[Welcome, Crooks & Liars readers! --lambert]
For those who came in late, accounting control fraud takes place at the elite, CEO level, when the executives of a company subvert its "accounting control" systems to enable fraud, generally to enrich themselves and their cronies by looting the company. Enron (whose executives were prosecuted) is one example. The S&L crisis under Reagan (where many executives were prosecuted) is another.
Now, Randy Wray (of UMKC's excellent blog econoblog) has a terrific three-parter on MERS, accounting control fraud, and a called short at the real legislative agenda in 2011. This deserves the widest possible circulation. Please, please, please read it all: Part one, part two, and part three. Here's the bottom line:
Here's the deal. This financial crisis is like Shrek's onion. As you peel back layer after layer of sleaze, you find that the whole damn thing is fraud. We are talking about tens of trillions of dollars of it. Tens of thousands of individuals were involved. It was thorough. It was blatant. It was even transparent, right under the noses of regulators and supervisors. It was normal business practice. It never had any fear of prosecution or punishment. Even today, it taunts the impotent administration, daring President Obama to do anything.
And it expects to win. The fraudsters have Congress in their back pocket and plan to rush through legislation to validate ex post all of their illegal activity. It is almost a foregone conclusion that Congress will pass a law early next year to legalize everything MERS and the big banks did -- lending fraud, recording fraud, tax fraud, securities fraud, and foreclosure fraud. There will be no rule of law to protect private property in the United States. Wall Street can claim any property it wants -- no proof required. That is what President Bush meant when he proclaimed a new "Ownership Society" -- as I wrote back in 2005. The plan all along was to put the bottom four deciles of Americans into permanent indebtedness while the top fraction of one percent would transfer ownership of everything to itself. So far, President Obama has stuck with the program -- overseeing the greatest wealth transfer in human history.
He did? I'm shocked.
NOTE Via 4closurefraud. Yves thinks legalization on the Federal level is a "huge stretch." Only Obama can go to China...
UPDATE I have it on not especially reliable authority that Randy is Link's son:
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Comments
They might not legalize it
but they sure as hell will give it the old college try.
It's quite the sticky wicket really. If you legitimize this sort of thing, then yeah - property rights is a thing of the past. I would suspect that anyone on the County books as owning their property is alright, that is to say if you haven't refinanced or gone into MERs anytime in the near past you can prove your ownership in court as of some date. For anyone that has passed through MERs, welcome to the funhouse.
The endgame is if no one owns a property then anyone can own it. If I can get together with say 10 other heavily armed people and declare myself owner of a contested property, then I am (if the bank cannot eject you.) If 20 heavily armed people show up a month later and take over, then they own it. If the police/bank cannot eject them, then there are no laws to fall back on to prove they don't own it. Possession becomes 9.9/10 of the law.
These people are so greedy they can't even see this as a possibility. They control the universe, they will always control the universe. Once they realize how much they depend on the laws for their income and safety it's going to be much to late.
They don't need to legalize it
The torture precedent is on point here. No laws were retroactively passed legalizing torture. The government simply declined to investigate, much less prosecute, those in ordering and executing the torture programs, and justified it in the name of political expediency. That apparently is good enough. In the meantime, a kid busted with 30 grams of pot faces hard time as a drug kingpin, and the FBI and other elements of our diligent national security apparatus are ransacking the homes of peace activists, socialists, and other sundry DFHs
coast to coast under sealed warrants to keep us all safe in the war on terror.
Sovereign Citizenry
It's the theory of sovereign citizens where the only real sovereign citizens are corporations. After all, they produce all the wealth, don't they, and, as John Jay said at the very beginning of our republican democracy, "Those who own the country ought to govern it." However, he also said, "No power on earth has a right to take our property from us without our consent." How he defined "us" is another question altogether.
Solar is civil defense
I agree with Yves
-- they can't just trample centuries of state law to authorize MERS. But then again, I thought they couldn't bail out the banks without nationalizing/firing the upper management
.
I'm an antagonist, not a dem, or a repug, or an "independent".
This is breaking on a lot of fronts right now.
As I mentioned before in a comment, the banks were scamming five ways from Sunday. They defrauded homeowners with predatory lending and fraudulent foreclosures, and with not following through on HAMP; investors because the mortgage backed securities were not backed with anything; and the government because they got money for HAMP and bailout money. They also used MERS to avoid paying taxes and fees to local governments. The same property got sold more than once and then the banks took them back. A scam.
The push back has been building for a few years, but is now gaining momentum. Class action suits have been successfully brought on the predatory lending. That was probably first. Then you had homeowners suing for fraudulent foreclosre. Not many could because it is strenuous and expensive - and the courts were not friendly. Now more judges are becoming 'educated'; more judges do not like what they see. It is a slow process and people continue to lose their homes in the meantime. But, information is being shared online. (4closurefraud.org is a great source.)
You also now have class action suits for the bank's failure to follow HAMP, which they said they were doing (it was voluntary) and for which they took government funding.
Now you have investors suing the banks because the investments they were sold were fraudulent. I think this area has good potential because investors have more money and represent more people. Homeowner's have to fight one by one.
The state Attorneys General have all joined together to investigate and to take actions to stop the fraudulent foreclosures. I think that it would be very difficult for the Federal Government to crudely step into this because real estate laws are state laws. (How can Republicans suddenly say they do not care about state's rights?!)
And, the SEC is expanding its investigations into how the loans were pooled and sold.
There are several aspects to the whole picture of the scam. It is huge, and if the banks were to actually pay up, some of the largest banks would go down. This is why, I think, we are not hearing enough of the real picture in the mainstream media.
Another good source is the congressional testimony, and a white paper by Adam Levitin, Law Professor at George Washington University.
Keeping the states under financial pressure, as Obama has done..
... would be an excellent way to retroactively legalize MERS, no? A barganing chip.
First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Mahatma Gandhi
Not to mention "states rights" are a convenient ideological
position, unless you happen to disagree with the state laws, when said "principle" is abandoned readily, see Terry Schiavo, marriage for gays, affirmative action laws, etc, etc,....
Time for Real Change
The Rs turn on a dime
Nothing new there. Better, I think, to focus on the pure power play aspect of it all. "Oh, they're just...." Neither legacy party has any principles, and both parties are owned by the financial class, so there's little point arguing on the detail. That the Rs shamlessly contradict themselves isn't even news.
Walt Whitman
First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Mahatma Gandhi
Exactly.."you are what you do, not what you say"
Holds true for every individual and group action.
Time for Real Change
I actually meant that parenthetical comment as a joke/snark.
Yves has really been on top of this, and it was she, I think, who said it would have to go to the Supreme Court - not that that is very reassuring with the court we have.
I found the quote: "A challenge on constitutional grounds would be inevitable."
How Banks Put the Economy Underwater
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/31/opinio...
No, the banks will not go down without a huge fight and they have the money to buy congressmen.
The state AGs are the ones moving right now. Perhaps, the more they can accomplish, the harder it will be for it to be all papered over.