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MERS CEO R.K. Arnold Leaving Company
Is the biggest fraud in the history of the US housing market about to come unglued? If so, take our prediction of a $100 billion total in future BofA rep and warranty reserves and triple it.
From the WSJ:
The chief executive of the privately-held Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, or MERS, is planning to leave the company and an announcement could come within days, according to people familiar with the matter.
The company has been under fire by Congress and state officials for its role in the mortgage-document crisis. The firm's board of directors has met in recent days to address the fate of the company and its chief executive, R.K. Arnold, the people said.
Arnold and other MERS executives didn't respond to requests for comment. A MERS spokeswoman Friday declined comment. Arnold, a former U.S. Army Ranger, has served as the CEO and president of Merscorp Inc., the parent company of MERS, since 1998 and has been with the company since its inception 15 years ago, according to a corporate biography.
MERS was built by Fannie Mae (FNMA), Freddie Mac (FMCC), and several large U.S. banks in 1996 as an electronic registry of land records. That created a parallel database to facilitate the packaging of loans into securities that could be sold and re-sold without being recorded in local county courthouses, reducing costs for banks. The company's name is listed as the agent for mortgage lenders on more than 65 million home loans.
But the company's practices have begun to receive heavy scrutiny from state prosecutors and federal regulators, particularly in light of foreclosure-document problems that surfaced last fall. State and federal lawmakers have begun to consider bills that would make it harder for banks to use or foreclose on properties through MERS.
MERS's legal standing also has been challenged by legal experts because it doesn't own the underlying debt. Previously, the mortgage and the promissory note weren't split between different parties.
Critics of the company have raised concerns over whether notes were properly assigned or tracked within the electronic system. Judges have also begun to question the company's practices of "deputizing" hundreds of bank executives to handle foreclosures by naming them "vice presidents" of MERS.
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The rats are leaving the ship.....while still 100 miles from port. Never a good sign when the rats think their chances are better in the open water.
animals can hear earthquakes coming too
Yeah, it's that very low frequency, inaudible hum that makes your stomach queasy. Sounds familiar indeed.
Interesting to see how much of the MERS debacle the banks can now pin on him. I think the pack of starving wolves just identified the sickly omega member.
Someone should poke him with a stick a few times, make sure he go's under.
He's going to be fine, waiting for his promotion from straw man to innocent bystander who never saw it coming.
It was Fannie and Freddie, two dead-ended government train-wrecks calling the shots, and elimination of key legislation which fired up the printing presses.
How much money did MERS rake in selling stamps and secret identities?
How much did they defraud local tax-coffers?
He's just quitting while he's at the peak of his career. Like in sports.
I wonder what his golden handshake will be :)
>500 million <20 billion
CD,
See Daily Bail:
http://www.suethefed.com/
Let us know what you think.
(I signed, but that's just me.) Thanks.
http://www.suethefed.com/about-us
While I agree with abolishing the Fed, where would this $100 trillion dollars come from? Does the Fed create it out of thin air just before it closes the front doors?
I like Ron Paul's Answer
The Fed can hold $1 trillion or more in Treasuries and issue all the debt it wants. Since it acted outside of the authority of Congress, we aren't obligated to pay for any of it...
Paul's words... not mine. But I like the idea...
Probably won't come to anything but might be entertaining theater.
Disclosure and depositions should be fun.
I'm in.
maybe he s WH bound
Tyler good find and CD, spot on. The mortgage fraudclosure thing is about to nuclear and this guy knows it. And the Dems and Republicans will both jump on it for PR purposes.....
Yep, check out this story that nobody has picked up yet...
Banks drop foreclosures in Southwest Florida"Banks in recent weeks have been dropping hundreds of their Southwest Florida foreclosure lawsuits instead of facing defendants at trial, according to local attorneys and court records."
http://www.news-press.com/article/20110119/RE/101190387/1076/Banks-drop-...
I'm sure he'll get some cushy Gov't job where he will head a committee that regulates Banking and Lending because he had done such a smash up job running his own ship into the rocks.
In other news, Vikram Pandit is getting a pay raise. Whuck?!!
