In a nearly $13 billion settlement with the US Justice Department in November 2013, JPMorganChase admitted that it, along with every other large US bank, had engaged in mortgage fraud as a routine business practice, sowing the seeds of the mortgage meltdown. JPMorgan and other megabanks have now been caught in over a dozen major frauds, including LIBOR-rigging and bid-rigging; yet no prominent banker has gone to jail. Meanwhile, nearly a quarter of all mortgages nationally remain underwater (meaning the balance owed exceeds the current value of the home), sapping homeowners’ budgets, the housing market and the economy. Since the banks, the courts and the federal government have failed to give adequate relief to homeowners, some cities are taking matters into their own hands.
Gayle McLaughlin, the bold mayor of Richmond, California, has gone where no woman dared go before, threatening to take underwater mortgages by eminent domain from Wall Street banks and renegotiate them on behalf of beleaguered homeowners. A member of the Green Party, which takes no corporate campaign money, she proved her mettle standing up to Chevron, which dominates the Richmond landscape. But the banks have signaled that if Richmond or another city tries the eminent domain gambit, they will rush to court seeking an injunction. Their grounds: an unconstitutional taking of private property and breach of contract.
How to refute those charges? There is a way; but to understand it, you first need to grasp the massive fraud perpetrated on homeowners. It is how you were duped into paying more than your house was worth; why you should not just turn in your keys or short-sell your underwater property away; why you should urge Congress not to legalize the MERS scheme; and why you should insist that your local government help you acquire title to your home at a fair price if the banks won’t. That is exactly what Richmond and other city councils are attempting to do through the tool of eminent domain.
The Securitization Fraud That Collapsed the Housing Market
One settlement after another has now been reached with investors and government agencies for the sale of “faulty mortgage bonds,” including a suit brought by Fannie and Freddie that settled in October 2013 for $5.1 billion. “Faulty” is a euphemism for “fraudulent.” It means that mortgages subject to securitization have “clouded” or “defective” titles. And that means the banks and real estate trusts claiming title as owners or nominees don’t actually have title – or have standing to enjoin the city from proceeding with eminent domain. They can’t claim an unconstitutional taking of property because they can’t prove they own the property, and they can’t claim breach of contract because they weren’t the real parties in interest to the mortgages (the parties putting up the money).
“Securitization” involves bundling mortgages into a pool, selling them to a non-bank vehicle called a “real estate trust,” and then selling “securities” (bonds) to investors (called “mortgage-backed securities” or “collateralized debt obligations”). By 2007, 75% of all mortgage originations were securitized. According to investment banker and financial analyst Christopher Whalen, the purpose of securitization was to allow banks to avoid capitalization requirements, enabling them to borrow at unregulated levels.
Since the real estate trusts were “off-balance sheet,” they did not count in the banks’ capital requirements. But under applicable accounting rules, that was true only if they were “true sales.” According to Whalen, “most of the securitizations done by banks over the past two decades were in fact secured borrowings, not true sales, and thus potential frauds on insured depositories.” He concludes, “bank abuses of non-bank vehicles to pretend to sell assets and thereby lower required capital levels was a major cause of the subprime financial crisis.”
In 1997, the FDIC gave the banks a pass on these disguised borrowings by granting them “safe harbor” status. This proved to be a colossal mistake, which led to the implosion of the housing market and the economy at large. Safe harbor status was finally withdrawn in 2011; but in the meantime, “financings” were disguised as “true sales,” permitting banks to grossly over-borrow and over-leverage. Over-leveraging allowed credit to be pumped up to bubble levels, driving up home prices. When the bubble collapsed, homeowners had to pick up the tab by paying on mortgages that far exceeded the market value of their homes. According to Whalen:
[T]he largest commercial banks became “too big to fail” in large part because they used non-bank vehicles to increase leverage without disclosure or capital backing. . . .
The failure of Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns and most notably Citigroup all were largely attributable to deliberate acts of securities fraud whereby assets were “sold” to investors via non-bank financial vehicles. These transactions were styled as “sales” in an effort to meet applicable accounting rules, but were in fact bank frauds that must, by GAAP and law applicable to non-banks since 1997, be reported as secured borrowings. Under legal tests stretching from 16th Century UK law to the Uniform Fraudulent Transfer Act of the 1980s, virtually none of the mortgage backed securities deals of the 2000s met the test of a true sale.
. . . When the crisis hit, it suddenly became clear that the banks’ capital was insufficient.
