What the hell: How stealth banking bailout reached Obama’s desk; Update: Here comes the first O-veto; White House: We’ll work on it
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Both the left and right sides of the blogosphere are buzzing about a bipartisan TARP-style banking bailout bill that somehow reached President Obama’s desk in the legislative rush before Congress adjourned for the midterm election break.
The sordid episode underscores everything I’ve spotlighted about the culture of corruption over the last two years — sabotage of the deliberative process, circumventing of rules, backroom deals, and contempt for the will of the people.
Yes, the Vampire Congress strikes again.
The bill is HR3808, the “Interstate Recognition of Notarizations Act of 2010,” which requires courts to accept as valid notarized letters made out of state, making it harder to challenge the authenticity of foreclosure and other legal documents. Here’s the legislative history of the bill.
Reuters lays out the basic story:
A bill that homeowners advocates warn will make it more difficult to challenge improper foreclosure attempts by big mortgage processors is awaiting President Barack Obama’s signature after it quietly zoomed through the Senate last week.
The bill, passed without public debate in a way that even surprised its main sponsor, Republican Representative Robert Aderholt, requires courts to accept as valid document notarizations made out of state, making it harder to challenge the authenticity of foreclosure and other legal documents.
The timing raised eyebrows, coming during a rising furor over improper affidavits and other filings in foreclosure actions by large mortgage processors such as GMAC, JPMorgan and Bank of America…The legislation could protect bank and mortgage processors from liability for false or improperly prepared documents.
And now, the dirty details of the legislative legerdemain that paved the bill’s path to Obama’s desk:
After languishing for months in the Senate Judiciary Committee, the bill passed the Senate with lightning speed and with hardly any public awareness of the bill’s existence on September 27, the day before the Senate recessed for midterm election campaign.
The bill’s approval involved invocation of a special procedure. Democratic Senator Robert Casey, shepherding last-minute legislation on behalf of the Senate leadership, had the bill taken away from the Senate Judiciary committee, which hadn’t acted on it.
The full Senate then immediately passed the bill without debate, by unanimous consent.
No debates.
No amendments.
No roll call votes.
More:
The House had passed the bill in April. The House actually had passed identical bills twice before, but both times they died when the Senate Judiciary Committee failed to act.
Some House and Senate staffers said the Senate committee had let the bills languish because of concerns that they would interfere with individual state’s rights to regulate notarizations.
Senate staffers familiar with the judiciary committee’s actions said the latest one passed by the House seemed destined for the same fate. But shortly before the Senate’s recess, Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy pressed to have the bill rushed through the special procedure, after Leahy “constituents” called him and pressed for passage.
The staffers said they didn’t know who these constituents were or if anyone representing the mortgage industry or other interests had pressed for the bill to go through.
These staffers said that, in an unusual display of bipartisanship, Senator Jeff Sessions, the committee’s senior Republican, also helped to engineer the Senate’s unanimous consent for the bill.
Neither Leahy’s nor Session’s offices responded to requests for comment Wednesday.
Zero Hedge calls it TARP 2. Others aren’t so sure of the bill’s impact. But anger over the corrupted process crosses party lines. Even the GOP House sponsor who initially proposed it to address a court reporter’s concerns was stunned by the speed with which it was shepherded through late last month after years of failed passage.
This stinks.
Will President Obama — Mr. Transparency — sign it? Ask him.
***
Fun fact via Steve Egg: One of the bill’s co-sponsors was none other than big banking buddy…GOP Rep. Mike Castle.
Wisconsinite Steve also notes from the legislative history: “The ‘debate’ in the House consisted solely of three people, one of which was Wisconsin’s own embarrassment Tammy Baldwin (of Madison), urging passage, which was done by voice vote.”
***
Update: The White House has “concerns.”
Uh-huh. Sure, they do…now.
Update: Obama will use his first veto and send the bill back to the House.
Update: Sent back, but not dead:
The authors of this bill no doubt had the best intentions in mind when trying to remove impediments to interstate commerce. We will work with them and other leaders in Congress to explore the best ways to achieve this goal going forward.