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/citi-ceo-pandit-gets-giant-pay-raise-2011-01-21?dist=afterbell
Company or leaving the country?
"MERS is one important component of the complex infrastructure of America’s mortgage swindling system. Billions of dollars of mortgage money flow through the financial system every year. It takes many, often-unseen mechanical processes to properly get those funds into the hands of Banksta thieves."
WB7,
I gush too much but you are actually contributing again and again and again.
Thanks.
ROTFLMAO!
That is RK Arnold ? He does not look like a super villain . He looks like one of his vice presidents ....clueless .
That's not R.K. Arnold
http://www.mersinc.org/about/full_bio.aspx?id=6
Mers has several R.K. Arnold's depending on the venue.
interesting resume, thanks for posting.
A lawyer whose been with MERS from the beginning and takes credit for designing the system. Definitely the guy on the spot as it falls apart.
Previously in management with Johnson & Johnson. Do they own KY Jelly?
You mean like Obama federal government workers, all clueless. All over compensated. All parasites.
This is not a true statement.
Thanks, that is funny. Now I see there are several internet posts that have the wrong image. Which is kind of funny given the subject matter we are dealing with ;-)
I have known a lot of army Rangers thru the years and none of them looked like this cat. Maybe a mis-spell, army wranglers (jeans mfg for PXs), army Mangers (build Xmas scenes on army bases), army Wangers (helps frotect ZH trolls). Huh?
Every unit has a weasel worm impotent logistics and supply officer...
Probably where he learned to electronically record fraudulently pay authorizations...
I can hear Arnold's eye balls clicking from here...
I thought MERS didn't have any employees.
It was a sole proprietorship. He was the only employee.
His absence will leave a big hole at the company :)
Talk about a scam.
When I think of MERS, I think surreal.
As in Surreal Estate
+1 nice
I dig it.
The surreal estate market goes head to head with the virtual property markets. See the knock down drag out fight this sunday sunday sunday....
I think the big hole goes with him.
Dey took our JOB!!!
When is the firing squad to be formed?
Does he have any suitcases filled with gold? Someone check his bags if he shows up at the airport!
+1.5 tonnes
His suitcases are probably filled with CalPERS muni bonds and blank Promissory Notes.
Tax evasion at a minimum
Well, "blow me away"!! Would anyone have thought FraudClosure could linger this long? The system is crawling to the brink, yet again, albeit ever so slowly thanks to the Scam Artists.
You think thats bad? 40% of Irish Cabinet members have resigned in the last 2 days. Leaving Cowen like a bad woman. Irish govt imploding. The wheels are starting to come off everywhere you look.
what I wouldn't give to have that happen here
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jr-3IQbFX4N5OtasdbJ_DxtX_Vsw?docId=CNG.500250af5e07ed4f2fdee64fb1e85479.181
and getting worse. Tunisia, check. Ireland, check. Never mind congress thinking of allowing state bankruptcies and whacking state retirement pensions.
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2011/01/irish-government-collapses-six-cabinet.html
BTFD
Be Quick!
The time is nearly here to be long torches and pitchforks, tar and feathers.
Oh.. what a dream THAT would be! Could you imagine the Reflection pool all lit up at night with the flicker of torchlight glinting off the cold steel. Then a quick March down Pennsylvania Avenue.... Sigh.
R.K Arnold? What's the R.K. stand for- Benedict?
Rat King
I am shaking with laughter. Stop it!
My guess is there is still another shoe to drop in this thing, and some very big tits are going to be in the wringer shortly. Milestones
Congress?
The world got snookered by Fannie and Freddie shielding the fraud from Wall St. all the way to the US capital.
Who can sue a GSE-once-removed?
His leaving the company has nothing to do with the frau...er... complications of these mortages. It's to spend more time with his family and to work on his memoirs.
Tyler and Netizenz, this is Off Topic (well, unless Turning of the Worms is the topic), but unbelievable...the Irish Times is saying that Sinn Fein's Gerry Adams could well be the main opposition leader in Ireland in six weeks' time due to the crash, the EU/IMF, and stupendous political blundering on the part of the current Irish PM (the one who just fought off a leadership challenge, yah that one):
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2011/0121/1224288008810.html
Taoiseach's blunder leaves party fighting for survivalGallows humour was about the only response left for Fianna Fáil TDs as they contemplated the political wreckage yesterday. The look on their faces showed varying levels of shock, anger and sheer despair. Even the Opposition was so stunned that the usual crowing at the discomfiture of a political opponent was distinctly muted.
