Is this the end of bankster rule?

It should be!

There comes a time after a period of military rule when the troops are sent back to the barracks.  Military governments may provide order but they really suck at everything else so eventually they are "requested" by the other powerful actors in the society to return to marching, shoe-polishing, and whatever else idle troops do.

There is no reasonable definition of a coup d' etat  that does not cover the behavior of the banksters in the past 30 years.  Military governments can only dream of the power that banker-institutions have wielded over sovereign nations.  And for whatever reason the bankers were accorded this power, it IS time for those folks to go back to their barracks as well.

A European Lynch Mob is coming for Bank of America 

Matt Schifrin  Oct. 25 2010 - 1:01 am 

I pity CEO Brian Moynihan and the 284,000 other employees of Bank of America Corp (BAC). That includes 15,000 Merrill Lynch brokers who are still recovering from the financial crisis and now have to explain to their clients why they work for a firm that is at the epicenter of America’s housing crisis.

Not only have they seen $80 billion in stock market value evaporate since April but they also have to suffer the humiliation of having a parent company bone-headed enough to pay $4 billion for Countrywide, the financial firm created by subprime mortgage pimp Angelo Mozilo. That mess could wind up costing BAC $50 billion, excluding legal fees and brand value deterioration. Remember Countrywide originated $1.4 trillion in mortgages from 2005 to 2007 alone.

The latest ugly news for Bank of America is actually coming from Europe, where big institutional money managers and other mortgage securities buyers are now beginning to organize for an assault. This information comes from John Mauldin’s, Thoughts from the Frontline Weekly Newsletter. His e-letter is a must-read for many money managers and serious investors.

This week he devotes a lot of his letter to testimony that seems to prove that big banks like Citigroup (C) and BAC were negligent and even willfully careless in underwriting subprime mortgages. He also reports on some new ominous developments brewing overseas and that law firm Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan , which specializes in going after money center banks, has been hired by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac parent, the FHFA. more

And Business Week kicks in with this.

Mortgage Mess: Shredding the Dream

The foreclosure crisis isn't just about lost documents. It's about trust—and a clash over who gets stuck with $1.1 trillion in losses

Even if the documentation problems turn out to be manageable—as Bank of America (BAC) and others insist they will be—the economy will still suffer long-term consequences from the loose underwriting that caused the subprime housing bubble. According to an Oct. 15 report by J.P. Morgan (JPM) Securities, some $2 trillion of the $6 trillion in U.S. mortgages and home-equity loans that were securitized during the height of the bubble, from 2005 through 2007, are likely to go into default. The report says the housing bust will ultimately cause losses of $1.1 trillion on those bonds.

While banks and investors take their hits, millions of homeowners continue to be punished by unaffordable mortgage payments and underwater home values. Laurie Goodman, a mortgage analyst at Amherst Securities Group, said in an Oct. 1 report that if government doesn't step up its intervention, over 11 million borrowers are in danger of losing their homes. That's one in five people with a mortgage. "Politically," she wrote, "this cannot happen. The government will attempt successive modification plans until something works."

Wall Street's unspoken strategy has been to kick mortgage losses down the road until an economic recovery reinflates the housing market. The faulty-foreclosure crisis has forced the issue back into the present tense, triggering a fight over who will bear the brunt of those losses. The combatants—all of whom are trying to minimize their share of the damage—include homeowners, lenders and mortgage brokers, loan servicers and the underwriters of mortgage-backed securities, the buyers of those securities, title insurers, rating firms, and the federally controlled mortgage buyers Fannie Mae (FNM) and Freddie Mac (FRD). more

Bair: Foreclosuregate Is A ****show

• BAIR: LITIGATION FROM SERVICER ISSUES COULD BE `VERY DAMAGING’
• BAIR SAYS FORECLOSURE PROBLEMS WILL REQUIRE `GLOBAL SOLUTION’
• BAIR: CRISIS REQUIRES `DECISIVE’ ACTION FOR MORTGAGE SYSTEM
• BAIR: FDIC SECURITIZATION RULES `CONSISTENT’ WITH DODD-FRANK
• BAIR SAYS CRISIS REVEALED `CRITICAL FLAWS’ IN MORTGAGE FINANCE

No **** Sherlock.

Here’s reality:

Lots of notes appear to have never been conveyed. When the MBS holders get their landsharks into this, the servicers and securitizers are screwed. Got it? Done, baked, cooked, finished.

The only “Global Solution” is to put the institutions that did this into recievership. Right now. BEFORE the landsharks cause a VERY disorderly collapse. We have a resolution authority. Use it. These institutions must be forced to eat the crap that they foisted off on pension funds and insurance companies. If they claimed they had original endorsed paper for each loan (and they all did) and did not that is black-letter fraud. So is selling someone paper you claim is good when you know it is not, and again, we have under-oath testimony documenting that this was done willfully and intentionally. This is fraud in the inducement against MBS holders and those who committed it must be forced to eat the consequences.

The question of fraud in the inducement against borrowers must be answered to. This is not a “technical matter.” Citibank’s former chief underwriter has testified under oath that he, and the rest of management, knew that 60% of production was bogus in 2006 and 80% in 2007. These loans are avoidable under long-existing law. You cannot create a binding contract where you have reason to know that the other party cannot perform, and long-standing law codifies this officially in terms of debts and security instruments - giving someone a loan where they retain insufficient assets and income to pay as agreed renders the security of the instrument and thus the loan avoidable. Period more

Hey, during the Great Depression, they had to suspend foreclosures.  This time, the massive lawbreaking by the banksters may trigger a de facto foreclosure moratorium.

HOMEOWNERS' REBELLION: 

COULD 62 MILLION HOMES BE FORECLOSURE-PROOF?

Ellen Brown, August 18th, 2010

http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/homeowners.php

Over 62 million mortgages are now held in the name of MERS, an electronic recording system devised by and for the convenience of the mortgage industry. A California bankruptcy court, following landmark cases in other jurisdictions, recently held that this electronic shortcut makes it impossible for banks to establish their ownership of property titles—and therefore to foreclose on mortgaged properties. The logical result could be 62 million homes that are foreclosure-proof.

Mortgages bundled into securities were a favorite investment of speculators at the height of the financial bubble leading up to the crash of 2008. The securities changed hands frequently, and the companies profiting from mortgage payments were often not the same parties that negotiated the loans. At the heart of this disconnect was the Mortgage Electronic Registration System, or MERS, a company that serves as the mortgagee of record for lenders, allowing properties to change hands without the necessity of recording each transfer.

MERS was convenient for the mortgage industry, but courts are now questioning the impact of all of this financial juggling when it comes to mortgage ownership. To foreclose on real property, the plaintiff must be able to establish the chain of title entitling it to relief. But MERS has acknowledged, and recent cases have held, that MERS is a mere “nominee”—an entity appointed by the true owner simply for the purpose of holding property in order to facilitate transactions. Recent court opinions stress that this defect is not just a procedural but is a substantive failure, one that is fatal to the plaintiff’s legal ability to foreclose.

That means hordes of victims of predatory lending could end up owning their homes free and clear—while the financial industry could end up skewered on its own sword. more