Figures my comment would be voted down. Most people in here aren’t looking for reality, just to tow the party line.
Predatory lending is mostly hype, driven by those who want to keep the eye off the ball. The higher risk market is a market, like it or not. And its a lucrative one when done right, with proper oversight to ensure lenders maintain sufficient capital from their increased profits (driven by increased interest rates) to cover the NATURALLY higher rate of default.
Naturally higher rate of default? uhhhh yea….duh.
That’s why its called high risk. You people are buying into the Nancy Pelosi Harry Reid nonsense of NO RISK lending.
High risk lending is how new businesses are formed, and they fuel development, meaning work, jobs, for tens of millions of people. Those jobs feed families. Families who right now are on food stamps, while you people talk about extending their welfare.
They don’t need welfare.
They need JOBS.
They want JOBS.
Most Americans want to work, but the jobs aren’t there. Because when builders can’t build, because buyers can’t buy, then workers can’t work. Period. And I’m not just talking about construction workers here. I’m talking about the independent owner operator who does long hauls of building materials. Or the guy who got hired on at the truck tire factory because more trucks are on the road. And the girl at home depot ringing up that new hot water heater you just bought because you’re upgrading your home to energy efficiency, or the guy who works at the roofing shingle factory, or the guy who drives the roach coach there each day because the factory’s open and doing a booming business, or the real estate lady, or the girl at the title company, or the landscaper, or home appraiser, who has more work than he can handle, or the local city govt hiring on 20 new pot hole fillers because their coffers are so full from the real estate sales taxes, to the guy working at the railroad that ships all that nice new lumber for all those homes going up for all those people buying them, to the cashier who got the extra shifts because business was so good at the local truck stop, to the….
There is no end to the jobs that were supported by our booming housing market. Alan Greenspan testified before Congress that the tent pole of our economy that was propping it up, was the housing market. He WARNED against letting it falter. Hell he wrote it in his book.
But no one listened.
Just like no one listens in here.
Because you’re too f$#king stupid, or too f#$king pompous, or too fuA#king something, because no one learned a damn thing.
No one got it. No one gets it.
Greenspan got it.
And so did Nancy Pelosi. And she USED it.
And it worked.
And now, all we have is a country full of dumbFa#4ks, running their mouths about things they read about on google. They don’t KNOW first hand, which by the way is the only reason I know.
I’m not smarter than anyone else and don’t claim to be. I just had first hand knowledge because it directly impacted me when it happened. And when my Mortgage broker called me the day Pelosi announced her “hearings” to “CLAMP DOWN ON LENDING”, and told me the money’s all frozen and the underwriters have stopped underwriting, thats when I SAW it happen, in real time.
Not some bs nonsense I’m regurgitating from google to try to sound erudite on a subject I know nothing about. No sir. First hand insider knowledge. The loans that were fine one day, were gone the next. And MILLIONS of developers were left holding properties, they could not sell.
Because suddenly there were no more mortgages for people to buy them with.
So go on, vote this one down too sheeple. Don’t let the truth stand in the way of your partisan pompousness. Just vote away. Might as well, because you vote the away the country just as easy.
Reader MBSGuy wrote to express his disgust with the mortgage industry’s efforts to pretend that nothing is rotten in Denmark. His object of contempt was an article in Bloomberg which dutifully recited the current talking points. The flacks have clearly been working full time: the headline, “Mortgage Industry Bristles at ‘Robin Hood’ Foreclosure Theories,” is yet another example of creative phrase-mongering to try to discredit critics. And get a load of the assertions:
The “number of attorneys that signed off on” the policies used when Wall Street firms packaged mortgages into bonds means it’s likely that the trusts used to hold the debt will be able to prove they own the loans in almost all cases, said Philip Seares, a managing director at Citigroup Inc. who run its trading of whole loans.
The industry also has faith that loan assignments handled by the Mortgage Electronic Registration System, or MERS, can’t be broadly contested, Seares and Mortgage Bankers Association President John Courson said at the group’s annual conference.
As we indicated in a post earlier tonight, judges ARE contesting the use of MERS, and in particular, the casual assignments made by parties who were not employees of the company that owned the note. In addition, all state supreme courts that have ruled on foreclosures in the name of MERS (admittedly a different issue than MERS assignments per se), save Minnesota, which passed MERS-friendly statutes, have ruled against it. . These decisions have often objected to the multiple and inconsistent roles MERS typically plays, which lays the foundation for other challenges.
As MBSGuy noted:
When confronted with countless examples of why there are problems, industry insiders say it can’t be a problem because scores of attorneys signed off on the legal documents. It is almost embarrassing to see how feeble the industry sounds when confronted with evidence.
The part that the industry boosters are missing is the fact that the legal opinions for mortgage securitizations were qualified (in general, lawyers craft opinion so as to provide the minimum degree of comfort necessary to get the deal done). They took an “if-then” form: “if you did everything you said you would do, then all is fine.” And as we’ve indicated repeatedly on this blog, the industry did NOT do what it promised in the pooling and servicing agreement. It appears in many cases starting roughly in 2004, the parties to the securitization failed to convey the notes as described in their own contracts, basically because it was too costly and time-consuming.
The media has finally woken up and is reporting on a wide range and variety of bogus foreclosure actions, vitiating the industry claims that all foreclosure actions are correct. And before some readers try the argument that a few errors here and there are no big deal, try telling that to someone threatened with the loss of their home. This sort of thing was impossible in the pre-securitization era, and for good reason: the process of dealing with real property was cumbersome by design. It was fault intolerant because the consequences of error can be catastrophic to the participants. Any process that has a lot of safety features and checks is going to be inefficient. It was inevitable that a drive for efficiency at all costs would compromise the integrity of the system.
The New York Times, in “Homeowners Facing Foreclosure Demand Recourse,” provides examples of erroneous foreclosure actions:
Ricky Rought paid cash to the Deutsche Bank National Trust Company for a four-room cabin in Michigan with the intention of fixing it up for his daughter. Instead, the bank tried to foreclose on the property and the locks were changed, court records show.
Sonya Robison is facing a foreclosure suit in Colorado after the company handling her mortgage encouraged her to skip a payment, she says, to square up for mistakenly changing the locks on her home, too.
Thomas and Charlotte Sexton, of Kentucky, were successfully foreclosed upon by a mortgage trust that, according to court records, does not exist.
