What's in a name? What's in a document?

THE NEIL GARFIELD SHOW

For the past 15 years, I have been hearing complaints about law enforcement and regulators who got it all wrong about securitization. The sad fact is that they didn't get it wrong. They knew what was happening, they initially sought enforcement and then backed off. But they did file actions in court at were the culmination of months, even years of investigation that no homeowner could have financed individually. The retreat from full enforcement was the result of a faulty decision-making process that was corrupted by a threat that was so large that nobody could see past it. Nobody actually was willing to investigate the threat or test it. It is the threat of universal financial armageddon. It resulted in tacit approval of an entirely fraudulent scheme not just in past conduct but also a green light for ongoing fraud through foreclosure, securitization claims, resecuritization claims, and the issuance of more "nominal" value in unregulated securities than all the money in the world 20 times over. Just as a point of reference the value of all such securities in 1983 was zero. The complaints filed by regulators and law enforcement help the reader understand what I have been saying here since 2007. The allegations themselves can be copied and pasted into complaints against not only the investment banks and all their minions but potentially against the individual officers and directors. Tonight we look at the case of the People of the State of Illinois v. Nationwide Title Clearing, described in the complaint as a "document production factory." The complaint is the product of investigation and findings by a state agency and therefore could be argued as presumptively true because of that. The case settled for a small fine, which is part of what I will be talking about tonight. see Illinois vs NTC