When there is a lot of money, even
dirty money, to be had many people will overlook the law. And when
'everyone' is doing it, well, they call this phenomenon situational
psychopathy. These folks are not psychopaths they are just easily
influenced. Here are the characteristics
of psychopathy according to Dr. Robert Hare, a respected expert.
Example – a paralegal is told by the
wealth attorney he or she works for to ignore the fact a trustee sale
is scheduled for less than a month after the Notice of Trustee Sale
was recorded in the county.
The paralegal thinks this must be
alright. Of course, the paralegal is wrong. But it takes a lot to
stand up to your boss when the money is good.
The smartest people working for one of
the oldest and most prestigious law firm in the United States mapped
out how securitizations would take place. Did they know it was a
scam? Yes, because they were smart – but also greedy.
Bernie Madoff used to walk the halls of
Cadwalader, Wickersham &
Taft (CWT) in New York City. This is the company who took on the
Excel Mortgage Project which launched registering bonds for sale to
the public, which bonds were based on pooled notes, a hybrid of debt
and equity interests in and contingent claims to realty. This type of
financial instrument had never before been sold to the public, though
it had existed for about 25 years in the “private placement”
market.
The entire staff of CWT, underwritten
by the Bank of New York, supporting Excel, were charged getting these
new-fangled “derivative” instruments past examination by the
Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC).
And then you need more mortgages to be
securitized to be added to these 'bonds,' right? No problem, house
loans made to the unwary were rapidly available to be recycled as new
notes.
And to facilitate this process mortgage
electronic registration systems (MERS) came online. No more those
old-fashioned ideas records mattered. And to finish the recycling
guys like Tom and Kevin were needed to run sleazy operations like
'Quality Loan Servicing Corporation.' Yes, sell those homes to
bottom feeders who are too dumb to even know they are breaking the
law, and the cycle can begin again.
Scary? Yep. And as large and the
Mortgage Fraud is it is only a symptom of the greed and avaricious
behavior which you can see in what President Eisenhower called the
Multi-National Corporations. The wealthy elite who own the media and
our government.
So, why pick on poor little Tom and
Kevin? Because they know better and we aim to make an example of
them.
