Tag: derivatives

Staggering Statistical Anomaly


Staggering Statistical Anomaly

By Jim Macklin
Secure Document Research

There is a staggering statistical anomaly that must be brought to light in the wake of the foreclosure crisis that has crippled capital markets across the globe. While Wall St. had its profits see glorious heights never imagined before, mid-stream America saw trillions in equity slip through their fingers.
 
Hedge fund managers sought to “sell-forward” as much of the tainted paper as could be heaped onto unsuspecting investment groups. Teachers’ retirement funds, firefighters, state and county workers, you know, the hardest working people in the world, were made promises of “AAA” ratings, with derivatives as a hedge against the unlikely scenario of mass defaults. When the door swung shut, and the folks who were shoveling sh*t and calling it sugar  ran out of money and ran for cover…millions of homes were nearly instantaneously lost to the phantoms who were behind the entire scheme…Wall St. investment bankers.
 
Without any skin in the game, Wall St. has single-handedly run the biggest equity/land grab in the history of mankind…and nobody seems to mind. This leaves an inventory of empty homes strewn across this nation like an abandoned game of ball & jacks of massive proportions.
 
Here we go… in the United States today, there are over 18.5 million houses with nobody living in them. In the United States today, we have over 3.75 million homeless persons. The formulaic equation applied here is simple: every homeless person in the U.S. could occupy 6 homes each!
 
Think about the rationale being espoused to the general public through the media. The banks have taken over 1.7 trillion dollars in relief of one form or another as a result of their own careless actions. Meanwhile, millions of service veterans, single mothers, children, and innocent victims of “bad times” are filling the streets and shelters. But does anyone at the bank lift a finger to state the obvious? Of course not. The bank, instead, hordes the millions of vacant homes and simply waits for a large group of investors, or an even larger group of new, upcoming credit worthy younger Americans to pony up even more money for a home that has been prostituted out to anyone who temporarily qualifies as a “good risk”.
 
Does everyone see what I see? Is this not the easiest fix, making the most sense for all parties concerned? For those not yet putting this two piece puzzle together (CONGRESS), public placement of homeless, disparaged, displaced persons into a caretaker position, even if merely temporary, to insure maintenance and property care to the empty homes, and people who truly need the shelter get a place to call home…even if only temporary. One could assemble a master team of the most regionally qualified persons in need of temporary assistance (they’re not hard to locate, just go to the local shelters and ask for someone who might be interested in a home), set a rotational system of caretaking for the 6 homes that each homeless person could occupy and maintain while looking for more meaningful work, and a set of standards applied to the caretakers that matches what the banks are currently employing.
 
The average bank is spending nearly $12,000 per year in maintenance fees for these abandoned, empty houses. Do you think that the homeless, probably jobless, person would mind mowing a lawn once a week and possibly doing some light maintenance for $12 grand and a home? For those of you that are thinking “yeah, but what if they destroy the home, or turn it into a drug emporium?” What do you think is going on right now? 
 
So, Congress, state worker programs, Veterans Administration, Salvation Army, Wells Fargo, Bank of America… call me, I have a really cool plan that would be amazingly simple to implement. What would be the harm in trying…a benefit to someone who hasn’t paid your nominal fee for  playing the ball & jacks game you call mortgage banking? 
 
We’ll call it: “Homes for the Homeless”. Surely some political candidate could use this premise to further their self-preserving interests.
 
My next blog will address a method for re-valuing property to a true net present value and getting a fresh start. Pay attention if you own multiple properties, this could reduce your debt by hundreds of thousands of dollars, and is recognized throughout the court system without litigating or arguing (much). Strategic bankruptcy! They do work and thousands of people are saving millions of dollars through the “cram-down”.
 

World Savings Bank, A Living Legacy of the Subprime Crisis

World Savings Bank, A Living Legacy of the Subprime Crisis

By Daniel Edstrom
DTC Systems, Inc.
http://www.dtc-systems.net
http://livinglies.wordpress.com