Translation: Er, let’s take this up again when no one’s paying attention.
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I’m sick of all this BS, are you?
I’m also tired of saying, “That doesn’t surprise me!”
Enough already!
but why was it passed so quickly after sitting there untouched for so long?
what did I miss
Tech note – Standard THOMAS searches expire after 30 minutes. I was, however, able to obtain a lasting permalink to the bill history.
Fun fact – one of the three co-sponsors was…Mike Castle.
So much for “The Pledge”. It just never matters what these criminals say nor how passionate they are when they say it. It’s all just one big mafia.
Thanks, Steve! Changed the link and will update with your fun fact. Ugh.
And who the @#$% is this turd named Unanimous Consent?!
These senior republicans are up to their eyeballs in this filth. A pox on all their houses!
Scott Brown what say you?
The big bank holding companies have poured MILLIONS of campaign donations into both parties over the years-hedging their bets as it were. The timing of this bill is not unsurprising to us following the mortgage/variable rate/forged signature scandals at Bank of America, Citibank, HSBC, PNC Bank, U.S. Bank and Wells Fargo/Wachovia.
Notary witnesses were faked.
There are indeed people being hit with increased mortgage payments due to variable rate mortgages they did not apply for–it is heartbreaking to see that Senator Sessions was involved. The housing bubble a few years ago was just too tempting an opportunity I guess.
===
Let your sidearm be like American Express:
Don’t Leave home without it.
Every Republican senator approved of this?
not unsurprisingnot a surprise
This should come as no surprise to those paying attention. The dumbocrats are going to pass anything and everything they can after the election. It will take years to reverse what they do, if it can be reversed at all.
I’m also a short fuse for people who are now telling me how much they dislike Obowmao. One of my husband’s idiot dumbocrat friend called last night and was whining about his health insurance, his loss of wages, blah, blah, blah. I wanted to reach through the phone and slap the s#*t out of him. My wonderful husband calmly asked him “Did you vote for Obama?” A meek yes was the answer. Idiot!!!
Unexpectedly.
Thanks, Michelle.
Why would anyone want to buy a house now? The entire system is designed to subvert the property rights of home owners. Owning real estate in this environment is like having your feet nailed to the floor getting beat up.
I haven’t owned property in the last ten years and I am certainly not interested in owning anytime soon.
“Unexpected”
“Unprecedented”
Let’s vote them all out of office.
Good job on Hannity last night Michelle, on point as usual. Bad news ain’t so bad as long as I can have you delivering it.
Always an excellent idea.
Don’t Re-elect Anyone
I have represented both creditors and debtors and I can tell you that many, many loan documents won’t stand up to scrutiny in court. The last one I handled involved a mortgage for $750k that was unenforceable because the bank screwed up the underlying deed. The one before was mortgage fraud by a borrower, and it included false affidavits.
Requiring states to honor foreign (i.e., out-of-state) affidavits makes it much more difficult to challenge those documents in court and provides a huge advantage to lenders. The current issues on bad foreclosures revolve around those very affidavits, which involve affiants attesting to facts about the loans history without reviewing the documents. So the affiants attested to facts of which they had no independent knowledge. That is perjury.
Now the vast majorities of these loans were in default, and no doubt the vast majority were lawfully subject to foreclosure. But the bad foreclosures will usually rely on a bad affidavit somewhere, and I have never seen a lender hesitate to take advantage of every legal issue in a collection case. The lenders must play by the same rules as the borrowers.
Someone, somewhere, knew exactly what they were doing when they shoved this bill through.
Bingo!
And given that the bill seems to have passed unanimously in the Senate, I wonder if anyone even knew what was in it?
You’d think that if it was that bad in its effects it would have had opponents, and that at least one of them would have raised objections, even if nothing more than to complain about the way it was being slipped through.
And impossible display.
