Foreclosures, financiers and judges

The latest dispatch shows just how bad the banksters' tentacles are, but what judges are willing to do, too.

As we wonder just how tough states will get with mortgage brokers and investment banks, vs. how non-tough the Obama Administration (or Congressional Republicans) will get, here's food for thought, of how we still have right-thinking judges, vs. how even a professor of finance can be a sellout financier.

First, the "good" professor:

Joseph R. Mason, a finance professor who holds the Louisiana Bankers Association chair at Louisiana State University, said that concerns about proper foreclosure documentation were overblown. At the end of the day, he said, even if the banks botched the paperwork, homeowners who didn’t make their mortgage payments still needed to be held accountable.

“You borrowed money,” he said. “You are obligated to repay it.”

Uhh, if the paperwork is fraudulent, we don't know who owes money, Profy-Woffy. We don't know if anybody owes. We do know that people have been evicted from homes on which their mortgages were up to date, or even paid off!


Meanwhile, some judges, at both state and federal level, get it:

A decision in October 2007 by Judge Christopher A. Boyko of the Federal District Court in northern Ohio to toss out 14 foreclosure cases put lenders on notice. Judge Boyko ruled that the entities trying to seize properties had not proved that they actually owned the notes, and he blasted the banks for worrying “less about jurisdictional requirements and more about maximizing returns.”

And

Frederick B. Tygart, a circuit court judge overseeing a foreclosure case in Duval County, Fla., recently ruled that agents representing Deutsche Bank relied on documents that “must have been counterfeited.” He stopped the foreclosure. Deutsche Bank had no comment on Wednesday.

And, that's why 23 states, thank doorknob, still require judicial procedures on foreclosures.

Beyond that, that's the problem with corporately-endowed university chairs, universities being run more like businesses, the chancellors and presidents who want to do that, etc.