World Savings Bank loans were the worst of the worst loans that were packaged up and sold to homeowners from the 1990’s until 2008.  These loans consisted of pick a pay loans with negative amortization.  Typical predatory negative amortization loans allow for the original loan balance to increase to 110% maximum.  Meaning if the loan was originally issued at $100,000.00, the loan balance can keep going negative until it reaches $110,000.00.   World Savings Bank decided that this wasn’t enough and allowed their negative amortization loans to reach 125% of the original principal balance.  This is the gift that keeps on giving.  As home values have been decimated by the meltdown and continue to drop, properties with World Savings Bank loans have principal balances that keep going up and up and up.  No underwriting was given on these loans, the value of the properties and the promise and belief they would ever rise was the only consideration given to support the loan.  The other consideration used in “lending” the money had nothing to do with the homeowners.  World Savings Bank wanted to entice investors into parting with their money.  Lots of money.  In fact BILLIONS and BILLIONS of dollars.  It turns out that World Savings Bank had NO STAKE in the transaction, they were only the middleman.  One big fat rich middleman.  This was at the expense of both borrowers and investors who purchased certificates from the many REMICs setup by World Savings Bank.  What REMICs?  What securitizations?  Didn’t Wells Fargo tell you that these loans were securitized?   Why does the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (the OCC) allow Wells Fargo Bank to foreclose in their own name on the tens of thousands of World Savings Bank foreclosures?  The OCC knows much more than the American people what World Savings Bank, Wachovia and Wells Fargo Bank are doing to the American homeowners.  Namely that Wells Fargo Bank is walking into court claiming to be the real party in interest, claiming that they own these loans and that they were never securitized.   Of course this is nothing new for Wells Fargo Bank or Wachovia.  Just look at the auto loans securitized by Wachovia Dealer Services.  Wachovia Dealer Services did not loan the money as these were table funded automobile loans.  The money used to fund the automobile loans came from various trusts that pooled the loans and sold them to investors.  The trusts and/or the investors allegedly own the loans and not Wachovia Dealer Services or Wells Fargo Bank.  But you would never know this by going to just about any state court in this country and looking at who the plaintiff is thats filing a judicial lawsuit on these automobile loans: Wachovia Dealer Services.  Reading the Prospectus for these deals is a real eye opener:  Title will remain in the name of Wachovia Dealer Services and even though the loans are sold, the abstract of title given to the DMV will not be updated to reflect the correct ownership.  They go on to admit that title has not been perfected and that the certificateholders are at risk.  It even goes on to say that the loan contracts will not be updated to reflect that ownership has changed (endorsement under state UCC laws).  So you have no endorsement and no transfer (no perfection).  The beneficial and equitable rights have been sold.  The above all describes predatory banking, lending and servicing at its worst.

Continue reading “World Savings Bank, A Living Legacy of the Subprime Crisis”

Financial Control Fraud

Financial Control Fraud

By Jim Macklin
Secure Document Research

When a person or persons who own or oversee the operations of a seemingly legitimate business or Governmental Agency uses that business or agency as a “weapon”, it is known as a control fraud. The term was coined by UMKC Professor William Black (The Best Way To Rob A Bank Is To Own One, Black, 2005). The “weapon of choice” in a financial control fraud is accounting. More losses occur in financial control frauds than any other form of property crimes …combined!

In the early stages of our most recent financial crisis, the FBI had correctly identified the presence of the type of fraud, yet, the Bush administration failed to effect any real consequences, and so the fraud was swept under the rugs of the administrations’ offices. De-regulation and the advent of hyper-bonuses helped to encourage the practices of the ratings agencies, hedge fund managers, and CEO’s of the Wall Street elite, while the AAA rated “junk bonds” went out for sale with a frenzied push for more paper. Never before, in the history of Wall Street, had a AAA rated bond gone into a default. Remember, these ratings agencies hadn’t even bothered to sample the veracity or viability of the loan files upon which these ratings were issued. This is a control fraud in its’ simplest and purest form, with all of the key players indemnified against losses through trust agreements. This is the smoking gun.

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Obligations and Defaults

We now jump ahead in the story and skip all the details of securitization including when, if and how your loan was allegedly transferred into the mortgage loan pool (the securitization trust).

If you haven’t heard of John Courson,

I want to change that.

John is the President and CEO of the Mortgage Bankers Association.

by Daniel Edstrom

Mr. Courson believes that it is a moral imperative to keep your financial obligations.  If you haven’t seen the video here http://www.thedailyshow.com/, you should.

Now let’s look at the alleged obligations and who is actually obligated.  This will lead us down the road to defaults and who is actually in default.  If you have a mortgage, you by default are the obligor because you are the one with the “obligation” to repay.  The note you signed is not the obligation but is evidence of the obligation.  The obligation arose when money was advanced by a “creditor” and you accepted the money.  So even if the note doesn’t exist there is still an obligation.  A default occurs when you fail to meet the terms of your obligation.  In days gone by this would be the end of the story, but thanks to Wall Street financial engineering we haven’t even reached the beginning yet.

We now jump ahead in the story and skip all the details of securitization including when, if and how your loan was allegedly transferred into the mortgage loan pool (the securitization trust).  We will just assume for the sake of argument that your loan is in the pool and that everything is A-OK, which is what the big banks with the robo-signing blues are saying anyway.  The SEC Filings are the governing documents and because they are typically a thousand pages of legal gibberish, you have to understand what words mean, such as “obligation” and “default”.  Let’s start with default.  Here is what US Bank, N.A., which acts as Trustee on thousands of securitized trusts says a default is (from http://www.usbank.com/cgi_w/cfm/commercial_business/products_and_services/corp_trust/terms_ps.cfm#d): Continue reading “Obligations and Defaults”