And = an
So, the House has passed dozens and dozens of bills and now they are all sitting there, waiting for the Senate to sneak them through during the lame duck session. Just watch…this is going to be so ugly. I wish there was some way to surround the Capital building and NOT LET ANYONE BACK IN AFTER ELECTIONS!! If we can’t do that, we are so screwed. They don’t care that most of the American People are furious with them. They thumb their noses at us, give us the middle finger, laugh in our faces, call us the “chattering class” and other disgusting elitist names. And they know we can’t do a damn thing about it until next year. In the meantime, they will do their damage to this country.
DON’T EVER FORGET WHAT THEY ARE DOING!!! This must never be allowed to happen again. Every corrupt, evil congressperson must be fired, investigated and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
They are laughing at us now. But they will be very very sorry later…count on it. They will be brought to justice and won’t even know what hit them.
WAIT WAIT WAIT WAIT
It seems as if it’s possible that this bill helps to prevent needless obstructions to the foreclosure process.
I happen to believe that lenders should be allowed to foreclose on deadbeat borrowers without lawyers making the process more difficult.
It seems as if this bill allows out-of-state lenders to navigate the foreclosure process more efficiently. I’d much rather have Obama sign something like this than sign something which prevents or restricts foreclosures on deadbeats.
I think we need to look at this closely before we label this some sort of bailout.
The full Senate may not have even seen it. I haven’t watched CSPAN in a long time, but as I recall, “unanimous consent” only means the consent of those present in the chamber, which may have only included a few Senators. Most of them wouldn’t have been there unless they were taking recorded votes. I’m not excusing anyone, but without a rollcall, you can’t tell who actually supported it. CSPAN aficionados can correct me if I’m wrong.
I see a lame duck repeal movement in America’s future.
Errah, in similar news; In the early morning hours Congress passes a law declaring that a Dog is a Cat. Obama is to sign into law next week!
And honestly … is it unreasonable to expect people to read a document before they sign on the dotted line? I find it hard to believe somebody “didn’t know” they were signing up for a variable rate mortgage.
Obowmao: Do these Capris make my butt look big?
Thank you corkie – well said.
It certainly could be. Stalling is one of the treasured legal tactics of residential deadbeats in possession of property, both deadbeat borrowers and deadbeat tenants. Lenders and landlords have property rights, too.
He’s the guy with one hand on your wallet and the other on your…huevos.
Nothing should be passed by Congress without the quorum of the full houses of congress and in the open…if that needs to be passed by the states as a constitutional amendment, so be it.
Mike Castle would have been such a good choice, eh Karl Rove? Ditz.
And this from the politicians that tell the people that they represent them. It’s time to throw them all out of office. In reality the only job a Senator has is to vote on bills, if that is asking to much of them ,we don’t need them.
This contributes to my main worry about our attempt to dislodge the Demoncraps – that means relying on Republicans not to shoot themselves repeatedly in the foot.
When the new congress takes over I want to hear 2 things – repeal the bills and jail the corrupt!
If it is not allowed by the Constitution then it needs to go. The commerce clause needs to be trimmed back.
This is a perfect example of why American citizens rate Congress as corrupt and untrustworthy.
The real question before us is, can we somehow hold our elected representatives accountable for their actions beyond simply voting them out of office?
The things they do in office do not cease to impact our lives once they leave office, so why should their culpability be limited to loosing an election?
I wouldn’t think that a bill that allows a bank to foreclose on a non-performing mortgage loan so they can sell the property at a huge loss would be considered a bailout anyway.
Our daughter and son-in-law were so desparate to get a house that they signed on to the balloon payment plan. That balloon will happen in a few months and, until about a month ago, they would have probably been in real trouble! We tried to warn them, but the prospect of getting that house was just too tempting. They lucked out, however, as our daughter recently got a better job with over $20,000 more per year than what she was making. I understand what people are facing here…and it is ad. But, just as our daughter, her husband and their two small boys would have to face losing the house and living in an apartment…the horror!!, lessons are learned and we go on from there. They would not make the same mistake again. And MAYBE, just MAYBE, they will listen to Mom and Dad next time!! Or not.
