LIBERTY ROAD MEDIA

WAR IS A RACKET TO PROP UP DOLLAR–END OF STORY

Posted on March 22, 2014 by eggsistense

War is a racket.

Money is fictional.

These two statements explain all wars, of course, but particularly the adventures of the western powers in the Middle East in the last 2+ decades. The first statement was spoken by Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler–an expert on the subject–who put it like this:

“WAR is a racket. It always has been.

It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.

A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small “inside” group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.”

So what is all the western saber-rattling about in Russia, Iran, China? What were the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan about? Indeed, these wars were, as Butler says, not what they seem to the majority of the people.

Think of it this way–remember how the U.S. was supposed to “get the Iraqi oil” (as memorialized by a Time magazine reporter in the story “US Companies Shut Out as Iraq Auctions Its Oil Fields“? That hasn’t worked out too well for people like you and me, as gas prices in California (where I now live) were approximately $1.52 for regular before we went “to get Iraq’s oil.” This week in California–some 11 years after the invasion–I paid $4.05 for regular. So we did not get the Iraqi oil, as it turns out. But oil companies made out like bandits (“Exxon reports record profit of nearly $16 billion”) and continue to do so. So did military contractors. But I’m getting off the subject, talking about what Iraq wasn’t about rather than what it was about.

Dollar hegemony is the point of all this

And that brings us to our second statement above, that “money is fictional.” What does that mean, exactly? Well, I put it like this at The Air Standard:

“…keep in mind that all money is fictional…Money must be created by someone, somewhere, because money does not exist in nature–except to the extent that a natural item like gold or salt might be assigned the properties of money. Despite what the typical Western economics professor might say, money does not just naturally come into being as a consequence of people needing to exchange things…

It is beyond dispute that money can be–and has been–anything: gold, paper, shells, sticks, salt, binary code, cigarettes, fabric, etc.,…

The dollar, then, is fictional: created out of nothing and backed by nothing. It has no inherent value. It is only given value by people’s belief that it does have value and can be used to purchase goods and services.

As we have seen, however, the dollar has lost almost all of its value (“Your Money Is Worthless By Design“) and many people have started to lose faith in the dollar, especially with the rampant QE that is devaluing the dollar and thereby undermining the power of large holders of dollar reserves, like China, or countries that have to trade their oil in dollars–like Iran.

So Iran, for instance, has stopped using the dollar for oil purchases because the dollar is worthless. Russia has stopped using the dollar (see “Iran, Russia dump dollar for rial, ruble“). China is always making noise about dumping the dollar (or someone is suggesting it to them.) Great article here on Russia and the petrodollar (“Forget Russia Dumping U.S. Treasuries … Here’s the REAL Economic Threat”):

“Russia threatened to dump its U.S. treasuries if America imposed sanctions regarding Putin’s action in the Crimea.

Zero Hedge argues that Russia has already done so.

But veteran investor Jim Sinclair argues that Russia has a much scarier financial attack which it can use against the U.S.

Specifically, Sinclair says that if Russia accepts payment for oil and gas in any currency other than the dollar – whether it’s gold, the Euro, the Ruble, the Rupee, or anything else – then the U.S. petrodollar system will collapse…“

Since–as we have seen–money is created by man and can be anything, someone who has come up with a system of money that is used by the entire world and enriches that “someone,” that “someone” has to have some way to enforce the use of this system of money or he will go broke. That “someone” in this case is the Federal Reserve.

And the banks that control the United States and issue the world’s reserve currency via the Federal Reserve can’t allow competing currencies; creating money from thin air to buy off the real wealth of the world is their racket and no one else’s. So off to another war–but about propping up a dying currency, not to stop genocide or for any other lofty, noble reason. Because war is a racket and money is fictional.

