How the U.S. Government Has Corrupted the Banking Industry and the Foreclosure System Today, January 26, 2011, 10 minutes ago | Mark Stopa A few years ago, if I came across a blog titled “How the U.S. Government has Corrupted the Banking Industry and the Foreclosure System,” I’d have thought the author was paranoid, crazy, or both.  Now?  After years of defending Florida homeowners facing foreclosure, I wholeheartedly believe it.  In fact, my con … Read More

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Foreclosure Document Fraud Drives Notaries to Take the Fifth Today, January 26, 2011, 35 minutes ago | Abigail Field Yet another problem has begun surfacing in the documents banks have been using to foreclose on homes: false notarizations. Notaries have been attesting legally to signatures they didn't witness, sometimes by people who didn't actually sign, and it's adding to the tangled mess of ownership confusion. Continue reading Foreclosure Doc … Read More

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The Lawsuit to be Heard ‘Round the World? Today, January 26, 2011, 6 hours ago | Editor Investors, including New York Life, have filed a 194-page complaint against Countrywide and Bank of America, alleging…essentially, what homeowners and consumer attorneys have been pointing out all along. You can read an excellent summary at Mandelman Matters, but this allegation is worth spotlighting again here: Countrywide routinely failed to comply with the … Read More

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The full story of the Ibanez case in Pictures

The full story of the Ibanez case

Posted by Tracy Alloway on Jan 18 19:04.

04:25 by John Galt. Filed under: Whatever

By John Galt
October 5, 2010

I know that a lot of fans of my writings are expecting another “get in yur bunker and clutch them thar guns and Bibles” type of story but this is, in my humble opinion, a reasonably well thought out picture of America just one to two years from now unless a massive if not tectonic shift in government and the apathy of the citizens occurs within the next ninety days. There will be readers from the lunatic left who will blame the events about to occur in our nation on those evil capitalists and bankers who were unwilling to work with the poor, downtrodden citizens and help them to save their homes, their property, and their standard of living. On the other hand the RINO right will blame excessive government meddling, insensitivity to the needs of the “system” to operate as it was with less regulation, and of course, the current administration for the upcoming disaster.

In reality it is you and I who are responsible for what is about to happen, because we voted for and trusted people into these positions within the economic and political realm to act as responsible caretakers of the power assigned to them, becoming too lazy to engage in oversight, too busy getting “more” in our homes and driveways if not more of a home than to participate and reject the policies and changes which have been inserted into our nation’s economic and political systems over the last eighty years.

Thus the question arises, how does the collapse of the housing system created by a closet Socialist in the person of one Franklin Delano Roosevelt, create the very power vacuum he and his ilk attempted to fill by packing the Supreme Court and creating legislative nightmares of which some still haunt us today? The system as envisioned with shared government oversight and participation within a system of banking and commerce has run full circle as many warned it would during the 1930′s. The insertion of the government as a participant in the marketplace all but guaranteed new standards for home lending on an almost annual basis initially, and an almost quarterly basis in the current era.

The Road Map History has Provided

“We stand at Armageddon, and we battle for the Lord.”

-Theodore Roosevelt, August 6, 1912 final line from the speech “A Confession of Faith” before the National Progressive Party convention

To understand where we are going as a society it is not necessary to rehash the goals of this administration nor the leftist elites who have been drifting our society towards a Statist form of government since 1893. The quote from the 1880′s book by Professor Richard Ely’s book An Introduction to Political Economy, Chapter V is still appropriate to this discussion:

“The danger to freedom appears to be a very real one. It is frankly admitted that up to a certain point there is a tendency on the part of government to improve as its functions increase. But would this hold with the indefinite extension of the sphere of government? Let us admit that our livelihood would depend on the efficiency of government all the force and energy which now go into private services would be turned into public channels. But what would happen if, in spite of all precautions, some unscrupulous combination should secure the control of government?”

The entirety of the socialist experiment is summed up in the statement above as I surmised in my piece of May 2009 titled “Blame Wisconsin” where I outlined how the Marxist/Progressive movement evolved from a test tube case environment in Wisconsin into a national ideal under Theodore Roosevelt. Fast forward to FDR, Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, etc. and the evolution of our modern housing finance system should not be shocking nor as disturbing once you pause and reflect on a little history. The plan all along was to insure a universal standard of living for the lower 90% of the population where income distribution was approximately equal and the mercantile class with the cooperation of the banking system and Federal government would insure the economy would function adequately to provide equilibrium of opportunity while providing the mask of capitalism to cover for their exercise of power and oversight.

Fast forward to the era where we are in which began shortly after the Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM) which almost destroyed the financial system due to the Russian debt default in 1998 and has now culminated in the greatest era of financial strife for the U.S. economy since the Great Depression. The danger is this time that there is no safety net other than the threat of hyperinflation from the Federal Reserve and the guarantee that our government (aka, Taxpayers) will undertake any and all actions to preserve the system’s status quo, shaky as that is. Thus to preserve a standard of living being eroded by the very powers entrusted to oversee and manage the economy now lies with the ability or gullibility of the average citizen to accept the ideas about to be presented for the “common good.”