In the immediate aftermath of yesterday’s debacle there was plenty of wild talk among Fianna Fáil TDs, and even some Ministers, about another attempt to change the leader but whether that will come to anything is a moot point. In any case time is fast running out for a change of leader with an election due in less than two months.
That election will amount to a fight for survival for Fianna Fáil. The party is dangerously close to the position of the Irish Party, which became extinct in 1918 having dominated Irish politics for decades, or the Italian Christian Democrats in the 1990s who expired after running Italy for nearly half a century.
The Irish system of multi-seat proportional representation may save Fianna Fáil from the fate of the Irish Party but there is a critical mass below which it may prove impossible to recover, particularly if it not the biggest party of opposition in the next Dáil.
While a number of recent opinion polls have put Fianna Fáil on the same share of the vote as Sinn Féin it is still widely assumed that when it comes to the election on March 11th the traditional party of power will be comfortably ahead of Sinn Féin in the opposition stakes.
However, things have now got so bad for Fianna Fáil that it may be dangerous to make any assumptions. The party has become such a toxic brand that it is likely to attract very few transfers when the votes are counted. By contrast Sinn Féin’s outright rejection of the EU-IMF bailout may make the party a second home for voters who opt to give their number one to far-left candidates or even those who vote for populist candidates coming from a right-wing anti-EU perspective.
If the polls during the election campaign continue to show Sinn Féin level with, or even ahead of, Fianna Fáil then the unthinkable could happen and Gerry Adams would end up the leader of the biggest opposition party in the Dáil. That is still an unlikely prospect but not nearly as unlikely as most political observers would have believed just a few months ago.
Fianna Fáil now has to find some way of picking itself up and devising a coherent battle plan. If it doesn’t find a way to do it quickly then Irish politics may be facing an even greater transformational moment on March 11th than anybody had imagined.
I hope Adams gets in. He's got more balls and brains than the rest put together.
+ Agree
http://www.suethefed.com/
Sue the FED
Perfect!! A quasi-legal company created by quasi Govt. sponsored agencies ( told by Govt. directive to make loans for unqualified buyers) in consultation with quasi-moral banksters supported by quasi money laundering Fed. A systems failure of the perfect storm variety.
Is there really any place to hide your savings? Gold, silver?? Forget commodities which will collapse when the prices get too high again and no one can afford them.
It is a lot more fun to just run with the sheeple and live in a home without paying your mortgage any more.
This article is a classic piece of government propaganda. The first point is, the false purpose of the story is to say that the CEO is leaving. The fact of the matter is, so fucking what? The guy is irrelevant, and without any true objective. MERS is a shell, and is actually run as a booking department by the banks. What is key to this article is the live
MERS was built by Fannie Mae (FNMA), Freddie Mac (FMCC), and several large U.S. banks in 1996 as an electronic registry of land records.
What they are trying to do is reshape MERS into some sort of official government aligned agency by claiming that the GSEs where the original creators. This is horseshit. MERS was and still is a private company created by the originator banks. Fannie and Freddie stuck their name to it, but they had not previously needed it to do their job. The purpose of MERS was to support the private label (sub-prime, and non-standard mortgages) that the banks were looking to originate and then sell to others.
State and federal lawmakers have begun to consider bills that would make it harder for banks to use or foreclose on properties through MERS.
This is another lie - the laws are already in place. What they are trying to do is pretend their are "new" laws so they claim all earlier issues will be ok. I suspect there is some idea that they will absorb MERS into the GSEs, thereby providing a balance sheet that will allow the loans to be pulled out of the REMIC and matched with the title deed so they can actually foreclose. We shall see...
Heckuva job, shitstain. I hope your golden parachute fails to open, asshole. Good riddance.
