Who Has the Title to Your House?

What Happened to Title Companies?

According to the NYT, in an Oct. 13, story by Eric Dash, about Chase, the “uproar over questionable conduct by mortgage lenders intensified Wednesday, one of the nation’s largest banks distanced itself from a controversial, industry-owned registration system that oversees millions of home loans.

“On the same day that all 50 state attorneys general announced that they would investigate foreclosure practices, JPMorgan Chase & Company became the first big lender to acknowledge that it had stopped using Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, or MERS, for foreclosures.

“This bank-owned registry, which eliminates the need to record changes in property ownership in local land records, (bold added) has been criticized for sloppy practices.”

Contrary to local practice in Taos, the above implies that the customary evidence to prove chain of title no longer applies in many parts of the country. Below, we reprint a recent interview with Amy Goodman, wherein journalist Robert Scheer identifies President Clinton’s culpability in modifying banking regulations for housing loans.

Further down we post excerpts from Amy’s interview with Matthew Weidner, a housing activist, whose clients have been subjected to “jack-booted thugs” hired by banks.

(Google Democracy Now and read the complete transcript or listen to the recording.)

Scheer:

“When Clinton came in, he brought in one of the big players on Wall Street, Robert Rubin, who has been head of Goldman Sachs, and basically turned to him and said, “You know, what do I need to do to get Wall Street on my side?” And they said, reverse what they considered to be onerous financial regulation. And Clinton delivered on that. He brought in Rubin then to be his Treasury secretary, who was followed by Lawrence Summers, who’s now the top economics adviser in the Obama White House.

“And in addition to the Gramm bill that reversed Glass-Steagall, he did something even more significant for our current crisis. He—after Summers had pushed it through, Congress signed off on the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000. He was already a lame duck president. It was in the closing weeks of his administration. And this is the source of our whole problem, really, in terms of the housing meltdown…This newfangled—these gimmicks that were developed and spiraled wildly out of control were made possible because of that Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which Clinton signed and which said in Titles III and IV, no existing government regulation, no existing government regulatory body, will be allowed to supervise these credit default swaps, these collateralized debt obligations that were there.

“And as a result, we had this wild runup of irresponsible mortgage lending. The banks no longer did, as in the old days, worry about whether you could make your payments, whether there was value in the house, because they weren’t going to hold that mortgage for thirty years like in the old days. They were going to sell it, you know? And that wild runup of the market—I call it the Clinton bubble. I think his administration deserves or should be given the main responsibility. And that is at the source of our problem.”

Goodman says Scheer, the longtime journalist based in California, worked for the Los Angeles Times for some thirty years, editor at Truthdig.com, author of many books. The latest, just out today in paperback, is “The Great American Stickup: How Reagan Republicans and Clinton Democrats Enriched Wall Street While Mugging Main Street.”

Prologue:

Dispatcher: So there’s a male outside and inside? Is that—they’ve gotten in.

Nancy Jacobini: I don’t know. I don’t know. I’m locked in my bathroom. I don’t know. I just know somebody is breaking—somebody broke into my house.

AMY GOODMAN: The intruder turned out to be an employee hired by Jacobini’s bank, JPMorgan Chase, to change her locks, they said. But Jacobini was only three months behind on her payments. She wasn’t in foreclosure.

NANCY JACOBINI: I was not in foreclosure. I was not given any warning. I am working in a loan modification, and I actually was perhaps maybe four months, five months behind, at the most.

Weidner: “Now, what’s so terrifying about this episode is this is not at all unique. I have examples from all around the country where these banks, these jackbooted thugs that are hired by the banks, are kicking down the doors of people’s homes all across the country. The thing to keep in mind, you know, the problems that are existing across this country are not isolated to people in foreclosure. And I think why this particular incident has caught the attention of people across the country is because they recognize that, wait a minute, if this happened to Nancy, then this could happen to me.”

“I confront law enforcement with these issues. Law enforcement, if you can get them to come out to the home, oftentimes won’t take a report of these activities. If they do happen to take a report of the bank’s breaking in and taking property, they will almost always determine that no crime has been committed, and there’s nothing at all that we can do. That really is what’s so disturbing and troubling is that, you know, our law enforcement, that work for us locally, are working now for the banks and saying that what these banks are doing is acceptable. And I’m here to tell you it absolutely is not. I mean, let’s keep in mind that one of the fundamental principles, a core value of this country, has been property ownership. We should have a right to be secure within our castles, within these homes that we own. And unfortunately, this foundation is being shaken by these banks, because they are now just emboldened, kicking down the doors and coming in whenever they please.”

Caveat Emptor:

If the Jackboots  tried this in Taos, they would get shot, beaten, or bitten by a mad dog. But the rest of the country isn’t used to defending itself against poachers and pirates, who prey on electric meters or use a pen to pilfer from property owners. Speak softly but carry a big stick!