The Average American’s Perilous Addiction To Things

The conversion that evolved with the moral revolution of the 1960′s from a “Greatest Generation” economic model where saving and frugality were usurped by the Baby Boomers consumerism model of owning “stuff” including one or two homes, several cars, televisions, etc., even if the financial means were unavailable at that moment to acquire the goods desired. The economic theory of housing during this evolution included the false impression provided that real estate in the form of a home was an “investment” and that this item should be used not just as a home, but to build a nest egg for the future and if possible use it during the good times to leverage up and acquire more items or investments of any type.

As the past two decades have demonstrated, the average American citizen has become addicted to the art of acquisition, even if they can not afford the items in question by using leverage to spread the payments of months, years, or in the case of a home, decades. The model worked well with modest inflation from the post-Volcker era until the late 1990′s but when LTCM imploded, the managers of America’s and Europe’s financial system realized that the stakes needed to be raised and the accelerated use of credit by the citizenry was a necessity if the bankers were to recover their losses from both the Savings and Loan disaster coupled with the ill advised ventures within the developing world. Hence the creation of new investing instruments for average citizens to participate with plus the evolution of creative financing for real estate purchases or investing were developed. The creation of the first bubble worked beyond their wildest dreams as the tech bubble demonstrated in the late 1990′s, inflating equity markets in many nations to levels that were only dreamed of during that era. The popping of that bubble and the wealth destruction in conjunction with the terror attacks of September 11, 2001 only increased the desperation of the political and financial class, which helped to enhance the evolution of the “ownership society” President Bush envisioned and the bankers salivated over so profits could be as leveraged as much as their balance sheets.

The American citizen’s additional credit card guaranteed by GSE’s like Fannie and Freddie enabled many to take advantage of Greenspan’s new bubble in the last decade and instead of saving to plan for a second or retirement home, the first home was refinanced at a very low rate and the equity extracted to buy “things.” Some of those “things” Americans purchased were courtesy of the belief that this was the ground floor for a real estate boom and you had to get into it now as “real estate always goes up” and this was the time to lock in a mortgage for that budding vacation home, time share, or future retirement home now. I believe that part of the boom was the famous myth propagated by both Realtors and bankers alike was that real estate always goes up in price so you had best get your slice of the American Dream now. This belief fueled speculation not just by professional real estate investors but by middle class citizens who viewed home equity extraction as an excuse to acquire those things their years of hard work had left them “due” and an opportunity to join the upper strata of society without having to work as hard to obtain that distinction. These middle class “investors” figured out the house flipping game at the very end of the bubble, just as they had discovered again the joys of using home equity to purchase stocks and other diverse investments in the 2005-2008 era.

Those beliefs along with the total destruction of housing values and retirements for three generations of Americans co-existing in our society now provides the formula for a national will to accept new ideas to preserve what they believe they have always deserved. Thus one of those dangerous intersections in history is upon us again and the next ninety days will do more to determine the course than any action we have seen since the fateful events of 1859 and 1860.

Preserving the Status Quo With Change

The crisis we face tonight and through the first crisp winter days of the new year will move with dazzling speed and keep historians busy for decades writing about it. The news from Monday was bleak, between the crisis of the “robo-signers” in the processing of foreclosures at the various major institutions to the continuing deterioration of home purchases as report after report is issued by the government and the National Association of Realtors. The most disturbing report was from Amherst Securities, LLC in an article on DNSNews.com October 4th ( Amherst: One of Five Borrowers Could Lose Their Homes ) where they postulate:

If governmental policy on foreclosure prevention does not change, 11.5 million borrowers are in danger of losing their homes, according to the analysts at Amherst Securities Group LP.

The staggering figure put forth by the mortgage investment brokerage equates to one out of every five borrowers – an astronomical 20 percent default rate that Amherst says “politically cannot happen.”

1 in 5 gang, let that sink in. If you think that a change in policy will not occur to stop such an event, you, the reader are on crack. The United States government for all of its flaws, devious or not, is not ignorant nor are the political and banking elites of whom we have given charge to manage the economy. The first course of action that will be undertaken has already been rumored with the idea that spread like wildfire throughout the financial system today of a ninety day mortgage moratorium would be imposed by the Federal Government to allow the system to clean up the mess created by the back log of fraudulent and erroneous paper trails. Unfortunately for the government, this does nothing but forestall the day of reckoning as the loss of valuation for many of the distressed homeowners speculated on in the Amherst report above is so grave that even if the homeowners wore able to work out a “sponsored” refinancing program, they would not have any equity for twenty years if housing prices resumed their normal pace of price appreciation.

This means that more creative solutions will have to be engaged in and that is the danger I foresee in our immediate future. Thus “change” to preserve the status quo or to prevent millions more citizens from losing their homes and accompanying crashing of a large portion of the financial system will be the order of the day. What does that sort of action entail beyond the prior solutions postulated like forced forbearance, government loan modifications, or worse?