Posted in Antiwar, China, Conspiracy, Debt, Debt Slavery, Everything Is Rigged, Federal Reserve, Iran, Middle East, petrodollar, QE unlimited, Russia, Uncategorized, War Is A Racket | Tagged california, China, gas prices, genocide, Iran, Middle East, petrodollar, quantitative easing, reserve currency, Russia, Smedley Butler, The Air Standard, war, War Is A Racket | Leave a comment

TAX TIME: PAY UP SO WE CAN CONTINUE TO TRAMPLE YOUR RIGHTS

Posted on March 21, 2014 by eggsistense

It’s tax season! “Working for no one but me,” indeed…

In the spirit of the season, Naked Capitalism has an interesting post today, titled “Whistleblower Reveals Favoritism Toward the Rich, Robo-Signing at the IRS.” Here’s an interesting excerpt regarding the whistleblower’s claim that the IRS is engaged in “favoritism toward well-connected tax filers and even document fraud”:

“This is no different than robo-signing. The documents initialed by “Wanda” presumably get submitted as evidence in tax court cases. I don’t know whether or not Wanda in any way legally attests that the underlying information in the legal documents is correct, but if errors routinely get found after the fact, some documents in all likelihood deliver false information to the court. No wonder nobody in Washington cared that much about robo-signing, I hadn’t entertained the possibility that it was official government policy.”

Sigh…the whistleblower confirms that the rich and big corporations get treated with kid gloves while the working stiffs that make $50K/year get hell’s fury unleashed upon them:

“Johnston points out later in the piece that Kim’s allegations line up with his long history of covering the IRS:

Many of Kim’s complaints are consistent with allegations that other IRS employees in New York and Long Island have shared with me over the last 15 years. In addition to favoritism, I have listened at length to complaints about pressure to go soft on, or quickly close, cases involving large corporations and some wealthy individuals […]

Seasoned investigators known for their skill at ferreting out subtle misconduct should be assigned to investigate the cases cited by Kim where the IRS missed deadlines, dropped the ball, or otherwise didn’t act in a timely fashion. To have credibility, those managing such an inquiry must issue clear orders that the chips will fall where they may given the deplorable favoritism shown by IRS managers in the San Francisco collections cases and the Chevron Indonesia oil cases detailed in my 2003 book, Perfectly Legal.

You can read about the San Francisco collections case in Perfectly Legal at Google Books. Basically, Peter Coons, a career IRS agent, was made chief tax collector for Northern California in 1995, started going after tax cheats from prominent Bay Area families, and was eventually railroaded out of the job. When he tried to seek whistleblower status over the favoritism he saw toward rich taxpayers, he was denied.”

Isn’t it wonderful how we pay our taxes so that our rights can be protected and the law upheld? Yes, it is wonderful, as we go back to this wonderfully wonderful story–“A Loan Fraud War That’s Short On Combat“:

“Most of all, the report is depressing because it indicates that the Justice Department, our nation’s top law enforcement agency, is simply unequipped — or unwilling — to combat complex financial frauds.”

Yes, friends, this is why we pay taxes. So the top “law enforcement” agency in the country can…um…”enforce” the law. Against you and me, they enforce the shit out of the law. Against the big boys, not so much. So, you know, pay up!

And rest assured knowing that not one penny of your money is going to anything other than interest owed on the fake money they’re enslaving us all with, as found by the Grace Commission and detailed in their 1984 (hey now!) report:

“With two thirds of everyone’s personal income taxes wasted or not collected, 100 percent of what is collected is absorbed solely by interest on the federal debt and by federal government contributions to transfer payments. In other words, all individual income tax revenues are gone before one nickel is spent on the services [that] taxpayers expect from their government.”

Posted in Debt, Debt Slavery, Everything Is Rigged, Federal Reserve, fiat currency, Financial Terrorism, Foreclosure fraud, Tax, Uncategorized | Tagged Beatles, David Dayen, Grace Commission, Naked Capitalism, tax, whistleblower | Leave a comment

JUDGES: DUPES OR IN ON IT?

Posted on March 20, 2014 by eggsistense

The “ta-da” endorsements and other document fabrication schemes are not exclusive to Wells Fargo, as we all know. It’s just that Wells’ manual has become public knowledge. And of course, the point of all this document fabrication is to fool judges and/or give judges a halfway-plausible legal tool to rule against homeowners, as Neil Garfield notes:

“There can be little doubt about it. Documents that a real bank acting like a bank would have in its possession appear to be completely absent in most if not all loans that are “performing” (i.e., the homeowner is paying, even if the party they are paying isn’t the right and even if the loan has already been paid off). But as soon as the file becomes subject to foreclosure proceedings, documents miraculously appear showing endorsements, allonges, powers of attorney and assignments. According to a report from The Real Deal (New York Real Estate News), these are frequently referred to as “ta-da endorsements” a reference from magic acts where rabbits are pulled from the hat.

