Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

PIMCO, Blackrock, NY Fed Seek to Force BofA to Repurchase $47 Billion in Soured Mortgages; Viral Nonsense on "Show Me the Note" and "ForeclosureGate"
Gallup Mid-Month Survey Confirms Prior Reading of 10% Unemployment; Expect Huge Rise in Unemployment After Mid-Term Elections
Brown Pledges College Admission for Illegal Immigrants
Lie of the Month: Geithner Says US will Not Engage in Devaluing Dollar

PIMCO, Blackrock, NY Fed Seek to Force BofA to Repurchase $47 Billion in Soured Mortgages; Viral Nonsense on "Show Me the Note" and "ForeclosureGate"

Posted: 19 Oct 2010 06:56 PM PDT

At long last, the real issue regarding soured mortgages has stepped up to the plate. The misguided focus on "ForclosureGate" is but a sideshow compared to Pimco, NY Fed Said to Seek BofA Mortgage Repurchases

Pacific Investment Management Co., BlackRock Inc. and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York are seeking to force Bank of America Corp. to repurchase soured mortgages packaged into $47 billion of bonds by its Countrywide Financial Corp. unit, people familiar with the matter said.

A group of bondholders wrote a letter to Bank of America and Bank of New York Mellon Corp., the debt's trustee, citing alleged failures by Countrywide to service loans properly, their lawyer said yesterday in a statement that didn't name the firms. The New York Fed acquired mortgage debt through its 2008 rescues of Bear Stearns Cos. and American International Group Inc.

Investors are stepping up efforts to recoup losses on mortgage bonds, which plummeted in value amid the worst slump in home prices since the 1930s. Last month, BNY Mellon declined to investigate mortgage files in response to a demand from the bondholder group, which has since expanded. Countrywide's servicing failures, including insufficient record keeping, may open the door for investors to seek repurchases by bypassing the trustee, said Kathy Patrick, their lawyer at Gibbs & Bruns LLP.

Patrick represents investors who own at least 25 percent of so-called voting rights in the deals and stand to recover "many billions of dollars," Patrick said.

Countrywide hasn't met its contractual obligations as a servicer also because it hasn't asked for loan repurchases and is taking too long with foreclosures, Patrick said. The delays stem from missing documents, process mistakes and insufficient staffing to evaluate borrowers for loan modifications, she said.

If Countrywide doesn't correct the servicing problems within a few months, her clients could have the right to pursue legal action against Bank of America, Bank of New York or both, she said. "None of the bondholders are opposed to modifications for deserving borrowers, but you've got to get it done" in a timely fashion, she added.

Mortgage-bond contracts are explicit in requiring repurchases of loans when their quality fails to match sellers' promises, said Scott Simon, Pimco's head of mortgage bonds. The contracts also call for trustees and servicers to ask lenders to take back debt under those circumstances, he said.

The initiative covered by the letter sent to Bank of America and BNY Mellon yesterday is separate from the effort coordinated through Dallas lawyer Talcott Franklin, Patrick said. That firm is coordinating action for a larger group of mortgage-bond investors holding more than $500 billion of the debt.

The Real Deal

One way we know this is the real deal is by who is participating. The New York Fed's participation says this is going to happen.

Right now the number is at $47 billion. How large does it get?

Bear in mind that is $47 billion in mortgages, not $47 billion in potential losses. However the amount is bound to grow by leaps and bounds.

It is curious as to why this took so long.

Smoking Guns

That these mortgage pools were misrepresented is widely understood.

The banks even knew they were doing it. In case you missed it, please consider Smoking Gun: New Evidence of How Wall Street Shafted Pension Funds by Misrepresenting Mortgages; Rep Miller Calls for Full Audit of Fannie Mae.

Dylan Ratigan Show

Democratic congressman Brad Miller calls for an audit of all the loans at Fannie and Freddie to see if they were conforming to the standards necessary to get government backing.

