dimelab dimelab: shrinking the gap between talk and action.

facilitate Topic in The Credit Debacle Catalog

actually facilitate front running (1); AIG Facilitated European Banks Circumventing Minimum Capital Requirements (1); facilitate price discovery (1); facilitation schemes (1); singlehandedly facilitating imprudent lender policy (1).

Fri 2010-10-08 21:53 EDT

MERS 101

MERS - Mortgage Electronic Registration Inc. - holds approximately 60 million American mortgages and is a Delaware corporation whose sole shareholder is Mers Corp. MersCorp and its specified members have agreed to include the MERS corporate name on any mortgage that was executed in conjunction with any mortgage loan made by any member of MersCorp...Thus in place of the original lender being named as the mortgagee on the mortgage that is supposed to secure their loan, MERS is named as the ``nominee'' for the lender who actually loaned the money to the borrower. In other words MERS is really nothing more than a name that is used on the mortgage instrument in place of the actual lender. MERS' primary function, therefore, is to act as a document custodian. MERS was created solely to simplify the process of transferring mortgages by avoiding the need to re-record liens -- and pay county recorder filing fees -- each time a loan is assigned. Instead, servicer's record loans only once and MERS' electronic system monitors transfers and facilitates the trading of notes...MersCorp was created in the early 1990's by the former C.E.O.'s of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Indy Mac, Countrywide, Stewart Title Insurance and the American Land Title Association... MERS, as has clearly been proven in many civil cases, does not hold any promissory notes of any kind. A party must have possession of a promissory note in order to have standing to enforce and/or otherwise collect a debt that is owed to another party. Given this clear-cut legal definition, MERS does not have legal standing to enforce or collect on the over 60 million mortgages it controls and no member of MERS has any standing in an American civil court. MERS has been taken to civil courts across the country and charged with a lack of standing in reposession issues. When the mortgage debacle initially, and inevitably, began, MERS always routinely brought actions against defaulting mortgage holders purporting to represent the owners of the defaulted mortgages but once the courts discovered that MERS was only a front organization that did not hold any deed nor was aware of who or what agencies might hold a deed, they have routinely been denied in their attempts to force foreclosure. In the past, persons alleging they were officials of MERS in foreclosure motions, purported to be the holders of the mortgage, when, in fact, they not only were not the holder of the mortgage but, under a court order, could not produce the identity of the actual holder. These so-called MERS officers have usually been just employees of entities who are servicing the loan for the actual lender. MERS, it is now widely acknowledged by the courts, has no legal right to foreclose or otherwise collect debt which are evidenced by promissory notes held by someone else...

MERS 101.

Tue 2010-04-27 08:27 EDT

Web of Debt - COMPUTERIZED FRONT RUNNING: ANOTHER GOLDMAN-DOMINATED FRAUD

While the SEC is busy investigating Goldman Sachs, it might want to look into another Goldman-dominated fraud: computerized front running using high-frequency trading programs...Wall Street commentator Max Keiser...claims to have invented one of the most widely used programs for doing the rigging. Not that that's what he meant to invent. His patented program was designed to take the manipulation out of markets. It would do this by matching buyers with sellers automatically, eliminating ``front running'' -- brokers buying or selling ahead of large orders coming in from their clients. The computer program was intended to remove the conflict of interest that exists when brokers who match buyers with sellers are also selling from their own accounts. But the program fell into the wrong hands and became the prototype for automated trading programs that actually facilitate front running...Keiser and HSX co-founder Michael Burns applied for a patent for a ``computer-implemented securities trading system with a virtual specialist function'' in 1996, and U.S. patent no. 5960176 was awarded in 1999...The listing for Keiser's patent shows that it has been referenced by 132 others involving automated program trading or HFT...

Computerized Front Running; debt; Goldman-dominated fraud; Web.

zero hedge Tue 2010-03-09 17:59 EST

Is The Federal Reserve Insolvent?

...For a refined analysis of what would happen in that moment of clarity when the world realizes the world's biggest bank is broke, we turn to a presentation by Chris Sims, given before Princeton University, titled "Fiscal/Monetary Coordination When The Anchor Cable Has Snapped."...discusses precisely the issues were are faced with today: namely a monetary policy that has run amok, seignorage, exploding excess reserves, the impact of these on "power money", and, in general, a Fed balance sheet that is increasingly reminiscent of a drunk, rapid and schizophrenic bull in a China store...the only way to deal with a mark-to-market of the Fed currently is to embrace monetization. It is no longer a question of semantics, of who promised what: it is the only mechanical way by which the Fed can dig itself out of a capital deficiency. With GSE delinquencies exploding, and with the Fed (and Congress) singlehandedly facilitating imprudent lender policy by allowing ever more borrowers to become deliquent without consequences, the MBS delinquency rate will likely hit 10% over the next 6-12 months. At that moment, someone will ask the Fed: "what is the true basis of your capital account?" And when the Fed is forced to justify a valid response, is when monetizaton will begin...

Federal Reserve Insolvent; Zero Hedge.

zero hedge Mon 2009-10-12 10:13 EDT

Overview Of Goldman Sachs Electronic Trading: Part 1

Zero Hedge is starting a multi-part overview of Goldman Sachs' Electronic Trading client-focused product suite, to demonstrate just how extensively embedded in modern market architecture are Goldman's various DMA and "liquidity" facilitation schemes, and the depths of dark pool domination via Goldman's global order router, and other specific topical offerings.

Goldman Sachs Electronic Trading; overview; Part 1; Zero Hedge.

Sun 2009-09-20 14:12 EDT

America's Exhausted Paradigm: Macroeconomic Causes of the Financial Crisis and Great Recession | The New America Foundation

This report traces the roots of the current financial crisis to a faulty U.S. macroeconomic paradigm. One flaw in this paradigm was the neo-liberal growth model adopted after 1980 that relied on debt and asset price inflation to drive demand. A second flaw was the model of U.S. engagement with the global economy that created a triple economic hemorrhage of spending on imports, manufacturing job losses, and off-shoring of investment. Deregulation and financial excess are important parts of the story, but they are not the ultimate cause of the crisis. Instead, they facilitated the housing bubble and are actually part of the neo-liberal model, their function being to fuel demand growth based on debt and asset price inflation. The old post-World War II growth model based on rising middle-class incomes has been dismantled, while the new neo-liberal growth model has imploded. The United States needs a new economic paradigm and a new growth model, but as yet this challenge has received little attention from policymakers or economists.

America's Exhausted Paradigm; Financial Crisis; Great Recession; Macroeconomic Causes; New America Foundation.

Tue 2008-10-07 00:00 EDT

naked capitalism: How AIG Facilitated European Banks Circumventing Minimum Capital Requirements

AIG Facilitated European Banks Circumventing Minimum Capital Requirements; naked capitalism.

Tue 2007-08-28 00:00 EDT

naked capitalism: Extreme Measures II: Gillian Tett at the Financial Times

"parties who are in the best position to facilitate price discovery have every reason to impede that process"

Extreme Measures II; Financial Times; Gillian Tett; naked capitalism.