The “Or Worse” Solutions to Repair the Housing Crisis and Start of Our National Nightmare

Everything in this section is pure speculation on my part as the author, but when you look at some of the proposals of this administration and the financial community it is not that far fetched. The bottom line is that the American system used to finance and purchase homes is irrevocably broken. The blame can be spread to both political parties, the Wall Street Ponzi game, and the irresponsible behavior of the banking community which was initiated under the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act and culminated with the then CEO of Goldman Sachs, one Hank Paulson the U.S. Treasury Secretary to be, persuading the government to release the limitations on leverage which allowed the mortgage and debt securitization industry to explode in less than two years. This expansion of the credit bubble did not lift all ships equally so the Congress stuck its nose under the tent and accelerated the reduction in standards which allowed totally unqualified buyers to purchase homes who now in turn are abandoning them or part of the problem by the millions.

Thus the solutions become quite obvious and palatable to the members of the financial community because their losses will be minimized if not eliminated and the future liabilities the responsibility of others. The first proposal I look for is a massive expansion of the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac system under the auspices of a Republican House with strong support from the banking system and the administration to either merge the agencies and create a super housing authority or new GSE (Government Sponsored Enterprise). Within this newly chartered instrument, the government will buy upwards of ninety-five percent of all mortgages, securitized or not, on the market at no less than ninety cents on the dollar plus assume the role for one hundred percent of origination for all mortgages under $750,000 nationally. This would still leave the banking system with the “appearance” of having some private role in the mortgage origination business, while in reality less than 2% of all mortgages created would be their responsibility and they would have the ability to manage the qualifications as they used to, on a case by base basis with strict fiduciary oversight.

Once this super GSE is in place, the mortgages for all delinquent homeowners could be purchased using the power of the taxpayer and the process of selective forbearance begun. This is not only a process which relieves the banking system of the stress of mortgage servicing (unless they wish to act as a contractor to the government, which they would have to initially as the system is created) and the torrid pace of default, but installs a program where jobs are created for former employees who specialize in mortgage finance and accounting, this time though as a government employee. The process of forbearance would be relatively straightforward and the homeowner would be forced into an obligation of thirty to sixty years refinancing based on income, age, and geographical criteria. If the homeowner declines the terms, the government would foreclose then seize the property in question and using a newly expanded Internal Revenue Service have the ability to collect deficiency payments for upwards of a decade to recoup some of their lost investment. This might sound insane but this is the type of radical solution you should be looking for as the alternative is worse than the collapse of late 2008.

That is only the precursor of our national nightmare however.

Imagine a world where you must report to a government official in a bank or other financial institution, maybe even a government office building to apply for a mortgage. Think about the new “green” wave of regulatory bureaucracy plus OSHA style ergonomic designs which will be instituted to “protect” the government’s investment in you the homeowner. For example if a husband and wife of eight years with two children walked into a home that they felt they could afford, the government regulatory regime could determine that this particular home is not ergonomically friendly enough for their children and the transportation costs in carbon would be excessive as the husband and/or wife would live too far from their place of employment. Sound insane? Review the stories emanating from the Mother Country of Jolly Old England regarding absurd regulations and government meddling in their citizen’s daily affairs.

Take this one example then consider the consequences of Kelo v. City of New London decision which could force a homeowner who are current with their payments out of their homes as the Federal Government owns all of the properties within a subdivision and their presence disrupts the ideal of economic diversity because they did not need nor want a government mortgage and their inhabiting of that property could make the new residents feel inferior, thus causing emotional distress. Or worse, if the one homeowner refuses to sell to a potential government sponsored buyer because the seller feels the price is inferior to market conditions the government could force the price to meet the standards of the bureaucratically established level of financing to match the price or use eminent domain to seize the property at the price level some beanie head feels is “just” for the GSE to pay.

This goes far beyond the concepts of financing, buying, and selling homes however. The entire real estate industry will end up subservient to a government master in Washington, D.C. Want to build a new subdivision? Better submit the homes to a standardized review to the Department of Housing Development team. Want to modify your GSE financed home by building a tool shed in the back? Fill out GSE form 4417-E/109.1367 available at your local bank’s GSE department or Federal office building and pray they approve it before the apocalypse. Want to sell to the family that wants to pay cash for the home instead of waiting for the minority who has the fifty year mortgage financing that is offering you 4% less? Nope, that would be discrimination and you no longer have control over property which technically belongs to the people.

See where this is leading?

Once the bankers and government elect to divert full control of the residential real estate market, or at least a majority of it, to Federal control, all private property rights cease in the United States. Want to grow a garden? Apply at the appropriate Federal agencies like the Department of Agriculture. Want to add a pool or a patio? Better hope the EPA carbon impact study doesn’t prevent that from happening. The U.S. will not only have legal physical control of your property outside of the home, but the inside where smart electrical grid systems will become mandatory, ten ounce water conserving slow flush toilets, twenty second showers, and those stupid General Electric Chi-Com manufactured mercury loaded curly bulbs being the only ones permitted. You will comply or the government will penalize you for abusing their home and regulations.