Such endorsements and other fabricated documents have been taken at face value by many judges across the country, despite vigorous protests from homeowners who were complaining about everything from “they didn’t have the documents before, so where did they get them?” to luring homeowners into false modifications that were designed to trap homeowners into foreclosure.”

Judges have to know what’s going on. They read the news. They’re not naive. We’re always told that judges can do whatever they want, and at some point one has to ask–if that is so, why does “whatever they want” almost always seem to be to throw homeowners in the street on the strength of fake documents?

Seriously–a lot of people, even attorneys, will defend judges that routinely find against homeowners. They don’t defend such decisions, necessarily, but they do defend the judges. At least publicly. They will say that judges are under pressure to clear the dockets, or the judge’s hands are tied because you didn’t say the magic words in your pleadings that would magically untie their magical hands so they could unleash magical justice.

However, at some point we have to ask ourselves, are the judges really dupes? That is, do they really buy all the BS that Wells Fargo and the other banks are feeding them? Do they really look at a case where there are affidavits swearing that an unendorsed note is true and correct and then suddenly a “ta-da”-endorsed note appears as a deus ex machina and say, “Yeah, I totally buy that?” Given the education and experience level of most judges that hear these cases, one would expect them to have pretty sensitive bullshit detectors.

The only other explanation is that the judges are somehow complicit. That’s an uncomfortable statement to make and even more uncomfortable to actually contemplate. And it seems almost impossible to pull off, but then again, it is being pulled off, as Garfield points out:

“The assumption that these are just loans that were to be enforced just like any other loans is naïve. The lending process described in the paperwork at the closings of these loans was a complete lie. The actual lender did not know the closing had occurred, never received the note and mortgage, nor any other instrument that protected the investor lenders. The borrower did not know the actual lender existed. Closing agent was at best negligent and at worst part of the scheme. Closing agent applied money from the investors to the closing of the “loan” and gave the paperwork that should’ve gone to the investors to third parties who didn’t have a dime invested in the deal. Later the investment banks would claim that they were suffering losses, but it was a lie, this time to the taxpayers and the government.

The reason the investment banks need to fabricate documentation is simply because their scheme required multiple sales of the same loan to multiple parties. They had to wait until they couldn’t wait any longer in order to pick a plaintiff to file a foreclosure lawsuit or pick a beneficiary who would appear out of nowhere to start the nonjudicial sale of property in which they were a complete stranger to the transaction.

The reason that homeowners should win in any reasonable challenge to a foreclosure action is that neither the forecloser nor the balance has been correctly stated. In many cases the balance “owed” by the borrower is negative! Yes that means that money is owed back to the borrower even know they stopped making payments. This is so counter intuitive that it is virtually impossible for most people to wrap their brains around this concept and that is exactly what Wall Street banks have been counting on and using against us for years.“

After all, it’s not like there’s ever been any proof that judges are in on a big plot. Oh, wait…

“(NaturalNews) A former county judge from Pennsylvania has been sentenced to 28 years in federal prison for reportedly abusing the criminal justice system by illegally jailing thousands of innocent children for cash. Mark Ciavarella Jr. was recently found guilty of accepting $1 million in bribes from the builders of two private juvenile detention centers in Luzerne County, which profited heavily from the many false convictions that filled its cells with innocent kids.”

That is, of course, an example of complicity by commission. But let’s not forget the example of complicity with the banks by the most favored method–omission:

But last week, a report from the inspector general of the Justice Department, Michael E. Horowitz, set the record straight. Sure enough, the report told us how hard the nation’s law enforcement officials had been investigating these cases. That is, hardly at all.

The report, called “Audit of the Department of Justice’s Efforts to Address Mortgage Fraud,” covers the period from 2009 to 2011. It vindicates anyone who ever questioned the government’s claim that the reason there weren’t more mortgage-related fraud cases is because the cases just weren’t there to be made.

Most of all, the report is depressing because it indicates that the Justice Department, our nation’s top law enforcement agency, is simply unequipped — or unwilling — to combat complex financial frauds.