The price is worth reading in full, because it gives the gory details of these cases, but it has some technical errors (its discussion of allonges is all wrong, and it also fails to note that the use of allonges in foreclosures is suspect; the ones that magically materialize in foreclosures are almost without exception in violation of the requirements of the Uniform Commercial Code).
Even though more and more accounts like these are being reported daily, the denial in the industry remains high. I spoke to one expert who believes that the big white shoe law firms themselves do not understand how badly their clients failed to perform their contractual obligations. Thus lawyers may be offering their confident defenses based on ignorance of the relevant facts. (Before legally sophisticated readers point out that banks ought to tell their attorneys first about any legal problems, since the communication is confidential, remember, only a very few senior executives, plus members of the legal department, deal with outside counsel. An individual employee who was in a position to know what was really going on would be at a lower level. A general rule of corporate life is bearing news of serious problems is a career-limiting move).
But even allowing for the possibility of remarkable ignorance, the industry defenses are remarkably weak. Back to the Bloomberg story:
The American Securitization Forum trade group, JPMorgan Chase & Co. bond analysts and law firm SNR Denton have also dismissed such talk. In a commentary posted on its website, SNR Denton says that most attempts to question the validity of practices can be trumped by items such as the fact that all parties involved “clearly intended” for the trusts to take ownership.
We dismembered the SNR Denton article earlier this week, and the “intent” argument is laughable, particularly given the detailed, specific requirements of the pooling and servicing agreement. Consider: if you paid your estimated income taxes on time and filed for an extension, but then failed to send in your tax return, how sympathetic do you think the IRS would be if you argued you clearly intended to submit your return by the deadline?
A vastly more compelling analysis comes from law professor Katherine Porter, whose testimony to the Congressional Oversight Panel today is must reading. She is quite clear that current practices are not kosher:
I describe the legal and economic issues involved in impermissible or flawed foreclosures and then set out the possible responses to such wrongdoing. Specifically, I consider the ways in which systemic foreclosure problems may set off extensive and complex litigation, destabilize the housing market, and result in regulatory interventions. I believe that the foreclosure process lacks integrity in an unacceptable number of ways and instances and that these problems undermine foreclosure mitigation efforts.
She stresses that the problems with foreclosures are far more extensive than robo signers:
Robo-signing is only one of a number of alleged deficiencies in foreclosure practices. Several courts have determined that there were serious deficiencies in the foreclosure process. At a website that I maintain with Tara Twomey, my co-investigator in the Mortgage Study, we make available a list of judicial decisions in which the court finds inappropriate foreclosure practices or misbehavior by mortgage servicers or their agents. Although we stopped updating the document over a year ago, at that time there were already more than fifty such cases. The problems in such cases range from the imposition and collection of improper fees, a lack of standing to foreclose in judicial foreclosure states, the pursuit of foreclosure without rights in the note and mortgage, mortgage origination fraud, or liability to investors for poor underwriting or improper servicing. The key point is that the vast majority of the alleged problems cannot accurately be described as “technicalities.” The flaws in the foreclosure systems go well beyond improper affidavits
Twomey and Porter stopped updating their Mortgage Study document in 2009 because they were being flooded with the number of cases showing violations of servicing requirements and foreclosure standards.
She also confirms our view that the failure to convey the borrower promissory note as described in the pooling and servicing agreement is a serious problem:
The largest and most complex harm that may exist with the loans in default or foreclosure today is that the paperwork for the loans was not transferred correctly…..The concern being raised is that during the securitization process that the transfers from originator to sponsor to depositor to trust (to generalize the parties in a typical process) were not performed or were not performed correctly. A related issue is whether the physical paperwork or electronic records can be located and are accurate. These records are needed to sort out whether the transfers were completed and valid.
I believe the law is somewhat unsettled on what actually must be done via a securitization to complete the transfers correctly….
The implications of problems with transfer are serious. If the trust does not have the loan, homeowners may have been making payments to the wrong party. If the trust does not have the note or mortgage, it may not have standing to foreclose or legal authority to negotiate a loan modification. To the extent that these transfers are being completed retroactively, it raises issues about honesty in creating and dating the assignments/transfers and about what parties can do, if anything, if an entity in the securitization chain, such as Lehman Brothers or New Century, is no longer in existence. Moreover, retroactive transfers may violate the terms of the trust, which often prohibit the addition of new assets, or may cause the trust to lose its REMIC status, a favorable treatment under the Internal Revenue Code. Chain of title problems have the potential to expose the banks to investor lawsuits and to hinder their legal authority to foreclose or even to do loss mitigation.
This is a pretty damning list, needless to say. And there is another layer of problems this may create, that consumers may be able to sue the securitization trust (or whatever entity actually has the note now) for origination fraud:
For over 10 years, there have been allegations about violations of consumer protection laws and poor/nonexistent underwriting at loan origination. While the law gives great finality to completed foreclosure sales, loans that are currently in default (which some estimate to be as many as 20 percent of mortgages underlying privately-backed securities) are at risk of being challenged for origination violations. These challenges could come in the form of investor suits trying to force banks to buy back loans that did not meet the representations of the securitization documents, e.g., they were not underwritten to the reported standard. Another type of lawsuit risk is that consumers are able to sue the current holder of their note for violations that occurred at origination. Normally, these complaints fail because the holder of the note is thought to be a “holder in due course,” a person that receives protection from most of the claims that someone could bring against the originator of the note. However, if the notes do not meet the requirements of negotiable instruments, there cannot be a holder in due course. The person with the note merely is the possessor “bearer paper,” and can be sued for all wrongs associated with that note contract.
She also dismisses bank claims that their processes are fine:
The banks have repeatedly tried to minimize perceptions about the materiality of their foreclosure deficiencies…The general thrust of the banks’ defense has been that because the homeowners did take on a mortgage obligation, and have in fact missed payments, then the foreclosure is proper. As I have explained recently:
“Just because the homeowner hasn’t paid his mortgage doesn’t mean anybody in the world can kick him out,” …She added that the bank’s argument was a little like saying that someone who committed a crime shouldn’t receive a trial because he’s so obviously guilty.
