The
Chicago Tribune's Mortgage Fraud Essays: Mortgage Fraud: New Street Hustle, David Jackson et al, The Chicago Tribune [Homepage] A free registration will be required to view the essays by The Chicago Tribune, if one is not already registered at their website. These were written in November '05. Essays by Staff Reporter David Jackson et al include: Mortgage
fraud is the thing to do now Followup
on Mortgage Fraud, David Jackson et al, The
Chicago Tribune
[Homepage] The above essays from Followup, were recently written in December '05, and your Editor hasn't read these yet, so stay tuned! There will be a Part 2 Commentary. OIe
Bear, Editor's Commentary Prologue I love Chicago and the Lyric Opera. My Bride and I go to the Windy City quite often, but I usually hang around piano stores in the suburbs and do the Chicago Symphony, the Lyric Opera, the Art Museum as well as the other attractions Downtown, including some of the fine eateries they have there. The Appraisal Institute [ www.appraisalinstitute.org ] has it headquarters there, and always has. But like any great city, college town, small town, or village we have rich folks, folks that can pay their bills and maybe get a little ahead under the theft of the value of our money by the fraud of the Federal Reserve banking cartel, and then we have folks, which we shall call po' folks who live day to day with their money, which constantly loses purchasing power thanks to Mr. Greenspan and his other banking cartel minions. Sure, the po' folks work for a living, have homes, apartments, children, and spouses, and some are single parents raising kids on their own for whatever reason. What may be one man's Taj Mahal, may be another man's adobe hut, for the accouterments of real estate in tenancy and ownership offer many variables in age, effective age, quality, amenities, condition, location, and effective market desirability. People live in residential property enjoying the benefits of tenancy or ownership for personal use and satisfaction. A home in a neighborhood that one can afford is desirable. Some neighborhoods are more desirable or less desirable in the marketplace than others. Only being able to afford one neighborhood, as compared to one which may be more desirable [and probably more costly and expensive] does not impact at all the quality of the human being who has to make a financial choice to survive, and support their family. We all gotta live someplace, because there aren't enough caves to house all of us! Some states have no caves at all. We have some great readers out there for FSO. I had prepared this 4Rs for today, and another Avid Reader sent us the additional link on Followup, which I haven't read yet. Gives me excuse to do another 4Rs on Friday, dudn't it? Editor's Commentary Returning from Choir Practice this Wednesday evening, one of our Avid Readers from Area Code 732, left me a message on my answering machine referencing the excellent essays by Mr. David Jackson et al at The Chicago Tribune, with a great "attaboy, keep up the good work." Well, I immediately hopped on the Net and went surfing and read every one of Jackson's essays noted above. You should, too! Our readers will be amazed how drugs, narco-dollars, real estate fraud, mortgage fraud, and appraisal fraud go hand in hand. You will see many types of scams and frauds from insiders at predatory lenders, to drug dealers who milk HUD and the rest of the system as well. You will see equity stripping, and folks led into bad loans where they lose their property. Less desirable, more affordable neighborhoods tend to have residents who are the po' folks who are living hand to mouth to exist. They are prime candidates for predatory lending, and more mortgage scams by second, third, and fourth parties. Don't forget about mortgage servicing and insider foreclosure fraud that we have documented as part of predatory lending! Yes, you are correct that race, ethnic origin, social class, or religious beliefs have nothing whatsoever to do with these scams. It is a scam about economics. Weak credit score folks are prime targets for inflated interest rates, terrible terms, and big loan payoffs if they refinance elsewhere later down the road. Paying mortgage folks based on sales incentives [commissions and bonuses] in our view is a crime to begin with, because it is a conflict of interest. An ethical appraiser cannot charge a contingency fee for valuation work, but paying these loan officers or mortgage brokers contingency fees based on production is morally wrong in our view, but every outfit in the land seems to do it. I cannot do it because the banking cartel running my industry says I cannot in its control over USPAP [Universal Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice]. However, it doesn't work that way under the Federal Reserve Banking Cartel for the mortgage business. Great, when you can regulate yourself, ehh? And set your own rules under the Myth of the Rule of Law. Jackson's et al essay work and research is very timely, as he's been working on this stuff for about six months or so. These