bank of America is continuing a large-scale retreat from its costly expansion into the home mortgage market, a shift that concentrates more power in the hands of its biggest rivals and leaves fewer options for some home buyers.
The bank, which already has sharply scaled back in making mortgages, on Monday sold off about 20 percent of its loan servicing business as part of its agreement to pay the housing finance giant Fannie Mae more than $11 billion to settle a bitter dispute over bad mortgages.
The payment resolves claims that Bank of America made bad mortgages before the financial crisis that home buyers had a hard time repaying, and then sold those troubled mortgages to the government. When borrowers defaulted — sometimes within months of taking out a mortgage — the taxpayer-supported Fannie Mae suffered immense losses.
The mortgage market could hurt consumers, potentially raising the costs of borrowing. The problems at Bank of America have cut down its mortgage ambitions; it accounts for 4 percent of the nation’s mortgage market, a slide from just over 20 percent in 2009, ceding market dominance to Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase.
While costly, analysts said, the settlements may reduce legal uncertainties for lenders and spur more banks to compete for home loan business.
In its agreement with Fannie Mae, which the government controls, Bank of America will pay the agency about $3.6 billion to compensate for faulty mortgages and $6.75 billion to buy back mortgages that could have resulted in future losses for the government. The bank also agreed to sell to other firms the right to collect payments on $306 billion worth of home loans.
“Bank of America is sending a clear message that the bank only wants to be the mortgage lender to a select, small group of people,” said Glenn Schorr, an analyst with Nomura.
Bank of America has been battered by a steady stream of losses after its 2008 purchase of Countrywide Financial, the subprime lender that has come to symbolize the reckless lending practices of the real estate bubble. Before Monday, the $4 billion Countrywide acquisition had cost Bank of America more than $40 billion in losses on real estate, legal costs and settlements. Most of the loans covered in the Fannie Mae settlement were issued by Countrywide from 2000 to 2008.
“These agreements are a significant step in resolving our remaining legacy mortgage issues, further streamlining and simplifying the company and reducing expenses over time,” the bank’s chief executive, Brian T. Moynihan, said in a statement.
Bank of America said it expected the settlement to depress its fourth-quarter earnings by $2.5 billion. Its shares, which doubled in 2012, on Monday essentially closed flat at just over $12.
While the settlement will resolve all of the lender’s disputes with Fannie Mae, which weighed on the bank, Bank of America still faces billions of dollars in claims from investors and federal prosecutors.
While the mortgage market is consolidating in the hands of a small number of banks, the housing market is showing signs of recovery. The Federal Reserve has spent hundreds of billions of dollars to stimulate the economy, driving down interest rates on 30-year mortgages to 3.34 percent. In the last year, this has helped lift house prices from their lows and prompted a boom in refinancings. At the same time, though, even borrowers with strong credit complain about onerous checks and backlogs in the application process. This suggests banks are still struggling to efficiently follow the higher standards introduced since the financial crisis.
Nearly all mortgages that banks make right now are transferred to the government, which guarantees that they will be repaid.
Most analysts agree that mortgage rates would be lower if banks were competing more vigorously for business. Because the settlements could ease legal uncertainties surrounding mortgage lending, a wider array of banks might be encouraged to lend more, eating into the market share of giants like Wells Fargo.
“Every one of these puts a little more distance between the banks and their subprime problems,” said Guy Cecala, publisher of Inside Mortgage Finance, an industry publication.
Wells Fargo made 30 percent of all new mortgages in the first nine months of 2012, far ahead of the second-place JPMorgan, which accounted for 10 percent of the market, according to figures from Inside Mortgage Finance. In 2007, Wells Fargo originated 11 percent of new mortgages.
“The markets are actually more competitive than ever,” said Vickee Adams, a spokeswoman for Wells Fargo Home Mortgage. She says smaller banks are making gains in some of the nation’s biggest urban markets.
Some mortgage analysts said the settlements did not provide the level of legal clarity that the banks crave. “We haven’t done enough listening to the banks,” said Christopher J. Mayer, a professor at Columbia Business School. For instance, he says, the banks need clearer rules on when they have to take back loans they have sold to government housing entities.