Here is one of the report’s conclusions: “We found that, despite public statements by the Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force and the department about the importance of pursuing financial fraud cases, including mortgage fraud, the F.B.I. Criminal Investigative Division ranked complex financial crimes as the lowest of the six ranked criminal threats within its area of responsibility, and ranked mortgage fraud as the lowest subcategory threat within the complex financial crimes category. Additionally, we found mortgage fraud to be a low priority, or not listed as a priority, for F.B.I. field offices in the locations we visited, including Baltimore, Los Angeles, Miami, and New York.”

Posted in Conspiracy, Everything Is Rigged, Financial Terrorism, Foreclosure fraud, Living Lies, Paper terrorism | Tagged deus ex machina, document fabrication, foreclosure fraud, judges, Living Lies, Neil Garfield | 4 Comments

“IF YOU DON’T HAVE THE DOCUMENTS, PERHAPS YOU JUST DON’T HAVE THE RIGHT TO FORECLOSE.”

Posted on March 19, 2014 by eggsistense

In this largely friendly Fox Business piece from The Willis Report with host Gerri Willis, attorney Linda Tirelli alleges–as do we here at LRM–that Wells Fargo is in fact engaged in fabrication of mortgage documents and is not alone in this practice.

“This is business as usual for all the big banks,” Tirelli said, referring to the manufacture of mortgage documents out of whole cloth in order to establish legal standing to foreclose on homes. In other words, if a bank doesn’t have the proper documentation needed to legally foreclose a mortgage or deed of trust, said bank will simply create the documents and then try to present the documents in court as though they were the originals and the bank had them all along.

“Maybe we’ll actually see a perp walk at some point,” said Tirelli in response to Willis’ question about what Tirelli expects to see as a result of the interest of a number of federal regulators in Tirelli’s allegations.

As one might expect, at one point Willis brings up the pro-bank, forgery-downplaying narrative: “After all, these people had not paid for their house–they hadn’t made their mortgage payments. What’s your response to that?”

Tirelli’s brilliant response: “Regardless of whether someone’s behind in their mortgage–which can happen to anyone in this economy–that doesn’t give a bank or anyone the right to fabricate documents and submit them to a court of law for the purpose of enticing a judge to rely on it and actually foreclose on a home.”

Incredibly, Willis acknowledges that the documents required to foreclose on homes “didn’t exist.” She says this as though such information is uncontroversial–which it is, in reality, though up til this point, most media types like Willis have pretended that it is very controversial–and is common knowledge. Very encouraging for those in the anti-foreclosure-fraud movement. Tirelli’s take on Willis’ comment–“If you don’t have the documents, perhaps you just don’t have the right to foreclose. And that’s certainly not the consumer’s fault.” WOW.

It’s certainly encouraging to see the national media coverage this is generating. Wells Fargo’s response has been tepid thus far, but their damage control will almost certainly soon kick into high gear, with a Wells Fargo representative sitting where Tirelli sat, on Willis’ show branding Tirelli as misguided and uninformed on the nuance of the manual. We must plan our response accordingly.

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

WHY NO ONE SHOULD TRUST BANKS…

Posted on March 18, 2014 by eggsistense

…especially if you’re a judge. Or a cop. Or a…person. Below are just a couple more reasons to add to a very long list of why no one should trust banks. Ever. On anything.

First of all, an unnamed bank hired thugs to go in and rob an elderly couple who had paid off their mortgage 15 years ago:

“COCONUT CREEK, Fla. –

A Broward County couple wants answers from the bank that foreclosed on their home mistakenly.

The couple returned from New York to find their locks had been changed and some of their stuff was gone. But it turns out the whole thing was a mistake.

‘I said, ‘Mel, we’ve been robbed.’ We couldn’t believe what had happened,’ said homeowner Harriett.

Mel and Harriet said they still feel violated three weeks after realizing someone broke into their home. But it wasn’t burglars that broke in, it was the bank.

When they returned to their home a lock box was on the door, the power was turned of, stickers were all over their stuff and the kitchen was cleaned out.

The snowbirds then discovered their Coconut Creek townhome had been foreclosed in December.

‘I was shocked, totally shocked,’ Mel said. ‘Why? We haven’t had a mortgage in 15 years.'”

The news report emphasizes this was a “mistake,” and the thugs that robbed the couple, rather than being sought by police, have told the press they will take the proper “corrective action.” Oh, I’m sure they will. BTW, why isn’t the bank named in this piece? Why is the bank being protected in this way?

