Saturday, May 01, 2010

Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems (MERS): A System Designed to Create the Mortgage Back Security Bubble.



In our rural community here in Oregon, I've noticed the vital stastistics pages in the local newspaper have been growing. This is a weekly publication and has five pages of mostly foreclosures. Seven out of twelve of them were attributed to Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, which is why I checked them out.

This Guy knows the haps...

Dr. Housing Bubble

I’ve gotten many e-mails regarding the Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems (MERS) case out of the Kansas Supreme Court. This is an important case but first let us discuss what MERS is. MERS claims to be a privately-held company and their function is keeping track of a confidential electronic registry of mortgages and the modifications to servicing rights and ownership of the loans. However, if you dig deeper into MERS and their shareholders you will find the same crony bankers that have led our economy off the financial cliff. Some of the shareholders include AIG, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, WaMu, CitiMortgage, Countrywide, GMAC, Guaranty Bank, and Merrill Lynch. It is a stunner how these same players show up in every financial war we have been dealing with.

MERS was founded in 1995 under the pretext that it would lower the cost of recording an assignment of ownership in county land records. By the way, as someone that has bought property in multiple states the filing fee is the lowest cost in acquiring a home. If you cannot afford the tiny fee in recording the deed then you probably shouldn’t be buying a home. The reality of course is MERS allowed for the mortgage backed security business to explode since it allowed mortgages to be shipped off to Wall Street to be minced into tiny tranches and sold off by the big investment banks to pensions, foreign investors, retail investors, and everyone else that wanted a piece of the mortgage bubble.

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Kansas Supreme Court

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