Due process does not disappear merely upon the assertion by one party that the other is clearly liable. The allegations of problems in mortgage servicing should, if anything, only heighten the due process requirements on consumers. For example, in light of the lack of verification procedures for affidavits to support requests for judgments in judicial foreclosures, it may be reasonable to be concerned that there is absolutely no verification of the facts in the non-judicial foreclosure context. Thus, we might argue that states or the federal government ought to increase the legal requirements for foreclosures across the board, at least for loans initiated in the last five to ten years when widespread allegations of paperwork and procedural problems have existed. The banks’ arguments that we can ignore possible systemic wrongdoing by the banks because as a systemic matter, homeowners are in default on their loans, is unpersuasive. Indeed, it seems to reflect a fundamental misunderstanding of the obligations of any party wishing to invoke the aid of the law in enforcing its rights….
he lawyers that I have met over years of my research on mortgage servicing—both creditor lawyers and debtor lawyers—have nearly universally expressed that they believe a very large number (perhaps virtually all) securitized loans made in the boom period in the mid-2000s contain serious paperwork flaws, did not meet underwriting or other requirements of the trust, and have not been serviced properly as to default and foreclosure.
There is a great deal more in her testimony that is very much worth reading.
Damon Slivers, a member of the COP, succinctly highlighted the key issue:
The risks to bank balance sheets is real as they reap the whirlwind they have sown. From the New York Times article cited earlier:
Some consumer lawyers say they are now swamped with homeowners saying they have been wronged by slipshod bank practices and want to fight to keep their homes.
And the more consumers fight, which increases costs to banks and investors, the more investors will push for a resolution (indeed, they’ve already started), and will go to court if need be. It’s going to be hard for banks to maintain their “no real problems here” party line as litigation against them continues to snowball.
eric seiger
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NEW YORK, NY, November 9, 2010 – News Corporation today announced that Former New York City Department of Education Chancellor Joel Klein will join the Company as Executive Vice President, Office of the Chairman. ...
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eric seiger
Figures my comment would be voted down. Most people in here aren’t looking for reality, just to tow the party line.
Predatory lending is mostly hype, driven by those who want to keep the eye off the ball. The higher risk market is a market, like it or not. And its a lucrative one when done right, with proper oversight to ensure lenders maintain sufficient capital from their increased profits (driven by increased interest rates) to cover the NATURALLY higher rate of default.
Naturally higher rate of default? uhhhh yea….duh.
That’s why its called high risk. You people are buying into the Nancy Pelosi Harry Reid nonsense of NO RISK lending.
High risk lending is how new businesses are formed, and they fuel development, meaning work, jobs, for tens of millions of people. Those jobs feed families. Families who right now are on food stamps, while you people talk about extending their welfare.
They don’t need welfare.
They need JOBS.
They want JOBS.
Most Americans want to work, but the jobs aren’t there. Because when builders can’t build, because buyers can’t buy, then workers can’t work. Period. And I’m not just talking about construction workers here. I’m talking about the independent owner operator who does long hauls of building materials. Or the guy who got hired on at the truck tire factory because more trucks are on the road. And the girl at home depot ringing up that new hot water heater you just bought because you’re upgrading your home to energy efficiency, or the guy who works at the roofing shingle factory, or the guy who drives the roach coach there each day because the factory’s open and doing a booming business, or the real estate lady, or the girl at the title company, or the landscaper, or home appraiser, who has more work than he can handle, or the local city govt hiring on 20 new pot hole fillers because their coffers are so full from the real estate sales taxes, to the guy working at the railroad that ships all that nice new lumber for all those homes going up for all those people buying them, to the cashier who got the extra shifts because business was so good at the local truck stop, to the….
There is no end to the jobs that were supported by our booming housing market. Alan Greenspan testified before Congress that the tent pole of our economy that was propping it up, was the housing market. He WARNED against letting it falter. Hell he wrote it in his book.
But no one listened.
Just like no one listens in here.
Because you’re too f$#king stupid, or too f#$king pompous, or too fuA#king something, because no one learned a damn thing.
No one got it. No one gets it.
Greenspan got it.
And so did Nancy Pelosi. And she USED it.
And it worked.
And now, all we have is a country full of dumbFa#4ks, running their mouths about things they read about on google. They don’t KNOW first hand, which by the way is the only reason I know.
I’m not smarter than anyone else and don’t claim to be. I just had first hand knowledge because it directly impacted me when it happened. And when my Mortgage broker called me the day Pelosi announced her “hearings” to “CLAMP DOWN ON LENDING”, and told me the money’s all frozen and the underwriters have stopped underwriting, thats when I SAW it happen, in real time.
Not some bs nonsense I’m regurgitating from google to try to sound erudite on a subject I know nothing about. No sir. First hand insider knowledge. The loans that were fine one day, were gone the next. And MILLIONS of developers were left holding properties, they could not sell.
Because suddenly there were no more mortgages for people to buy them with.
So go on, vote this one down too sheeple. Don’t let the truth stand in the way of your partisan pompousness. Just vote away. Might as well, because you vote the away the country just as easy.
Reader MBSGuy wrote to express his disgust with the mortgage industry’s efforts to pretend that nothing is rotten in Denmark. His object of contempt was an article in Bloomberg which dutifully recited the current talking points. The flacks have clearly been working full time: the headline, “Mortgage Industry Bristles at ‘Robin Hood’ Foreclosure Theories,” is yet another example of creative phrase-mongering to try to discredit critics. And get a load of the assertions:
The “number of attorneys that signed off on” the policies used when Wall Street firms packaged mortgages into bonds means it’s likely that the trusts used to hold the debt will be able to prove they own the loans in almost all cases, said Philip Seares, a managing director at Citigroup Inc. who run its trading of whole loans.
The industry also has faith that loan assignments handled by the Mortgage Electronic Registration System, or MERS, can’t be broadly contested, Seares and Mortgage Bankers Association President John Courson said at the group’s annual conference.
As we indicated in a post earlier tonight, judges ARE contesting the use of MERS, and in particular, the casual assignments made by parties who were not employees of the company that owned the note. In addition, all state supreme courts that have ruled on foreclosures in the name of MERS (admittedly a different issue than MERS assignments per se), save Minnesota, which passed MERS-friendly statutes, have ruled against it. . These decisions have often objected to the multiple and inconsistent roles MERS typically plays, which lays the foundation for other challenges.
As MBSGuy noted:
When confronted with countless examples of why there are problems, industry insiders say it can’t be a problem because scores of attorneys signed off on the legal documents. It is almost embarrassing to see how feeble the industry sounds when confronted with evidence.
