WILLIAM M. ACKER, JR., District Judge.

This case illustrates the shortcomings, even the dangers, of the once mighty global secondary mortgage loan market, with its arcane methods of doing business, conceived by ambitious, super-sophisticated, big-brained, short-sighted financiers and their lawyers, who did not realize that they were creating a Frankenstein for everybody involved except the lawyers. Based on the number of somewhat similar cases pending in various federal and state courts, the roof has come crashing down, and its restoration remains in doubt.

In the complicated world of the high risk mortgage industry as it existed at all times here pertinent, the answer to a question as simple as “who is the owner of a mortgage?” is not always apparent from a review of the land records where the real property is located. In fact, the term “owner” may mean “a hundred owners” involved in a joint or divided undertaking or investment where the original homeowner-borrower is unaware of who the “real” “owners” are. This complexity is exacerbated when the “owner” or “owners” begin to split up and transfer the mortgage and note willy-nilly, often effectuating the transfer by simply endorsing the note in blank, affixing an allonge to it, and assuming that the mortgage security and right to foreclose will pass with the note by operation of law.

Duke v. Nationstar Mortg., L.L.C., 893 F.Supp.2d 1238, 2012 WL 3852121, N.D.Ala., August 30, 2012

From http://ctblueblog.com/

Pam Martens covers all things Wall Street, and if you want to stay in a permanent state of despair about the country generally, and economic fairness specifically, you should read it religiously. She has been covering the Senate hearings on the foreclosure “settlement” and you won’t believe this:

http://is.gd/ilvmwP

Not to put too fine a point on it, it appears that the banks engineered a deal where they get to decide who they scammed, and then they get to call one dollar 500 dollars. (I wonder if I can repay my own mortgage using that kind of accounting?) For that matter, if they can find a million dollar mortgage out there they can convert a dollar into a thousand dollars. Plus, and why is this no surprise, they can get this rosy outcome by comforting the most comfortable among those they scammed (or decide that they scammed, and they are incentivized to decide they scammed the rich) while ignoring the most strained. What a great country.