Today . . . hundreds of billions in claims against banks arising from these purported “sales” of assets remain pending before the courts.
Eminent Domain as a Negotiating Tool
Investors can afford high-powered attorneys to bring investor class actions, but underwater and defaulting homeowners usually cannot; and that is where local government comes in. Eminent domain is a way to bring banks and investors to the bargaining table.
Professor Robert Hockett of Cornell University Law School is the author of the plan to use eminent domain to take underwater loans and write them down for homeowners. He writes on NewYorkFed.org:
[In] the case of privately securitized mortgages, [principal] write-downs are almost impossible to carry out, since loan modifications on the scale necessitated by the housing market crash would require collective action by a multitude of geographically dispersed security holders. The solution . . . Is for state and municipal governments to use their eminent domain powers to buy up and restructure underwater mortgages, thereby sidestepping the need to coordinate action across large numbers of security holders.
The problem is blowback from the banks, but it can be blocked by requiring them to prove title to the properties. Securities are governed by federal law, but real estate law is the domain of the states. Counties have a mandate to maintain clean title records; and legally, clean title requires a chain of “wet” signatures, from A to B to C to D. If the chain is broken, title is clouded. Properties for which title cannot be established escheat (or revert) to the state by law, allowing the government to start fresh with clean title.
New York State law governs most of the trusts involved in securitization. Under it, transfers of mortgages into a trust after the cutoff date specified in the Pooling and Servicing Agreement (PSA) governing the trust are void.
For obscure reasons, the REMICs (Real Estate Mortgage Investment Conduits) claiming to own the properties routinely received them after the closing date specified in the PSAs. The late transfers were done throu gh the fraudulent signatures-after-the-fact called “robo-signing,” which occurred so regularly that they were the basis of a $25 billion settlement between a coalition of state attorneys general and the five biggest mortgage servicers in February 2012. (Why all the robo-signing? Good question. See my earlier article here.)
Until recently, courts have precluded homeowners from raising the late transfers into the trust as a defense to foreclosure, because the homeowners were not parties to the PSAs. But in August 2013, in Glaski v. Bank of America, N.A., 218 Cal. App. 4th 1079 (July 31, 2013), a California appellate court ruled that the question whether the loan ever made it into the asset pool could be raised in determining the proper party to initiate foreclosure. And whether or not the homeowner was a party to the PSA, the city and county have a clear legal interest in seeing that the PSA’s terms were complied with, since the job of the county recorder is to maintain records establishing clean title.
Before the rise of mortgage securitization, any transfer of a note and deed needed to be recorded as a public record, to give notice of ownership and establish a “priority of liens.” With securitization, a private database called MERS (Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems) circumvented this procedure by keeping the deeds as “nominee for the beneficiary,” obscuring the property’s legal owner and avoiding the expense of recording the transfer (usually about $30 each). Estimates are that untraceable property assignments concealed behind MERS may have cost counties nationwide billions of dollars in recording fees. (See my earlier article here.)
Counties thus have not only a fiduciary but a financial interest in establishing clean title to the properties in their jurisdictions. If no one can establish title, the properties escheat and can be claimed free and clear. Eminent domain can be a powerful tool for negotiating loan modifications on underwater mortgages; and if the banks cannot prove title, they have no standing to complain.
The End of “Too Big to Fail”?
Richmond’s city council is only one vote short of the supermajority needed to pursue the eminent domain plan, and it is seeking partners in a Joint Powers Authority that will make the push much stronger. Grassroots efforts to pursue eminent domain are also underway in a number of other cities around the country. If Richmond pulls it off successfully, others will rush to follow.
The result could be costly for some very large banks, but they have brought it on themselves with shady dealings. Christopher Whalen predicts that the FDIC’s withdrawal of “safe harbor” status for the securitization model may herald the end of “too big to fail” for those banks, which will no longer have the power to grossly over-leverage and may have to keep their loans on their books.
Wall Street banks are deemed “too big to fail” only because there is no viable alternative – but there could be. Local governments could form their own publicly-owned banks, on the model of the state-owned Bank of North Dakota. They could then put their revenues, their savings, and their newly-acquired real estate into those public utilities, to be used to generate interest-free credit for the local government (since it would own the bank) and low-cost credit for the local community. For more on this promising option, which has been or is being explored in almost half the state legislatures in the US, see here.
_____________
Ellen Brown is an attorney, president of the Public Banking Institute, and a candidate for California State Treasurer running on a state bank platform. She is the author of twelve books including the best-selling Web of Debt and her latest book, The Public Bank Solution, which explores successful public banking models historically and globally.
