In an excellent piece, Lawyer Roy Oppenheim warns that the Florida Legislature is moving to legalize bank theft of homes. See his piece here.
As I’ve been writing for years, foreclosure is theft in most cases. You see, in their hurry to package mortgages into securities, the banksters virtually never followed the law. I won’t go through the details here again, but they were supposed to follow property law that requires documentation of property sales and as well documents sales of mortgages. Apparently they never did that. Most of the documents were destroyed–a business practice recommended by the banksters’ Frankenstein monster, MERS. Almost all property records in the USA are now suspect.
At first the homeowners and their lawyers as well as judges had no idea–the banks swiftly foreclosed–illegally taking homes away from rightful owners and selling them. As the information about bankster fraud came into the light, homeowners started fighting back, and in a few cases the judges started siding with them.
That threw a monkeywrench into the illegal foreclosures. It slowed things down, giving homeowners a chance to keep their homes. There was more pressure on banksters to try to find ways to work out some debt relief–as that was less costly than contentious foreclosures.
Banksters hate that, though. They want to steal the homes, cheaply and swiftly.
So what is a bankster going to do? Turn to the hired hands in the legislatures, of course. They bought the politicians, so now it is time to change the law after-the-fact. Legalize the fraudulent foreclosures.
This has always been the danger. We know that Washington will not investigate, let alone prosecute, bankster fraud. That meant the only chance for homeowners was to fight it out in the court system. But what if “elected” politicians change the law to retroactively legalize theft? Then there’s no remedy.
Here are excerpts from Oppenheim’s piece. It is must reading. And if you live in Florida (or anywhere else in America) you ought to be “mad as hell”.
Florida proposed legislation - HB 87 and SB 1666 - which backers claim will clear the backlog of foreclosure cases in Florida instead invites bank fraud and creates more problems by putting speed ahead of justice.
The backlog is blamed on foot dragging by homeowners. In reality, banks are to blame due to federal directives to pursue loss mitigation alternatives or by voluntarily slowing down the process to explore settlement options in the interests of both parties and the market.
However long it takes to conclude a foreclosure in Florida, given the magnitude of bank fraud, forgery and abuses that the banks admitted to, we should exempt this category of civil court cases from “time to complete” requirements.
Public policy decisions should not be based on unverified, incorrect and misleading information, particularly when that data is provided by the same industry that admitted wrongdoing.
The next problem behind any push for foreclosure reform is that the market is improving. Florida home prices have rebounded, due in part to the fact that banks and homeowners are managing the backlog of foreclosures.
Short sales and negotiated resolutions which yield higher returns than faster foreclosures would disappear under the proposed legislation.
Only institutional buyers will win. When they buy in bulk, they exclude Realtors who profit from short sales and other end user transactions. Instead of supporting this legislation, Florida’s Realtors should take California’s lead and oppose attempts to speed up foreclosures….
It is undisputed that those responsible for the foreclosure crisis are the financial institutions that filed these cases. These settlements should lead to more protections, not lowered standards. The full magnitude of bank wrongdoing has not been fully revealed, and even more will be swept under the rug.
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