The final straw will expand control into the areas of landlord and property management which shall be regulated via the government buying up those property’s loans and lastly small scale commercial real estate enterprises as the community banking system will implode without direct government intervention and soon. In the end this probably leaves less than twenty percent of all domestic real estate concerns either invested in or owned outright by private entities. With the preservation of the banking system, pension funds invested in REITs, plus the potential “Municide” or collapse of the municipal bond system (as I’ve been warning about since 2008) as a result of the housing collapse, there is little doubt in my mind that this devious yet effective plan to usurp private property rights will be sold as the only solution to the banking and housing crisis without allowing the entire economy to fail and reset. This new initiative will be reinforced with a bailout of the municipal bond system and states which are teetering on default so as to sell support for the program proposed and both political parties will be involved in the process to give it that “bi-partisan” appearance. Knowing the average American’s desire to obtain and keep “things” including their future retirement or home be it ten months or ten years out, look for the political and financial elites to act in a Machiavellian manner which leaves those freedoms God gave us and our Founding Fathers codified as a distant memory to those of us pining for the good old days.

http://dtc-systems.net/2010/11/cnbc-mortgage-meltdown/

Always said, you take Texas and you swing the country. IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE WESTERN DISTRICT OF TEXAS AUSTIN DIVISION TO: THE HONORABLE JAMES NOWLIN UNITED STATES SENIOR JUDGE REPORT AND RECOMMENDATION OF THE UNITED STATES MAGISTRATE JUDGE http://www.scribd.com/doc/47282955/Norwood-v-Chase-Summary-Judgement-Against -Chase-and-Barret-Daffin … Read More

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I would like the following points regarding MERS to be clear to all: 1) It’s not a PAPERWORK issue – it’s an OWNERSHIP issue. Whenever we see the word ‘paperwork’ describing the MERS scam, we should know that the correct word is ‘ownership’. ‘Paperwork’ is defined as: written or clerical work, as records or reports, forming a necessary but often a routine and secondary part of some work or job. That is not the issue with MERS. The issue is one of … Read More

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The full story of the Ibanez case Posted by Tracy Alloway on Jan 18 19:04. Back in 2005 in Springfield, Massachusetts… What happened next currently has the mortgage and housing market palpitating. US Bank filed a foreclosure complaint on the above loan, but soon found itself embroiled in a legal battle which would become known as the ‘Ibanez’ case. There’s a second mortgage — the LaRace mortgage — involved in the various court cases too but for s … Read More

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Josh Rosner: 'Landmark Foreclosure Ruling' In Massachusetts Ibanez Case – Bloomberg Video Today, January 20, 2011, 4 hours ago | DailyBail New clip from Rosner – not posted before. Read the Rosner piece from last week for a quick refresher… Video – Jan. 10 (Bloomberg) — Joshua Rosner, an analyst at Graham Fisher & Co., talks about the implications of a court ruling against U.S. Bancorp and Wells Fargo & Co. in a Massachusetts foreclosu … Read More

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Daily Finance | Fixing Massachusetts Foreclosures Won’t Be So Easy Today, January 14, 2011, 7 minutes ago | Foreclosure Fraud Fixing Massachusetts Foreclosures Won’t Be So Easy By ABIGAIL FIELD Last week, the top court in Massachusetts handed down a ruling chastising banks for their “carelessness” during the securitization of Massachusetts mortgages. That carelessness has clouded the title of thousands of already-foreclosed properties and creates … Read More

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Is The Fix In- Will The Wall Street Banks Beat Down The New Jersey Court? Today, January 14, 2011, 52 minutes ago | Matthew D. Weidner, Esq. I’m increasingly concerned that the banks and institutions, the Wall Street Fat Cats are too powerful, that they in fact own and control this country, everyone in it and that even our courts….the highest courts in the land…are not above being bullied and intimidated by the forces aligned against our fundamen … Read More

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As the economy revs back to life, with signs of hiring on the horizon, the housing market is being left behind like Macaulay Culkin in “Home Alone.”

AP Macaulay Culkin

In the past few years, we’ve all been careful to choose our words carefully, not calling it a recession until it fit the technical definition and avoiding any inappropriate use of the “D” word — Depression.

Things were bad but the broader economy never reached Depression territory. The housing market, on the other hand, just crossed that threshold.

Home values have fallen 26 percent since their peak in June 2006, worse than the 25.9-percent decline seen during the Depression years between 1928 and 1933, Zillow reported.

November marked the 53^rd consecutive month (4 ½ years) that home values have fallen.

What’s worse, it’s not over yet: Home values are expected to continue to slide as inventories pile up, and likely won’t recover until the job market improves.

And while the president is physically protected in an emergency, whisked to a bunker at an undisclosed location, the actual White House is not: The value of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue has dropped by $80 million, or nearly 25 percent since the peak of the housing boom. It’s current value is $251.6 million, according to Zillow, down from $331.5 million.