But a big problem may be that many banks are too poorly run to compete, a situation that may not quickly change even with greater legal clarity. Bank of America’s servicing operations have struggled for several years.
“It may be that Bank of America decided that it wasn’t good enough at servicing,” said Thomas Lawler, a former chief economist of Fannie Mae and founder of Lawler Economic and Housing Consulting, a housing analysis firm.
The bank is looking to refocus beyond the mortgage business. To that end, Bank of America agreed to offload the servicing rights on two million loans with an outstanding principal of $306 billion. Those rights were scooped up by specialty mortgage servicing firms, including Nationstar Mortgage Holdings and the Newcastle Investment Corporation, which collect payments from borrowers.
Jerry Dubrowski, a spokesman for Bank of America, said, “The strategy is simple: to focus on our core retail customers, to be able to provide an entire array of products and services to them, in which mortgage is an integral product, but not the only product.”
Correction: January 8, 2013
An earlier version of this article omitted one element of the settlement between Bank of America and Fannie Mae, and summaries of the article in some sections of nytimes.com consequently understated the total amount of the two mortgage-related settlements announced Monday. It is more than $20 billion, not $18.5 billion.
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August 29th 2012
Great News for New Jersey
The unsold housing inventory in New Jersey is at its lowest seasonally adjusted average since 2005.
This seeming is bringing back more value to the housing market.
U R Home as well as other experts in N.J told Renters buy NOW before the housing prices go up.
Are there still affordable homes available? YES however there is a rising cost.
Rental prices soared this summer, making renting not nearly as attractive as Home Ownership says U R Home.
Several Years ago U R Home as well as many others were saying this and no one would listen, Buyers became paranoid and stopped buying homes and started renting. Now Renting is costing the American People more this year than last. Renting vs Buying is only the tip of the iceberg but it still counts. Read this Link below. And if you haven't watched it at least twice make sure you watch ' TOO BIG TO FAIL"
http://www.thestreet.com/story/11665082/1/iceland-was-right-we-were-wrong-the-imf.html
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When Homeowners Lose,
Freddie Mac Wins
Freddie Mac, a taxpayer-owned mortgage company, is supposed to make homeownership easier. One thing that makes owning a home more affordable is getting a cheaper mortgage.
But Freddie Mac has invested billions of dollars betting that U.S. homeowners won't be able to refinance their mortgages at today's lower rates, according to an investigation by NPR andProPublica, an independent, nonprofit newsroom.
These investments, while legal, raise concerns about a conflict of interest within Freddie Mac.
"We were actually shocked they did this," says Scott Simon, who heads the mortgage-backed securities team at the giant bond trading and investment firm called PIMCO. "It seemed so out of line with their mission, out of line with what Congress wanted them to do."
EnlargeChip Somodevilla/Getty Images
In December, Freddie Mac CEO Charles Haldeman, FHFA acting Director Edward DeMarco and Fannie Mae CEO Michael Williams testified on Capitol Hill about the Federal Housing Finance Agency's performance.
Freddie Mac, formally called the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp., was chartered by Congress in 1970. On its website, it says it has "a public mission to stabilize the nation's residential mortgage markets and expand opportunities for homeownership." The company is owned by U.S. taxpayers and overseen by a regulator, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA).
In December, Freddie's chief executive, Charles Haldeman, assured Congress his company is "helping financially strapped families reduce their mortgage costs through refinancing their mortgages."
But public documents show that in 2010 and 2011, Freddie Mac set out to make gains for its own investment portfolio by using complex mortgage securities that brought in more money for Freddie Mac when homeowners in higher interest-rate loans were unable to qualify for a refinancing.
Those trades "put them squarely against the homeowner," PIMCO's Simon says.
Freddie Mac's trades came at a time when mortgage rates were falling to record lows. Millions of homeowners wish they could refinance, but their lenders tell them they can't qualify for today's low rates because of tight rules. Freddie Mac is one of the gatekeepers with the power to set those rules, and lately, it has been saying no more often to homeowners.