are excellent reads, and the writing style is very to the point. One can follow the money with his pen. One of the main pivots that permeates the essays is the fact that mortgage fraud, however, it occurs in a neighborhood, is not only devastating to property values, but peoples' lives, moral character, mental health, their children, and their inner sense of self-worth. Mortgage fraud is a crime against humanity. And there is a Hell for these criminals in an after-life -- those who create a living Hell on Earth for these neighborhoods, and for the people within these neighborhoods who are striving to be decent folk under God and Jesus, or whomever they worship and believe in as the Higher Celestial Power. Denouement From With mortgage fraud, it's catch 'em if you can, this quote is especially disturbing to me, in respect to all those bundled loans made pretty in the ABS and MBS portfolios [GSEs, namely Fannie and Freddie, Ford, GE, GM et al]. From our hands on experience here in Central Missouri, some appraisal mis-management companies are trying to cover up for the Big Lending Boys in the review process making pretty bundled loans sold to investors that have gone sour: Beyond the first line of financiers, the trail becomes even more difficult to follow. In the multibillion-dollar secondary market, home loans to low-income borrowers are pooled and then offered as securities to Wall Street investors. Big institutional investors sometimes hold a pool of these subprime loans for just minutes before reselling it. Since no single foreclosure represents a significant loss to any of these investors, the owner of a delinquent loan has little incentive to assist a borrower, to hold an unscrupulous loan broker accountable, or to report suspected fraud to authorities. As Fennessey puts it: "A lot of these mortgage companies just write off the loss and walk away. Then whose mortgage is it?" Whose Mortgage is it anyway? It
is the taxpayers'
who will be bailing out Wall Street Derivatives blow ups, counter-parties taking a hiatus at the local Fugi Sauna [generic term for massage parlor] while they get out their financial calculators figgering and ciphering if they are losing more or less money per day than Long Term Capital Management, Black-Sholes formulae melt-downs with folks scratching their heads, Congressional hearings, hauling every brother and their dog before Congress to figure out whose pork is which, and who is to blame, and the Federal Reserve as the lender of last resort, since the nice folks in Asia and Europe stopped sending money to the Treasury Bond Market to keep the Ponzi Con Game Afloat. Ooops, the GSEs? Fannie and Freddie? Ford, GM, and GE? Well, GE has a better idea, doesn't it? -- "ABS's built Ford Tough!" I don't think so! Don't worry about it, though, as the FED is the GSE lender of last resort. The mechanism is all in place without a Congressional vote [but everyone will Ballyhoo about it on Bubblevision and the CNBC making big news out of no news], and I documented it here at FSOs Realty Reality. [See: Link for Dizard's Essay] This little financial mess, will probably give both the folks at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and the Bank of New York ulcers as they chase Jack Daniels' with John Daniels' and more Prozac and Financial Quaaludes.... ooops I misspoke! They only drink un-blended 40- year old Scotch at the Bank of New York Boardroom... when they are problem solving! The President will recommend it ["Name of the Game is Bailout!," Chapter 2, Ed Griffin's Creature from Jekyll Island, a second look at the federal reserve], protecting his job. The Congress will approve it, hands down, protecting their jobs at pork production. Sooooooooooieee! The Supreme Court will validate the transfer of wealth, without thinking about the Rule of Law, or the Constitution and the Bill of Rights about private property and money rights, in order to protect the Federal Reserve Banking Cartel [Fraud within itself along with the IRS, since the 16th Amendment to the Constitution was never properly ratified according to Bill Benson], and in order to protect their lifelong Supreme appointed jobs. This is what we call a fine kettle of fish, and it is all pretty rank, isn't it? The Chicago Tribune Essays are pretty damn good, and just damn good reporting from the streets of Chicago! There are some nice pictures in the essay series... and we all know one picture of a board-up or a vacant lot on your street or in your neighborhood, is worth a lot of thought at the Federal Reserve for getting us all in this pickle barrel. If our readers see more links in this essay series at the Chicago Trib, please let me and the nice folks at FSO know. We will be glad to post them. Bibliography and Related Essays on How to Follow the Money:
Seasons Greetings! and Happy Holidays!
Ole Bear, Editor PS: To our Avid Reader who sent the links from Area Code 732... Woof! Woof! Woof! and Yippee, Y'all! Thank you! My Friend! Pal, you forget to leave your name! © 2005 Realty Reality |
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