Just change the accounting like Verizon and everything is peachy.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Verizon-moves-202B-in-pension-apf-1148047506.html?x=0&sec=topStories&pos=8&asset=&ccode=
$20.2 billion just disappears !
Presto chango Alacazzam !!
Please, can I use the same time machine? I need 2 minutes only.
From bridge under water to water under the bridge. You can tell verizion plays scattergories on yahoo games.
Fantastic article and summary of the crisis (and that's an understatement) that is everything MERS, Zero Hedge.
they weren't just deputizing executives, they were really deputizing anyone who would signoff on shoddy paperwork.
I hear Fannie and Freddie are hiring.
Leaving the company? Waiting to hear if he is also leaving the country.
Adios.
The Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection is without a director. Wouldn't this guy be just the "perfect" pick?
All part of the creeping metastasis of the foreclosure cancer. This one can't be solved by the oligarchs in a back room, with their favorite CONgress-Critters cleaning up the mess.
Fresh off the Ibanez case, we now look towards the Bevilacqua case in Massachusetts.
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/01/mass-supreme-court-to-consider-whether-buyers-out-of-faulty-foreclosures-actually-own-property.html
The answer, by the way, is "no, they do not." Look out below.
"MERS was built by Fannie Mae (FNMA), Freddie Mac (FMCC), and several large U.S. banks in 1996 as an electronic registry of land records"
For all you cynics who think the bankstas never create anything...
Judges have also begun to question the company's practices of "deputizing" hundreds of bank executives to handle foreclosures by naming them "vice presidents" of MERS.
Priceless.
Judges have just now apparently awoken from their intellectual slumber, and have "begun" to question the entire issue of any validity of what MERS is or what it does....
.....I always say I am prepared for any bullshit, and then the bullshit I can't possibly be prepared for seems to find me again.
No shit!! I'm covered in the stuff!!
TruthInSunshine wrote:
".....I always say I am prepared for any bullshit, and then the bullshit I can't possibly be prepared for seems to find me again."
If I could 'fan' you, I would!
Mission Accomplished.
[Is the biggest fraud in the history of the US housing market about to come unglued?]---TD
Yes.
How 'bout that rumor the US government is working out a "solution" for the housing disaster this spring? I expect all residential and commercial property will be officially nationalized eventually. (Of course, through Fannie and Freddie, we are already there unofficially. Property tax is another matter, but that's for another post.)
So, if my mortgage is serviced by and the deed held by the U.S. federal government, does that make me a "renter" to the govt? If the government is my landlord, would the government have expanded powers to enter my home without my consent?
As a former tenant of apartments, I can tell you the landlord had authority to enter my apartment if he or she had reason to believe I was in violation of the lease agreement.
What if, under a nationalized system, the "lease agreement" included such provisions as...oh...limits on firearms, ammunition, and calibers per household. Far fetched? Maybe. But, anyone with plans to abolish the U.S. Constitution also has plans for how to get the guns. The 2nd Amendment is a real bugger for them.
Nationalized private property would quickly lead to an armed and open revolt. They know it, and wouldn't dare.
Not even if they "rent" me my house for $100 a month , will i sign up for the government to be my landlord
If anyone sees this guy walking down the street, please punch him in the face.
Jesus says; "Its OK."
No, it's not ok.
If you don't sin, Jesus died for nothing
JC said to drag him into the temple first
No jesus is busy implementing a plan that lasts 2000 years with no discernable results involving getting rid of the banksters and money changers by loving them harder and harder till they stop. I think this might just be a con.
Hope someone's fitting him with an ankle bracelet for tracking purposes.
And making sure he's not cleared for travel to any non-extradition treaty countries.
What a douchbag. You can just see it in his face he is a moron.
Tip to MERS Board: Make sure to keep the original copy of the letter of resignation on file.
+ intelligent sarcasm!
did they have to mention that he is a former Ranger-buddy to demonstrate to us that he really is a partriotic citizen and after all really had the best interests of the average American citizen at heart?
Even the rangers need someone to fill the drinking fountains and color code ink pens.
It is where he got his rubber stamp experience.
surprising they didn't mention he was a boy scout too.