The part that the industry boosters are missing is the fact that the legal opinions for mortgage securitizations were qualified (in general, lawyers craft opinion so as to provide the minimum degree of comfort necessary to get the deal done). They took an “if-then” form: “if you did everything you said you would do, then all is fine.” And as we’ve indicated repeatedly on this blog, the industry did NOT do what it promised in the pooling and servicing agreement. It appears in many cases starting roughly in 2004, the parties to the securitization failed to convey the notes as described in their own contracts, basically because it was too costly and time-consuming.
The media has finally woken up and is reporting on a wide range and variety of bogus foreclosure actions, vitiating the industry claims that all foreclosure actions are correct. And before some readers try the argument that a few errors here and there are no big deal, try telling that to someone threatened with the loss of their home. This sort of thing was impossible in the pre-securitization era, and for good reason: the process of dealing with real property was cumbersome by design. It was fault intolerant because the consequences of error can be catastrophic to the participants. Any process that has a lot of safety features and checks is going to be inefficient. It was inevitable that a drive for efficiency at all costs would compromise the integrity of the system.
The New York Times, in “Homeowners Facing Foreclosure Demand Recourse,” provides examples of erroneous foreclosure actions:
Ricky Rought paid cash to the Deutsche Bank National Trust Company for a four-room cabin in Michigan with the intention of fixing it up for his daughter. Instead, the bank tried to foreclose on the property and the locks were changed, court records show.
Sonya Robison is facing a foreclosure suit in Colorado after the company handling her mortgage encouraged her to skip a payment, she says, to square up for mistakenly changing the locks on her home, too.
Thomas and Charlotte Sexton, of Kentucky, were successfully foreclosed upon by a mortgage trust that, according to court records, does not exist.
The price is worth reading in full, because it gives the gory details of these cases, but it has some technical errors (its discussion of allonges is all wrong, and it also fails to note that the use of allonges in foreclosures is suspect; the ones that magically materialize in foreclosures are almost without exception in violation of the requirements of the Uniform Commercial Code).
Even though more and more accounts like these are being reported daily, the denial in the industry remains high. I spoke to one expert who believes that the big white shoe law firms themselves do not understand how badly their clients failed to perform their contractual obligations. Thus lawyers may be offering their confident defenses based on ignorance of the relevant facts. (Before legally sophisticated readers point out that banks ought to tell their attorneys first about any legal problems, since the communication is confidential, remember, only a very few senior executives, plus members of the legal department, deal with outside counsel. An individual employee who was in a position to know what was really going on would be at a lower level. A general rule of corporate life is bearing news of serious problems is a career-limiting move).
But even allowing for the possibility of remarkable ignorance, the industry defenses are remarkably weak. Back to the Bloomberg story:
The American Securitization Forum trade group, JPMorgan Chase & Co. bond analysts and law firm SNR Denton have also dismissed such talk. In a commentary posted on its website, SNR Denton says that most attempts to question the validity of practices can be trumped by items such as the fact that all parties involved “clearly intended” for the trusts to take ownership.
We dismembered the SNR Denton article earlier this week, and the “intent” argument is laughable, particularly given the detailed, specific requirements of the pooling and servicing agreement. Consider: if you paid your estimated income taxes on time and filed for an extension, but then failed to send in your tax return, how sympathetic do you think the IRS would be if you argued you clearly intended to submit your return by the deadline?
A vastly more compelling analysis comes from law professor Katherine Porter, whose testimony to the Congressional Oversight Panel today is must reading. She is quite clear that current practices are not kosher:
I describe the legal and economic issues involved in impermissible or flawed foreclosures and then set out the possible responses to such wrongdoing. Specifically, I consider the ways in which systemic foreclosure problems may set off extensive and complex litigation, destabilize the housing market, and result in regulatory interventions. I believe that the foreclosure process lacks integrity in an unacceptable number of ways and instances and that these problems undermine foreclosure mitigation efforts.
She stresses that the problems with foreclosures are far more extensive than robo signers:
Robo-signing is only one of a number of alleged deficiencies in foreclosure practices. Several courts have determined that there were serious deficiencies in the foreclosure process. At a website that I maintain with Tara Twomey, my co-investigator in the Mortgage Study, we make available a list of judicial decisions in which the court finds inappropriate foreclosure practices or misbehavior by mortgage servicers or their agents. Although we stopped updating the document over a year ago, at that time there were already more than fifty such cases. The problems in such cases range from the imposition and collection of improper fees, a lack of standing to foreclose in judicial foreclosure states, the pursuit of foreclosure without rights in the note and mortgage, mortgage origination fraud, or liability to investors for poor underwriting or improper servicing. The key point is that the vast majority of the alleged problems cannot accurately be described as “technicalities.” The flaws in the foreclosure systems go well beyond improper affidavits
Twomey and Porter stopped updating their Mortgage Study document in 2009 because they were being flooded with the number of cases showing violations of servicing requirements and foreclosure standards.
She also confirms our view that the failure to convey the borrower promissory note as described in the pooling and servicing agreement is a serious problem:
The largest and most complex harm that may exist with the loans in default or foreclosure today is that the paperwork for the loans was not transferred correctly…..The concern being raised is that during the securitization process that the transfers from originator to sponsor to depositor to trust (to generalize the parties in a typical process) were not performed or were not performed correctly. A related issue is whether the physical paperwork or electronic records can be located and are accurate. These records are needed to sort out whether the transfers were completed and valid.
I believe the law is somewhat unsettled on what actually must be done via a securitization to complete the transfers correctly….
The implications of problems with transfer are serious. If the trust does not have the loan, homeowners may have been making payments to the wrong party. If the trust does not have the note or mortgage, it may not have standing to foreclose or legal authority to negotiate a loan modification. To the extent that these transfers are being completed retroactively, it raises issues about honesty in creating and dating the assignments/transfers and about what parties can do, if anything, if an entity in the securitization chain, such as Lehman Brothers or New Century, is no longer in existence. Moreover, retroactive transfers may violate the terms of the trust, which often prohibit the addition of new assets, or may cause the trust to lose its REMIC status, a favorable treatment under the Internal Revenue Code. Chain of title problems have the potential to expose the banks to investor lawsuits and to hinder their legal authority to foreclose or even to do loss mitigation.