This is not an isolated incident, as the new story indicates:

“Sobol [an attorney] calls this foreclosure foul up ‘legalized burglary,’ and it turns out Safeguard has been accused of making the same mistake before. In fact, according to The Huffington Post, homeowners in 31 states, and the Attorney General of Illinois, have sued the company for unlawful break-ins.“

So if you rob a bank, the state’s enforcers (aka the police) will hunt you down like a dog. The bank robs you, they assure everyone they will take “corrective action.”

How does a “mistake” like this even happen? Perhaps something like this accounts for it:

This comes from Mortgage Compliance Investigators. As you can see, this mortgage assignment was notarized without even being signed. Or robo-signed. They don’t even know what the hell they’re doing; they don’t even know that they don’t know what the hell they’re doing, yet we’re all just supposed to go along with it! This is the essence of the con job, the snow job, the heist. This is why no one should trust banks.

BTW, Mortgage Compliance Investigators has a gigantic collection of this kind of stuff:

http://www.scribd.com/collections/4358078/MCI-Fraud-Evidence

Posted in Debt Slavery, Everything Is Rigged, Financial Terrorism, Foreclosure fraud, Paper terrorism, Uncategorized | Tagged assignment, Florida, foreclosure fraud, Mortgage Compliance Investigators, notary | Leave a comment

I SMELL A SETTLEMENT–BUT CONVENTIONAL WISDOM IS CHANGING FOR THE BETTER

Posted on March 17, 2014 by eggsistense

So the so-called regulators have gotten in on the Wells Fargo debacle:

“…four major watchdogs have taken notice. New York’s attorney general, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the New York State Department of Financial Services and the United States Trustee Program — a unit of the Department of Justice that oversees bankruptcy courts — have obtained copies of the 150-page Wells Fargo Home Mortgage Foreclosure Attorney Procedures Manual cited in the allegations filed in federal court in New York, sources said.”

Forgive us if we don’t get our hopes up that this will lead to meaningful action against the banks. Schneiderman talks a good game and sues the right people, but very often ends in settlements, as in “AG Schneiderman Announces $13 Billion Mortgage Settlement With JPMorgan Chase” from just the end of last year. However, as Salon’s David Dayen pointed out, that fine works out just, well fine for JPM:

“Meanwhile, almost all of the [settlement] deal, save a $2 billion penalty to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Sacramento to settle a civil lawsuit, is tax deductible as a business expense. Assuming a 38 percent rate for deductions (as JPMorgan does) on $7 billion in business expenses, this knocks another $2.66 billion off the real cost to JPMorgan Chase. A ballyhooed $13 billion settlement winds up being closer to $2.74 billion. That’s less than what BP or GlaxoSmithKline paid in their Justice Department settlements.”

Settlements don’t help homeowners. They don’t end the fraud business model adopted by all the big banks. And by the corporate world in general.

The conventional wisdom is coming around!

One nice thing about this latest article–it contains a startling change from the typical narrative regarding banks and foreclosures. Here’s that startling change:

“For hundreds of years, Americans could rely on clear homeownership records kept in county courthouses.

But the securitization of mortgages destroyed this system, thanks to the loans changing hands multiple times, and MERS, an unreliable electronic record-keeping system created by banks to bypass county courthouses and the associated filing fees.”

What’s beautiful about this is that these grafs are not attributed to a source (at least not clearly and uneqivocally so) , unless conventional wisdom can be considered a source. In other words, the writer of this article and her editor do not feel that stating that MERS is unreliable and that securitization destroyed the county recording systems as controversial or in need of attribution or qualification. Saying those things is apparently now considered as a much of a “known fact” as the sun shining in a blue sky. I’ll take progress wherever I can get it!