They should have a Boy Scout reference but they 've had their scandals too. So pretty soon we'll see "he was generally regarded as a good student by his now deceased principal, who died under mysterious circumstances earlier today, and also considered a good child to his parents, who were degenerate gamblers and ran a house of prostitution. Both parents died this morning under mysterious circumstances too which is why he won't be available to the press as he and his lawyers verify the validity of the death certificates in order to assure the insurance company that his parents are indeed dead so he can take the proceeds from a substantially large insurance policy taken out on his parents yesterday ( strangely enough) by an insurance company that no one has ever heard about but we are told is well regarded in the moon beam industry.
In other news Verizon says they are looking forward as the place 20 Billion dollars of losses in the past as they note in the SEC filing that it won't have any material effect on current operations as it was a non-cash loss. In short, they are still coming out with the iPhone much to the relief of shareholders and consumers alike. The stock rose 1.2% in after hours trading .
After three years of a steady diet of all this fraud, lying, corruption, criminal, immoral, unethical, smarmy, smegmatic behavior from practically everyone in the Financial and Mortgage scams, and the apparent eternality of it, I'm beginning to think those who have never spent one second looking at it are far better off in their heretofore concupiscent indifference.
They have to feel better knowing that no matter how much they would have learned they can't and couldn't, are totally impotent to do anything about it just like the rest of us who have studied every blatant bit of bullshit and the nuances that accompany in depth examination of the entrails.
I'd rather not see another autopsy. I get it.
...concupiscent...
Had to look that one up. Nice.
Your autopsy metaphor works well also. Like Ned Zeppelin points out above, the internal organs of the deceased had become so metastisized with malignancies, that life was no longer possible.
I had to look that one up as well ...
Edit: but I don't understand how it is used in that sentence, do you?
Hmm...you have a good point. Words have meaning, after all.
In the context that the word is used, I would speculate that it could be translated as:
a willful, pleasurable and enthusiastically-embraced cognitive dissonance.
Exactamente.
So he's doing a "James Lockhart" and after doing his stint in the private sector ensuring the Banks got what they wanted, cashed in and got a corner office?
Like Lockhart did after 'Regulating' Fannie and Freddie goes to work for Wilbur Ross?
'Officials such as Lockhart have become hot commodities. The revolving door between government and business is not new, and connections inside Washington have long been a calling card in the private sector. But some executives say the qualification Wall Street now covets is a fine-grain understanding of how regulators are managing the mortgage market and planning for its transformation. Lockhart's "expertise is what we are interested in," said Wilbur Ross, who hired the former regulator. "He's looked at an awful lot of mortgages, given the regulatory background he has. We are very interested in his expertise as opposed to his connections."
Other former federal officials are scrambling for a piece of the action. Joseph J. Murin, former president of Ginnie Mae, which guarantees securities linked to government-backed mortgages, and former Federal Housing Administration commissioner Brian Montgomery, set up a consulting shop on L Street in mid-August.'
http://theautomaticearth.blogspot.com/2009/09/september-14-2009-colliding-collapses.html
Those who would like to march armed on DC better read a little bit of history regarding what happened to the war veteran 'Bonus Marchers" at the hands of that great American hero Douglas MacArthur. There will always be a MacArthur waiting for them. Armed marches will never succeed. However - you can accomplish the same thing: buy a little silver each week/month; buy only locally grown food; stop banking at anything but a small local bank; get rid of your credit cards; grow your own tobacco if you smoke cigarettes; use only generic drugs whenever possible; practice preventative medicine and stay away from doctors/hospitals if you can; stop shopping at big box stores and only shop locally; make TSA do a body search regardless of the inconvenience; consider everyone in a suit or other kind of uniform a sociopath; own as many unregistered guns as possible; stop eating fast food, period; stop respecting anyone in authority; get to know your neighbors; don't break any traffic laws and starve the municipal beast; learn to love rice and beans; make a garden - better yet, make a community garden; ditch the TV and show your kids this activity called reading a book; stop buying tickets to sports events, concerts etc; drive only cars that are 10 years old or more; barter for what you need whenever possible; lose weight and exercise; oh - and be extra nice to assholes (it drives them crazy and they simply vaporize).
