real estate mortgage investment conduit

Posts Tagged ‘real estate mortgage investment conduit’

The State of the Union Speech You Should Have Heard

Tuesday, February 19th, 2013

President Barack Obama delivers remarks on the economy at Shaker Heights High School,Shaker Heights, Ohio, Jan. 4, 2012. (Official White House Photo by Chuck Kennedy)

If you watched President Obama give the State of the Union , you might be scratching your head over his failure to speak, except for a brief mention, about what will one day fill at least a chapter in history books as one of the worst financial crises since the Great Depression.

Instead, the president appeared to be taking his cue from the story The Emperor’s New Clothes. Much like the emperor, the American public has fallen victim to swindlers – in this case the banks – with everyone believing that the nation’s economy is as splendid as the emperor believed was his fine clothing.

If I were King For a Day, my State of the Union address would have gone a little differently:

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Vice President, members of Congress, fellow Americans:
Let me start by saying I know it appears on the surface that the economy is improving, but look around you. Who among your family, friends, co-workers or acquaintances hasn’t suffered at the hands of the banking industry?

Those with any savings to speak of continue to get a pittance worth of interest. Those who purchased homes at the height of the economic crisis remain underwater and continue to face the prospect of losing their home. Our housing market is not healing at the pace it should and homeowners do not enjoy the protections they were promised.
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Tags: banking in the united states, economy of the united states, financial crisis, Obama, President Obama, presidents, real estate mortgage investment conduit, state of the union speech, Troubled Asset Relief Program, united states department of the treasury
Posted in Big Banks, President Barack Obama, Wall Street | No Comments »

Deconstructing The Black Magic of Securitized Trusts

Wednesday, December 19th, 2012

Below is an abbreviated version of an article written by Roy Oppenheim and Jacquelyn Trask, which was first published this week by Thomson Reuters. The longer version of “Deconstructing The Black Magic of Securitized Trusts” was published earlier this year by the Stetson Law Review.

From 2003 to 2007, Florida saw the largest real estate boom in its history. Real estate sold at astonishing prices as people were sold a bill of goods known as the “American Dream.” But for many, that American Dream turned out to be the American Nightmare. From sub-prime mortgage lending and predatory practices by mortgage brokers, lenders and improper securitization of mortgages, this era of economic boom led to the largest crash in the history of the real estate market¹, a crash from which Florida has yet to recover, and to which we have not yet seen the end. The full extent of the damage inflicted by these practices has not yet been felt, but millions of homeowners nationwide have suffered from financial crisis, foreclosure and bankruptcy. And what is worse yet is that the systemic fraud and illegal conduct of the banks has continued to pervasively infect court systems throughout the nation; further, the Florida court system has suffered from extreme abuse at the hands of the banks that have high jacked it and effectively turned it into a private collection agency for the banking industry.²

Mortgage securitization is perhaps one of the least understood areas of the real estate industry, and for good reason. With phrases such as mortgage bundling, securitized trusts, and tax-exempt structures known as Real Estate Mortgage Investment Conduits (“REMICS”), there are many terms employed to describe massive collections of bundled mortgages which were broken up and sold off in pieces. While this method of bundling mortgages was once looked at as perhaps the best thing to ever happen to the mortgage industry, allowing large scale investors such as pensions and retirement funds to own interests in mortgages in a way that was deemed “safe,”³ the securitization process has become a nightmare for the American homeowner fighting foreclosure. In fact, the securitization process has made it impossible in many, if not all cases where a mortgage is held in a securitized trust, to determine who actually owns a mortgage and note, a fact which until recently has done little to slow down the foreclosure rocket-docket.⁴
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Tags: bundle mortgages, estate mortgage investment, estate sells, finance, financial economics, foreclosure, MERS, mortgage broker, mortgage bundling, mortgage industry, mortgage industry of the united states, mortgage loan, mortgage securitization, real estate boom, real estate mortgage investment conduit, real estate sold, securitization
Posted in Foreclosure Defense, Foreclosure Fraud, Foreclosure Law, REMICS, Securitized Trusts | No Comments »

Wall Street Has Ruled….Because of the Wall Street Rule

Wednesday, October 3rd, 2012

An edited version of this post originally appeared on Yahoo! Homes and is being republished on South Florida Law Blog with their permission.