Filed under: Ellen Brown Articles/Commentary | Tagged: clouded title, eminent domain, housing crisis, richmond, securitization, true sale, Wall Street fraud |
WEB OF DEBT BLOG 
Ideally, the ED process seeks to seize mortgage notes (not borrowers’ homes), condemn the toxic notes in the name of public good, and pay just/fair compensation to the lawful owner of the mortgage notes IF the lawful owners can be identified. Because lawful ownership (unbroken chain of title) is going to be tough to prove, NO LAWFUL NOTE OWNER may step forward to challenge ED or claim just compensation. If the true and lawful owner of the mortgage note doesn’t come forward with the proofs required by the UCC, the homeowner can then file a quiet title lawsuit to have the alleged mortgage and note extinguished. That is, in my opinion, the great power of using ED. Unfortunately, the Mayor of Richmond has elected to get into bed with a corporate hedge fund as financial partner (unnecessary) to fund and complete the ED process. Though most of the indicated “underwater” mortgage notes are not underwater at all or even delinquent… they are allegedly held by Wall Street interests which wil be well served by ED proceedings and transferring those possibly worthless/unenforceable assets to a government insured loan program… which is another back door bailout. Instead of using Wall Street’s money to bail out Wall Street’s interests, this would be a perfect use for a publically owned, public benefit bank. I suggest the formation of a publically owned, public benefit bank to facilitate the ED process… and not further enrich the scoundrels who perpetrated this massive fraud.
Agreed on that. I’ve suggested before a public bank to handle it; the problem with these articles is that there are word limits and I’m always over! So in this one I just focused on the title issues as a way to rebut the banks. Maybe I could write a sequel. Thanks.
Here is an essay, “ED – Gift Horse or Trojan Horse” on Popular Resistance: http://www.popularresistance.org/eminent-domain-a-gift-horse-or-trojan-horse/
[…] due it being used for economic development. But eminent domain doesn’t have to be all bad. Ellen Brown wrote a compelling piece on using ED as a tool to help reclaim foreclosed properties whose ownership is lost somewhere in […]
Excellent, Ellen. Interest-free credit from state utility banks for state, county, and local governments, instead of servicing bonds, means less taxes. Interest-free credit for business and personal loans means more wealth and freedom for citizens. The only thing left is to imprison the banksters and seize their assets for massive nation-destroying RICO violations.
Right on, Ernest. Their ill-gotten gains, probably largely in off-shore accounts, should be forfeited and revert to the people.
I agree Ernie. One thing however, when these “ill-gotten” gains revert to the people, which people are you talking about? A check sent to you and I who actually lost the money – not! – or into the hands of the government which allowed this swindling to take place in the first place. And, if paid to the government where is this money deposited and how is it spent? Do you or I have any input or any way to find out where the money goes? I dare say no way! I think it is just another rabbit hole of obfuscation and theft.
It is true that there is the parallel problem of bad government controlled by the likes of Goldman Sachs, AIPAC, and the Fed. Reverting the money to the people could be done directly in a number of ways, like having it cancel income tax, which would put it right into people’s pockets. The “conservative” or libertarian idea that all government is necessarily bad–that government is not the answer because it is evil–is a trap though. There has been and is such a thing as good government. It is a large part of the answer. It is the foundation of civilization. The government of North Dakota runs the state-owned Bank of North Dakota with honesty and probity, no problem. Read Ellen Brown’s book The Public Bank Solution for much more on this; it’s quite encouraging.
“According to investment banker and financial analyst Christopher Whalen, the purpose of securitization was to allow banks to avoid capitalization requirements, enabling them to borrow at unregulated levels.”
*Not So !*
The real purpose was to make capital gains (profit) in the billions of dollars in immediate cash. They sold the future value of the assets.
They broke the rule of 72, they did not have to wait for the time needed to make the profit, they were paid today. The problem became: How much could they put together to sell.
Ellen, Where are the attorneys that could file RICO lawsuits?
Ellen, Where are the attorneys that could file the class action suits ?
Every mortgage made had one criminal action attached:
The higher price needed was guaranteed by the banks because they “controlled the appraisal since every loan had to be appraised
by “an approved by the bank appraiser”.
This is all because, we allow the Private For Profit Banks (PFPB)
to print, issue our money and to tax (charge interest) on that money.