Partial Transcript

MILLER: There are $trillion of mortgage backed securities out there that are very much in doubt. The pension funds have been pushing for some time now to get information about whether the securitizer, the big banks that bought the mortgages and put them in pools, and sold the mortgage backed securities, whether the securitizer should have to buy back the mortgages for not meeting the contractual requirements.

If those banks have to buy back that stuff it's a big liability.

RATIGAN: Let's not kid ourselves, it's lights out.

MILLER: I've pushed the Obama administration to ... find out exactly what mortgages are in those pools that Fannie and Freddie on the securities for and figure out if they have the requirements. And if they don't, to push and make the banks buy them back so that we [taxpayers] don't get stuck. ... If you do not pursue the legal rights, it's another back door subsidy, back door bailout. If we have legal right to reduce taxpayer exposure, we need to pursue it.

I pushed secretary Geithner, I pushed the Obama administration, and I plan to keep pushing.

Light's Out?

Whether or not the buybacks are coming will constitute "Lights Out" or not depends on three factors:

Actual volume of forced buybacks
Losses on those buybacks
How quickly banks have to realize those losses

This can easily drag on for years. However, if it doesn't and if the losses are significant enough, any banks that have to repurchase mortgages are going to be in serious trouble.

ForeclosureGate Misinformation

Quite a number of people have gone seriously astray thinking "ForeclosureGate" is the big issue. It's not, at least for those being foreclosed on. They are headed for foreclosure anyway.

Yet Emails and articles regarding "Show Me The Note" and what "ForeclosureGate" means have gone viral. I am not surprised at some of those propagating misinformation, but after seeing John Mauldin do it I have to say enough is enough.

Please consider The Subprime Debacle: Act 2

OK, in a serendipitous moment, Maine fishing buddy David Kotok sent me this email on the mortgage foreclosure crisis just as I was getting ready to write much the same thing. It is about the best thing I have read on the topic. Saves me some time and you get a better explanation. From Kotok: ....

"The purpose of MERS was to help in the securitization process. Basically, MERS directed defaulting mortgages to the appropriate tranches of mortgage bonds. MERS was essentially where the digitized mortgage notes were sliced and diced and rearranged so as to create the mortgage-backed securities. Think of MERS as Dr. Frankenstein's operating table, where the beast got put together.

"However, legally...and this is the important part...MERS didn't hold any mortgage notes: the true owner of the mortgage notes should have been the REMICs.

"But the REMICs didn't own the notes either, because of a fluke of the ratings agencies: the REMICs had to be "bankruptcy remote," in order to get the precious ratings needed to peddle mortgage-backed Securities to institutional investors.

"So somewhere between the REMICs and MERS, the chain of title was broken.

"Now, what does 'broken chain of title' mean? Simple: when a homebuyer signs a mortgage, the key document is the note. As I said before, it's the actual IOU. In order for the mortgage note to be sold or transferred to someone else (and therefore turned into a mortgage-backed security), this document has to be physically endorsed to the next person. All of these signatures on the note are called the 'chain of title.'

"You can endorse the note as many times as you please...but you have to have a clear chain of title right on the actual note: I sold the note to Moe, who sold it to Larry, who sold it to Curly, and all our notarized signatures are actually, physically, on the note, one after the other.

"If for whatever reason any of these signatures is skipped, then the chain of title is said to be broken. Therefore, legally, the mortgage note is no longer valid. That is, the person who took out the mortgage loan to pay for the house no longer owes the loan, because he no longer knows whom to pay.

"To repeat: if the chain of title of the note is broken, then the borrower no longer owes any money on the loan.

Viral Nonsense

I am sorry but that is complete nonsense. It will mean delays and legal expenses to figure out who has the right to foreclose, but it sure as hell does not mean borrowers own their house free and clear.

The article continues ...

"The move by the United States Congress last week, to sneak by the Interstate Recognition of Notarizations Act? That was all the banking lobby. They wanted to shove down that law, so that their foreclosure mills' forged and fraudulent documents would not be scrutinized by out-of-state judges. (The spineless cowards in the Senate carried out their master's will by a voice vote...so that there would be no registry of who had voted for it, and therefore no accountability.)

