They’d keep only electronic records in a database that only they have access to. And they would enter the data–with virtually no way to check its accuracy. MERS had a total of 50 employees, with somewhere around a dozen of whom were supposed to do some checking of the tens of millions of mortgages handled. Heck the typical ballpark has more people hired to tally up the strikes and balls. To say that this was a disaster waiting to happen–even if the banksters had been good-intentioned (which they were not)–is an understatement.
More importantly, if you really did have a mortgage, they could package and repackage and re-repackage that mortgage upteen times into as many securitizations as they felt like originating and selling, earning fees as they duped investors into believing that each had a unique claim to your monthly payment.
You see, the advantage of shredding the paperwork and moving to an electronic registry system is that you can copy and paste the data as many times as you want. If you have a computer and a mouse, you’ve got all the equipment you need for replication–suddently that single mortgage can be sold as many times as you want.
And any 10 year old can doctor the electronic entries–a mortgage against 7825 Main Street becomes, prestO-changeO, 8825 Main Street–so that mortgages are easily placed against properties.
At foreclosure time, the only thing protecting a homeowner from theft would be a quizzical judge (and only then in judicial foreclosure states), asking to see the paper docs. There aren’t many quizzical judges, since most judges are already deep in the back pockets of the banks. Still, when that happened, the banks were ready with the BurgerKing robo-signing kids to fabricate the needed docs.
It is not an overstatement to say that the Global Financial Crisis would not have happened without MERS. MERS was absolutely essential to the “efficient” securitization model that led up to the crisis.
It is all illegal. There was never any law that permitted the industry to create MERS to evade US property law (and to avoid paying recording fees in local jurisdictions). Many brave homeowners have fought against the banksters, taking their cases to court.
The banks have lost some cases, but have also won some. So, predictably, our lawmakers and other policymakers are moving to legalize home theivery. Make it all completely above-board. Create a national electronic registry along the model created by MERS. The intention is to destroy property law and to undermine local property records that protect American homeowners. It is led, of course, by the banksters, but also–I guess not surprisingly–by the Fed.
You see, the Fed does not like local proptery law. It acts like sand in the securitization-foreclosure cogwheels created by the banksters. They want the cheapest, quickest way to turn your home into a money-making machine. Making money for them, that is. They do not want local yokels slowing that down by actually trying to protect the interests of local homeowners. What, you want accurate property records? You want to know who owns your mortgage? You want to know when a bank sells your mortgage to some foreign bank? You want to be able to track down who you are supposed to make payments to, and whether they actually received them? No, the Fed and the Bankers do not think you have a right to this sort of information. They’ll keep it for you in a national electronic registry. No more going down to your local recording office to find out.
In truth, you cannot do that any more. MERS and the banksters already destroyed the chain of title. The Fed wants to rubberstamp what the industry already did.
The Fed wants to keep securitization cheap–indeed, the Fed is quite open about that. It wants to reboot 2004 all over again. It wants to bring back the subprime bubble. Steamrolling a new–legal this time–MERS is part of the plan to boost another real estate bubble. It was so much fun last time around! And there are still some Americans among the 99% who still own their homes. The banks need to mortgage those so they can foreclose and move the rest of the real estate to the top 1%. Here’s an excellent piece summarizing the issues: http://www.marinkapeschmann.com/2014/07/10/exposed-federal-reserve-doc-go-from-paper-homeowner-instruments-to-electronic-foreclosure-fraud-what-fraud/.
Some people are standing up, trying to slow down that steamroller.
Here’s a link to a protest that begins at noon today: http://www.rollingrebellion.org/protest-at-the-uniform-law-conference/.
If you are in the Seattle area today, show up.