It worked for 90 years. But then they discovered a way to collect a lot of that interest (tax), within months. Create MBSs and sell the future income.
Justafoolish question. If they do not pass legislation that gives the homeowners a break, that is ‘exempt “phantom income” from mortgage
defaults; would that created a basis as a fraudulent loss for the borrowers caused by the lenders ?
Where is the “Bob Montgomery” for this trillion dollar law suit?
Bob Montgomery is Dead… or this would be going through the courts in Florida with Pit Bull Ferocity \/\/\/\/\/\/
So I ask, “Where is the “Bob Montgomery”, “Darrow”, champion of today?
Where is todays attorney that would hold the banks accountable to civil and criminal law ?
Surely, it is known that they are legally allowed to “print” temporary money and issue that currency as loans and to tax that issuance by means of interest attached.. But they are not allowed to use those privileges to defraud the people. A scheme that would cause “systemic failure”, a collapse of the currency.
I find it difficult to “follow the money” in this scam as American property laws seem completely different to Australian law, however, the overriding impression I get is that this incredibly complex “can of worms” was not a coincidence, but the result of a conspiricy to deliberately defraud a large swarthe of American homeowners, and the Federal Reserve Bank, in their role of overseeing the Banking industry, the Creit Rating Agencies etc, must have been aware of, or intimately involved in the construction, execution, and legal hocus pocus of the deal.
And given that the sceme was carried out accross the Banking industry ie, they were all involved in the deal, I believe the Fed should be answering some very pertinant questions as to their involvement. I doubt that their denial, if they do deny it, would have any credibility as some of the Banks involved are actually part owners of the FED.
Is there any mechanism in America that would allow the US Treasury to do a comprehensive probe of what actually happened? Or perhaps the “hapless” Dept of Justice might start doing its job, and do some heavy probing of its own?
This scam has “financially raped” a lot of American homeowners, while ALL the QE(trillions of dollars) has been used to buy up the Bad Debts of the Banks who ran the scam.
It is absolutely outrageous what has happened, and SOMONE has to be held accountable.
Fox/Henhouse. The Treasury doesn’t have clean hands. It is complicit.
It seems that all of the senior positions through out the American government are “infected” with this “criminal disease”
Our state capitalist system is dangerously close to fascism. Many believe we are already there. The Wall Street/White House is open for business irrespective of which corporate owned political party is in residence. The two major parties are the left and right wing of the same bird of prey capitalism. And that bird is on its last leg.
“Big Money”, “Lobbyists” and “Backroom Deals” have corrupted the USA’s Democracy(and other countries as well.)
The winners are the mega rich and the losers are honest decent, hardworking people who believed the lies, obeyed the laws, and paid their taxes……………..
“From your mouth to God’s ears.”
The homeowners were conned into accepting the mortgages on a higher evaluation by the banks playing on their greed and desire to achieve the “American Dream”.
The rating agencies, and appraisers were paid off and notified if they did not give higher evaluations they would be “no longer needed”.
ALL of this was done to inflate the banks ponze scheme :
To sell the future asset at a profit while at the same time making NO change in the value of that asset.
The PFPB were able to realize a profit of @ $50 billion on $1 trillion
of MBSs while at the same time keeping the asset value of the Mortgages on their books at $1 trillion.
Please challenge or endorse.
Awesome, Ellen; thank you! A strong demand for the rule of law can help break these criminals, and open the playing field for solutions to our economic conditions!
[…] Ellen Brown Writer, Dandelion Salad The Web of Debt Blog March 3, […]
[…] This piece first appeared at Web of Debt. […]
I am not in a position to debate the legal theory – which looks plausible. But I think you are missing certain facts which make this situation something far more murky than a plucky local government standing up for the little guy against evil banks.
First, Wall Street has already collected its profits from these securitization deals – in the form of fees paid when the mortgages were bundled 7 or more years ago. While we don’t know exactly who owns all the securities that would be negatively impacted by an eminent domain, we do know that a lot of it is held by public employee pension funds. So instead of taking it to the big banks, you may well be taking it to the humble public servant.
Second, not everyone who took on these mortgages is a poor innocent victim. Some wanted to take cash out of their properties for one reason or another, and actually got the money cheap due to the lending bubble. Also, many homeowners with underwater mortgages in Richmond are not poor. The original pool slated for eminent domain included 3000+ square foot McMansions and waterfront properties. Finally, with the recent rebound in home prices, many fewer homes are underwater and foreclosure rates are down – so you are addressing yesterday’s problem.