And his asst. was DD Eisenhower. Can you say Petraeus?
Completely agree with you. Have been doing a lot of this stuff and more for a couple of years. Starve the beast.
I thought Smedley Butler cleaned out the Bonus Army?
No, that was MacArthur. Smedley Butler declined to be involved in a proposed military coup against F.D.R. known as the "Business Plot", because (surprise, surprise!) businessmen were involved in it. ONE of whom was reputed to be one Prescott Bush (ring any bells?).
(From Wikipaedia)
"In 1934 he was involved in a controversy known as the Business Plot when he told a congressional committee that a group of wealthy industrialists had approached him to lead a military coup to overthrow Franklin D. Roosevelt. The individuals that were involved denied the existence of a plot, and the media ridiculed the allegations. The final report of the committee claimed that there was evidence that such a plot existed, but no charges were ever filed. The opinion of most historians is that while planning for a coup was not very advanced, wild schemes were discussed."
Proposed Bill to put before Congress: "NO member of the Bush Clan, whether by birth or marriage or adoption or cloning or resurrection, shall be permitted to hold ANY position in Government, whether Federal, State or Local, above the position of ASSISTANT DOG-CATCHER, for the next 100 YEARS, on pain of DEATH."
(There, that makes me feel better!)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matryona%27s_Place
The only way out of the "hole" is to resist peaceably for what is right, to oppose evil without violence, to endure to the end. There is no escape in this world, in this life, in this "place".
That we are here is testament to a karmic inheritance and a ransom which MUST be paid. So suffer to stay upright!
None are fit to speak it or even fasten a latchet on the footpiece of great lawgivers, benefactors, ransomers.
Time to bow down and submit, sackcloth and ashes, with an awareness of why one must pass through this epoch of deceit and ruin.
See: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0260688/
Al Zoua (Princes and Paupers)
..concupiscent...was the "word of the day"at thr printer I visited this week....spooky. On another note,Can I get some opinion's on the possible opportunity' of squatting in some of these empty bank(?) owned house's? Got quite a few around that no-one ever seem's to visit or upkeep.Who own's these thing's? why not me?
Randy Quaid got caught squatting. THe charge was felony vandalism.
Interesting question. I'd check your state laws on Adverse Possession and proceed accordingly. I suppose deals could be made with the local authorities as well. They need the revenue. Share the wealth. Free houses for all!
Thank's for the pointer Rick. Lot's to consider for sure. It's not even about a "free" house,it's more about giving these f$%ker's a kick in the nut's for making me have to look at an unfinished house for the last 5 year's
And remember "I am in charge here" Al Haig?
Stepping down to spend more time with our money.
I'm thinking single-car accident or sleeping pill overdose. This cat knows too much...
You may want to update that profile, dipshit...
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/r-k-arnold/3/79a/8a6
Smedley Butler? Go to www.archive.org and download "War Is A Racket" by Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler. I think you've got the wrong man my friend.
Who did he hand in his resignation to?
But The RK Arnold Name Will Live On
To: All Foreclosure Document Preparers
From: MERS Signature Approval Team
Please find enclosed the newly approved RK Arnold Robo signatrue stamp. Apply to all back dated documents now in progress.
Supersedes the T. Geithner and retires the C Dodd Robo signature stamps.
Sincerely,
MERS Management
Actually, for real drama, who will replace him?
Candidates:
Paul Volker (recently out of a job)
John Thain (AKA Robo-EO)
Any of the 23,000 vice presidents floating around
Meg Whitman (heard she'll do anything for money)
Walt Whitman (dead, but has a nice signature)
Meredith Whitney
Whitey Ford
Ford Frick
Felix Rohatyn
Felix the Cat
Cat Stevens (AKA Yusuf Islam)
That's all I got for now...
How can he be leaving if he was never "there?" If a tree falls in the forest and nobody is there to hear it...?
I see opportunity here: On Monday, I'm filing for unemployment based on his work history.
According to this Ft. Meyers, FL news report, BOA is withdrawing foreclosures in Florida: here's the link:
http://www.news-press.com/article/20110119/RE/101190387/1014/business/Banks-drop-foreclosures-in-Southwest-Florida