This is a pretty damning list, needless to say. And there is another layer of problems this may create, that consumers may be able to sue the securitization trust (or whatever entity actually has the note now) for origination fraud:
For over 10 years, there have been allegations about violations of consumer protection laws and poor/nonexistent underwriting at loan origination. While the law gives great finality to completed foreclosure sales, loans that are currently in default (which some estimate to be as many as 20 percent of mortgages underlying privately-backed securities) are at risk of being challenged for origination violations. These challenges could come in the form of investor suits trying to force banks to buy back loans that did not meet the representations of the securitization documents, e.g., they were not underwritten to the reported standard. Another type of lawsuit risk is that consumers are able to sue the current holder of their note for violations that occurred at origination. Normally, these complaints fail because the holder of the note is thought to be a “holder in due course,” a person that receives protection from most of the claims that someone could bring against the originator of the note. However, if the notes do not meet the requirements of negotiable instruments, there cannot be a holder in due course. The person with the note merely is the possessor “bearer paper,” and can be sued for all wrongs associated with that note contract.
She also dismisses bank claims that their processes are fine:
The banks have repeatedly tried to minimize perceptions about the materiality of their foreclosure deficiencies…The general thrust of the banks’ defense has been that because the homeowners did take on a mortgage obligation, and have in fact missed payments, then the foreclosure is proper. As I have explained recently:
“Just because the homeowner hasn’t paid his mortgage doesn’t mean anybody in the world can kick him out,” …She added that the bank’s argument was a little like saying that someone who committed a crime shouldn’t receive a trial because he’s so obviously guilty.
Due process does not disappear merely upon the assertion by one party that the other is clearly liable. The allegations of problems in mortgage servicing should, if anything, only heighten the due process requirements on consumers. For example, in light of the lack of verification procedures for affidavits to support requests for judgments in judicial foreclosures, it may be reasonable to be concerned that there is absolutely no verification of the facts in the non-judicial foreclosure context. Thus, we might argue that states or the federal government ought to increase the legal requirements for foreclosures across the board, at least for loans initiated in the last five to ten years when widespread allegations of paperwork and procedural problems have existed. The banks’ arguments that we can ignore possible systemic wrongdoing by the banks because as a systemic matter, homeowners are in default on their loans, is unpersuasive. Indeed, it seems to reflect a fundamental misunderstanding of the obligations of any party wishing to invoke the aid of the law in enforcing its rights….
he lawyers that I have met over years of my research on mortgage servicing—both creditor lawyers and debtor lawyers—have nearly universally expressed that they believe a very large number (perhaps virtually all) securitized loans made in the boom period in the mid-2000s contain serious paperwork flaws, did not meet underwriting or other requirements of the trust, and have not been serviced properly as to default and foreclosure.
There is a great deal more in her testimony that is very much worth reading.
Damon Slivers, a member of the COP, succinctly highlighted the key issue:
The risks to bank balance sheets is real as they reap the whirlwind they have sown. From the New York Times article cited earlier:
Some consumer lawyers say they are now swamped with homeowners saying they have been wronged by slipshod bank practices and want to fight to keep their homes.
And the more consumers fight, which increases costs to banks and investors, the more investors will push for a resolution (indeed, they’ve already started), and will go to court if need be. It’s going to be hard for banks to maintain their “no real problems here” party line as litigation against them continues to snowball.
eric seiger
<b>News</b> Corp Names EVP Office Of Chairman – Deadline.com
NEW YORK, NY, November 9, 2010 – News Corporation today announced that Former New York City Department of Education Chancellor Joel Klein will join the Company as Executive Vice President, Office of the Chairman. ...
<b>News</b> Poll FAIL - Epic Fail Funny Videos and Funny Pictures
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Google <b>News</b> enhanced for mobiles - Pocket-lint
Google News enhanced for mobiles - Easier navigation for your fat fingers.
eric seiger
eric seiger
eric seiger
<b>News</b> Corp Names EVP Office Of Chairman – Deadline.com
NEW YORK, NY, November 9, 2010 – News Corporation today announced that Former New York City Department of Education Chancellor Joel Klein will join the Company as Executive Vice President, Office of the Chairman. ...
<b>News</b> Poll FAIL - Epic Fail Funny Videos and Funny Pictures
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eric seiger
Figures my comment would be voted down. Most people in here aren’t looking for reality, just to tow the party line.
Predatory lending is mostly hype, driven by those who want to keep the eye off the ball. The higher risk market is a market, like it or not. And its a lucrative one when done right, with proper oversight to ensure lenders maintain sufficient capital from their increased profits (driven by increased interest rates) to cover the NATURALLY higher rate of default.
Naturally higher rate of default? uhhhh yea….duh.
That’s why its called high risk. You people are buying into the Nancy Pelosi Harry Reid nonsense of NO RISK lending.
High risk lending is how new businesses are formed, and they fuel development, meaning work, jobs, for tens of millions of people. Those jobs feed families. Families who right now are on food stamps, while you people talk about extending their welfare.
They don’t need welfare.
They need JOBS.
They want JOBS.
Most Americans want to work, but the jobs aren’t there. Because when builders can’t build, because buyers can’t buy, then workers can’t work. Period. And I’m not just talking about construction workers here. I’m talking about the independent owner operator who does long hauls of building materials. Or the guy who got hired on at the truck tire factory because more trucks are on the road. And the girl at home depot ringing up that new hot water heater you just bought because you’re upgrading your home to energy efficiency, or the guy who works at the roofing shingle factory, or the guy who drives the roach coach there each day because the factory’s open and doing a booming business, or the real estate lady, or the girl at the title company, or the landscaper, or home appraiser, who has more work than he can handle, or the local city govt hiring on 20 new pot hole fillers because their coffers are so full from the real estate sales taxes, to the guy working at the railroad that ships all that nice new lumber for all those homes going up for all those people buying them, to the cashier who got the extra shifts because business was so good at the local truck stop, to the….
There is no end to the jobs that were supported by our booming housing market. Alan Greenspan testified before Congress that the tent pole of our economy that was propping it up, was the housing market. He WARNED against letting it falter. Hell he wrote it in his book.
But no one listened.
Just like no one listens in here.
Because you’re too f$#king stupid, or too f#$king pompous, or too fuA#king something, because no one learned a damn thing.
No one got it. No one gets it.
Greenspan got it.
And so did Nancy Pelosi. And she USED it.
And it worked.
And now, all we have is a country full of dumbFa#4ks, running their mouths about things they read about on google. They don’t KNOW first hand, which by the way is the only reason I know.
