Don’t mess with Texas!

In Nueces County, Texas, MERS will be going to trial because, according to a Bloomberg article:

“The county alleges that properties bundled into mortgage securities may have traded dozens of times within the MERS system without the county being notified of any change in ownership.“

That is the EXACT problem with MERS.  Not only is the county notified of change in ownership, the homeowner is not notified of change in ownership.  MERS is like a game of musical chairs for banks: while the homeowner’s monthly payments are coming in, the note changes hands multiple times-without the county or homeowner knowing of this hand-changing–and when the music (payments) stops, MERS is always able to find a chair because supposedly MERS can purport to be the nominee/agent of ANY bank.  So no bank can ever lose at musical chairs, because MERS is their “ghost man” they can put in whatever chair they need to put him in, even if no bank is an actual creditor and shouldn’t still be playing the game.

MERS is about opacity, not transparency

However, this little scheme is not the point of recording ownership with the county recorder.  The point of recording ownership is so that the public–i.e., the county, the homeowner, the courts, any interested party–can always know who really owns what property.    The banks of course, do not want this sort of transparency, because if there was such transparency, the whole securitization Ponzi scheme would be revealed for what it is, i.e., a complete con game.  So the very business model of MERS certainly goes against the spirit of recording laws, even though it may adhere (however tenuously) to the letter of the law.  The judge recognized this:

“‘This court cannot simply bend the laws of Texas to fit the MERS system, no matter how ubiquitous it has become,’ Ramos said. She rejected the bank’s argument that she should ‘turn a blind eye to the fact this process does not comply with the law’ because MERS is involved in 50 percent of the county’s residential mortgages.”

Ah–the cracks are appearing in the “too big too fail” dam that is holding back a reservoir of fraud!

(h/t: STOP Foreclosure Fraud)