Matt Weidner – Fighting With The American People

Posts Tagged ‘robo signer’

Dear friends,

I am taking the gloves off, its that time!  Attorney General Beau Biden did us all proud and right yesterday, despite the political reality that he faces in a state that hosts as corporations, the banks, Wall St. firms, and system he is attacking.  I would ask that each of you kindly read the entirety of this letter and to assist me help each of you and this nation of ours and force the other AGs and elements of our government and the media to be as bold and brave as Beau Biden!

Beau knows MERS!  LOL  He certainly not only vindicated me and my decade-ol fight against MERS and my predictions, but all of us, especially Max, April, Judges Logan and Gordon (would love to interview each now) and let me not forget our favorite jurist, Judge Schack!

Let us not forget the crooked judges too, like Craig Schwall and Louis Levenson in Fulton Co who will be getting their comeuppance next month in both courts of law and public opinion (the media).  We need to have media focus on the Judges who get it and the judges we have evidence of corruption on. (including our tapes)  This will be one of our new objectives. We also need to expose Robo-Judges™ who issue Robo-Orders™!

We’re starting a new movement in America.  Our new movement will complement the Occupy Wall Street and Occupy the Internet movements by assisting those trying to help or most importantly IGNORING TO HELP our nation and states.  That is the media who is trying to help and some in government like Beau Biden.  The other AGs and regulators that ignore us will be publicly noticed and later publicly embarrassed if they fail to act, since a “record” of notices, warnings, and actions or inactions will be publicly displayed now and for the years to come that anyone can access.  We shall begin with Names!!

The name for these new movements shall be Occupy The Government & Occupy The Media!  As for the media, we shall and I request that you respect their time and their space.

The first step is that I want each of you to provide me, Lisa, Michael, Matt and everyone of our colleagues and comrades in arms with an email list of ALL media and government contacts you have in two separate email address books for Outlook or AOL.  We will then discuss content to send by each of us to these contacts.  For the media, we will target great story ideas for each journalist and editor we have befriended and has supported the cause.  We will also provide a host of information, facts, and evidence for their investigative needs.  The media is not only our friend, but our greatest ally in this movement, next to the Internet!

For government, we will create letters and petitions and forward to them in masse!  Also, we will document and forward complaints, and evidence of fraudulent bank behavior.  They are either with us, or against us!  They get to choose and so do we, by a vote.  It’s time to stop picking leaders by social issues, but real life issues.  You’re either a bank bitch and for them or you’re not (like Beau).

I want to do to the AGs, all regulators, and politicians, what I did to CEOs and boards years ago, paper them and “put them on notice” to act.  Let’s see if they ignore our warnings this time around since doing so, will surely jeopardize their political and/or professional aspirations.  As they move up the political food chain, we will have a record of what they were warned of and what they did or didn’t do so that their prior actions can be judged by voters and regulators alike.

I am reminded of Gandhi’s quote “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”  We’re now winning, so it’s time to pile in on as the bankster’s lawyers would say.  Over the years, I have created a “hit list” and “target list” of enemies and foes and have guarded carefully very personal information about them.  While information is power, knowledge of what to do with that information, and the wisdom to know when its right to use, is key. I suggest you each do the same!

Next, I will begin writing more letters and more warnings based on my experience and I will start doing some polling with the help of supporters and sponsors I will seek from law firms.  This will accomplish a few goals.  First, it will bring national media attention and coverage to the issues and second, media attention, business and leads to the law firms than sponsor my research.  My research has traditionally garnered national media attention and the front pages of virtually every newspaper as well as television and radio.  It will once more, do so again.

As for Beau Biden, his complaint is a masterpiece and must read and pins the tail on the ASS (sorry, Donkey was way too kind) so to speak in MERS.  In effect, he is not only seeking to shut down every MERS foreclosure in DE, but seeking to foreclose on MERS itself!  I wonder what ASSet protection MERSCORP and its enablers have in place.

I have previously called the racketeering acts of the servicers the “default servicing enterprise.”  However, Beau kept it simple and called it the “foreclosure enterprise.”  I agree.  From this day forward, when we discuss or refer to this racketeering enterprise, let’s all agree to call it and refer to it as the FORECLOSURE ENTERPRISE!  Let’s get that mantra up and explain it for what it is, an enterprise which is key for RICO actions, both state and federal, which is where we will be going next with the evidence we have all uncovered.  Make Foreclosure enterprise as widely known and accepted as robo-signing and fraudclosure!