Oh-h say can you see … by the dawn’s ear-ly light …

Thursday, January 13, 2011 Recent Massachusetts High Court Ibanez Ruling Leaves Question On 3rd Party Bona Fide Purchaser Unanswered (Or Did It?) One question that the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in the recent Ibanez ruling left unanswered is noted in this excerpt from Justice Robert J. Cordy's concurring opinion, with whom Justice Margot Botsford joined: What is more complicated, and not addressed in this opinion, because the issue was … Read More

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2010 – The year foreclosurefraud makes case law! Today, January 13, 2011, 40 minutes ago | Rob Harrington Hat tip Catherine. Huffington Post/Randall Wray Randall states: As I have been arguing in a series of pieces (see here and here and here), in their haste to commit lender fraud, the banks that securitized mortgages also perpetrated tax fraud and securities fraud. The inevitable outcome of those frauds is foreclosure fraud. As Lynn Szymoniak a … Read More

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Thursday, January 13, 2011 Government Says No to Helping States and Main Street, While Continuing to Throw Trillions at the Giant Banks   The Wall Street Journal noted last week: Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke on Friday ruled out a central bank bailout of state and local governments strapped with big municipal debt burdens, saying the Fed had limited legal authority to help and little will to use that authority. "We have no expectatio … Read More

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Third Way Comments on Foreclosure Fraud Policy in the Post-Ibanez Landscape Today, January 13, 2011, 1 hour ago | Mike You can tell that the landscape is changing.  Third Way has just released a memo titled Fixing “Foreclosure-gate” which details out a policy solution to the current foreclosure fraud crisis. That the post-Ibenez landscape is so drastically different that groups are mobilizing in a policy way should tell us that things may move in … Read More

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Marlow of Cameron Baxter Films Searching for Outrage: Me Too Today, January 13, 2011, 10 hours ago | Neil Garfield Dear Editor: Is anyone paying attention? Is anyone outraged? If not, go see “Inside Job” at the Wheeler this week. Hats off to the Filmfest Academy Screening committee/Wheeler Film Society for presenting this Wall Street-damning documentary, as well as “The Company Men.” Both films show that it was not those “pesky homeowners who bou … Read More

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Opinion: Ibanez and the Wall Street PR Machine   January 13, 2011 by christine Alina forwarded me this article from Naked Capitalism, which is, as usual, a fine blog analysis. The reason I don’t write about every piece of Wall Street garbage is because I don’t want to add any energy to what they are doing. Today I’m making an exception because it’s illustrative of a point I’ve wanted to make for a long time now: that many of us are falling v … Read More

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http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/01/09/BU4N1H5FOR.DTL

On Monday, more than two months behind schedule, the California Housing Finance Agency will begin taking applications for a federally funded program that will give some unemployed homeowners up to $18,000 each over six months to pay their mortgage.

To qualify, homeowners must meet income and other restrictions and their loan servicer must participate in the program. As of Friday, only three servicers had signed up, but CalHFA expects to have up to 10 by the end of this week.

The program is the first of four in California that will be financed by the Hardest Hit Fund, a $7.6 billion pot of money the Treasury Department is providing to 18 states with high unemployment rates or big drops in housing prices.

The Obama administration announced the fund in February but kept adding states and money to it throughout last year. California was one of the first states to qualify and stands to receive almost $2 billion, but has not yet launched a program.

The other three CalHFA programs, which go under the umbrella name Keep Your Home California, will:

— Give homeowners who have fallen behind on their mortgage payments up to $15,000 to reinstate them.

— Reduce principal balances by up to $50,000 for borrowers who owe more than their homes are worth.

— Provide up to $5,000 in transition assistance to homeowners who give up their homes in connection with a short sale or deed-in-lieu of foreclosure.

A homeowner might qualify for more than one program, but can’t get more than $50,000 in total assistance.

CalHFA had promised to start taking applications for all four programs Nov. 1, but each one requires loan servicers to participate and their assistance has not been easy to get, even though lenders stand to benefit.

That’s partly because each state getting hardest-hit funds can design its own program and that has created administrative burdens for national servicers.

“They have asked us to have a unified process,” says Evan Gerberding, a spokeswoman for CalHFA.

Unemployment program

California’s unemployment assistance program, which begins Monday, has many requirements.

— You must be receiving unemployment benefits, but you can not be within 90 days of exhausting them.

— Your income must be 120 percent or less of the median income for a family of four in your county. In San Francisco, your income must be $119,300 or less. For other counties, see sfg.ly/g58tX0.

— Your loan must have originated on or before Jan. 1, 2009, and the balance cannot exceed $729,750.

— You must be delinquent or at risk of becoming delinquent, but you can’t be in foreclosure or more than three months past due.

— You must live in the home or condo, and you cannot own any other real estate.

— You will not qualify if you refinanced your mortgage for more than the outstanding balance (except to pay for mortgage-related fees). If you refinanced just to get a lower rate, you will not be disqualified.

— If you have a stand-alone second mortgage, such as a home equity loan or line of credit, you will not qualify.

Homeowners can get up to $3,000 per month or 100 percent of their mortgage payment, whichever is less, for up to six months.

