Election 2010: Teabaggin' the Ds & Rs

[Adder]

Originally Posted by Cletus Miller

Not to speak for Seb, but I think he's been assuming an absence of bad faith--which is certainly true on the level of the peons executing the affidavits

Again, I'm not so sure. The GMAC guy signed affidavits saying he reviewed the files and later admitted in a deposition that he didn't. That's bad faith in my book (although not as to substance).

[Cletus Miller]

Originally Posted by Adder

Again, I'm not so sure. The GMAC guy signed affidavits saying he reviewed the files and later admitted in a deposition that he didn't. That's bad faith in my book (although not as to substance).

He also said he didn't understand what he was signing. As has basically every other person in a similar situation.

If the peon were a licensed attorney, you have a point. My understanding was that the peons were not, for I think obvious reasons.

[Sidd Finch]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

It's an in rem judgment - against the property, not the borrower. And as to the post-sheriff's sale deficiency, in 99% of instances, the lender does not pursue a separate action to obtain and enforce an in personam judgment against the borrower (no use in pumping a dead well).

So if the IRS were just seizing homes, and justifying a campaign of robo-signing affidavits and falsifying notary stamps with "we're probably right 90% of the time," that would be fine?

[Cletus Miller]

Originally Posted by Sidd Finch

So if the IRS were just seizing homes, and justifying a campaign of robo-signing affidavits and falsifying notary stamps with "we're probably right 90% of the time," that would be fine?

Or bank accounts, because that would be in rem, too. Just so long as there are no criminal penalties, that'd be okay, right?

[Sidd Finch]

Originally Posted by Cletus Miller

He also said he didn't understand what he was signing. As has basically every other person in a similar situation.

If the peon were a licensed attorney, you have a point. My understanding was that the peons were not, for I think obvious reasons.

I haven't seen the affidavits but I would expect the last line to be something like "I declare under penalty of perjury that the foregoing is true of my own personal knowledge." Maybe he didn't understand "the foregoing" -- but did he really not understand the statement that "the foregoing is true"? If anything, the "gosh, I didn't understand the document" argument is further proof of bad faith.

[Cletus Miller]

Originally Posted by Sidd Finch

I haven't seen the affidavits but I would expect the last line to be something like "I declare under penalty of perjury that the foregoing is true of my own personal knowledge." Maybe he didn't understand "the foregoing" -- but did he really not understand the statement that "the foregoing is true"? If anything, the "gosh, I didn't understand the document" argument is further proof of bad faith.

Note--The closest I come on this is Ty's suggestion that it's reckless--certainly not good faith, but not necessarily bad faith either.

That said, doesn't it depend on what he understood "personal knowledge" to mean, what he was instructed to review and certify too and what the level of detail regarding the ownership of the note/mortgage contained in the aff was?

Say the aff stated "GMAC is the holder of legal title to the note in original amount $X, secured by mortgage on 123 Fake Street. GMAC holds the legal right to enforce said mortgage." before detailing default, last payment date and amount of arrearages, penalty interest and fees, all of which he actually confirmed. In the *personal* knowledge of the signer, GMAC owned the note and had the right to foreclose--otherwise, why would he, an employee of GMAC--be signing the document, right?

And, almost certainly, the assertion of ownership and rights was in the "pre-printed" portion of the doc, with the numbers and dates as the only fill-in info. Again, to the personal knowledge of the signer, GMAC's ownership wasn't in question (not anymore, of course). Which is why one should never accept a knowledge qualifier keyed on the personal knowledge of an individual on behalf of a corporation, unless you get some sort of "after due inquiry" proviso, too.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Sidd Finch

So if the IRS were just seizing homes, and justifying a campaign of robo-signing affidavits and falsifying notary stamps with "we're probably right 90% of the time," that would be fine?

An IRS lien is not analogous to a person failing to make payments under a mortgage.

And this is a pretty sophomoric way of trying to goad me into a comment you can suggest shows bias in favor of banks and against govt. Ideology has nothing to do with this. If a person owed Uncle Sam $300k in taxes, knew he owed it and complained because of some technical defect in the IRS's execution on his home, I'd take the same exact position in favor of the IRS.

If you aren't paying on your mortgage, you have every right to avail yourself of all defenses and stay in the house as long as you can under law. The bank's failures in the foreclosure process, committed in good faith, bad faith or recklessly, however, do not preclude me or anyone else from calling your defenses bullshit technicalities. That's what they are (and I say this as one routinely raising them in both commercial and residential f/cs). Nor do they preclude me from calling out dimwit pundits who are slanting this "Foreclosuregate" thing to suggest delinquent homeowners are victims. They are beneficiaries of the errors. The banks' imbecility is going to grant them many more months of cost-free living in a home they equitably should have forfeit long ago.