In his complaint and his exhibits, Beau Biden has laid the foundation for attacking MERS and every lender.  In every case where MERS is ANYWHERE in the chain (current or prior loans) you must file his complaint and exhibits with the court with a notice for the Court to take “judicial notice” of the complaint.  Next, you must also file all of the county recorder lawsuits.  Remember, building a record is the most important thing you can do in a case.  This is how we will also expose the corrupt judges we have evidence on.  An analysis of their record and rulings will assist media and also how we vote them out.  We shall approve and disprove of judges and politicians and make our voices known, regardless of party affiliation.  We will make them sign pledges and contracts, so we know where stand.

We will get our friends in person, email, and on Facebook, to work with us, petition, send emails, make phone calls and focus attention on issues and those who fight and oppose us.  We will gather lists of names too and personal and email addresses for protesters.

Our first petition will be the abolishment of MERS and I am drafting Lisa Epstein to create the first draft using the relief that Beau seeks in his lawsuit to be the first petition of our group.  Lisa, please copy me, Jacqs, April, Dan, and Max on it and we’ll get out soon!

Friends, its time!  2012, the Mayans predicted would be the end of the world “as we know it!”  I’m reminded of the song “its the end of the world as we know it, its the end of the world as we know it.  If we believe and act, we can do it!  I know we can and i know we will!

It’s time my friends, time to get immediate attention and use the legal strategy the the banks and foreclosure mills created called “piling on” after football piling on.  Let’s get to the media, get to the government, get to judges, and get to the people.  Let’s Occupy Government and The Media and take control of the destiny God has given each of us!  2012 is upon us.  The Mayans were right, its the end of the world as we know it, and the start of a new world, not new world order, as we desire and want it to be free of banks, political influence, and corruption!

Nye

PS  Blogs, Please publish the above and below in separate postings – - thanks!!!

Dear Attorneys General:

Recently, the Office of Inspector General for the Federal Housing Finance Agency released reports about a special counsel investigation by Fannie Mae and that a shareholder had warned and provided Fannie Mae and others as far back as 2003 about robo-signing and foreclosure abuses.  This story was picked up by the NYTimes’ Gretchen Mogenson and a plethora of other news media.  While Gretchen and the FHFA didn’t name me, I was nonetheless outed since she and many others, including some of you, knew this shareholder was me.

I have been working hard behind the scenes to warn and stop the catastrophic events of the past few years which I first forecast in 1996!  I have spent almost $1 million and spent over 40,000 hours since 1994 investigating, researching, and documenting these frauds.  I have millions of pages of documents and a history like a bear in the woods who has left a trail all the way up to personally warning and communicating to the CEOs of virtually every bank, servicer, and Wall Street firm of these abuses.  I took shares in each of these companies in the late 90s to warn them.  Jaime Dimon, William Harrison, Kerry Killinger, Ace Greenberg, and James Cayne are just a few.  However, the ratings agencies were warned as well as law firms and accounting firms, especially Deloitte!

As the shareholder that in 2003 warned Fannie Mae and worked with the independent counsel they appointed, Mark Cymrot, of Baker Hostetler in Washington DC, I have a unique perspective as well as set of facts that each of you could never obtain due to the cost and time limitations, that I have accumulated since 1993, almost 20-years!

However, as you will see by the attached letter to FHFA and links to reports and warnings I have authored since the mid-nineties, many were warned, including some of your offices since the mid to late nineties.  I am also the individual that first discovered robo-signing and foreclosure fraud in the mid-nineties and authored reports documenting such abuses starting in the mid-nineties, until a “visiting judge” in Dallas, TX gagged me from telling this story.

It wasn’t until 2000, at the National Consumer Law Center conference in Colorado when I released reports on these frauds and abuses.  Some of your lawyers were in attendance and were provided two reports.  Only Max Gardner, a bankruptcy lawyer from North Carolina, took the reports to heart and began a decade-old fight to expose this corruption.

Robo-signing and foreclosure fraud and the intentional fraudulent filing of lawsuit complaints, advertisements of sale, assignments of mortgage, satisfactions of mortgage, and affidavits, as you will see from my well-documented reports, are not a recent phenomon or the result of the securitization craze that swept America and the world from the late nineties to mid-2000s.

They were carefullly planned and orchestrated after the RTC debacle in the late 80s wherein a select group of “special servicers,” commonly referred to in the industry as the industry’s “toxic waste dumps,” were created to push these newly developed and even “patented” foreclosure factory processes that the four major special servicers “tested” and then “perfected” for the rest of the industry.  These special servicers are known to many of you, but their names were EMC Mortgage, SPS f/k/a Conti-Fairbanks Capital, Ocwen, and Litton Loan.

