A ruling by the Kansas Supreme Court could spell relief for millions of Americans who face foreclosure of their homes; the ruling is also potentially a disaster for Deutsche Bank, America's Foreclosure King. The court ruled that MERS, a private company that that registers
mortgages electronically and tracks changes in ownership, has no standing in real estate foreclosure proceedings. MERS is an acronym for Mortgage
Electronic Registration Systems. It turns out that about one-half of all new mortgages in the US are registered with MERS and recorded in its name. MERS facilitated the process where banks such as Deutsche Bank would purchase pools of mortgages and then securitize them – basically chopping them into pieces and selling them off to investors such as the German Landesbanken. MERS reduced the transparency of the mortgage market to such an extent that the homeowner no longer knew who held the mortgage note. It may have been held by one bank in Frankfurt, or pieces of it held by hedge funds and insurance companies.
It was a ruling in Cleveland against Deutsche Bank that set the legal precedent for the Kansas Court:
securities have typically served as trustees for the investors. When
the trustees could not present timely written proof of ownership
entitling them to foreclose, they would in the past file “lost-note
affidavits” with the court; and judges usually let these foreclosures
proceed without objection. But in October 2007, an intrepid federal
judge in Cleveland put a halt to the practice. U.S. District Court
Judge Christopher Boyko
ruled that Deutsche Bank had not filed the proper paperwork to
establish its right to foreclose on fourteen homes it was suing to
repossess as trustee. Judges in many other states then came out with
similar rulings.
The ruling in Kansas does not (yet) apply to other states, and unfortunately comes too late for residents in Massachusetts who are losing their homes to Deutsche Bank. Richard Zombeck writes in the Huffington Post how some are fighting back and protesting against the German banking giant:
Deutsche Bank holds the record in Massachusetts for the most
evictions of any bank. They are responsible for 17 percent of all
evictions in the state, according to activists at the protest.
Picketers passed out fliers demanding that Deutsche Bank makes its
subcontractors write down mortgages to present day value at fixed
rates; stop all post-foreclosure evictions; and support passage of
bills in the Massachusetts Legislature that would provide a moratorium
on under-water foreclosures and post-foreclosure evictions.Led by Steve Meacham, Director of Housing Organizing for City Life/Vida Urbana (CLVU), protesters shouted, "Deutsche Bank eats while they throw us in streets."
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I wonder how deep this goes – Why isn’t this the #1 story on CNN. There are over 60 million families – including my own – directly affected by these actions. Yet we hear news of a H1N1 pandimic? Something is not right in America
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