"And President Obama's pocket veto of the measure? He had to veto it...if he'd signed it, there would have been political hell to pay, plus it would have been challenged almost immediately, and likely overturned as unconstitutional in short order. (But he didn't have the gumption to come right out and veto it...he pocket vetoed it.)

"As soon as the White House announced the pocket veto...the very next day!...Bank of America halted all foreclosures, nationwide.

"Why do you think that happened? Because the banks are in trouble...again. Over the same thing as last time...the damned mortgage-backed securities!

"The reason the banks are in the tank again is, if they've been foreclosing on people they didn't have the legal right to foreclose on, then those people have the right to get their houses back. And the people who bought those foreclosed houses from the bank might not actually own the houses they paid for.

"People still haven't figured out what all this means. But I'll tell you: if enough mortgage-paying homeowners realize that they may be able to get out of their mortgage loans and keep their houses, scott-free? That's basically a license to halt payments right now, thank you. That's basically a license to tell the banks to take a hike.

Once again the article contains a bunch of half-truths interspersed with nonsense. This certainly NOT a license to stop paying the bills and keep houses scott-free. Anyone who tries is going to lose their house!

I am disappointed that people perpetuate such nonsense.

I do not want to make light of the purposeful fraud in robo-signing, but people will not get to own their house free and clear over robo-signing nor will they get their house free and clear because of MERS.

Largest Bank Will Resume Foreclosure Push in 23 States

I was getting ready to comment on that last night when I had to laugh at the headline Largest Bank Will Resume Foreclosure Push in 23 States

Bank of America announced on Monday that it would resume home foreclosures in nearly two dozen states, despite the running controversy over how banks handled tens of thousands of cases of homeowners facing eviction.

Bank of America, the nation's largest bank and the servicer of roughly one in five American mortgages, insisted that it had not found a single example where a foreclosure proceeding was brought in error.

The move is also likely to encourage other giant lenders, like JPMorgan Chase, to resume the foreclosure process that threatens two million homeowners.

While I find it had to believe that BofA could have validated all of those foreclosures, the fact remains that 99.99% of those being foreclosed on, deserve to be foreclosed on (by someone), if they are in default.

Again, I do not want to make light of "robo-signing" and I am not, because some people ought to face criminal charges over this. Yet, from the perspective of the person being foreclosed on, all this process means (at most) is some potential delays. Given that some foreclosures suspensions are off already, the delays may even be less than I thought.

Many bloggers got wrapped up on the wrong issue about what "ForeclosureGate" and "Show Me The Note" means in practical terms. The answer is not much more than delays in the inevitable.

In contrast, that PIMCO, Blackrock, NY Fed Seek to Force BofA to Repurchase Soured Mortgages is a very big deal for bank earnings, and possibly even for the banking system itself.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List

Gallup Mid-Month Survey Confirms Prior Reading of 10% Unemployment; Expect Huge Rise in Unemployment After Mid-Term Elections

Posted: 19 Oct 2010 10:38 AM PDT

Earlier this month Gallup released a survey that showed unemployment rose .8% to 10.1%

Unemployment, as measured by Gallup without seasonal adjustment, increased to 10.1% in September -- up sharply from 9.3% in August and 8.9% in July. Much of this increase came during the second half of the month -- the unemployment rate was 9.4% in mid-September -- and therefore is unlikely to be picked up in the government's unemployment report on Friday.

See Gallup Finds U.S. Unemployment at 10.1% in September for more details.

Gallup has since conducted a second survey that confirms the sharply rising unemployment of the first: Gallup Finds U.S. Unemployment at 10.0% in Mid-October

Unemployment, as measured by Gallup without seasonal adjustment, is at 10.0% in mid-October -- essentially the same as the 10.1% at the end of September but up sharply from 9.4% in mid-September and 9.3% at the end of August. This mid-month measurement confirms the late September surge in joblessness that should be reflected in the government's Nov. 5 unemployment report.

Certain groups continue to fare worse than the national average. For example, 14.2% of Americans aged 18 to 29 and 13.8% of those with no college education were unemployed in mid-October.