The assistance will be structured as a non-recourse, non-interest-bearing lien against the property that is forgiven after three years. If you default on your payments, sell or refinance within three years, you might have to repay it.

To apply, contact your servicer or call a toll-free number that CalHFA will post on its website by Monday. If you call the number, a housing counselor will help determine if you are eligible and if so, work with your servicer. For more information, see keepyourhomecalifornia.org.

Other programs

As of Friday, only three servicers – Chase, CalVet and CalHFA itself – had signed up for the unemployment assistance program.

Representatives for Chase, Wells Fargo and CitiMortgage say they will participate in California’s unemployment assistance and mortgage reinstatement programs but have no immediate plans to sign up for the other two.

A spokesman for Bank of America would not say which if any of the California programs BofA will sign up for. In a statement, BofA said it supports the Hardest Hit Fund concept but it will “focus our collaborative efforts on implementing consistent programs nationally.”

Gerberding says CalHFA hopes to launch the other programs in mid to late February.

Getting lenders into the principal reduction plan could be a challenge because they must match any reductions the program provides dollar for dollar.

“Where principal reduction is appropriate, we are focusing on the HAMP principal reduction alternative,” Wells Fargo spokesman Tom Goyda says, referring to a new option under the federal Home Affordable Modification Program. “That allows us to do principal reductions in all 50 states.”

Under that program, Wells is only reducing principal on loans it owns, not those it services for others, including Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Fannie and Freddie have not allowed principal reductions on loans they own or back – and these account for the majority of home loans. (They have allowed principal to be reduced for the purposes of calculating a modified mortgage payment, but this principal is not forgiven.)

Whether Fannie and Freddie can permanently reduce principal under state hardest hit programs “is under review,” says a spokeswoman for the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which oversees Fannie and Freddie.

TARP funding

CalHFA has allocated $875 million of its hardest hit funds for unemployment assistance, $790 million for principal reduction, $129 million for mortgage reinstatement and $32 million for transition assistance.

If one program does not use all of its funding, “then we will spread it among the others,” Gerberding says. She estimates that funds could be available for up to three years.

Hardest hit funds are coming out of the $50 billion set aside for foreclosure prevention under the Troubled Assets Relief Program. Although funding for new TARP programs ended in October, “existing programs already allocated under TARP will continue to run,” says Treasury Department spokeswoman Andrea Risotto.

Risotto says that 12 states that have received hardest hit funds are testing or operating programs. By March, she says, all 18 states, plus the District of Columbia, will be operational.

For more information on the Hardest Hit Fund, see finan cialstability.gov/roadtostabil ity/hardesthitfund.html.

WHEN DOES THE 3 YEAR RIGHT TO BEGIN START? WHEN IS A LOAN “CONSUMMATED”? IS THERE EQUITABLE TOLLING OF THE TILA RIGHT TO RESCIND? Today, January 11, 2011, 3 hours ago | Foreclosure Defense Attorney Steve Vondran The following is an overview of a few cases I was looking at in the area of Truth in Lending (“TILA”) law.  We get a lot of questions about when TILA three years begins to run.  THIS IS NOT LEGAL ADVICE AND IS NOT TO BE CONSTRUED AS LEGAL … Read More

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LAW FIRMS RE-ASSESS RELATIONSHIP WITH SECURITIZING BANKS Today, January 11, 2011, 4 hours ago | Neil Garfield COMBO Title and Securitization Search, Report, Documents, Analysis & Commentary I am receiving confidential reports that lawyers who work for firms representing securitizing banks consider themselves working for “the dark side.” From the junior lawyers on up attorneys are reconsidering their representation of would-be foreclosers or e … Read More

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Reader's Question: What Makes This A Federal Issue? Court Deals Blow to Banks in Foreclosure Case. Can You Say, "Critical Mass!" Today, January 11, 2011, 2 hours ago | noreply@blogger.com (The Rosey Outlook) A reader had some sound questions after reading:  Court Deals Blow to Banks in Foreclosure Case Rosey, Who owns property? As a buyer, I always bought title insurance to protect me. With slicing of the mortgage who is the owner of the property … Read More

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The Market Ticker – For Those Who Think The MA Supremes Don't Matter…. Today, January 11, 2011, 6 hours ago | genesis I'd read this. In any case, getting the assignment from Lehman wouldnt really help you. Youd still have a gap in the chain from Option One to Lehman. Its probably best to skip over Lehman all together and go directly to Option One to ask for the assignment. But you have a bit of a problem. You didnt buy the mortgage from Option … Read More

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WELLS WHISTLEBLOWER REVEALS BLACK HOLE FOR DOCUMENTS AND PROCEDURES Today, January 11, 2011, 29 minutes ago | Neil Garfield COMBO Title and Securitization Search, Report, Documents, Analysis & Commentary EDITOR’S COMMENT: LIVINGLIES HAS INDEPENDENTLY VERIFIED EVERY STATEMENT OF THIS WHISTLE-BLOWER. IT OPENS THE DOOR TO A WHISTLE-BLOWER LAWSUIT, A QUI TAM ACTION IN WHICH THE RELATER OR WHISTLE-BLOWER CAN RECEIVE HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS … Read More