Totally agree! Somehow, just losing an election is not enough for the criminals. Prosecution and jail.
Corkie and ConservativeRus, the ends justify the means? Seriously??? You have zero concerns that government now operates in the shadows and without public deliberation at the beck and call of big finance?
This is precisely where the Republic was torpedoed by the Bush administration (and the Republican Congress in 2004-2006), and is being torpedoed by the current Congress and the Obama administration.
I wonder what Corkie and ConservativeRus thought of TARP?? (Feel free to publicize your opinions. I know the banks loved it, and we taxpayers are still footing over $100 billion for it….. But, but, but, it saved us from a worse meltdown!!! Even Paul$on said it was necessary!!!)
There is no single ideology or philosophy created in human history more evil that of “The end justifies the Means“.
I agree on your point about deadbeat borrowers, but I fear you’re being naive about the merits of this bill. Something greater is in play, especially the expidited Anti-Constitutional process.
Good luck with that. The Republicans are still gunshy from trying to impeach Clinton.
I wasn’t attempting to comment on the process – only the outcome. I’m not speaking for Corkie here at all – but I will go on record that the ends NEVER justify the means.
In fact with respect to the current matter – I think the process “invoked” should nullify the outcome and the bill should be vetoed and every congress person who gave their “unanimous consent” should be charged with criminal activity.
With that said though, on the surface, almost anything which makes it easier to actually enforce contracts, is a good thing.
I’m extremely disappointed with Session’s actions on this matter. I have been looking at him as one of the saviors, don’t tell me now he is gone also. Shame if he has.
I have been listening to Rush and he feels this bho will be so bent out of shape with the r’s in control of the house and hopefully the sentate, he will just go around congress and do EO and appoint more czars. I feel the same way. The only way to stop this bho if he does this is to stop the funding if congress has the guts to do so.
L
The entire text of the bill. I’m sorry, I just don’t see anything TARP about it, and all of this running around wailing and moaning and waving your arms in the air strikes me as absurd. Passing bills by unanimous consent is normally only done on the most non-controversial legislation, and this certainly seems to fit the bill.
=======================================
I can’t see anything from my house anymore.
Right. So now we ask ourselves why Michelle used the term “stealth banking bailout” in the headline.
More detail on the contributors to Mike Castle’s recent campaign (from OpenSecrets.org):
http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/contrib.php?cycle=2010&cid=n00009775&type=I
Ummm, the Federal Government telling state courts what to do under the Commerce Clause in non-controversial? Why not let state courts decide, like they do for recognizing, oh pick any topic, marriage licenses or business incorporations, of another state?
Certainly, the Republic has not been overburdened before by having 50 separate states and 50 court systems. What is so different today? Maybe we should abandon the idea of states altogether, right, and just set up one State under Federal Control!!!
Back off, dtestard!
Government operating in the shadows?? Seriously?
Do you hate the Constitution and the methods that it requires? I haven’t seen any evidence that this bill was passed unconstitutionally or outside prescribed procedures. Have you?
Really? I thought it was going to cost $700 billion. At least that’s what almost everyone on here claimed.
And isn’t down to around $30 billion now?
Please explain the problem with the “Means” in this situation.
Why do you think the “Means” were so evil?
How were the “Means” so different than the normal passage of benign bills?
Please describe the specific problems you have with this bill.
My goodness. What was their crime? What law did they break?
I concur.
However, maybe someone on here would like to explain the controversy behind recognizing an out of state notary. Anyone?
No overreaction occurring here. Those evil out-of-state notaries! Stop all cross border loans! Stop all interstate lending!!
Their “crime” was malfeasance of duty. If I as a corporate officer treated legally binding contracts in the same manner as congress – I’d be criminally liable.
We elect (and pay) them to be our “corporate” officers.
Of course there is no evidence. That’s exactly the point of (wait for it)
So TARP was also passed by process which adhered to the letter of the law. That make it right in your eyes?