As for the council, they need to work with Mortgage Resolution Partners because they want someone to cover their legal costs during the inevitable litigation. The City could be driven into bankruptcy if it is forced into endless litigation or suffers an adverse judgement. More disturbing is the recent expose from the Center for Investigative Reporting showing that Richmond public housing – a Council responsibility – is dilapidated and infested with vermin. If we can’t trust elected officials to provide livable public housing why should we rely on them to resolve blight arising from private foreclosures.
[…] By Ellen Brown Web of Debt […]
In a nearly $13 billion settlement with the US Justice Department in November 2013, Does the money go to those who lost their houses because of the fraud? Where is their compensation? Lower taxes maybe?
[…] Ellen Brown – The Stone that Brings Down Goliath? Richmond and Eminent Domain […]
I have never seen so much information as in this short essay. “Faulty Mortgages” only hints at the real issue. The fact is that, in the sub-prime mortgage market (which is where virtually all of the fraud occurred), the mortgage originators certified to the buyers of the pools of mortgages they sold that they has followed specific underwriting procedures (like income checks, loan to value assessments, etc.) before granting a mortgage to an applicant. As it turned out, these certifications (on which the buyer relied) were untrue. This has permitted the buyers to sue the sellers for losses and many billions of dollars have been recovered from the sellers.
None of this fraud had any impact on the mortgagor or the value of his or her property.
Second, nobody – except you – claims that the securitizations were not true sales. As you may or may not know, virtually all securitizations involved the sale of subordinated tranches that absorbed losses and served as equity.
Third,financial analyst Christopher Whalen, is simply wrong when he says that the purpose of securitization was to allow banks to avoid capitalization requirements, enabling them to borrow at unregulated levels. The fact is that there are no regulations with respect to the level at which banks are permitted to borrow money and, indeed once the mortgages were securitized (and sold to third parties), the originators, including the banks didn’t have anything to fund. They did, however, earn substantial fees for their role as originators.
Fourth, it is clear – in retrospect – that many home buyers paid too much for their homes and now find that the value of their mortgage exceeds the value of their homes. This is not the first time that this has happened nor do I expect it will be the last. Typically, recessions and high interest rates have a negative impact on home prices. That is unfortunate, but that is all.
Fifth, your point about MERS is really just a technical legal point and is pretty clear that it impedes the mortagee’s (i.e., the lender) ability to foreclose on a delinquent mortgage. But this defect neither contributed to the bubble nor did it impact anyone but delinquent mortagors; if anything it probably delayed the foreclosure process which would have benefited the mortgagors.
I will not address your proposal to bail out people who ended up with underwater on their loans or who were unable to make their monthly payments and defaulted. That would set a dangerous precedent and restrict people’s ability to get mortgages in the first place.
“I will not address your proposal to bail out people who ended up with underwater on their loans or who were unable to make their monthly payments and defaulted. That would set a dangerous precedent and restrict people’s ability to get mortgages in the first place”.
Why not? This whole scam was a “top down” operation. The people buying homes were not guilty of anything other than wanting a home, and they paid market price(an inflated price caused by too much availability of housing finance, without due diligence by the lenders).The PBS Frontline program “The Untouchables” exposed the Banking scam in all it’s deceit and ugliness, and is worth watching.
“That would set a dangerous precedent” What? like compensation for victims of a crime? The dangerous precedent was bailing out the big Banks by the Fed, for the bad Commercial Loans that they made on top of the housing scam. What’s the total bail out? Somewhere between 4 and 7 TRILLION dollars.
“And restrict people’s ability to get mortgages in the first place”. It’s a fact of life, that you shouldn’t make purchases that you can’t afford, or that will endanger your ability to service the debt.
May I add to your comments, “What is wrong with a “bailout”, IF in fact it raises revenue ‘for the people’ as well as helping the people ?”
A solution so simple it screams,
***** “Believe nothing merely because you have been told it…But whatsoever, after due examination and analysis,you find to be kind, conducive to the good, the benefit,the welfare of all beings – that doctrine believe and cling to,and take it as your guide.”- Buddha
Read more:”Justaluckyfool”, http://bit.ly/MlQWNs
Have the FED do for US what they have done for the PFPB.
“QE 4 The People”
BUY the assets, the mortgages from the private for profit banks, modify them as assumable loans with 2% interest for 40 years.
IF the amount is $12 trillion, no new money is needed since it would be MERELY a balance sheet item; a transfer of $12trillion from the banks sheet to the Fed sheet.