That raises concerns among some industry insiders who see a conflict: Freddie Mac's own financial health improves when homeowners can't refinance.
Simply put, "Freddie Mac prevented households from being able to take advantage of today's mortgage rates — and then bet on it," says Alan Boyce, a former bond trader who has been involved in efforts to push for more refinancing of home loans.
Freddie and FHFA repeatedly declined to comment on the specific transactions, but Freddie did say that its employees who make investment decisions are "walled off" from those who decide the rules for homeowners.
When Homeowners Lose, Freddie Mac Wins
Freddie Mac, based in Northern Virginia, says its job is to purchase "loans from lenders to replenish their supply of funds so that they [the lenders] can make more mortgage loans to other borrowers." That's one reason why Freddie has a gigantic portfolio containing loans that generate income from mortgage payments. Critics say this investment portfolio has been allowed to grow far larger than necessary to further Freddie's policy mission.
Plus, in 2010 and 2011, Freddie didn't just hold a simple pile of loans. Instead, for hundreds of thousands of home loans, it used Wall Street alchemy to chop these loans up into complicated securities — slices of which were sold in financial markets.
This hypothetical example may help explain what happens:1) Freddie Mac takes, say, $1 billion worth of home loans and packages them. With the help of a Wall Street banker, it can then slice off parts of the bundle to create different investment securities, some riskier than others. The slices could be set up so that, say, $900 million worth are relatively safe investments, based upon homeowners paying the principal on their mortgages.2) But the one remaining slice, worth $100 million, is the riskiest part. Freddie retains that slice, known as an "inverse floater," which receives all of the interest payments from the entire $1 billion worth of mortgages.3) That riskiest investment pays out a lucrative stream of interest payments. But Freddie's slice also has all the so-called "pre-payment risk" associated with that $1 billion worth of loans. So if lots of people "pre-pay" their old loans and refinance into new, cheaper ones, then Freddie Mac starts to lose money. If people can't refinance, then Freddie wins because it continues to receive that flow of older, higher interest payments.
If the homeowner is unable to refinance, the Freddie Mac portfolio managers win, Simon says. "And if the homeowner can refinance, they lose."
Refinancing A Path To Recovery
In his State of the Union address, President Obama pushed for legislation to allow "every responsible homeowner the chance to save about $3,000 a year on their mortgage" by refinancing without what he called "red tape" or a "runaround from the banks."
How Homeowner Assistance Fell Short
EnlargeJoe Raedle/Getty Images
In West Palm Beach, Fla., homeowners lined up for the 2010 Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America "Save the Dream" tour, hoping to restructure their mortgage loans.
Freddie Mac: Mortgage giants Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were government-sponsored enterprises that nearly failed during the 2008 financial crisis that brought down the U.S. housing market. The government took over the companies that year; it has sunk more than $169 billion into keeping them afloat. Freddie Mac was chartered by Congress in 1970.
"Our statutory mission is to provide liquidity, stability and affordability to the U.S. housing market," Freddie Mac says on its website. Fannie and Freddie own or guarantee trillions of dollars worth of mortgages and mortgage-backed securities. The Securities and Exchange Commission has charged that six former top executives of Frannie and Freddie misled investors about the firms' exposure to high-risk mortgages.
FHFA: The Federal Housing Finance Agency has regulated Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae since the government took them over in 2008. The FHFA was created as part of the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008, which was designed in part to allow borrowers to refinance with lower-cost, government-backed mortgages.
The Obama administration has been pressing the FHFA to allow more homeowners to refinance their government-backed loans at lower rates. But so far, programs to help millions of homeowners lower their costs have fallen short of expectations.
Refinancing: With mortgage rates at historic lows, millions of homeowners could save hundreds of dollars a month by refinancing their mortgages. Rates for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages have remained below 4 percent for several weeks in a row. But many homeowners can't qualify for refinancing because their homes are "underwater" — the value has dropped far below the amount that they owe on their mortgages. In many cases, they can't get a "re-fi" because they have been tripped up by a tangle of complicated eligibility requirements and paperwork.
