I foolishly hoped the Facebook IPO might actually bring some confidence back to Wall Street.

What was I thinking?

Turns out it’s just another example of how the soulless Wall Street culture is destroying American style capitalism.

We have barely gotten past JP Morgan Chase’s $3 billion catastrophe, and the outrage over their foolish decisions, but here we are again. The attention span on Wall Street seems equivalent to that of a small child.

Scott Udine, a broker friend of mine, said it best, “The brokerage firm community is made up of salesmen and people that mainly care about THEIR bottom-line….not yours!!! They will sell anything, say anything and do anything.”

Morgan Stanley over sold and over hyped too many shares of Facebook to an unsuspecting public, while quietly telling large institutional investors another story. And to add insult to injury NASDAQ had such huge headaches processing all the buy, sell and cancellation orders that they now admit the whole IPO was an unmitigated disaster.

So once again its heads, the banks win, and tails, you lose.

Morgan Stanley changed the game as the lineup was being announced. It reeks of impropriety. Anybody in the stock business will tell you it is practically unheard of.

I can only add this to the mounting list of evidence against the too-big-to-fail and too-big-to-jail banksters and sigh in disgust.

If you’re wondering why a foreclosure defense attorney is up-in-arms about a stock offering, it is because the same shady tactics that have led homeowners to my office are the same ones on display here.

Just as the banks tried to sell mortgages they knew were garbage as “safe” investments, Morgan Stanley pushed Facebook stock that probably wasn’t worth the paper it was printed on.

The only difference here is that unlike with the foreclosure crisis and robosigning, we are seeing everything unfold as it happens, in real time.

I only pray that the regulators in Washington aren’t asleep at the wheel and will actually do something about it. Unlike with the JP Morgan loss, this isn’t their money that went down the tubes.

It’s yours.

The Facebook debacle is indicative of why less and less companies are going public. Smart people just don’t trust Wall Street, and now I suspect no ones does. Since 1997 the drop in companies going public has been a whopping 48 percent. No wonder.

America better not think it has a monopoly on economic engines, or that its model is the only game in town.

Just look at China, where 80 percent of their companies are State Owned Enterprises. In Russia SEOs make up 62 percent while it is 38 percent in Brazil. This is the new global model, and right now it’s making our economic template look out of touch and out of date.

If our system is going to compete with these entities we need to make sure it is not broken, and today it is sure looks like it is.

From The Trenches,

Roy Oppenheim

In the never-ending battle by the banks to make things just a little easier for them, courts in Australia began to authorize banks to serve foreclosure proceedings via Facebook.

In order to begin Florida foreclosure defense proceedings, it is necessary for banks to prove that a homeowner has been successfully served, or notified, before proceeding in court. Service is usually carried out by process servers who try to physically track down the homeowner in order to give them the initial paperwork. Now, not only have banks in Australia gotten authorization to serve via Facebook, but banks in New Zealand, Canada and England have also obtained authorization from courts to serve foreclosure notices using Facebook, in addition to the traditional means.

Why is such a new method undesirable here in Florida? Because banks in the rest of the world didn’t have the document mill scandals that plagued Florida.

Currently, electronic service is only permitted when people have authorized it beforehand. However, it is easy to envision a future where lenders will require borrowers to allow themselves to be electronically served. If banks cannot even be relied upon to properly keep track of legal documents and not to commit fraud, then they should not be given yet another potent tool to put in their arsenal.

Florida Foreclosure Law Changes: Gated Communities and Condominiums

A potent tool that banks in Florida did get, however, is a change to the law regarding service of process to gated communities and condominiums. Before July 1^st, gated communities and condominiums did not have to allow process servers in unannounced.

State Representative John Patrick Julien led the charge to change the law and allow process servers into these locations unannounced. A process server himself, Representative Julien convinced his colleagues that security guards and building doormen should be required to let in process servers into communities and condos unannounced.

The law now requires guards and doormen to not only allow unfettered access to homes about to be put into foreclosure, but guards and doormen must allow process servers into any and all parts of the community, including common areas. The law even leaves unclear whether process servers are allowed into other peoples’ homes because it also allows access to areas where the homeowner is “known to be within.”

Oppenheim Law believes in the Constitution and procedural due process that is supposed to be guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. We’ve already seen what happens when banks cut corners and try to make the foreclosure process too easy. We all know the stakes are too high to allow that to happen again.

Check out The National Law Journal’s excerpt on The 25 Legal Stories That Defined The Decade. Social Media was #4 and I shared my thoughts with The National Law Journal’s Tresa Baldis about it in this link…

http://oppenheimlaw.com/media-coverage.php?new_id=96

Thank YOU for the friends, follows and shares.

What a way to start the New Year!

Cheers!

Roy

P.S. Bail out the New Year with me at my Free Foreclosure Defense Workshop on January 7th from 6-7 pm