The victims here are you and me and everyone else who bought a home he could afford and lived within his means. The sensible borrower stands in a "clowns to the left, jokers to the right" scenario in this mess... all the while, watching his home value remain stagnant, or fall.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

The victims here are you and me and everyone else who bought a home he could afford and lived within his means. The sensible borrower stands in a "clowns to the left, jokers to the right" scenario in this mess... all the while, watching his home value remain stagnant, or fall.

And the people who live in communities where there are foreclosures. And the people who bought mortgage-backed securities from the banks. Not to mention the people who bought stock in the banks themselves, I suppose.

eta: And people who want to buy houses.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

And the people who live in communities where there are foreclosures. And the people who bought mortgage-backed securities from the banks. Not to mention the people who bought stock in the banks themselves, I suppose.

eta: And people who want to buy houses.

You'll notice I have never taken issue with Volcker's suggestion we break up the big banks. I see some of the benefits of size, but on balance, I think too big to fail is also too big to provide adequate service, too big to manage and too big to exist. When a thing gets so unwieldy - so impossible to organize and operate - that it repeatedly, routinely exhibits incompetence at the levels we're seeing now... incompetence that continues to damage the economy years after these same idiot organizations initially drove us to the edge of collapse, I think those organizations forfeit the right to exist. Next time one starts teetering, I think it's time to give Roubini's plan a shot. Send in the black suits asap, chop the fucker into bits and instead of selling its pieces to another TBTF, reconstitute it as a pile of small regionals.

ETA: Yes, I am saying interfere in the market and bar the big banks from buying the pieces of any large bank failing in the future.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

You'll notice I have never taken issue with Volcker's suggestion we break up the big banks. I see some of the benefits of size, but on balance, I think too big to fail is also too big to provide adequate service, too big to manage and too big to exist. When a thing gets so unwieldy - so impossible to organize and operate - that it repeatedly, routinely exhibits incompetence at the levels we're seeing now... incompetence that continues to damage the economy years after these same idiot organizations initially drove us to the edge of collapse, I think those organizations forfeit the right to exist. Next time one starts teetering, I think it's time to give Roubini's plan a shot. Send in the black suits asap, chop the fucker into bits and instead of selling its pieces to another TBTF, reconstitute it as a pile of small regionals.

ETA: Yes, I am saying interfere in the market and bar the big banks from buying the pieces of any large bank failing in the future.

Market definition is always tricky, but I think the banking industry does not look particularly concentrated compared to some others where competition seems to work better. Which suggests that maybe we need better benchmarks for banking.

Where are the mortgage lenders that competed by avoiding the crapulence that has led to all the problems?

[Cletus Miller]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

You'll notice I have never taken issue with Volcker's suggestion we break up the big banks. I see some of the benefits of size, but on balance, I think too big to fail is also too big to provide adequate service, too big to manage and too big to exist. When a thing gets so unwieldy - so impossible to organize and operate - that it repeatedly, routinely exhibits incompetence at the levels we're seeing now... incompetence that continues to damage the economy years after these same idiot organizations initially drove us to the edge of collapse, I think those organizations forfeit the right to exist. Next time one starts teetering, I think it's time to give Roubini's plan a shot. Send in the black suits asap, chop the fucker into bits and instead of selling its pieces to another TBTF, reconstitute it as a pile of small regionals.

ETA: Yes, I am saying interfere in the market and bar the big banks from buying the pieces of any large bank failing in the future.

Most of the recent big-bank acquisitions required a waiver--as national banks have been prohibited from having over 10% of total retail deposits, and at least BofA, JPM and WFB are over the limit.

[Cletus Miller]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

Market definition is always tricky, but I think the banking industry does not look particularly concentrated compared to some others where competition seems to work better. Which suggests that maybe we need better benchmarks for banking.

Where are the mortgage lenders that competed by avoiding the crapulence that has led to all the problems?

Out of the lending business. Couldn't compete on rates.

[Adder]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

Market definition is always tricky, but I think the banking industry does not look particularly concentrated compared to some others where competition seems to work better. Which suggests that maybe we need better benchmarks for banking.

Where are the mortgage lenders that competed by avoiding the crapulence that has led to all the problems?

It's not a market power problem, though.

Or not one of the type that has gotten much excitement in the antitrust world for 30 years or so.

And it seems to me that should be obvious customer-service benefits to having truly nationwide banks. The problem is that the banks that started to reach that scale decided to do all kinds of things other than retail banking.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by Adder

It's not a market power problem, though.

Or not one of the type that has gotten much excitement in the antitrust world for 30 years or so.

And it seems to me that should be obvious customer-service benefits to having truly nationwide banks. The problem is that the banks that started to reach that scale decided to do all kinds of things other than retail banking.

Customer service benefits to those mammoth, slow-moving bureaucracies? You go there for the money, not the service.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by Cletus Miller

Out of the lending business. Couldn't compete on rates.

Not true. Look at the best performing banks in the $1 to $10 billion range in any area. You'll find banks that lent off their own base, avoided the problems, and are having a grand time in the market today.