— Avie Schneider
Columbia University economist Chris Mayer supports such an approach. "A widespread refinancing program would have many benefits — not only helping the economy and putting tens of billions of dollars back in consumers' pockets, the equivalent of a very long-term tax cut," he says.
"It also is likely to reduce foreclosures and benefit the U.S. government by having fewer losses that they have to pay," Mayer adds.
In the long term, he says, allowing more Americans to refinance would help taxpayers as well as mortgage giants Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, because they would suffer fewer losses related to foreclosures. These inverse floater trades, however, give Freddie Mac a short-term incentive to resist such so-called "mass re-fi" programs.
"If there was a mass re-fi program, the bets they made would get absolutely wiped out," PIMCO's Simon says. "The way these bets do the best is if the homeowner is barred from refinancing."
In a written statement, Freddie said it "is actively supporting efforts for borrowers to realize the benefits of refinancing their mortgages to lower rates." It also says it refinanced loans for hundreds of thousands of borrowers just last year.
Fannie and Freddie have taken part in an existing federal program known as "HARP" to help Americans refinance, but many economists say far more homeowners would benefit if Fannie and Freddie were to implement the program more aggressively.
Stuck In 'Financial Jail'
Some homeowners believe the current re-fi game is stacked against them.
Jay and Bonnie Silverstein describe themselves as truly stuck in a bad mortgage. They live in an unfinished development of yellow stucco houses north of Philadelphia. The developer went bankrupt.
The Silversteins bought this home before the housing market crashed, and then couldn't sell their old house. They now say that buying a new home before selling the old one was a mistake — a painful one. Stuck with two mortgages, they started to get behind on their payments on the old house.
"It wound up taking us years to sell that house, so we had two homes and two mortgages for two-and-a-half years," Jay Silverstein says. "It burned up my 401(k) and drained us."
Jay Silverstein has a modest pension, and they haven't missed a mortgage payment on their current home. Still, they are struggling. They could make the monthly payment on their new home if they could just refinance — down from their current interest rate of near 7 percent to today's rates below 4 percent. That could save them roughly $500 a month.
EnlargeChris Arnold/NPR
If Jay and Bonnie Silverstein were able to refinance their mortgage, they could save nearly $500 a month. "We're living paycheck to paycheck," Jay says.
"You know, we're living paycheck to paycheck," he says. A lower rate "might go a long way toward helping us."
But that's the problem — getting approved for a refinancing. Here's why: After the housing market crashed, the Silversteins' old house had to be sold for less than the mortgage was worth. That's known as a short sale.
Freddie Mac has been tightening lending restrictions, and one of its restrictions blocks people with a short sale in their past from refinancing for up to four years following that short sale. So the Silversteins are stranded by the rule.
"We're in financial jail," Jay says. "We've never been there before."
Tight For Homeowners, But Elsewhere, Money Still Flows
Economists say that during the housing bubble, lending standards got too loose. Now many believe the pendulum has swung too far, making rules too tight.
The short-sale restriction may be a good example. For a home purchase, such a rule may be prudent, but allowing people with existing loans to refinance actually lowers the risk that they may default by giving them more affordable mortgage payments.
In a recent analysis of remedies for the stalled housing market, the Federal Reserve criticized Fannie and Freddie for the fees they have charged for refinancing. Such fees are "another possible reason for low rates of refinancing," the Fed wrote, adding that the charges are "difficult to justify."
Meanwhile, even though Freddie is a ward of the federal government, its top executives are highly compensated. The Freddie Mac official then in charge of its investment portfolio, Peter Federico, made $2.5 million in 2010, and had target compensation of $2.6 million for last year — the time period during which most of these inverse floater investments were made. ProPublica and NPR made numerous attempts to reach Federico. A woman who answered his home phone said he declined to comment.
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BANKRUPTCY AND FORECLOSURE don't disqualify you from ever using
your VA home loan benefits.
You may need to wait a year or two depending on when these events
occurred, and rebuilding your credit is key.
But these don't preclude you from getting a no-down payment home
loan.