Posted in Conspiracy, Everything Is Rigged, Financial Terrorism, Foreclosure fraud, MERS, Paper terrorism | Tagged David Dayen, Eric Schneiderman, fines, JPMorgan Chase, New York Post, settlements, Wells Fargo | Leave a comment

“CT,” POLICE STATE, AND WHY WE MUST WAKE THE F@$& UP

Posted on March 16, 2014 by eggsistense

It’s kind of hilarious to read the comments below this great article–“The Reason The Police in The U.S. Routinely Kills, Tortures, and Lies With Impunity–from Daily Kos. The commenters can’t seem to accept the reality that is staring them and everyone else in the face, i.e., that we are living in a police state. We recently addressed this same phenomenon in the piece “Stop Pretending That We Are Living In A 50s Sitcom”:

“And clearly, that’s what we must do now—accept the enormity of what is happening to us. See things for what they are. Turn off the “news.” Talk to other people. Realize that America is not now what it never was–a 1950s paradise that everyone wants to believe in even though it isn’t now and never was real–and act accordingly.“

So first, some quotes from the great article by Ray Pensador:

“But just like at some point we have to learn that there is no Santa Claus (and worst, that he actually does not come down the chimney on Christmas eve), one day it will be necessary for people to understand that we already lost the last remnants of democracy, and that we are in the middle of an imposition of a corporatist police state.

Please, for those “good citizens” who are going to exhibit the typical knee-jerk reaction to this type of criticism of the police, like ‘How dare you impugn police officers; they put their lives on the line every day; most of them are decent, law abiding, and take their oath to protect and serve very seriously,’ I ask you to first read this diary carefully before you react in such a fashion.

It all starts at the top. Equal justice under the law does not exist in this country. In reality, the concept has always been kind of a farce, but it has never been this grotesque, this in-your-face.

We have a two-tiered justice system. One overtly lenient and convenient for the top 1 percent, and one increasingly punishing and draconian for the rest of us.“

That we have a two-tiered justice system has never been in debate, it’s just that it was always something that the poor and minorities were forced to deal with–or so the story goes. Indeed, the doctors and lawyers who find themselves railroaded in foreclosure court are now beginning to realize what a two-tiered justice system is all about and that if it can happen to them, it can happen–and is happening–to everyone. They are beginning to WTFU!

Pensador continues:

“In the meantime, the real terrorizing, the real crime (at a massive, massive level) is being committed by the criminal ruling elite. But because they are doing it piecemeal, slowly, deliberately, the populace can’t grasp the depths of the depravity and predation behind it.”

To which I scream: Exactly! The people can’t grasp the depths of the depravity and predation not only because of the pace of it, but also because they are under literal mind control and have been since birth. Again, back to the idea behind the 50s sitcom article–we are taught to believe that “men are men and women are pretty and polite and children are obedient and bankers lend out deposits and everybody goes to church on Sundays” and–as Pensador is telling us– that Officer Friendly is here to protect us! The sick joke is that none of this could be more untrue–not only now, but always.

Back to Pensador:

“It is within this context that police forces around the country routinely kill and torture innocent people, with total impunity. And it is within this context that police officers lie routinely, and stand in fascist formation behind the thin blue line.”

Took me a while to figure out what “CT” is

As mentioned earlier, the comments to this article are priceless in their naivete, as they mostly revolve around whether or not Pensador’s article is “CT.” At first I thought maybe I had missed some reference to Connecticut in the article or that it was an inside joke on Daily Kos or that it was the initials of one of DK’s many diarists.

Eventually I got it, though: “CT” stands for “conspiracy theory.” I should point out that the reason I had never seen this acronym before is because I almost never visit Daily Kos, and the comments to this article remind me why.

Those who think that Pensador’s article is “CT” will undoubtedly–if they live through what’s happening and what’s in store for us–find themselves very sympathetic to the Solzhenitsyn quote: “And how we burned in the camps later…And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation…. We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”

Posted in civil rights, Conspiracy, Everything Is Rigged, Police State | Tagged "CT", conspiracy fact, conspiracy theory, Daily Kos, police state, Ray Pensador, Solzhenitsyn | 2 Comments

WELLS FARGO “CORRECTS” DOCUMENTS TO TAKE HOUSES

Posted on March 14, 2014 by eggsistense

In the Wells Fargo manual mentioned in the post “Conspiracy Fact, Not Theory: Wells Fargo’s Manual”, we find the following statement on p. 32:

“Files needing a corrected endorsement or assignment will not follow the Wells Fargo policy of returning exception files to the Attorney after 48 hours. These files will be held with Wells Fargo until the follow-up actions are completed to get the corrected documents.”

