By Yasha Levine
Mortgage Electronic Registrati*on Systems, Inc., or MERS.
MERS quietly took control in 1995 of privatized mortgage record-kee*ping across the country. In a few years, MERS scrambled America's private property ownership records to the point where no one can figure out who owns what.
MERS was a tool_ used by America's top financial institutio*ns to pump up the real estate market. Mortgage-b*acked securities*, robo-signe*rs, lightning quick foreclosur*es, subprime mortgages and just about everything else that went into feeding the biggest real estate bubble in U.S. history could not function without help from MERS.
Bankers needed a quick, clean way of reassignin*g mortgages without having to go through the "cumbersom*e" process of recording them with county courts and recorder offices. Instead of working with municipali*ties to modernize title registrati*on by a creating a national database that was aboveboard and that everyone could use, the banking industry did what it does best: hid the informatio*n with sly accounting tricks.
In just a few short years, MERS took over the bulk of residentia*l mortgage registrati*on. There are about 80 million residentia*l mortgages in America today, and MERS tracks 60 percent of them.
How an Obscure Outfit Called MERS Is Subverting Our Entire System of Property Rights http://www*.alternet.*org/econom*y/149189/d*ude,_where%27s_my_mo*rtgage_how*_an_obscur*e_outfit_c*alled_mers*_is_subver*ting_our_e*ntire_syst*em_of_prop*erty_right*s/?page=en*tire (5 page article)
Mortgage Electronic Registrati*on Systems, Inc., or MERS.
MERS quietly took control in 1995 of privatized mortgage record-kee*ping across the country. In a few years, MERS scrambled America's private property ownership records to the point where no one can figure out who owns what.
MERS was a tool_ used by America's top financial institutio*ns to pump up the real estate market. Mortgage-b*acked securities*, robo-signe*rs, lightning quick foreclosur*es, subprime mortgages and just about everything else that went into feeding the biggest real estate bubble in U.S. history could not function without help from MERS.
Bankers needed a quick, clean way of reassignin*g mortgages without having to go through the "cumbersom*e" process of recording them with county courts and recorder offices. Instead of working with municipali*ties to modernize title registrati*on by a creating a national database that was aboveboard and that everyone could use, the banking industry did what it does best: hid the informatio*n with sly accounting tricks.
In just a few short years, MERS took over the bulk of residentia*l mortgage registrati*on. There are about 80 million residentia*l mortgages in America today, and MERS tracks 60 percent of them.
How an Obscure Outfit Called MERS Is Subverting Our Entire System of Property Rights http://www*.alternet.*org/econom*y/149189/d*ude,_where%27s_my_mo*rtgage_how*_an_obscur*e_outfit_c*alled_mers*_is_subver*ting_our_e*ntire_syst*em_of_prop*erty_right*s/?page=en*tire (5 page article)