Fewer Working Part Time Looking for Full-Time Employment

The percentage of part-time workers who want full-time work is at 8.6% of the workforce, not much different from the 8.7% at the end of September, but well below the 9.2% reading in the middle of last month.

U.S. Unemployment Rate Should Increase on Nov. 5

Gallup modeling suggests the government's unemployment rate report for October will be in the 9.7% to 9.9% range when it is released Nov. 5. The government's last report showed the U.S. unemployment rate at 9.6% in September on a seasonally adjusted basis, as Gallup anticipated. In addition to seasonal adjustments, the official unemployment rate is likely to be held down by a continued exodus of people from the workforce. It is easy for potential workers to become discouraged when the unemployment rate is expected to remain above 9% through the end of 2011.

In this regard, the lack of increase in Gallup's underemployment measure when the unemployment rate is increasing would normally be a good sign for jobs and the economy. However, the current decline in the percentage of workers employed part time but looking for full-time work is not necessarily positive. It might be that some workers who are employed part time are losing their jobs -- becoming unemployed or dropping out of the workforce -- and are not being replaced, while new part-time workers are not being hired.

Something Amiss in BLS Data

Note that the BLS Jobs Report for September shows a whopping 612,000 increase of involuntary part-time workers from 8,860,000 to 9,472,000 while Gallup has the number declining substantially.

The BLS report is also inconsistent with recent ADP reports.

Please see Rosenberg says "ISM Flunks Sniff Test "; Cashin calls ISM "an Outlier"; ADP, Other Data Does Not Confirm for details regarding August discrepancies between BLS data and ADP.

Those discrepancies continued with the ADP September 2010 National Employment Report in which ADP reported "Private-sector employment decreased by 39,000 from August to September on a seasonally adjusted basis"

That was the second straight month of private sector contraction for ADP, consistent with what Gallup is saying. The odd man out is the BLS which shows private sector expansion.

Labor Pool Contraction

One of the things holding down the BLS unemployment rate is the huge number of people the BLS claims has dropped out of the labor pool.

Allegedly 175,000 dropped out of the labor pool in September. Moreover, 1,768,000 workers supposedly dropped out of the labor force in the past year.

While demographics suggest there will be a large number of boomers retiring, that fact is indicative of a labor pool that should be growing more slowly, not a labor pool massively contracting.

Even with the above astonishing numbers, the BLS reported unemployment rate is 9.6%.

I smell a huge rise in unemployment in the November 5th BLS jobs report, conveniently after the mid-term elections. I am sticking with my forecast that says new highs in the unemployment rate are yet to come.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List

Brown Pledges College Admission for Illegal Immigrants

Posted: 19 Oct 2010 09:12 AM PDT

Those of you considering voting for Brown in the California gubernatorial election need to consider this.

"We have enough wealth to continue to have a great university and get every kid into this school that can qualify. Now when I say every young man and young woman, I mean everyone – whether they are documented or not. If they went to school, they ought to be here."

Brown is a fool. California has enough problems already. Hopefully this stupidity will cost him the election.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List

Lie of the Month: Geithner Says US will Not Engage in Devaluing Dollar

Posted: 19 Oct 2010 12:23 AM PDT

Given all the problems with foreclosures, it might seem hard to pick a winner for the lie of the month contest. However, fraud and lies are not the same thing, but even if they were, Geithner is up to the task.

Please consider Geithner denies US bid to weaken dollar

Speaking at a meeting in California on Monday, Tim Geithner, Treasury secretary, denied that the US was trying to devalue the dollar to boost its economy.

"It is very important for people to understand that the United States of America and no country around the world can devalue its way to prosperity and competitiveness," he said. "It is not a viable, feasible strategy and we will not engage in it."

"US Needs a Weaker Dollar" Theory Running Rampant

Everyone but Geithner seems to be latching on to the "US Needs a Weaker Dollar" theory.

Check out this Bloomberg story: Geithner Weak Dollar Seen as U.S. Recovery Route Versus BRICS

For U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, a weaker dollar may now be in the national interest.

