Mortgage- backed securities are not secured by real estate

Today, an article appears in Bloomberg, and it appears to be a rehash of this now week-old story, so I was puzzled to see it run now. But buried in the article is the probable reason for this piece, namely, that the Bloomberg reporters saw that BankThink had purchased and posted the trial transcripts, and quoted more of DeMartini’s testimony. And it isn’t pretty. From Bloomberg:




The judge asked DeMartini whether the notes ever move to follow the transfer of ownership, according to the transcript of the August 2009 hearing.



“I can’t say that they’re never moved because, I mean, with this many millions of loans as we have I wouldn’t presume to say that, but it is not customary for them to move,” DeMartini said.



This is in keeping with the judge’s recap, and also underscores the notion that it was Countrywide’s practice to not convey the notes. We have been told separately that a senior industry executive also said that no one in the industry transferred the notes. If true, this has very serious implications. As we’ve indicated, it means that residential mortgage backed securties are not secured by real estate, or as Adam Levitin put it, they are “non mortgage backed decurities. Bloomberg provides further comments along those lines:



“It may mean investors who think they bought mortgage- backed securities bought securities that aren’t backed by anything,” said Kurt Eggert, a professor at Chapman University School of Law in Orange, California.



With the ramifications so serious, expect industry denials to continue apace until the evidence becomes overwhelming.