I’m not smarter than anyone else and don’t claim to be. I just had first hand knowledge because it directly impacted me when it happened. And when my Mortgage broker called me the day Pelosi announced her “hearings” to “CLAMP DOWN ON LENDING”, and told me the money’s all frozen and the underwriters have stopped underwriting, thats when I SAW it happen, in real time.
Not some bs nonsense I’m regurgitating from google to try to sound erudite on a subject I know nothing about. No sir. First hand insider knowledge. The loans that were fine one day, were gone the next. And MILLIONS of developers were left holding properties, they could not sell.
Because suddenly there were no more mortgages for people to buy them with.
So go on, vote this one down too sheeple. Don’t let the truth stand in the way of your partisan pompousness. Just vote away. Might as well, because you vote the away the country just as easy.
Reader MBSGuy wrote to express his disgust with the mortgage industry’s efforts to pretend that nothing is rotten in Denmark. His object of contempt was an article in Bloomberg which dutifully recited the current talking points. The flacks have clearly been working full time: the headline, “Mortgage Industry Bristles at ‘Robin Hood’ Foreclosure Theories,” is yet another example of creative phrase-mongering to try to discredit critics. And get a load of the assertions:
The “number of attorneys that signed off on” the policies used when Wall Street firms packaged mortgages into bonds means it’s likely that the trusts used to hold the debt will be able to prove they own the loans in almost all cases, said Philip Seares, a managing director at Citigroup Inc. who run its trading of whole loans.
The industry also has faith that loan assignments handled by the Mortgage Electronic Registration System, or MERS, can’t be broadly contested, Seares and Mortgage Bankers Association President John Courson said at the group’s annual conference.
As we indicated in a post earlier tonight, judges ARE contesting the use of MERS, and in particular, the casual assignments made by parties who were not employees of the company that owned the note. In addition, all state supreme courts that have ruled on foreclosures in the name of MERS (admittedly a different issue than MERS assignments per se), save Minnesota, which passed MERS-friendly statutes, have ruled against it. . These decisions have often objected to the multiple and inconsistent roles MERS typically plays, which lays the foundation for other challenges.
As MBSGuy noted:
When confronted with countless examples of why there are problems, industry insiders say it can’t be a problem because scores of attorneys signed off on the legal documents. It is almost embarrassing to see how feeble the industry sounds when confronted with evidence.
The part that the industry boosters are missing is the fact that the legal opinions for mortgage securitizations were qualified (in general, lawyers craft opinion so as to provide the minimum degree of comfort necessary to get the deal done). They took an “if-then” form: “if you did everything you said you would do, then all is fine.” And as we’ve indicated repeatedly on this blog, the industry did NOT do what it promised in the pooling and servicing agreement. It appears in many cases starting roughly in 2004, the parties to the securitization failed to convey the notes as described in their own contracts, basically because it was too costly and time-consuming.
The media has finally woken up and is reporting on a wide range and variety of bogus foreclosure actions, vitiating the industry claims that all foreclosure actions are correct. And before some readers try the argument that a few errors here and there are no big deal, try telling that to someone threatened with the loss of their home. This sort of thing was impossible in the pre-securitization era, and for good reason: the process of dealing with real property was cumbersome by design. It was fault intolerant because the consequences of error can be catastrophic to the participants. Any process that has a lot of safety features and checks is going to be inefficient. It was inevitable that a drive for efficiency at all costs would compromise the integrity of the system.
The New York Times, in “Homeowners Facing Foreclosure Demand Recourse,” provides examples of erroneous foreclosure actions:
Ricky Rought paid cash to the Deutsche Bank National Trust Company for a four-room cabin in Michigan with the intention of fixing it up for his daughter. Instead, the bank tried to foreclose on the property and the locks were changed, court records show.
Sonya Robison is facing a foreclosure suit in Colorado after the company handling her mortgage encouraged her to skip a payment, she says, to square up for mistakenly changing the locks on her home, too.
Thomas and Charlotte Sexton, of Kentucky, were successfully foreclosed upon by a mortgage trust that, according to court records, does not exist.
The price is worth reading in full, because it gives the gory details of these cases, but it has some technical errors (its discussion of allonges is all wrong, and it also fails to note that the use of allonges in foreclosures is suspect; the ones that magically materialize in foreclosures are almost without exception in violation of the requirements of the Uniform Commercial Code).
Even though more and more accounts like these are being reported daily, the denial in the industry remains high. I spoke to one expert who believes that the big white shoe law firms themselves do not understand how badly their clients failed to perform their contractual obligations. Thus lawyers may be offering their confident defenses based on ignorance of the relevant facts. (Before legally sophisticated readers point out that banks ought to tell their attorneys first about any legal problems, since the communication is confidential, remember, only a very few senior executives, plus members of the legal department, deal with outside counsel. An individual employee who was in a position to know what was really going on would be at a lower level. A general rule of corporate life is bearing news of serious problems is a career-limiting move).
But even allowing for the possibility of remarkable ignorance, the industry defenses are remarkably weak. Back to the Bloomberg story:
The American Securitization Forum trade group, JPMorgan Chase & Co. bond analysts and law firm SNR Denton have also dismissed such talk. In a commentary posted on its website, SNR Denton says that most attempts to question the validity of practices can be trumped by items such as the fact that all parties involved “clearly intended” for the trusts to take ownership.
We dismembered the SNR Denton article earlier this week, and the “intent” argument is laughable, particularly given the detailed, specific requirements of the pooling and servicing agreement. Consider: if you paid your estimated income taxes on time and filed for an extension, but then failed to send in your tax return, how sympathetic do you think the IRS would be if you argued you clearly intended to submit your return by the deadline?
A vastly more compelling analysis comes from law professor Katherine Porter, whose testimony to the Congressional Oversight Panel today is must reading. She is quite clear that current practices are not kosher:
I describe the legal and economic issues involved in impermissible or flawed foreclosures and then set out the possible responses to such wrongdoing. Specifically, I consider the ways in which systemic foreclosure problems may set off extensive and complex litigation, destabilize the housing market, and result in regulatory interventions. I believe that the foreclosure process lacks integrity in an unacceptable number of ways and instances and that these problems undermine foreclosure mitigation efforts.
