Randall Wray: Time to Audit REMICs!

Yes, those REMICs (Real Estate Mortgage Investment Conduits) that didn't have any mortgage to back their MBS, which therefore was "mortgage-unbacked securities".

Randall Wray, who's been writing extensively about mortgage origination - securitization - foreclosure fraud which he calls "the worst in human history", says it is time we audited the REMICs:

We now know that the “mortgage backed” securities were not backed by mortgages. In reality they are unsecured debt. The “pooling and servicing agreements” (PSAs) that govern securitization require that the mortgage documents (including the wet ink notes as well as a clean chain of title) are transferred in a timely manner to the trustees. This was rarely and perhaps never done, because it was counter to the recommendation made by MERS (Mortgage Electronic Registry System). Instead, notes were either destroyed or held by the servicers to speed the foreclosures that were always envisioned as the end result of the mortgage origination process. Not only does this practice render the securities fraudulent but it also violates the federal tax laws that govern the REMICs—meaning back taxes are due.

But worse than all that, by breaking the chain of title and by destruction of documents, MERS and the servicers have jeopardized the entire system of property rights. Most, perhaps all, foreclosures have been fraudulent, which means that resales of the homes are also frauds. It goes without saying that the original mortgages were frauds from the very beginning—to complete the transformation to the ownership society it was necessary to ensure that by construction, default was inevitable. Either the homeowner would be unable to pay, or the servicer would “lose” the payments. By obscuring the chain of title, it would be impossible for the debtors or the courts to sort things out. Separating home owners from their property was necessary to ensure that we can create Bush's ownership society. It is the modern form of the feudal foreclosures and seizures of peasant lands that concentrated ownership in the hands of agricultural capitalists—creating the first ownership society.

...It is time to push the reset button. All foreclosures should be stopped immediately. The REMIC trustees should be audited to see if they have properly followed the requirements of the PSAs and laws applying to REMICs. If they do not have the notes, the securities should be put back to the banks. If the banks cannot absorb the losses, they must be closed and resolved.

On a very thin trading today, banks who are servicers and/or trustees of a REMIC - Bank of America, J.P.Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citi, Bank of New York, etc - are all up.

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