To boil down Foreclosuregate into one sentence, it is the transfer of mortgages between financial institutions and investors, while securitizing loans into bonds, without the proper paperwork and signatures required to legally document ownership. And this has resulted in numerous lawsuits filed on behalf of homeowners in foreclosure.
The company that tracks who owns what is a private company named Mortgage Electronic Registration System (MERS). Sixty-six million mortgages are registered in the MERS system.
Lobbyists are now on Capital Hill pushing legislation to affirm MERS as the standard for tracking mortgages. If this were to happen, the industry could get rid of all the Foreclosuregate lawsuits with congress’ implicit approval, Americans would be left with weakened property rights, and banks would be affirmed as America’s largest real estate holding companies.
Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur (D-OH), on the Oversight Government Reform Committee, isn’t keen on letting this happen, as she questions the efficiency and loyalties of the MERS mortgage system and associated issues. On MSNBC with host Dylan Ratigan, she says, “[MERS] was invented by the most powerful financial players in the country while regulators were asleep at the wheel.”
There is some great information in this video, beyond MERS, and it’s a definite Must See.
Let us leave you with this great quote from Thomas Jefferson that Ratigan pulled up for this segment:
“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.”
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