She stresses that the problems with foreclosures are far more extensive than robo signers:
Robo-signing is only one of a number of alleged deficiencies in foreclosure practices. Several courts have determined that there were serious deficiencies in the foreclosure process. At a website that I maintain with Tara Twomey, my co-investigator in the Mortgage Study, we make available a list of judicial decisions in which the court finds inappropriate foreclosure practices or misbehavior by mortgage servicers or their agents. Although we stopped updating the document over a year ago, at that time there were already more than fifty such cases. The problems in such cases range from the imposition and collection of improper fees, a lack of standing to foreclose in judicial foreclosure states, the pursuit of foreclosure without rights in the note and mortgage, mortgage origination fraud, or liability to investors for poor underwriting or improper servicing. The key point is that the vast majority of the alleged problems cannot accurately be described as “technicalities.” The flaws in the foreclosure systems go well beyond improper affidavits
Twomey and Porter stopped updating their Mortgage Study document in 2009 because they were being flooded with the number of cases showing violations of servicing requirements and foreclosure standards.
She also confirms our view that the failure to convey the borrower promissory note as described in the pooling and servicing agreement is a serious problem:
The largest and most complex harm that may exist with the loans in default or foreclosure today is that the paperwork for the loans was not transferred correctly…..The concern being raised is that during the securitization process that the transfers from originator to sponsor to depositor to trust (to generalize the parties in a typical process) were not performed or were not performed correctly. A related issue is whether the physical paperwork or electronic records can be located and are accurate. These records are needed to sort out whether the transfers were completed and valid.
I believe the law is somewhat unsettled on what actually must be done via a securitization to complete the transfers correctly….
The implications of problems with transfer are serious. If the trust does not have the loan, homeowners may have been making payments to the wrong party. If the trust does not have the note or mortgage, it may not have standing to foreclose or legal authority to negotiate a loan modification. To the extent that these transfers are being completed retroactively, it raises issues about honesty in creating and dating the assignments/transfers and about what parties can do, if anything, if an entity in the securitization chain, such as Lehman Brothers or New Century, is no longer in existence. Moreover, retroactive transfers may violate the terms of the trust, which often prohibit the addition of new assets, or may cause the trust to lose its REMIC status, a favorable treatment under the Internal Revenue Code. Chain of title problems have the potential to expose the banks to investor lawsuits and to hinder their legal authority to foreclose or even to do loss mitigation.
This is a pretty damning list, needless to say. And there is another layer of problems this may create, that consumers may be able to sue the securitization trust (or whatever entity actually has the note now) for origination fraud:
For over 10 years, there have been allegations about violations of consumer protection laws and poor/nonexistent underwriting at loan origination. While the law gives great finality to completed foreclosure sales, loans that are currently in default (which some estimate to be as many as 20 percent of mortgages underlying privately-backed securities) are at risk of being challenged for origination violations. These challenges could come in the form of investor suits trying to force banks to buy back loans that did not meet the representations of the securitization documents, e.g., they were not underwritten to the reported standard. Another type of lawsuit risk is that consumers are able to sue the current holder of their note for violations that occurred at origination. Normally, these complaints fail because the holder of the note is thought to be a “holder in due course,” a person that receives protection from most of the claims that someone could bring against the originator of the note. However, if the notes do not meet the requirements of negotiable instruments, there cannot be a holder in due course. The person with the note merely is the possessor “bearer paper,” and can be sued for all wrongs associated with that note contract.
She also dismisses bank claims that their processes are fine:
The banks have repeatedly tried to minimize perceptions about the materiality of their foreclosure deficiencies…The general thrust of the banks’ defense has been that because the homeowners did take on a mortgage obligation, and have in fact missed payments, then the foreclosure is proper. As I have explained recently:
“Just because the homeowner hasn’t paid his mortgage doesn’t mean anybody in the world can kick him out,” …She added that the bank’s argument was a little like saying that someone who committed a crime shouldn’t receive a trial because he’s so obviously guilty.
Due process does not disappear merely upon the assertion by one party that the other is clearly liable. The allegations of problems in mortgage servicing should, if anything, only heighten the due process requirements on consumers. For example, in light of the lack of verification procedures for affidavits to support requests for judgments in judicial foreclosures, it may be reasonable to be concerned that there is absolutely no verification of the facts in the non-judicial foreclosure context. Thus, we might argue that states or the federal government ought to increase the legal requirements for foreclosures across the board, at least for loans initiated in the last five to ten years when widespread allegations of paperwork and procedural problems have existed. The banks’ arguments that we can ignore possible systemic wrongdoing by the banks because as a systemic matter, homeowners are in default on their loans, is unpersuasive. Indeed, it seems to reflect a fundamental misunderstanding of the obligations of any party wishing to invoke the aid of the law in enforcing its rights….
he lawyers that I have met over years of my research on mortgage servicing—both creditor lawyers and debtor lawyers—have nearly universally expressed that they believe a very large number (perhaps virtually all) securitized loans made in the boom period in the mid-2000s contain serious paperwork flaws, did not meet underwriting or other requirements of the trust, and have not been serviced properly as to default and foreclosure.
There is a great deal more in her testimony that is very much worth reading.
Damon Slivers, a member of the COP, succinctly highlighted the key issue:
The risks to bank balance sheets is real as they reap the whirlwind they have sown. From the New York Times article cited earlier:
Some consumer lawyers say they are now swamped with homeowners saying they have been wronged by slipshod bank practices and want to fight to keep their homes.
And the more consumers fight, which increases costs to banks and investors, the more investors will push for a resolution (indeed, they’ve already started), and will go to court if need be. It’s going to be hard for banks to maintain their “no real problems here” party line as litigation against them continues to snowball.
eric seiger
eric seiger
<b>News</b> Corp Names EVP Office Of Chairman – Deadline.com
NEW YORK, NY, November 9, 2010 – News Corporation today announced that Former New York City Department of Education Chancellor Joel Klein will join the Company as Executive Vice President, Office of the Chairman. ...
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eric seiger
eric seiger
<b>News</b> Corp Names EVP Office Of Chairman – Deadline.com
NEW YORK, NY, November 9, 2010 – News Corporation today announced that Former New York City Department of Education Chancellor Joel Klein will join the Company as Executive Vice President, Office of the Chairman. ...
<b>News</b> Poll FAIL - Epic Fail Funny Videos and Funny Pictures
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eric seiger
<b>News</b> Corp Names EVP Office Of Chairman – Deadline.com
NEW YORK, NY, November 9, 2010 – News Corporation today announced that Former New York City Department of Education Chancellor Joel Klein will join the Company as Executive Vice President, Office of the Chairman. ...