Through “partnerships” with firms like the Barrett Burke operation in Texas, the LOGs group (Shapiro) out of Illinois, the McCalla Raymer group in Georgia and many others, they created an automated foreclosure machine that threw all caution to the wind when it not only came to ethics, but the law.  In a newly expanding “virtual” world, they, along with vendors and third parties such as title insurers Fidelity National and First American created patented and marketable “cradle-to-grave” systems and processes to expand the housing and mortgage markets and cover-up and conceal the known fraud to all of them perpetrated mostly by aggressive loan brokers and occasionally borrowers and factored such losses and circumstances into their system.  I can provide each of you with mens rea and scienter to prosecute for frauds.

As they tested these systems and perfected their fraud via such practices as intentionally concealing the real ownership of a promissory note and first foreclosing in the names of servicers who claimed to “own” the notes and then MERS, they really were double and multi-pledging the promissory notes to themselves and others to obtain servicing advances as well as take gain on sale accounting treatments on the notes they originated with no risk to them, since they had already forward sold the notes to our respective mutual, trust, and pension funds.

As you each take your own collective and individual approaches towards your investigations, I would whole-heartedly agree with Attorneys General Scheiderman, Biden, Harris, and others who want to continue this investigation.  If you don’t continue and right the wrongs, I will boldly predict that each of you will have blood on your hands.  I say this as no threat of any means whatsoever, but as a warning based on my understanding as a social scientist and advocate of the human psyche that for some is weak, but for others is broken.  If you look at my forecasts and predictions over the years, I have one heck of a batting average in getting it right.  As my former partner, Dr. Roy Stout who was featured in the book Blink, would say, I see things and data that others want to ignore.  For the first time in my life, I am scared – - scared, not for me, but for our nation and our nation’s youth and those who might have to endure the consequence of the excesses of my generation.

Today, its mortgages, but when these young students, like an ex-girlfriend who at 22 left school with $150,000 in student debt realize what has occurred, all bets will be off.  Today, they are peaceful – - tomorrow, they may be vengeful!  The Occupy Wall Street movement is only the start.  The American public and world, want to see accountability.  They want to see perp walks.  They want the intentional bankers, hedge funds, and Wall Street executives who intentionally created and manipulated this world-wide financial debacle prosecuted.  If you don’t do it, I fear as the nation and the world’s economy suffers even more, there will be total anarchy in the streets as well as assaults and even “non-political” assassinations against banking CEOs, Wall St executives, and foreclosure lawyers, by para-military right and left wing extremists that were former Army Rangers and Navy Seals who are not only disenchanted with the current situation, but disenfranchised.  Living in Savannah, GA last year, I met many Rangers each evening who were angry, very angry for fighting a war that they realized was not for Americans, but for other interests.  The discussions I would have in the evenings were illuminating and gave me a great respect for our nation’s military men and women.

However, as they lose more friends, limbs, spouses, their sanity and now their homes, a combustible mixture that is not only flamable, but toxic is spreading.  You can see it in the OWS movement and some of the videos.  I say these things not to scare you, but to warn you once again and most importantly, to EMPOWER EACH OF YOU, collectively or indivudally.

You have each been give a god-given opportunity at a vital point in our nation and the world’s history.  Each of you, if you do your jobs and ignore the politics, political influence, and lobbying from both banks and the federal government, have a special moment in time to leave a mark.  A mark that historians will one day write was the day America and the world decided to be free of political and banking influence and truly helped create a world democracy.

The money now, whether it is $20 billion or $50 billion in the scheme of trillion dollar losses is really not what the people are angry at.  They was to see accountability and those who not only created the situation, but manipulated it or ignored it to their personal gain be prosecuted.  I hear their voices each day and that’s why I am coming out of the closet, so to speak, despite the threats against my family and I to offer my help and assistance in doing what is right for this nation, our people, and those youths protesting for what they know, that many in our generation simply ignored as they drove their BMWs, put dope up their noses, and lived it up at the expense of their children and grand children.

Now is the time.  I can give you the goods on many of these if you want to really follow the patented fraud.  Have you all read the patents as yet of all these so-called “processes?”  The most human element in the entire automated factory were the actual ignorant robo-signers!  In fact, when I discovered and reported on robo-signing, I did so just to give one “minor example of the overall fraudulent scheme that was designed not to defraud borrowers who were only pawns in the “game” as it was called, but our respective pension funds and extraction of our so-called excess wealth.