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JUDGE SCHACK| Dismisses Case With Prejudice Against Citibank Due To Counsel Failure To Comply Posted on11 January 2011. Tags: administrative order, affidavit, Arthur M. Schack, cancelled, citibank, discharged, foreclosure fraud, Jennifer M. Mcann, Judge Ann T. Pfau, judge schack, Law Office Of Steven J. Baum, Megan B. Szeliga, new york, notice of pendency, ny supreme court, prejudice, Santiago Murillo, Steven J. Baum p.c. Citibank, N.A. AS TRUSTE … Read More

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New Florida Attorney General Report on Fraudclosures Presented to the FL Senate Banking and Insurance Committee Today, January 11, 2011, 36 minutes ago | Foreclosure Fraud Not as entertaining and colorful as the original report but interesting none the less… Enjoy! ~ 4closureFraud.org ~ New Florida Attorney General Report on Fraudclosures Presented to the FL Senate Banking and Insurance Committee View this document on Scribd … Read More

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Strategic Default: Watch Elites Freak Out To the Trend That Isn’t Happening. Today, January 11, 2011, 21 minutes ago | Mike Remember this guy?  David Walker of the Peterson Institute gets nostalgic about debtors prisons for strategic defaulters. There is a norm asymmetry being ruthlessly exploited between how people and businesses view debt.   Strategic default is not a phenomenon in any empirical data, but it is a boogeyman that needs to be ruth … Read More

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Today, January 11, 2011, 2 hours ago | Dave Krieger TRUSTEE FAILS ON MOTION TO DISMISS IN PENDING QUIET TITLE ACTION By Dave Krieger Most of the judges and foreclosure attorneys on both sides are watching this case carefully. It should be noted here that former civil rights lawyer and 30-year trial litigator Gwen Caranchini, no stranger to the blog sites by any means, had her best day in court in years in her case against Bank of America, MERS an … Read More

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Elizabeth Warren: Good Words, Now Let's See Deeds Today, January 01, 2011, 27 minutes ago | genesis From The Huffington Post (although not originally there) in reference to the mortgage servicing mess with Foreclosuregate and similar nonsense: While federal and state investigators are still examining exactly what has gone wrong and why, two things are clear. First, several financial services companies have already admitted that they used "robo-si … Read More

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2011- The American Apocalypse Yesterday, January 01, 2011, 7:24:05 PM | Matthew D. Weidner, Esq. My critics out there that accuse me of suffering from paranoid delusions when I share my fears of economic collapse and very real Civil War/Revolution.  My delusions derive from the day to day experience with clients in my office and what’s happening in courtrooms all across this country.  Real people are experiencing real suffering while those at the … Read More

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“Robo-Signing” Woman Kept Signing Docs- 13 Years After Her Death Today, January 02, 2011, 5 hours ago | twist Who says that just because you’re dead you can’t keep on working?  In what is certainly the most blatant case of robo-signing I’ve seen to date, one company had a woman signing hundreds of documents- for thirteen years after her death.  [Hat tip Freedoms Phoenix.] How, may you ask, can a woman who has been dead since 1995 sign documents m … Read More

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Max Gardner’s Top 11 Economic Predictions for 2011 Today, December 27, 2010, 1 hour ago | O. Max Gardner III At least 20 cities will be forced to file for Chapter 9 relief and the defaults on municipal bonds will hit all time highs.  Two major cities-such as Detroit and San Diego will join the others that go broke.  And, the Muni bonds are clearly headed for Puni-grounds. The number of Consumer Bankruptcy filings will reach an all time record and … Read More

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Subpoenas Withdrawn: Ally (GMAC, owned by USA) to Pay Fannie (owned by USA) $462 Million for “BuyBacks” Today, December 28, 2010, 4 hours ago | Neil Garfield COMBO Title and Securitization Search, Report, Documents, Analysis & Commentary COVER-UP CONTINUES EDITOR’S COMMENT: Confused? Ally, wholly owed by GMAC, which is 80% owed by our Federal government has agreed to pay $462 MILLION on “repurchase demands” (i.e. legal damages) to Fannie Mae … Read More

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TITLE UNDERWRITERS ISSUING RESTRICTIONS TO AGENTS ON SECURITIZED MORTGAGES Today, December 28, 2010, 3 hours ago | Neil Garfield COMBO Title and Securitization Search, Report, Documents, Analysis & Commentary see MD Foreclosure INDEMNITY AGREEMENT EDITOR’S NOTE: WHETHER IT IS IN WRITING OR NOT, VIRTUALLY ALL TITLE INSURANCE UNDERWRITERS THAT ARE INDEPENDENT FROM THE MEGA-BANKS ARE ISSUING DIRECTIONS AND RESTRICTIONS REGARDING INSURING TITLE O … Read More

