Category: politics

Beware of those offers of "modification"

December 20, 2008

The lenders are out in force trying to get you to sign something new. Most of the offers accomplish only two things: (1) ratification of a loan that was unenforceable and (2) a virtual guarntee that you will end up with worse problem than when you started in as little as 3 months; QUESTION: I have been working with Wachovia, and they have granted me a three month deferment of my mortgage. I need to respond to them by Monday. QUESTION 1: If I do accept this modification with them, would that mean we will be unable to continue to

Clearinghouse and Trustees Defined From Garfield's Glossary: Some of the new entries

December 20, 2008

CLEARINGHOUSE: A company or government sponsored entity that either takes physical possession of transactional documents and records them on its own books. An accepted clearinghouse’s records is used as business records to prove ownership of a particular security or other transactional document. Cede and Company and others are the clearinghouse for quadrillions of dollars of transactions. It is unclear and indeed doubtful that the unregulated mortgage backed certificates sold investors are registered with any conventional clearinghouse, despite the fact that these certificates did have a secondary market in which the trading volume of these certificates was traded in low volume.

WORKSHOPS COMING UP 8 CA CLE & 9.5 FLA CLE CREDITS

December 17, 2008

PLEASE SUPPORT THIS SITE !!! donation-form-1108 Florida Bar Approves Garfield Continuum for 9.5 CLE Credits Lawyers Workshop Registration Form – November 2, 2009 Homeowners Workshop Registration Form – November 1, 2009 What Lawyers Are Saying About Neil Garfield\’s Seminars covered-in-the-garfield-continuum-workshops-you-can-look-this-stuff-up-in-wikopedia REQUIRED READING: appraisal-fraud-and-industry-standards-described-in-2003-official-white-paper-red-flags-described-in-detail-with-excellent-diagrams-explanations-and-descriptions-of-best-practices Work and Play in Sunny Clearwater Beach FL How to Save $$ while attending Garfield Event(s) Clearwater Beach FL November 1-2, 2009 * Reserve Workshop Seat prior to Oct 23, 2009 for Early Bird discount on Registration * Mention Garfield’s Foreclosure Defense Group when reserving rooms to get special Group Rate of $99 * Check into flying into Tampa/St. Petersburg and other airports within a short drive multiple

Harvard-educated architect to lead an agency dealing with the mortgage mess

December 14, 2008

Submitted on 2008/12/14 at 8:37pm by Philip Elliott | The Associated Press Saturday December 13, 2008, 3:54 PM CHICAGO — Promising a prominent role for his housing department, President-elect Barack Obama on Saturday named a Harvard-educated architect to lead an agency dealing with the mortgage mess that dragged the country into a recession. Former Clinton aide: New York Housing Preservation and Development Commissioner Shaun Donovan has a national reputation for developing affordable housing.With one in 10 U.S. homeowners delinquent on mortgage payments or in foreclosure, Obama said New York City housing commissioner Shaun Donovan will bring “fresh thinking, unencumbered by

Livinglies Discovers where the documents and emails are kept by whom

December 13, 2008

It was only a matter of time. This is probably the tip of the iceberg. index.htm “Autonomy ZANTAZ is renowned for its blue chip customer base including diverse and global corporations ranging across industry sectors and geographies, including banking, insurance, pharmaceutical, medical products, biotech, healthcare, entertainment, energy, law firms and litigation services. Furthermore, US and European government agencies have entrusted 20 billion emails to our hosted archive solutions and 1 billion pages of active legal documents to our legal review and production software-as-a-service (SaaS). Our customers count on us to tie together our archiving and discovery technology to produce over

MERS Scandal Exposed and Explained

December 9, 2008

Kevin Lamson Said, So can anyone guess the name of “organization” that was formed by Countrywide’s, Anthony Mazillo and Fannie Mae’s, James Johnson ten years ago it start with an M? No not the Mafia. It’s Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems Inc. commonly referred to as MERS. Yes that’s right Countrywide and Fannie Mae were the lead organizers of MERS and are shareholders and “members” of MERS. Here are excerpts from an investigative report on MERS I have been working on for the last several months. This may help shed some much needed light on MERS and the cozy relationships many

Why You Don't Owe the Money

December 8, 2008

OK it’s complicated. But I have distilled it down to a few sound bites that more or less captures the basic truth of why you don’t owe the money on that mortgage note, credit card, student loan, auto loan, furniture loan etc. Even small businesses might not owe their small business loans. There are exceptions and you should consult with counsel licensed in your state before acting or making any decision on this. And the facts of any particular case do vary, but for the most part I believe the following list applies to nearly all debt in the U.S.,

From July CNN: Merrill and Others Knew they were selling junk at Triple AAA ratings

December 5, 2008

securities consultant says Merrill Lynch knew or should have known the securities they brought to market where overrated (From her website: “She wrote the first letter the SEC posted in February 2007 in response to its proposed rules for the credit rating agencies; she made the case that the NRSRO designation for the rating agencies should be revoked for structured financial products.”): http://money.cnn.com/video/#/video/news/2008/07/31/news.073108.tavoli.cnnmoney “I misspoke earlier in the interview. I meant to say recent mortgage lending is the largest Ponzi scheme (not “one of the largest”) in the history of the financial markets. The mortgage lending business model is not