Perhaps you should read more than the headline, and temper your interpretation in view of her own words:
So what do you think of TARP? Good (we abandoned free market principles to save the free market, and the banks can say the money they got directly from the government was almost all “paid back,” having paid it with money they got from the American public one way or another, so we are the poorer for it and they never needed to be “efficient or else fail,” just like they might have uncapitalistically and ineffectively operated in Socialist USSR)? Bad (there was $150 billion in “sweeteners”/pork in the package that the taxpayer will never see again)?
It does not deal with the Constitution, but the Rules of the Senate.
This is like the location of the Ground Zero Mosque. It may be legal, but it is not right.
Don’t just replace the word crime with malfeasance.
Tell me what the crime or malfeasance was.
What legally binding contract was treated inappropriately with respect to this bill?
Actually, they’re not our officers. You’re better off comparing them to corporate directors since they don’t have executive powers.
Ummm, I’m repeating myself for you… You see no controversy in the Feds forcing a sovereign state to recognize notaries of another state??? Why shouldn’t the states choose like they’ve done for a hundred years?
***
The AMERICAN POLITBORO don’t need no steeenking debate. Or discussion or analysis. Or voting.
***
Eat S**T and die, peons! Just wait until you taste the delicious C**P SANDWICHES we’re “cooking up” for you losers in our lame duck sessions.
***
Don’t spare the hot sauce. REMEMBER IN NOVEMBER–we’ve got damn few friends–of either party–in the so called “representatives” in the Senate and House.
***
John Bibb
***
So, this bho is sending bill back as a
pocket veto’? Could it be that those who voted for this knew this would happen so that is why it passed the sentate? This whole thing is not making any sense to me!
L
There are a lot of foreclosure cases out there. Sometimes the underlying paperwork is bad, and that may include a fraudulent or defective affidavit, bad language in the note or mortgage, etc. Sometimes the loan has been sold or transferred to different creditors repeatedly, and the transferees got bad paper or mishandled good paper. Sometimes the evidence is not properly placed before the court, as when an affidavit that alleges the debtor is is default is signed by someone who never looked at the file and doesn’t have a clue if the affidavit’s allegations are true and whether they can be proven. In the former cases the defect(s) may or may not ultimately effect the enforceability of the loan. In the latter case the defect is fatal to the complaint in foreclosure, because the plaintiff has failed to properly establish the necessary facts by sworn evidence.
If lenders made bad loans does it somehow entitle them to file false affidavits in order to recoup what they can? If they bought bad loans with unenforceable paper should they get to file false affidavits? The problem is that some of these lenders didn’t just make bad loans, they made additional mistakes in documentation or record-keeping or notification. They bought bad loans supported by bad paper or indaequate records. They played fast and loose with the rules because it reduced their administrative overhead in a highly competitive market. (Looks to me they took a cue from Moe Howard and decided to hire themselves a cheap lawyer, too.)
Foreclosure cases are relatively cut and dried where the lender is default if basic rules of record keeping are followed, proper documentation attended the origination of the loan and required notices of default, and proper pleadings are filed with the court. Most people who are in foreclosure can’t afford to pay a lawyer to engage in delaying tactics or they wouldn’t be in default in the first place. You get the occasional pro se defendant that files a bunch of stuff, and the occasional serial bankruptcy filer, but that is the worst of it.
What is at stake here is not just the enforceability of foreclosure remedies, but the cost of enforcing those remedies. Some of these loans have been sold or transferred repeatedly, and preparing the necessary records and affidavits is time-consuming. Someone must be responsible for using reasonable diligence to review the file and attest that the documents are in order and the records support the plaintiffs claims of default and right to foreclosure. That person can’t just be an autograph machine, blindly signing everything put before her by clerks.