Think about it, for a moment if you will.  Robo-signing is such an elementary fraud, so simple, so stupid, so petty!  The real fraud and why the banks want to settle with you so quickly is the securization and the fact that none of these deals were “true sales,” but the financing of receivables whereby investors were defrauded and multi-pledging of paid off notes occurred to inflate their earnings, stock prices, and bonuses.

How many of you have had your original wet-ink promissory note returned to you canceled and paid in full upon its payoff or refinancing?  Ask around the office?  Then, check your lien release or satisfaction and see if it was robo-signed?  Who is your real lender?

Open the black pandora’s box of financial alchemy in securitization and you will find the multi-pledging and sale of paid off notes, the same notes, and even “ghost notes” that were created with Photoshop and never even executed by a real live borrower.  I will save the death threats, break-ins, arsons, computer hacks, and millions of dollars of vexatious litigation by the banks and its foreclosure lawyers against my family, myself, our trusts, and the select group of advocates who were the first to take the batton from my hand for another day.  I will even save the bribery of judicial officers, court reporters, and local judges for another day.  All I ask is for each of you to think long and very hard, before letting the banks, their servicers, vendors, and lawyers off the hook.

I’ll come to see any of you and give any of you my deposition as well as access to whatever I possess in terms of evidence.  I would also suggest that you ask each bank you are investigating and law firm to preserve all evidence and provide to you everything they have in their possession that contains my name “Nye Lavalle” or “Aneurin Lavalle” or this email address that I have had since the mid-nineties.  I am also more than willing to take polygraph exams, should you find that necessary.

In essence, all I personally want is the real and true story told by a real and true investigation and the subsequent civil and criminal prosecution of those responsible for this nation’s morass.

I pray some, or all of you, will take me up on my offer.  Please feel free to call or email me at any time if I can be of assistance to you or any of your collective or respective investigations!

Nye Lavalle
561/860-7632

—–Original Message—–
From: Nye Lavalle <mortgagefrauds@aol.com>
To: OIGhotline <OIGhotline@fhfa.gov>; DeputyDirector-Enterprises <DeputyDirector-Enterprises@FHFA.gov>; Director <Director@FHFA.gov>; DeputyDirector-FHLBanks <DeputyDirector-FHLBanks@FHFA.gov>; GeneralCounsel <GeneralCounsel@FHFA.gov>; Ombudsman <Ombudsman@FHFA.gov>
Sent: Sat, Oct 8, 2011 10:28 pm
Subject: I AM THE FANNIE SHAREHOLDER NAMED IN YOUR OIG REPORTS THAT WARNED FANNIE AND FREDDIE OF FORECLOSURE ABUSES IN 2003 AND AFTER

Gentlemen,

By way of introduction, my name is Nye Lavalle  and I am the shareholder/investor, referenced in your recent OIG reports that warned Fannie Mae’s board and CEO of foreclosure and legal abuses almost a decade ago.  For over a year, I worked closely with Fannie Mae and Mark Cymrot of Baker Hostetler, who was the independent counsel appointed by Fannie Mae, to investigate allegations contained in my 2004 report.  I also warned Freddie Mac and its board as well.

The attached letter will provide you more information and hopefully open a dialogue between us that will help us find solutions for our nation and its citizens as well as hold those responsible, accountable for their actions.

To that end, I stand ready and able to assist you each in your respective duties at FHFA and the OIG for FHFA.

Sincerely,

Nye Lavalle

From Today’s AP story:

Mortgage industry employees are still signing documents they haven’t read and using fake signatures more than eight months after big banks and mortgage companies promised to stop the illegal practices that led to a nationwide halt of home foreclosures.

It is a federal crime to sign someone else’s name to a legal document. It is also illegal to sign your name to an affidavit if you have not verified the information you’re swearing to. Both are punishable by prison.

READ FULL STORY HERE

Good lawyers and judges all over this county recognized the dangers if we just sat back and let the banks continue with the same sloppy and improper practices that got us in this mess in the first place.  The pushback was the first fight against Robo Signing.

Despite all the attention, keep in mind there have been no penalties, no punishments, no consequences…and so it should be no surprise that the banks are at it all over again.

But keep in mind that this is not just about sloppy supervision of low level employees.  The fundamental battle behind robo signing is the reality that it is merely a symptom of an economic system that is corrupt, lying and which will cause us all greater liability in the years to come.

