Follow the Money: From MERS to Fraudclosure

April 2, 2011 10:00am by Barry Ritholtz

Even 60 Minutes seems to be sugarcoating the motivation for fraudclosure:

“Banks so poorly handled documentation on millions of mortgages that many today cannot prove that they own the homes they want to foreclose on. The resulting rash of lawsuits from people seeking to save their homes has one of the government’s top banking regulators worried that the torrent of litigation will delay the real estate market’s recovery.”

Understand this precisely: This was not a case of slipshod handling, of sloppy paperwork, or bad management. This was a willful decision to break the law in order to save expenses and be more profitable.

Follow the money: MERS to subprime lending to automated underwriting to securitization to robosigning to fraudclosure — its ALWAYS been about saving a few bucks regardless of the consequences.

The good thing about this Sunday’s 60 Minutes piece (which I have not seen yet) is that it will apply more popular pressure to the State AGs for some legal action on Fraudclosure.

But they are missing the bigger picture here: Reckless disregard for property rights and the rule of law. And exactly where are all of my Libertarian friends on this . . . ?

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