How much could this solve if it were policy?

[nancylebov]

That really is the hard problem. In fact, I read that a couple of bankruptcy judges have been voiding mortgages altogether, letting people keep their homes for free, for just this reason: the debtor's lawyer challenges the current mortgage company to show that they own the loan, show the original paperwork, and they can't do it. It got mailed around, moved around, from bank to bank to bank to three other kinds of companies, and now nobody knows where it is.

And from the same post, on the goddamit people could have known front:

When Warren Buffett's company took over Swiss RE way back in 2002, he set a team of forensic accountants on their CDO shares to try to figure out what the things were actually worth, based on generally accepted accounting principles. They came back months later and told him it couldn't be done. So he dumped them, 6 years ago, for pennies on the dollar and never missed them; he'd bought Swiss RE for its other assets. So seriously: the famously "smartest guy in the world" when it comes to money put a team of his best people on trying to figure out who the owners of the collateral were and what the collateral was actually worth for even a tiny fraction of the CDO shares out there, and gave up. It can't be done.

In any case, please pass the word about the legal strategy. A lot of people will probably need it.

Comments

[captain-button.livejournal.com]

Well I am experiencing schadenfreude right now at the news that those lying thieves at Wachovia going down. Among their other sins when servicing my student loan back when was promising to send me back my original loan agreement and then not doing so.

I've often idly wondered how much of all this stuff we have to sign could actually be found if they needed to show it in court.

[still-asking.livejournal.com]

my pre nuptuial agreement got lost