Read the Reuter’s Story Here

and here

Reuters

the state attorneys general have gone absolutely radio silent here and the banks have gone on the attack against attorneys and activists who are daring to stand up for the people and challenge the banks and corporations.

Banks Attack

I was looking for some old case law and came across this old post….it is one of the earliest uses of the term, “Robo Signer“…a term that is now part of our national lexicon.  Full credit is given in the original post for the excellent work of a young law student, Michael Fuino who really opened my eyes to the wrong that was being done in foreclosure cases…

RoboSigner

For more information on the birth of Robo Signer

Wall Street Journal

The street fighting foreclosure defense practitioners have been warning about fraud in the very beginning of the foreclosure process….the initial service of process, for years now.

We’ve reported clients who did not get served with the lawsuit and many irregularities even when service was actually made.  How does one know whether the actual, licensed process server delivered the summons and the lawsuit on the named defendant?  What would prevent the process server from handing half of his serves for the day off to a brother or other person and allowing that person to do the service?  Who would ever know if that even happened anyway…I mean, after all, no-one is looking right?

There is so much here….some….just some of it is detailed in the Article That Appears in The Palm Beach Post.,

West Palm Beach resident Liz Mills learned she was a robo-signer when a friend suggested she search her own name online.

On foreclosure blogs and in at least one newspaper article, the 51-year-old process server was singled out for the numerous and varying styles of her signatures on summons paperwork used to prove her efforts in locating home­owners in foreclosure.

Now Mills is coming forward in affidavits filed in three foreclosure cases, saying she didn’t sign the paperwork and never signed in front of a notary despite notary stamps affixed to the documents.

But these allegations and facts have been around for a long, long time now, see 4closurefraud or just  google the name “Liz Miller” a good an honorable person who stood up…at great personal risk and alerted authorities and the world when she discovered something was wrong.

These allegations have been around for months now….and where is someone….anyone, to investigate the allegations?  I really do give a whole lot of credit to the Palm Beach Post for keeping the heat up and doing a phenomenal job.  I’m telling you, they are going to be throwing out Pulitzers to the good reporters who have commitment and dedication it takes to chase down all these rabbit holes…

But honestly, this great article in the Post only just begins to scratch the surface.  Have a read of the attached letter and just think through the significance….

judge letter 2010_2_1

The text below could have been lifted directly off my page–or that of any one of the handful of advocates, attorneys or bloggers out there that have been warning about the problems in the foreclosure process for months now–but it’s not, it comes directly from the editorial page of the New York Times.  We would all do well to listen to the warnings and take action, but our elected and appointed officials seem content to just fritter away and pretend that none of this is true.  The most staggering thing is that our judges must be aware of these issues now right? I mean there cannot be a judge in the entire country who would generally dispute any of the information contained herein or the statements made.  If this is indeed true, how can any of these judges proceed with cases before them in this environment?

In Congressional hearings last week, Obama administration officials acknowledged that uncertainty over foreclosures could delay the recovery of the housing market. The implications for the economy are serious. For instance, the International Monetary Fund found that the persistently high unemployment in the United States is largely the result of foreclosures and underwater mortgages, rather than widely cited causes like mismatches between job requirements and worker skills.

This chapter of the financial crisis is a self-inflicted wound. The major banks and their agents have for years taken shortcuts with their mortgage securitization documents — and not due to a momentary lack of attention, but as part of a systematic approach to save money and increase profits. The result can be seen in the stream of reports of colossal foreclosure mistakes: multiple banks foreclosing on the same borrower; banks trying to seize the homes of people who never had a mortgage or who had already entered into a refinancing program.

Banks are claiming that these are just accidents. But suppose that while absent-mindedly paying a bill, you wrote a check from a bank account that you had already closed. No one would have much sympathy with excuses that you were in a hurry and didn’t mean to do it, and it really was just a technicality.

The most visible symptoms of cutting corners have come up in the foreclosure process, but the roots lie much deeper. As has been widely documented in recent weeks, to speed up foreclosures, some banks hired low-level workers, including hair stylists and teenagers, to sign or simply stamp documents like affidavits — a job known as being a “robo-signer.”

Such documents were improper, since the person signing an affidavit is attesting that he has personal knowledge of the matters at issue, which was clearly impossible for people simply stamping hundreds of documents a day. As a result, several major financial firms froze foreclosures in many states, and attorneys general in all 50 states started an investigation.

