ELIZABETH WARREN AND JOHN MCCAIN TEAM UP TO REIGN IN BANKS

MSNBC had a segment today in which they interviewed Elizabeth Warren about a new set of laws reinstating the old style of Chinese walls. There are probably similar interviews on other channels with Senator Warren or Senator McCain and others. Just go to your favorite news channel and look it up. Their approach has bi partisan support because of its simplicity and its history. Historically it is merely a tune-up of the old laws to include definitions of new financial products that did not exist and were not adequately considered in the 1930's when EVERYONE AGREED THE RESTRICTIONS WERE NEEDED.

Bottom Line: RETURN TO THE BORING BANK SAFETY WITHOUT BOOMS AND BUSTS FROM 1930's into the 1990's: leading republicans and democrats are stepping out of gridlock into agreement. They want to stop Wall Street from access to checking and savings accounts for use in high risk investment banking because that is what brought us to the brink and some say brought us Into the abyss. And it would stop commercial banks that are depository institutions for your checking and savings accounts from using your money on deposit in ways where there is a substantial risk of loss that would require FDIC ((taxpayer) intervention.

Banking should be boring. In the years when restrictions were in place we only had one serious breach of banking practices --- the S&L Scandal in the 1980's. But it didn't threaten the viability of our entire economy and more than 800 people were serving prison terms when the dust cleared. Of course Bankers saw prison terms as an invasion of their business practices and regulation as unnecessary.

But the simple reason for bipartisan support is that the public is enraged that the mega banks (too big to fail) have GROWN 30% SINCE THE 2007-2008 while the people on Main Street are losing jobs, homes, businesses, families (divorce), thus stifling an already grievously injured economy because credit and cash are now scarce --- unless you are a mega bank that made hundreds of billions or even trillions of dollars because they were able to create an illusion (securitization) and at the same time, knowing it was an illusion, they bet heavily using extreme leverage on the illusion being popped.

They made it so complex as to be intimidating to even bank regulators. So no wonder borrowers could not realize or even contemplate that their mortgage was not a perfected lien, so they admitted it. Foreclosure defense attorneys made the same mistake and added to it by admitting the default without knowing who had paid what money that should have been allocated to the loan receivable account of the borrower that was supposedly converted for a note receivable from the borrower to a bond receivable from an asset pool that supposedly owned the note receivable account.

The complexity made it challenging to enforce regulations and laws. The complexity was hidden behind curtains for reasons of "privacy". The real reason is that as long as bankers know they are acting behind a curtain, they are subject to moral hazard. In this case it erupted into the largest PONZI scheme in human history.

And the proof of that just beginning to come out in the courts as judges are confronted with an absurd position --- where the banks "foreclosing" on homes and businesses want delays and the borrower wants to move the case alone; and where those same banks want a resolution (FORECLOSURE OR BUST) that ALWAYS yields the least possible mitigation damages, the least coverage for the alleged loss on the note because they would be liable for all the money they made on the bond. Just yesterday I was in Court asking for expedited discovery and the Judge's demeanor changed visibly when the Plaintiff seeking Foreclosure refused to agree to such terms. The Judge wanted to know why the defendant borrower wanted to speed the case up while the Plaintiff bank wanted to slow it down.

And because of all the multiple sales, the insurance funds, the proceeds of credit default swaps, because the initial money funding mortgages came from depositors ("investors"), and all the money from the Federal Reserve who is still paying off these bond receivables 100 cents to the dollar --- all that money amounting to far more than the loans to borrowers --- because it related to the bond receivable, the banks think they can withhold allocation of that money to the receivable until after foreclosure and avoid refunding all the excess payments to the borrower the investor and everyone else who paid money in this scheme. And the system is letting them because it is difficult to distinguish between the note receivable and the bond receivable and the asset pool that issued the bond to the actual lender/depositor.

Senators Warren and McCain and others want to put an end to even the illusion that such an argument would even be entertained. Support them now if not for yourselves then for your children and grandchildren.