<b>News</b> Poll FAIL - Epic Fail Funny Videos and Funny Pictures
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eric seiger
<b>News</b> Corp Names EVP Office Of Chairman – Deadline.com
NEW YORK, NY, November 9, 2010 – News Corporation today announced that Former New York City Department of Education Chancellor Joel Klein will join the Company as Executive Vice President, Office of the Chairman. ...
<b>News</b> Poll FAIL - Epic Fail Funny Videos and Funny Pictures
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eric seiger
eric seiger
eric seiger
<b>News</b> Corp Names EVP Office Of Chairman – Deadline.com
NEW YORK, NY, November 9, 2010 – News Corporation today announced that Former New York City Department of Education Chancellor Joel Klein will join the Company as Executive Vice President, Office of the Chairman. ...
<b>News</b> Poll FAIL - Epic Fail Funny Videos and Funny Pictures
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You had enough money when you bought the place. In fact you had more than enough. You calculated it out yourself. You didn't want to go any more than one fifth of your income. So, you found a house and a loan package that you could support and afford and yet stay well within your budget.
It's a beautiful home. There are plenty of options for growth and a great neighborhood to raise your children in. Just enough land, ten acres, to allow for a garage some time in the future and not so much that you will be burdened with excessive upkeep. Though yours is not waterfront, on a good day, you can see the neighboring inland lake. Simply ideal you think. You are feeling a bit proud of yourself at having made such a great selection.
Your wife and you have worked hard for the past five years and have saved everything you possibly could just to get your piece of the earth. You've both worked two jobs while still trying to take care of your newest addition to the family, your now, two year old son. Your savings continued to grow and tempted you the full time but you withstood the urge to spend and you successfully saved it all for this moment.
Fortunately for you, your home based business turned out very successful. Who would have thought a business consultant could support a family, buy two new cars and even get a mortgage on a new home while doing something he loved so much. But, the means justifies the end, and here you are, sitting on the porch of your new piece of Americana, your family home.
Suddenly, the climate chills and your brightening glow darkens. Your customers begin to cancel appointments. Some of them close their doors, others move out of the state or even out of the country. You frantically call them day after day only to hear things like "I can't even afford to buy raw material, how can I afford to bring you in." Your monthly activity falls from a lucrative 20 days a month to an existing 10 days a month, to a "get behind" 5 days. Now you find it difficult to schedule even one or two days a month.
You sell your second vehicle, stop several services, and cancel all magazines and newspapers and professional organization memberships. You and wife quit going out, no more lunches, no more weekend movies, and no more client entertainment evenings. You find yourself drawing on what is left of your now meager savings just to keep the mortgage and utilities paid. Soon, you find yourself prioritizing between the mortgage and the light bill; which one gets paid first?
This month you miss the mortgage payment and wait with bated breath to hear what the bank has to say. You are scolded and reminded of your responsibilities. You go to Mom and Dad and borrow the next month mortgage payment. Now you are already one month behind and will stay that way until something turns around.
You finally face the inevitable and put your life's dream up for sale. Your real estate agent suggests you drop your asking price even before they ever advertise your home for sale. You follow their direction and drop it just low enough to pay off your loan. You won't make any money but you will get the loan paid off.
You patiently await the surge of business you expect to come in from your customers but it never materializes. You sell your lawn tractor and the last of your "special" toys, you and your wife's matching golf clubs. You clean your two car garage out of all the tools, toys and implements that compliment a gentleman farmer's estate and park your one lonely family vehicle in the middle of it. You have long since traded in your second new car and settled for a nice looking, though eight year used, sedan.
One day you find yourself in the food stamp line. What happened? The next day you are applying for assistance? How could this be? You owned my own business. You were on top of the world. Now all that is left is your beautiful home; with three late payments to its credit and a letter from the bank threatening foreclosure. It is listed for sale but even if it sold it would be a "short sale." That's where the property sells for less than what it is worth. The bank has assured you that you would not owe anything extra but neither would you recoup your 20% down payment.
Facing foreclosure? Facing foreclosure you sit down with your wife across the table from you. You hold hands; you look each other in the eyes, watery, reddened eyes, and breathe a heavy sigh. You have each other, still. Now, more than ever you need each other. You are facing the greatest loss of your short life together. You pray your losses never get any worse than this but to lose your home was going to be a major blow, a numbing blow.
You can do no more. You have no more resources. There is nothing more you can turn off, or reduce, or quit or sell; you have done it all. You had the letter in hand and the regret in heart. You tried and you lost. Nothing more can save you.
This is all too familiar a scenario in America today. For awhile, everybody was willing to get as creative as they had to, simply to get you to take out a loan and buy a house. It didn't matter if you really had the wherewithal to eventually pay the loan back or not. The objective was to get the financing secured. Then, on top of that, our economy falls apart. Companies close, layoffs sky rocket, people quit buying, banks go belly-up, and people lose their savings and retirements. Financially, everybody's broke.
Facing foreclosure you will find yourself mysteriously alone. This is one of the greatest American tragedies yet, where is all the help? We pay 9/11 survivors almost 2 million dollars a family, we buy Katrina victims homes and give them jobs, America is on site at almost every disaster there is, except this one. Everybody turns their backs on the wretch who has allowed himself to be foreclosed upon.
Facing foreclosure? You will face it by yourself. Nobody will be by your side. You will go through the downsizing, the shame of poverty and the pain of loss by yourself. Your one best defense during this entire time is to keep your spouse close to you, stay close to your spouse, depend entirely upon one another and make it work! Whatever becomes of you and your situation - make it work! I did, my wife did, and today we are a fraction of what we once were but we are happy and we still have one another. It can happen.
eric seiger
<b>News</b> Corp Names EVP Office Of Chairman – Deadline.com
NEW YORK, NY, November 9, 2010 – News Corporation today announced that Former New York City Department of Education Chancellor Joel Klein will join the Company as Executive Vice President, Office of the Chairman. ...
<b>News</b> Poll FAIL - Epic Fail Funny Videos and Funny Pictures
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eric seiger
<b>News</b> Corp Names EVP Office Of Chairman – Deadline.com
NEW YORK, NY, November 9, 2010 – News Corporation today announced that Former New York City Department of Education Chancellor Joel Klein will join the Company as Executive Vice President, Office of the Chairman. ...
<b>News</b> Poll FAIL - Epic Fail Funny Videos and Funny Pictures
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Google <b>News</b> enhanced for mobiles - Pocket-lint
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eric seiger
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