The dollar has dropped more than 7 percent since Aug. 27, when Chairman Ben S. Bernanke signaled the Federal Reserve is prepared to ease monetary policy. Where once such a decline may have been met with resistance from the U.S., Geithner may now be tolerating it as a way of bolstering the recovery.

Companies from Costco Wholesale Corp. to Deere & Co. have credited the weaker dollar for giving their earnings a boost, and the currency's slide has helped propel the Dow Jones Industrial Average above 11,000 for the first time since May.

"In an era where deflation pressures appear to be the greatest risk, growth is below trend and the U.S. wants to boost exports, why would they not want" a weaker dollar, Jim O'Neill, chairman of Goldman Sachs Asset Management in London, said in an interview. "The answer is when it becomes a problem for financial markets. Until then it's a straightforward strategy."

"The dollar is going to go down," Martin Feldstein, a Harvard University professor who was chief economic adviser to President Ronald Reagan, said Oct. 7 in a Bloomberg Television interview on "Surveillance Midday" with Tom Keene. "It will cause Americans to shift from imported goods into domestic services. All of that will strengthen the economy."

A weaker dollar is "a positive for equities as long as it's not viewed as a collapse of the dollar," said Paul Zemsky, the New York-based head of asset allocation for ING Investment Management, which oversees $550 billion.

Matt McCormick, portfolio manager at Cincinnati-based Bahl & Gaynor Inc., which manages $2.9 billion, said the dollar's weakness is benefiting companies he owns with "significant" overseas revenue, including McDonald's Corp., Procter & Gamble Co., Intel Corp. and Qualcomm Inc.

"A low dollar will be with us for longer than most people expect," he said.

"Geithner's comments recently have been not exactly dollar-supportive," said Barry Knapp, chief U.S. equity strategist at Barclays Plc in New York. "Typically what happens is that the Treasury either says we support a strong dollar or we think a free market should decide where the dollar goes, and that means we don't mind if it goes down."

Misguided Theory

The problem with this misguided "we need a weaker dollar" theory is that it only looks at one side of the equation. Small businesses have been crucified by rising input prices and falling output prices.

Indeed NFIB Small Business Trends for October Continue to Show No Recovery, Inflation Not a Threat; Fed Governor Hoenig Blasts Bernanke's QE Strategy

Every month I report on NFIB small business trends and every month it looks like a broken record. October is no different. Please consider NFIB Small Business Trends for October.
Inflation Not A Threat

Inflation? Not a threat. Far more owners have cut prices than raised them for 21 months in a row. Deflation? It certainly feels that way to a quarter of the owners reporting price declines for the goods and services they produce and sell, and apparently a majority at the Federal Reserve are now worried. New "inflation targets" are being floated out there, like two percent (characterized as price stability?). This will be the justification for more "quantitative easing". Buying more Treasury securities may push rates even lower, but to what end? The impact on home sales will surely be minimal. With mortgage rates at record low levels already, even lower rates are unlikely to invite new entrants to the market.

Of course, there may be other "agendas" such as a weakening of the dollar and support for asset prices. This is very dangerous as hundreds of billions of dollars are being "allocated" based on false prices (interest rates). The charade can't be maintained forever and weakening the dollar only invites others to join the party.

And lost in all of this focus on credit is the loss of hundreds of billions in interest rate income for savers. Certainly their spending has been curtailed as a result. Every dollar a borrower saves from some sort of refinance deal is a dollar of interest income lost to savers. Even lenders will lose income as loans with interval rate re-sets will be set based on historically very low Treasury rates (lowering net interest margins). No wonder confidence is low and uncertainty is high, it is hard to make sense of this.

The previous three paragraphs hold the key to understanding just how wrong the Fed's weak dollar policy is. Multinationals and exporters may like it, but the net effect on jobs is negative.

Geithner says "It is not a viable, feasible strategy and we will not engage in it." Half of that sentence is true, and that is about the best you can expect from Geithner.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List

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Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

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