Now I’m no attorney or UCC expert, but it seems to me that a “corrected endorsement” on a promissory note is basically a new endorsement. And a new endorsement is an attempt to change the fact of which party (if any) to whom a note was–or was not–negotiated. (NOTE: for a discussion of why negotiation is crucial, see “How Negotiability Has Fouled Up the Secondary Market, and What To Do About It“). And that fact–namely, to whom was a note negotiated–is central to foreclosure defense (or offense, of course). The argument in foreclosure defense is essentially that any “corrected”–read “new”–endorsement is unacceptable come foreclosure time. That is likely why Naked Capitalism’s Wells Fargo whistleblower was apparently somewhat of a stickler when he was reviewing documents for Wells Fargo (probably as part of what the Wells Fargo manual refers to as the “WFHM Executable Team”):

“The whistleblower estimated that 99.5% of the notes that he reviewed that had been securitized failed the bank’s tests, and roughly 10% to 15% of the bank owned mortgages were tagged as ‘fails’.”

Indeed, an endorsement can’t really be “corrected” without becoming an altogether new endorsement. Endorsements are made up of only a few words, i.e.:

PAY TO THE ORDER OF

__________________________
WITHOUT RECOURSE
NAME OF BANK OR BANK ENTITY

That blank can be either left empty–known as an endorsement “in blank” (or “to blank”)–or the name of a natural or corporate person can be written on that blank. For foreclosure purposes (from a bank like Wells Fargo’s perspective), the only ways to “correct” this part of any endorsement would be to either: 1) erase the name that was originally in the blank (or insert a name into the blank that wasn’t in the blank before); or 2) change the name of the endorsing bank or bank entity . Either way, this “correction” completely changes the endorsement and hence changes the party entitled to foreclose. Which is the idea, one supposes.

After the elements of endorsement listed above, there is the name of a natural person above their title in the bank or bank entity said natural person is supposedly authorized to endorse the note for, like this:

BY ___JOHN DOE__________________
TITLE WITHIN BANK OR BANK ENTITY

“Correcting” either of these elements also creates a new endorsement, in my non-attorney opinion.

In other words, what the Wells Fargo manual refers to as “corrected” endorsements is essentially an obfuscatory term for a new–and almost certainly legally invalid–endorsement that is an attempt to negotiate a note long after it should have been negotiated.

IMPORTANT NOTE/DISCLAIMER: The above article is not legal advice and was not written by an attorney. It is merely a collection of common-sense, rational observations written by a sane, rational layperson with common sense. It is recommended that you consult with an attorney for any and all legal advice and/or action.

Posted in Conspiracy, Debt Slavery, Everything Is Rigged, Financial Terrorism, Foreclosure fraud, Secondary debt market, Uncategorized | Tagged Dale Whitman, Naked Capitalism, negotiation, UCC, Wells Fargo, whistleblower | Leave a comment

CONSPIRACY FACT, NOT THEORY: WELLS FARGO’S MANUAL

Posted on March 13, 2014 by eggsistense

So, once again, the “conspiracy theory” that banks manufacture/massage/manipulate the documents they need–but don’t have–in the foreclosure context has proven to be conspiracy fact.

Indeed, the whistleblower that went to Naked Capitalism regarding Wells Fargo a year ago was not just, um…whistling Dixie, as it turns out. Wells Fargo indeed doctors/manufactures documents, and according to a lawsuit in New York, they actually have a manual on how to do it! Naked Capitalism quotes a New York Post article about the lawsuit:

“In a filing in New York’s Southern District in White Plains for a local homeowner in bankruptcy, attorney Linda Tirelli described a 150-page Wells Fargo Foreclosure Attorney Procedures Manual created November 9, 2011 and updated February 24, 2012. According to court papers, the Manual details ‘a procedure for processing [mortgage] notes without endorsements and obtaining endorsements and allonges.'”

If Wells Fargo does it, you can rest assured that the other big banks do it–after all, they have to compete! Check out this quote that gets right to the heart of the kind of thinking that causes this copycat, groupthink fraud from an article entitled “Fiduciary Duty to Cheat? Stock Market Super-Star Jim Chanos Reveals the Perverse New Mindset of Financial Fraudsters”:

“Because if now, as the senior member of a bank, or the board of a bank, I know that there are no criminal penalties for breaking the rules, don’t I have a fiduciary responsibility to my shareholders to actually play fast and loose? Because if I get caught, that’s just the cost of doing business?”