I am often asked how Wall Street has managed to be so reckless, with little to no regard for its customers and its investors, yet avoid any real consequence for its actions.

The easy answer, if there is one, is that no one has really tried to change the very culture of the banking industry. Corrections have been at the micro level, yes, but these granular solutions have merely chipped away at the problems with mortgage securitization.

No one until this point has been bold or audacious enough to stand up to the banks. Maybe it’s because of fear of blowback from the bankers and their powerful allies, maybe it’s that the regulators and legislators actually don’t know how take them on.

Wall Street has always managed to have a defense that it always seems to fall back on whenever its motives are questioned.

Banks have used it so often there is actually a name for it. It’s called the Wall Street Rule.

Two Brooklyn Law School professors recently, and succinctly, brought attention to the Wall Street Rule and how it applies to the mortgage securitization engine. Bradley Borden and David Reiss correctly argue mortgage backed securities were flawed from the start.

By convincing Congress to ease certain tax restrictions back in 1986, these securities called REMICS were created and became a loophole to allow the banks to avoid paying income tax on millions upon millions of mortgages, which I alluded to back in August.
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Tags: bear stearns, eric schneiderman, finance, financial crises, financial economics, investment, jpmorgan chase, lawsuit, mortgage backed security, mortgage industry of the united states, mortgage loan, real change, real estate mortgage investment conduit, rule, securitization, securitized loan, street, street rule, the wall street, united states housing bubble, wall street
Posted in Eric Schneiderman, JP Morgan Chase, Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities Working Group, Wall Street | No Comments »

@OpLaw Dirty Dozen; When Every Bank Is Guilty; The Only Crime Is Getting Caught

Thursday, August 9th, 2012

Would you believe it if I told you that 24% of executives in the United States and the UK believe that financial services professionals need to engage in unethical or illegal conduct to be successful?

Well, a recent survey of over 500 executives found exactly that , with 26% of them admitting first hand knowledge of wrongdoing in their workplace.

I can’t say I was surprised. Not one bit.

With this type of mentality, is it any wonder that our financial system is failing, and that the banks have a holier than thou mentality where they think they are above the law?

Apparently on Wall Street, the crime isn’t engaging in misconduct, but in getting caught.

I mean, since everyone is doing it, it must be OK, right?

But down here on Main Street, we would not have the same success rate with that line of reasoning.

Let’s say you got pulled over for speeding, and when the officer asked why would you going 100 miles-per-hour when the speed limit is 70, you told the officer;

“Well officer, everyone else was speeding; it would have been dangerous for me to slow down.”

Do you think that officer would let you off? Of course not.

Yet regulators and politicians have been accepting this type of excuse from the banks for far too long.

Oppenheim Law’s Dirty Dozen Exposed

And that exact excuse has reared its head again in relation to a massive tax fraud being investigated by New York Attorney General Schneiderman , the IRS, as well as the attorneys here at Oppenheim Law.

The investigation centers on what we have coined the @OpLaw Dirty Dozen, a group of twelve banks that have perpetrated the most egregious tax fraud at the expense of the American people.

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Tags: a bank, bank, bank account, banks love, dirty, dirty dozen, dozen, expose, foreclosure, income tax in the united states, Internal Revenue Service, mortgage, oplaw dirty dozen, oppenheim, real estate mortgage investment conduit, tax avoidance and tax evasion, tax resistance, taxation in the united states, the bank
Posted in Bank Fraud, OpLaw Dirty Dozen, REMICS | 6 Comments »

Posts Tagged ‘real estate mortgage investment conduit’

The State of the Union Speech You Should Have Heard

Deconstructing The Black Magic of Securitized Trusts

Wall Street Has Ruled….Because of the Wall Street Rule

@OpLaw Dirty Dozen; When Every Bank Is Guilty; The Only Crime Is Getting Caught

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