At Naked Capitalism a corporate lawyer offers a non-humorous anecdote about what the securitization branch of the rentier industry does and why. Basically, they can stamp their boot on your face forever, while their toadies grab your wallet. You can think of their tactics as the corporate equivalent of the signing statements used by a recent administration to completely ignore any laws that cramped their style. After all, everything changed after 9/11. Hell, I’ll bet we eventually find out that the gravitational constant’s changed and it’s being covered up by those liberal physicists. The executive and legislative branches have a chance to curb these crimes with the Consumer Financial Protection Agency, but as wholly owned subsidiaries of FinanceCo they almost certainly won’t. At this rate it won’t be long before the information asymmetry approaches a physical limit whereupon the consumer side will vanish and we’ll see a financial information monopole.
I am a lawyer who has been involved in corporate finance for over 25 years. First, if you beleive that securitization offers benefits (cost reductions) to consumers then MERS is not per se a bad thing in that it reduces overall transation costs which should in part be passed on to the homeowner borrower. As you note, the problem is more a change in standards (perhaps ethics and morality) in the last ten years in the industry.
The problem is not MERs by itself but how the securitization industry has changed in recent years to the detriment of cosumers and investors in the banks and other companies that have blown up as a result of an important industry being turned into basically a circus. I can share my own expereince as a homeowner to demonstrate how crazy things have become.
I had a mortgage on my home that was originated over 15 years ago at a local bank. The mortgage had been sold (through five intervening transactions)over the years to Washington Mutual. Two years ago I decided to pay the loan off. At the end of a month, I sent in a check for the full balance of principal and interest on the loanand requested a deed release be filed. This was all in accordance with the terms of my promissory note and mortgage the legal agreement governing all parties.
Two weeks later I received my check back in the mail from WMU with a letter stating that the payoff was not in accordance with Washington Mutual policy. No one at Washington Mutual had bothered to read the mortgage agreement (the legal agreement binding the parties). Instead the letter stated that payoffs had to be preceeded by paying $75 for a “payoff quotation” and must be made by wire transfer and other terms which were obviously made to increase the profitablity to WMU which had no basis in the legal agreements.
Since WMU had no legal basis for its demands, I stopped paying my mortgage. Within three months my credit score had been lowered 300 points, all of my credit cards were canceled (I never kept a balance on any card) and I was receiving daily harrassing collection calls. Eventually, I sent a couple of letters to the WMU General Counsel’s office and began to work towards a class action lawsuit. Despite this, it took another three months to get someone’s attention at WMU who could put two and two together and I finally received a call and letter from a senior attorney who agreed to forgive thousands of dollars in interest, put a person full time on reestoring my FICO score etc etc. and fix the problems that never should have occured.
The point is that the securitization industry 5-10 years ago made a collective choice to ignore the terms of contracts, state and local laws and legal convesntions developed over hundreds of years. Why? Because they could. Our legal system and conventions were built on the assumption that most businesses would choose to follow them. Instead, the securitization industry simply developed a cost/benefit approach to following the law and adhering to contracts. It worked quite well becaseu most individuals just aren’t equipped to read and enforce their mortgage agreements or fully understand the law.
This is why the banks are fighting so hard against the Consumer Financil Protection Agency. The CFPA will have the ability to level the playig field and thus change the economics of banks simply ignoring laws, contracts and convention.