I don’t think that concerns about preventing baseless delaying tactics is what motivated someone to slip this one through on the down-low. This law may make it impossible to establish that a fraudulent affidavit underlies the complaint in foreclosure. Is the law intended to give cover to lenders who not only made bad loans, but based them on unenforceable terms or documentation? Does it permit lenders to submit fraudulent affidavits in the effort to foreclose on bad loans? Is it effectively a bailout, permitting foreclosure and a substantial recoupment where there would otherwise be a total loss in thousands and thousands of cases around the country? We don’t know, because someone slipped it through without debate, but of course that very fact must raise suspicions.
None are required by neither the constitution nor congressional rules, and this bill wasn’t controversial/important enough to opt for any of the above actions.
It’s possible to be displeased with the process used to pass expensive and extensive bills without being displeased with the fact that the same process is used to pass simple and unimportant bills.
Um, I was criticizing the headline AFTER reading txvet2′s posting of the actual bill.
I’m happy to discuss TARP with you as soon as you agree that this isn’t anything even close to TARP or a bailout.
Corkie seems to be spamming this blog today. Reminds me of someone who is no longer with us. Remember…the one with the very active question mark key?? I can’t even remember the name of that troll. Did Corkie and that troll post at the same time? Or could this be a reincarnation?
OBTW, don’t worry, Pelosi plans to introduce a bill to freeze all foreclosures. More brilliance.
Then we do not have to worry at all about notaries.
Just think in Pelosiland you are expected to lend money to someone and have no recourse if they refuse to repay it.
What wasn’t “right” about passing this bill?
Well said.
Do some research there–this bill is covering for forged and fraudulent signatures and illegal post signature insertions. This is crony capitalism at it most blatant worst.
REMEMBER IN NOVEMBER? That works.
===
give a man to fish and you feed him for a day
teach him to fish and he will spend his weekends in a boat drinking beer
No, no, you get to tell me what is “right” about the bill.
Remember you are defending what shouldbe proper due diligence when siezing the single largest investment, the single largest asset a person possess in their lifetime.
Knock yourself out.
Senate rules and the process to amend the senate rules need to comply with the Constitution.
Could you possibly be more disingenuous? You display the intellectual dishonesty of Bob Beckel or Bill Clinton, “What is the definition of “IS”.
In the phrase “The end justifies the Means” the word means is clearly defined as, the practices, tactics, ideologies and physical actions taken to achieve a specific goal.
“Means” in and of themselves are not evil, and it takes a dishonest person to separate a single word of a phrase calling it out for scrutiny in an attempt to de-legitimatize an entire phrase by calling the veracity of use of a single word into question.
The phrase “The end justifies the means” means exactly what it sounds like it means.
It means no atrocity, no act repugnant to moral ethical individuals, no behavior that shocks the sensibilities of average people, no vile or despicable act of perfidy is not justifiable if it brings about the desired result.
The bill in question was designed to provide legal cover to financial institutes that violated financial transaction laws.
The United States as most other law abiding societies maintains a “ex post facto/Nullum crimen, nulla poena sine praevia lege poenali” status.
What that means is if you do something on 10/07/2010 and on 10/08/2010 it is legislated as an illegal action you cannot be charged with a ex post facto crime.
It also means that if you committed a criminal action on 10/07/2010 and that criminal act was decriminalized on 10/08/2010 you are still criminally libel for an act that you committed while it was illegal.
The criminal act in this case was failure to abide by the legal requirement to have a local notary public personally witness the signature of a foreclosure notice before that note was executed.
This bill was passed without due legislative process for the purpose of side stepping the legal requirement of a local notary public personally witnessing the signature of over 59,000 foreclosure notes.
Oh please. Have you ever heard of the UCC?
All 50 states and DC are a party to a uniform code that covers bankruptcy and foreclosure. There’s nothing radical about out-of-state notary recognition in conjunction with these processes.
No.
But they should be allowed to file an affidavit notarized in another state.
Yes, but I’ve never post at the same time as Superman.
No, it’s not.
I already did.
That’s right. And I have ZERO concern that banks will start foreclosing on deadbeat borrowers by pretending that the an innocent homeowner borrowed money that really wasn’t borrowed.