Oh Yeah? Here is what you say when they are dismissive of your claims

December 4, 2008

Notwithstanding your assertions to the contrary, the letter is very specific to the subject mortgage transaction. You are quite right however, that we are questioning virtually every aspect of the transaction because there appears to be questionable behavior on the part of multiple parties in connection with every phase of the loan transaction and subsequent sale to investors of some pool of assets into which you placed our client’s name, identity, and reference to a private transaction between the original “lender” (who did not fund the table-funded loan) and our client who unknowingly executed documents that appear to be part

Countrywide Sued by Fund Over $8.4 Billion Loan Deal

December 1, 2008

Countrywide Sued by Fund Over $8.4 Billion Loan Deal (Update1) greenwich-investor-complaint-against-countrywide-describing-securitization-in-simple-terms Excellent Article by Mr. Mortgage: Mortgage Security Holder Stands up to Bofa By Patricia Hurtado Dec. 1 (Bloomberg) — Countrywide Financial Corp., the home lender acquired by Bank of America Corp., was sued by Greenwich Financial Services Fund over claims an agreement to reduce payments on mortgages by $8.4 billion would hurt investors. The hedge fund claims investors will be harmed by Bank of America’s settlement, reached on behalf of Countrywide, with 15 state attorneys general. The value of trusts that bought 400,000 mortgages will decline under the deal,

Appraisal and Ratings Fraud Documented

December 1, 2008

From Mario Kenny — see comments posted to blog As we have stated repeatedly, the logistics were simple: (a) inflate the value of the mortgage backed securities with fraudulently obtained Triple AAA Ratings and (b) inflating the value of the home with fraudulent and negligent use of false comparable and ignoring time factors. The economics of lending changed “upside down” — by hiding a mountain of toxic waste loans behind a thin veneer of high quality borrowers, Wall Street was able sell securities at many times their actual value producing unprecedented and unconscionable profits. They were in essence stealing the

Fed Action on Student loans, Auto Loans, Consumer Loans and small business loans

November 30, 2008

As we have repeatedly said publicly and privately, the securitization process extended throughout the credit world. Hardly anything was not packaged in some securitized zone. Thus most assumptions about the liability on such debt are wrong as to whether there is any outstanding balance, who owns the loan, etc. Of particular interest is the student loan debt. We have researched this. It appears that the government guarantee does not necessarily run with the note. In fact, quite the contrary, once the lender is paid in full (as they always are in securitized loans) there is no guarantee. This is important

Is Your Money Safe? Probably Not — Unless YOU do something about it.

November 29, 2008

It’s along time since I wrote this piece on March 1, 2007 — before I even started the blog. I believed then as I do now that the safety of our nation, the soundness of our economy and the happiness and freedoms of our children and grandchildren depend entirely upon our actions today. In this great experimental democracy the boss is us, not government. But if you let the servants of our governance run wild you will get wild results. The correction is in change of personnel and increasing our involvement in the process of change. The simple truth is

Citigroup et al Bailouts Present Additional Defenses Againsts Collection of Virtually Any Debt

November 24, 2008

Think about it. You are a taxpayer and your tax dollars are absorbing the “losses” associated with write-offs of your debts (mortgage, credit card, auto-loan, student loan etc.) whether you pay or not! The reason for the toxicity of those assets the government is eating up is NOT because of defaults, it is because the paper is bad to begin with. In plain words, those debts are not enforceable because the securitizers and investment bankers didn’t follow the rules and intentionally defrauded both the investors who put up the money and the “borrowers” who were in actuality the unwitting parties

Livinglies Rolls Out 80+ Attorney Network in 23 states

November 23, 2008

donation-form-1108 SUPPORT THIS SITE!!! Wow! Nice to see when your efforts pay off. After only 6 seminars on the Garfield Continuum Seminars, and recruiting on the blogsite, we are pleased to report that new lawyers are joining the network every day. Please give us your feedback on experiences with any of them. Some of these either duplicate or supplement the list that is already up under the Lawyer’s Who Get It page. THANK YOU EVERYONE FOR MAKING THIS MOVEMENT A SUCCESS. Click Here for Lawyers-that-Get-It-112208

July, 2007: Livinglies describes and predicts the meltdown

November 20, 2008

History shows that the descriptions and predictions in this piece I wrote 1 1/2 years ago were unfortunately on target. What I didn’t realize at the time, was that many if not most of the money was at that time going for “refi’s” that homeowners did not solicit or want. There was a knock on the door in some reverse red lined neighborhood, and some nice looking person introduced themselves as a Representative of First National Bank on the Corner. As a new bank in the neighborhood (created by some investment banker on Wall Street, but of course that wasn’t

MICHIGAN REPUBLICANS BARRING VOTERS IN FORECLOSURE IN NOVEMBER ELECTION

September 12, 2008

Apparently on the assumption that most of these voters are either Democrats or otherwise people who will blame Republicans for not regulating Wall Street and Lenders, Republicans with close ties to the largest foreclosure law firm in the State, which raised $250,000 for them, have taken control of the polling and are removing people from the voting rolls if their address is on any foreclosure list. The theory is that if they are on the list, they don’t live there anymore — even if they do. First they trick people into doing refi’s when the homeowner wasn’t looking for it