From cnbc.com:
WASHINGTON – 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.
Questions about improper notarizations have figured prominently in challenges to the validity of these court documents, and led to widespread halts of foreclosure proceedings.
The legislation could protect bank and mortgage processors from liability for false or improperly prepared documents. The White House said it is reviewing the legislation.
“It is troubling to me and curious that it passed so quietly,” Thomas Cox, a Maine lawyer representing homeowners contesting foreclosures, told Reuters in an interview.
Here’s your chance to send the Joker and the Goldman Sachs gang at the Out (White) house your comments on HR3808. Link below.
It’s Now or Never. Do you want to see Mozilo in striped pajamas or not? I thought so. Just Do It.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/webform/comment-legislation?billname=H.R.%203808%20-%20Interstate%20Recognition%20of%20Notarizations%20Act%20of%202010
Ok, so States will have to recognize notarizations from out of state, like they pretty much already do. Someone in Iowa will not have to find a Califonia notary for something required to be notarized in California. So what the heck is the issue here and what does it have to do with with the Goldman Sachs gang?
I admit that I have not read the bill, but I suspect that all the conspiracy theorists have not either.
It smells fishy – the last part of the article:
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.
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.
Obama won’t sign it:
http://www.cnbc.com/id/39550663
Way to go, Barry O!
Senator Dodd is retiring and is the chairman of the committee. Its obviuos he has million dollar banking sector job awaiting him.
If Dodd is retiring from the banking committee would that mean Ron Paul will be the next chairman? If so the Federal Reserve is screwed.
Doh… I guess it would be hard for Paul in Congress to lead a Senate committee.
~ Breaking News ~ It’s vetoed. From CNN/Money – Full article:
http://money.cnn.com/2010/10/07/news/economy/pocket_veto/index.htm
@Shdash, Also the wrong party.
Big bills with little debate always reminds me of Colbert’s recent testimony: “Maybe this ag jobs bill will help. I don’t know. Like most members of Congress, I haven’t read it.”
The banks are in a panic, and they run this country. Ergo . . .
This won’t be the last stupid rule change they slip through.
Did Summers leave yet? I wouldn’t put it past him to slip the bill under Obama’s robo pen, the sleaze-bag.
If anyone is interested in what the sponsors of the bill have to say,
http://www.housingwire.com/2010/10/07/sponsors-of-notary-bill-no-connection-to-robo-signing-issue
It was proposed back in 2005.
I’m glad he didn’t sign it because giving the banks yet another free pass is criminal. This will be a huge mess for sometime…Get the short sales ready Jim, REO could be getting very quiet as all the big banks “review” their procedures or the BIG O could just freeze all foreclosures until next year.
Hmmm, I wonder who Leahy’s “constituents” are?
“I admit that I have not read the bill, ….”
Kingside | October 7th, 2010 at 10:25 am”
I rest my case.
Ya got me 3g. Undoubtedly this whole thing is a Goldman Sachs conspiracy going back to 2005.
If anyone has read the bill, please tell, where is that language that would have required Courts to accept fraudulent notorizations and given the robo-servicers a pass?
The bill is only a page long and an easy read, just google HR3808. Although that might leave you scratching your head over what all the fuss is about.
My take is that the banks have been sloppy in the records-keeping, and that this would have the practical effect of switching the presumption from “the banks must prove this part of the paperwork is correct” to “the homeowner must prove this part of the paperwork is fraudulent.”
A summary of the bill:
Interstate Recognition of Notarizations Act of 2010 – Requires each federal and state court to recognize any lawful notarization occurring in or affecting interstate commerce which is made by a notary public licensed or commissioned under the laws of a state other than the state where the court is located.
Requires such a notarization to: (1) use a seal of office as symbol of the notary public’s authority; or (2) have the seal information, in the case of an electronic record, securely attached to, or logically associated with, the electronic record so as to render the record tamper-resistant.
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d111:HR03808:@@@L&summ2=m&
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I don’t see anything that allows fraud to take place on the lenders’ part either.
BTW, it seems that most of the people who are using the “robo-signing” argument against their lenders are doing so in an attempt to keep from being foreclosed on **when they haven’t been paying thier mortgages.**
These people are NOT victims, and they should not have their foreclosures delayed because of some technical glitch in their documents. If they aren’t paying their mortgage, the lenders should have the right to foreclose.
The examples where truly innocent people have been foreclosed on when they hadn’t defaulted on their loans (or when they had no loan at all) are rare and should be handled appropriately. I just think the majority of these litigants are deadbeats who are using the system in an effort to keep ripping off their lenders.
The utterly corrupt banking ponzi culture is entering a tunnel that hasn’t been finished yet…
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/05/the-quiet-coup/7364/
What if an unscrupulous bank tried to foreclose on a property that was never at risk of defaulting? It sounds as if this bill would have made it possible for banks to legally steal people’s homes.