The homes would be affordable, payable and price stabilized.
It would also allow for a sector increase of over 2 million jobs.
Yes, all of this PLUS an increase of revenue of over $24 trillion over the 40 years-money that Congress MUST spend..””to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity,…”
Why do you not want prosperity for yourselves and your children?
Henry Mortimer, “None of this fraud had any impact on the mortgagor or the value of his or her property.”
Tell a lie and use that lie as a truth! WOW,none of the fraud that made the ponze scheme : Higher and higher prices that would make higher and higher loan amounts available to feed the bubble of this “fraud had any impact “.
Do you not understand; to make $50 to $100 billion of “real money” in profits in one year without having any change in their assets (the $1 trillion is still $1 trillion on their balance sheet), they needed “Mortgages” the “M” in MBSs.
“None of this fraud had any impact on the mortgagor or the value of his or her property.”
Not the bribery of real estate agents to find people that could ” pass the mirror test”, willing to sign (also being bribed ) at a higher price.
Not to worry, for the appraisers were either blackmailed or bribed to make the needed higher values be approved. Then .of course, not the Triple A raters either ?
Ellen, in this sequence of events, everyone is guilty of something. The home buyers were guilty of foolish purchases. The Bankers were guilty of fraudulently securitizing and selling the mortgages. The investors were guilty of a profound lack of due diligence. Why not let everyone take their lumps? The homebuyers might learn to be more prudent (as they should). The Bankers might go bankrupt and some would go to jail (as they should). And the investors will learn the importance of due diligence (as they should). The assets won’t evaporate. They will be marked to market and end up in stronger hands (as they should). Any thing else will amount to subsidizing bad behavior. Leaving aside the issue of who pays for this bad behavior, subsidizing it just invites more of the same.
Surely, all victims of the scheme must know that “It’s mostly their fault”.
How dare they believe:
…in the American Dream
…protection against fraud
…government accountability
…the rule of law.
The Rule of Law only seems to apply to the “Plebs” in America. American jails are full of petty criminals, but there’s not many high ranking Banksters in jail. Even Bernie Madoff, who robbed his own people is in a (holiday camp) Jail.
Why is American law completely Impotent, when it comes to the “ruling elite”?
The clown in the White House seems to spend more time worrying about Syria,Egypt,Ukraine etc, than he does about upholding the laws in America.
Because it’s an oligarchy, and the whole body of the law, especially financial law, is there to maintain the privileges of the “elite” (in quotation marks because they are actually scum).
Good one, Ernie. I had to fill in the gaps you left, but the message is clear, thanks.
To answer your question: the American Elite have successfully structured a fake republic by engineering an electoral process so expensive and so exhaustive that only candidates selected by the plutocrats ever even make it on to the ballot at the national level which, as it now stands, is the only one that counts since all money and therefore all power flows from Washington. Needless to say, the electorate is largely unaware of what has been lost and still naively hope for a better outcome.
[…] The Stone that Brings Down Goliath? Richmond and Eminent Domain | WEB OF DEBT BLOG […]
[…] The Stone that Brings Down Goliath? Richmond and Eminent Domain […]
[…] Gayle McLaughlin, the bold mayor of Richmond, California, has gone where no woman dared go before, threatening to take underwater mortgages by eminent domain from Wall Street banks and renegotiate them on behalf of beleaguered homeowners.Continue reading → […]
[…] Marc Joffe, on March 4, 2014 at 8:40 pm said: […]
[…] The Web of Debt by Ellen Brown March 3, 2014 […]
[…] The Stone that Brings Down Goliath? Richmond and Eminent Domain – In a nearly $13 billion settlement with the US Justice Department in November 2013, JPMorganChase admitted that it, along with every other large US bank, had engaged in mortgage fraud as a routine business practice, sowing the seeds of the mortgage meltdown. https://ellenbrown.com/2014/03/03/the-stone-that-brings-down-goliath-richmond-and-eminent-domain/ […]
it wasn’t a mistake. they did it mindfully with the intention to create the crisis-not. really an intentional , mindful destruction of financial,trust and accountability structure……largely mad possible by the atmosphere of fraud inherent in the cafr scam-o-ology.
[…] READ MORE HERE […]
[…] of interest rates was/is known by The Federal Reserve and encouraged, this fraud is now conservative and admitted fact, trillions in bank bailouts and bail-ins are thrust upon the public, and known solutions worth […]
[…] link here to the essay […]