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SPECIAL GUEST POST: Bob Cratchit Speaks Out on Christmas Foreclosure Freezes, Rated ‘PG-13’ Today, December 23, 2010, 4 hours ago | Mandelman Cratchit here… Well, it’s ‘that’ time of the year once again… the Christmas holidays.  For most people, in addition to being the celebration of the birth of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, it’s also a time to spend with loved ones… our family members and close friends… a time to share in the spirit of gi … Read More

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Fraud Ruling Against Wells Fargo in Minnesota Points to Widespread Abuses in Securities Lending Program Yesterday, December 23, 2010, 11:44:55 PM | Yves Smith A fraud and breach of fiduciary duty ruling against Wells Fargo in a major scandal in Minnesota may have much broader ramifications for this sanctimonious bank. The facts are not pretty. Wells Fargo, in its investment management operation, used securities lending to boost returns. But the r … Read More

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Christmas Stories Yesterday, December 23, 2010, 7:32:34 PM | Michael If you and your family are blessed and prosperous this holiday season, you should consider yourself to be very fortunate, because there are tens of millions of other Americans that are desperately hanging on by their fingernails.  The Christmas stories that you are going to read below aren't going to give you any warm fuzzies.  They aren't about "Santa Claus" sliding down the ch … Read More

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Accelerated mortgage defaults likely choice to deleverage household debt Today, December 24, 2010, 3 hours ago Most economists agree that households will continue to deleverage. Bank of America believes over $1,000,000,000 will come from strategic default. Irvine Home Address … 65 GRANDVIEW Irvine, CA 92603 Resale Home Price …… $2,320,000 In the town where I was born, Lived a man who sailed to sea, And he told us of his life, In the land of … Read More

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ROBO SIGNING – LENDERS DELAYING FORECLOSURES INTO FEBRUARY 2011? Today, December 24, 2010, 5 hours ago | Richard Zaretsky, Florida Real Estate Attorney (Richard P. Zaretsky P.A. – Bd Certified Real Estate Attorney) Robo sigining foreclosure affidavits and other documents has been in the news for months – forcing lenders to suspend foreclosures in process.  Recently many banks reported that their self imposed moratorium on foreclosure prosecution … Read More

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State Pension Problems Are Billions Worse Than Advertised Today, December 24, 2010, 7 hours ago | Mike "Mish" Shedlock The Wall Street Journal reports New Jersey Pension Gap Hits $54 Billion. New Jersey’s pension gap grew to $53.9 billion in the last fiscal year, up from $45.8 billion, thanks to market losses and a lack of state funding, according to figures released Thursday. Gov. Chris Christie’s administration said the gap, which reflected the … Read More

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Geithner on Foreclosure Fraud: What’s the Problem? | MyFDL Today, December 24, 2010, 13 hours ago | Alrady40@yahoo.com (Alrady) Geithner on Foreclosure Fraud: What’s the Problem? | MyFDL: "Comments with regard to the Congressional Oversight Panel hearing Dec. 16, 2010, with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner: Mr. Geithner disingenuously blamed the American public for borrowing too much credit without acknowledging that homeowners relied upon (al … Read More

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2010-12-18 to Today Title Views Home page 2,381 The Sum Of All Eviction Fears…"Families Exchange Homes to Stop Foreclosure." 1,622 Meredith Whitney, Chris Christie On 60 Minutes: Illinois & California Are Bankrupt, States Face Reckoning Day 356 Arizona Attorney General Charges BANK of AMERICA with Mortgage and foreclosure fraud…Complaint Here… 172 State of Nevada vs Bank of America – Nevada Attorney General Sues Bank of America for Dece … Read More

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Foreclosure Fraud | Bank Of America’s Christmas Present: Foreclose Even Though Not A Payment Missed Today, December 25, 2010, 46 minutes ago | Foreclosure Fraud The moral to the story below is if you are put into a “loan modification” your regular payments will not be applied, late fees will occur, your credit will be ruined because you are reported as NOT making your payments when in a modification, and once you sent in your trail payments, they … Read More

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7 Things I Refuse to Worry About In 2011 Today, December 25, 2010, 1 hour ago | James Altucher I began worrying in 1995. I had two jobs: my fulltime job at HBO during the day and by night I was starting a company which built websites for other companies. In the summer of 1995 I would work all day at HBO and then at night was building americanexpress.com and Toshiba.com. I had deadlines everywhere and on the other side of those deadlines were very … Read More

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Mortgage Lending and Foreclosure: ‘There Should be Compensation For People Who Have Been Harmed Share | Charlene Crowell NNPA Columnist December 25, 2010 As temperatures plummet across much of the country, multiple developments related to foreclosure and fair lending are heating up. From yet another multi-million dollar settlement to attorneys general investigations and potential actions against mortgage servicers, it is clear that consumers have … Read More

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Sunday, December 26, 2010 SEIU's "Where's The Note" Campaign Meeting With Hostility By Note-Lacking Lenders? A recent campaign by the Service Employees International Union ("SEIU") encouraging its homeowning members, whether facing foreclosure, having an underwater mortgage, or who are simply concerned over home lenders' rampant inability to account for the whereabouts of the original promissory notes, to contact their bank and demand to see the … Read More

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