CLOSED

 

I’ve closed this business.  However, it may be helpful to some to leave this material up for research and educational purposes, so that’s what I’ll do.

Best political summary of 2010

Cartoon from Investor's Business Daily

downplaying foreclosure paperwork failings

This is not about a missing signature here or there.

•  It’s about the big banks trying to subvert the Land Title laws which the common law has relied on for hundreds of years.   The reason our laws and customs REQUIRE these documents are in writing AND recorded AND requiring the original signatures  is to protect the people from grievous, irreparable harm.

Has cutting corners led to clouded titles on half the properties sold in the past decade?  Who pays for that remedy? If title insurers withdraw from the market, how will you sell your house next year?

•  It’s about mortgage backed securities sold to your pension fund and mutual funds in which the Trustee, in black and white expressed contract,  certified there was a valid chain of endorsements on the mortgages and notes delivered into the trust.  How many MBS are hollow shells, without assets?     Failure of these MBS vitiate their tax-favored REMIC status, requiring a 100% tax, retroactive.  So what are the pensions worth now?

•  It’s about banks thumbing their nose at the notary laws.

•  It’s about banks demanding the courts permit them to ‘cure irregularities in paperwork’ when the black letter of the law prohibits it.

•  It’s about the banks filing motions with the courts demanding the silence of opposing attorneys that expose bank affidavits given ‘in bad faith.’

•  It’s about banks hiring shop clerks to sit and forge signatures all day without the clerks even understanding what the word “affidavit’ is.

•  It’s about banks forging notices of process service for foreclosures.

•  It’s about banks filing notices of assignment of mortgages AFTER the foreclosure lawsuit was filed.

•  It’s about bank vendors relying on document forgery consultants to ‘recreate’ a paper trail.

•  It’s NOT about people not honoring their commitment and ‘getting a free house.’  A note is the promise to pay, and the mortgage is the security interest in the property.   It may be found that the mortgage itself is invalid and the collateral (the house) cannot be repossessed. But the note itself still exists.  The question is to whom are the payments made.

• It’s about the banks deliberately destroying notes and documents or shipping them off to India ‘for storage’ in order to obfuscate legal discovery.

•  It is about preserving property rights and the rule of law, and preventing another staggering lurch into the dark world without rule of law.

•  It will be about banks trying to evade the financial and criminal consequences of their mortgage ‘pump and dump’ onto the taxpayer. Again.

Foreclosure resolutions

It’s extraordinarily difficult to summarize the mortgage/foreclosure/note transfers/securitization mess.   I point you to 4closurefraud.org and foreclosurehamlet.org blogs to get you started on the grassroots horror stories.

Karl Denninger’s Market Ticker is a good source of much of the background on the financial ramifications.  It’s unknowable at this point, but I understand that nearly all of these mortgage backed securities (MBS) have the legal structure that requires the mortgage notes to be delivered by a specified closing date to receive the special tax treatment of the interest.  Think of it as Noah’s Ark… if the mortgage note isn’t in the boat when the door closes, tough luck. If the special REMIC tax treatment is violated, it’s revocable to inception, and the revenuers will have a field day.

Portfolio managers might discover their mortgage backed portfolio doesn’t legally own the notes it thinks.  Portfolios (mutual funds, pension funds, etc.) may very well have to chase down the Wall Street bank that sold the MBS and sue for fraud and nonperformance.  Where will the investment banks get the capital to reimburse the damages, if found in judgment?    Personally, if I was a portfolio manager with a pile in what are supposed to be valid mortgage notes, I’d have someone seriously sampling the collateral.

A political take-away is be sure to chuckle and shake your head at the next candidate that says they want to get rid of the office of the Secretary of State.  The leading elected official to cry ‘foul’ in this mess is Ohio SecState Jennifer Brunner.  With her prompting, the Ohioh AG is suing GMAC – known now as Ally Bank — for fraud to the tune of $25,000 per false notarization on foreclosures.  Doing the math, of  one bank, in one state …

It was humbling to leaf through the foreclosure notices posted at the town hall this week.  These are my neighbors. If they pledged their property as collateral, and things didn’t work out, they get to suffer the consequences.  But property rights and contract rights are inviolable, and our justice system and our legislators must not permit shortcuts.

Chef Jeff’s Fox West Cooking Show

Heyer Capital, LLC is pleased to advertise with the “Chef Jeff Fox West Cooking Show.”  This special event will be held on February 18 at Immanuel Lutheran School in Greenville, WI.

Chef Jeff Igel, Department Chair, Culinary Arts & Hospitality,  Fox Valley Technical College and guest, Chef Mark Biesack, Head Chef, Lawrence University, will be presenting the cooking show.  The theme this year will be “Guilt Free Comfort Classics.”  (I’ve had Jeff’s Christmas candies, so I know we’re in for a treat.)

Doors open at 5pm and the cooking show will take place from 7:00 – 8:30pm.  There will be special goody bags along with exhibitor tables that may have samplings available.  Special appearances made by Kathy Keene, WHBY along with “The Biggest Losers” Cathy Skell & Kristin Steede.

CEO: I’m not going to hire anybody in the US

This is largely a repost from Jeff Matthew’s “Is Not Making It Up” blog.

Comments from Emerson Electric CEO David Farr.

“I’m Not Going to Hire Anybody in the United States”

“Now, to tell you how bad this is and tell you what I think Washington is doing right now, Washington is doing everything in their manpower capability to destroy US manufacturers, fundamentally destroy US manufacturers.

“Cap and trade, medical reform, labor rules, whatever they want to do, raise taxes. They’re just going to destroyed jobs. We have already reached 7.3 million jobs in this downturn. We’re going to 8. That is a summation of the last four downturns.

“So what do you think the recovery is going to be in jobs? It ain’t going to be very good. I listen to everything Washington is doing — wasting money, raising the deficit to 10, $12 trillion — the debt level to 10, $12 trillion, going to $23 trillion; raising taxes; putting regulations and requirements on me as a manufacturing company.

“What do you think I’m going to do? I’m not going to hire anybody in the United States. I’m moving. So they’re doing everything possible to destroy jobs, in my opinion. That’s my opinion as a manufacturer and we employ 125,000 people worldwide. So I do know what the (expletive) I’m talking about.

“We used to employ a lot more in the United States and we will continue to move [all this]. When I see guys like this, Wall Street bailouts, car bailouts, I’m looking — what are these guys doing with our money? They’re wasting trillions of dollars, trillions of dollars.

“So what they are going to do, they’re going to pass a new medical healthcare, raise my costs, jobs will go. Cap and trade, tax me, jobs will go. It’s pretty straightforward. What they’re doing right now ain’t working. 8 million jobs, summation of the last four downturns….

Flash trading

The link below is a very fair explanation of why flash trading is plainly not fair dealing with the public and how this horrendous practice costs Joe & Mary Lunchbucket billions by the penny.

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/themis-trading