However, the problems in the mortgage securitization market run much wider and deeper than robo-signing, and started much earlier than the foreclosure process.

When mortgage securitization took off in the 1980s, the contracts to govern these transactions were written carefully to satisfy not just well-settled, state-based real estate law, but other state and federal considerations. These included each state’s Uniform Commercial Code, which governed “secured” transactions that involve property with loans against them, and state trust law, since the packaged loans are put into a trust to protect investors. On the federal side, these deals needed to satisfy securities agencies and the Internal Revenue Service.

This process worked well enough until roughly 2004, when the volume of transactions exploded. Fee-hungry bankers broke the origination end of the machine. One problem is well known: many lenders ceased to be concerned about the quality of the loans they were creating, since if they turned bad, someone else (the investors in the securities) would suffer.

A second, potentially more significant, failure lay in how the rush to speed up the securitization process trampled traditional property rights protections for mortgages.

The procedures stipulated for these securitizations are labor-intensive. Each loan has to be signed over several times, first by the originator, then by typically at least two other parties, before it gets to the trust, “endorsed” the same way you might endorse a check to another party. In general, this process has to be completed within 90 days after a trust is closed.

Evidence is mounting that these requirements were widely ignored. Judges are noticing: more are finding that banks cannot prove that they have the standing to foreclose on the properties that were bundled into securities. If this were a mere procedural problem, the banks could foreclose once they marshaled their evidence. But banks who are challenged in many cases do not resume these foreclosures, indicating that their lapses go well beyond minor paperwork.

Increasingly, homeowners being foreclosed on are correctly demanding that servicers prove that the trust that is trying to foreclose actually has the right to do so. Problems with the mishandling of the loans have been compounded by the Mortgage Electronic Registration System, an electronic lien-registry service that was set up by the banks. While a standardized, centralized database was a good idea in theory, MERS has been widely accused of sloppy practices and is increasingly facing legal challenges.

As a result, investors are becoming concerned that the value of their securities will suffer if it becomes difficult and costly to foreclose; this uncertainty in turn puts a cloud over the value of mortgage-backed securities, which are the biggest asset class in the world.

Other serious abuses are coming to light. Consider a company called Lender Processing Services, which acts as a middleman for mortgage servicers and says it oversees more than half the foreclosures in the United States. To assist foreclosure law firms in its network, a subsidiary of the company offered a menu of services it provided for a fee.

The list showed prices for “creating” — that is, conjuring from thin air — various documents that the trust owning the loan should already have on hand. The firm even offered to create a “collateral file,” which contained all the documents needed to establish ownership of a particular real estate loan. Equipped with a collateral file, you could likely persuade a court that you were entitled to foreclose on a house even if you had never owned the loan.

That there was even a market for such fabricated documents among the law firms involved in foreclosures shows just how hard it is going to be to fix the problems caused by the lapses of the mortgage boom. No one would resort to such dubious behavior if there were an easier remedy.

The banks and other players in the securitization industry now seem to be looking to Congress to snap its fingers to make the whole problem go away, preferably with a law that relieves them of liability for their bad behavior. But any such legislative fiat would bulldoze regions of state laws on real estate and trusts, not to mention the Uniform Commercial Code. A challenge on constitutional grounds would be inevitable.

Asking for Congress’s help would also require the banks to tacitly admit that they routinely broke their own contracts and made misrepresentations to investors in their Securities and Exchange Commission filings. Would Congress dare shield them from well-deserved litigation when the banks themselves use every minor customer deviation from incomprehensible contracts as an excuse to charge a fee?

There are alternatives. One measure that both homeowners and investors in mortgage-backed securities would probably support is a process for major principal modifications for viable borrowers; that is, to forgive a portion of their debt and lower their monthly payments. This could come about through either coordinated state action or a state-federal effort.

The large banks, no doubt, would resist; they would be forced to write down the mortgage exposures they carry on their books, which some banking experts contend would force them back into the Troubled Asset Relief Program. However, allowing significant principal modifications would stem the flood of foreclosures and reduce uncertainty about the housing market and mortgage securities, giving the authorities time to devise approaches to the messy problems of clouded titles and faulty loan conveyance.

The people who so carefully designed the mortgage securitization process unwittingly devised a costly trap for people who ran roughshod over their handiwork. The trap has closed — and unless the mortgage finance industry agrees to a sensible way out of it, the entire economy will be the victim.

Yves Smith is the author of the blog Naked Capitalism and “Econned: How Unenlightened Self-Interest Undermined Democracy and Corrupted Capitalism.”