I’m not worried one bit about a judge giving a house to a bank that never lent the homeowner any money.
I’m sorry, I still don’t buy the hysteria. It seems to me well within the Congress’s responsibilities to establish an interstate standard for recognition of notarized documents. These aren’t just mortgage papers, you understand. Have a NY birth certificate and want to use it to verify your citizenship status in California? It has a NY notary stamp on it. Been divorced? That has a notary stamp too. I’d imagine you’d want that recognized in any other state. Same goes for 99% of all notarized documents.
Of course not everyone will agree, but let’s keep the discussion to the propriety of regulating interstate/intrastate commerce, and forget the flights of fancy over TARP and bailouts and other silly extrapolations.
Really? Or was it designed to prevent disingenuous lawyers from fighting the foreclosure process via technicalities?
Please. The act wasn’t criminal. It just makes foreclosure more difficult.
I must admit that I am surprised by the pocket veto.
The only explanation that I can think of is that since this was brought to light, and couldn’t be signed without adding to the electoral tsunami that is coming in November, the Democratic Socialists thought that Obama’s signing it would absolutely guarantee that they would lose both houses of congress, and they decided it was better to lose this bill than to lose both houses.
…but they will still lose both houses anyway.
Greasing the skids for more Eminent Domain abuse
Obama’s veto is probably more motivated by making it more difficult for the evil lenders to get their money back from the poor, downtrodden borrowers currently occupying homes they were never able to afford.
Which is mutually exclusive to the certification of notaries within each state. If there was any sembalance of uniformity then HR3808, the “Interstate Recognition of Notarizations Act of 2010,” would be unneeded.
Do you think the State of Colorado, would you accept a vehicle certification report from an inspector in New Jersey? What would you think if the Federal government compelled Colorado to accept it?
Just how in the h@11 does the Congress know that the notary standards in all states pass muster?
I am sureeeeeeee (sarcasm dripping from my fingers as I type this) they have done as exhaustive study, like they did reading all the legislation they passed, to make sure that all state notary standards are acceptable before passing this thing.
Flyoverman, if you live in Florida and loaned me money in Georgia, then would it be ok if I refused to pay you back because you had my IOU notarized in Florida?
Or should you be put into jail for committing a criminal action?
I hope so because I think some states allow their notaries to be complicit in fraud.
I hope so because, otherwise, an out of state bank might take the house of someone that doesn’t even have a mortgage.
I hope so because some states lag behind all the recent technological developments associated with notarizing documents.
I long for the day, and it may be soon, that we hear these pompous-a$$ elitists, like Leahy, say;
“Whoa…I never saw that coming!”
..as the election results that toss them out of office, come pouring in.
Corkie in the state I live in these standards vary by county…….
Apples – Oranges, that is irrelevant to this discussion.
What we are discussing here is providing the means to VERIFY the authenticity of a notarized document versus being COMPELLED by the Federal Government to blindly accept it.
Which approach has the higher risk of being subject to fraud?
This is the same YOU MUST approach by the same legislative body that gave us the massive losses in Fannie and Freddie and the housing bubble.
This is the same YOU MUST approach that has given us epidemic voter registration fraud.
And the underlying motivation in each instance in terms of the Congress has been what??????
Culture of Corruption!
Wish in one hand and…..
Dude, what fraud are you worried about?
Are you claiming that the borrower wont get their money at the onset of the loan?
Are you claiming that the lender will foreclose on a house that really wasn’t mortgaged?
Please explain the downside to me.
Look, it’s ok if you’d rather appoint a task force to study this issue while thousands of deadbeats continue to screw their banks.
Just don’t hysterically claim that this is some sort of bank bailout.
No, it’s not irrelevant.
I’m not claiming that this is the only issue involved, but it’s certainly one of them.
It strikes me that this was pushed through to give Obama the pulic veto, so he’d look like he cares!
That doesn’t help the Republicans who went along with this. (Demint too!?!?!?)