Yep. All the banks are doing it, not just Wells Fargo. We just don’t have the other banks’ manuals–yet.

These are the people that need to be deposed, ASAP!

As I argued in this blog’s maiden post, “Bank of America’s Magic Wand,” it’s the underlings that need to be deposed, not the people whose names appear on these phony endorsements. People like Naked Capitalism’s whistleblower need to be deposed, because the people whose names appear on the endorsements never have anything to do with actually placing the endorsements on the notes.

According to the unnamed Naked Capitalism whistleblower, his working group didn’t actually manufacture the endorsements, they just inspected them and/or ratified them. In other words, if the mortgage documents didn’t pass muster with that whistleblower’s unit–made up of temps, very few of whom had any experience with mortgage documentation–those mortgage documents were flagged for made-up, “ta-da” endorsements.

So that gets us ever closer to how the fraud actually occurred. Maybe that whistleblower–or someone like him–can get us names/job titles of the people who actually manufactured the fake endorsements. Those are the people that should be deposed, post-haste!

Posted in Conspiracy, Everything Is Rigged, Financial Terrorism, Foreclosure fraud | Tagged conspiracy fact, conspiracy theory, endorsement, Naked Capitalism, New York, New York Post, ta-da endorsement, Wells Fargo, whistleblower | 5 Comments

STOP PRETENDING WE’RE LIVING IN A 50s SITCOM

Posted on March 10, 2014 by eggsistense

I always feel a little awkward, like I’m making people uncomfortable, when I question conventional wisdom out loud. Not that I’m some genius thinker or what have you. But if I suggest that perhaps everything is rigged, that money itself is a fraud, that banks are criminal organizations, that Democrats and Republicans are just different names for the same party, etc., some people act like I’m off my nut. Sometimes, even, people in my own family.

And so it seems that most people are operating under the pretense that we are always living in some idyllic time—say, the 1950s—where hard work is rewarded with high pay and everyone plays by the rules and we are a nation of laws, not of men. That every day is “Happy Days.” That real life is or ought to be a 50s sitcom. Indeed, no period in American history has been idolized—and “idyllized”–as much as the 50s, particularly in TV and movies. Such a carefree, everything-in-its-right-place time has never really existed, but it seems as though people hold up such an imaginary time as “the way things used to—and still ought to—be.”

But it’s hard to notice most of the time because it’s not usually expressed in such terms; it’s much more subtle–indeed, most people don’t even know that they think this way. It’s the idea that you should have no problem finding and getting a good-paying job in your chosen field because, well, this is America after all, and that’s what America is all about, in this non-existent 1950s egalitarian paradise that most people implicitly believe in and cling to.

This mindset evinces itself in the idea that things cannot be as bad as they seem—the government is spying on everyone, everywhere, all the time, for example, but hey, this is America and America is forever bound into that 50s-esque ideal of men are men and women are pretty and polite and children are obedient and bankers lend out deposits and everybody goes to church on Sundays, so if the government is spying on us, well then, that is just a part of that 50s-esque paradise that we didn’t realize was part of the paradise.

Another manifestation of this attitude regarding something like government surveillance or the open rigging of all markets is that “Well, it could be worse—at least we’re not Jews in Nazi Germany or slaves in the antebellum South” or some such. Yes, that may be true, but at least Jews in Nazi Germany and slaves in the South knew very well what was happening to them at the time it was happening to them. We seem to be no better than the proverbial frog in the tepid water, now slightly warming, now slightly warmer still…wow, it’s getting hot…

And maybe that’s the point of the famous Solzhenitsyn quote—

“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?… The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If…if…We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation…. We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”

–that yes, it was a tragedy that people were rounded up, but even more tragic is the fact that they couldn’t accept the enormity of what was happening to them, i.e., being rounded up, even while it was happening. If they had accepted the enormity of it, as he said, they might have lain in wait and killed the rounder-uppers.

And clearly, that’s what we must do now—accept the enormity of what is happening to us. See things for what they are. Turn off the “news.” Talk to other people. Realize that America is not now what it never was–a 1950s paradise that everyone wants to believe in even though it isn’t now and never was real–and act accordingly.

Posted in Conspiracy, Everything Is Rigged | Tagged 1950s, antebellum, Happy Days, Nazi Germany, NSA, slavery, Solzhenitsyn, South | 1 Comment