While the banks are throwing more Americans out of their homes, accompanied by much thumb-twiddling in DC:

Obama signs [$4.5b] child nutrition bill, championed by the first lady
“The bill also increases the spending per meal by about 6 cents, President Obama noted. He said the money for funding the increase came from cuts in the food-stamp program but that he was committed to working with Congress to find a way to restore those funds.” [emph. added]
LINK.

Obama Threatens Social Security
William Greider
“The most dangerous feature in the president’s proposed compromise on taxes is not the $700 billion tax cut for billionaires. It is the Trojan horse provision that threatens to destroy Social Security by undermining the longterm solvency of the social insurance system.”
LINK.

Breaking News at LA Times: Federal Judge strikes down health care law LINK.

LA Times update:

Federal judge voids key component of healthcare reform
By Michael Memoli | 9:17 a.m.
“A U.S. judge in Virginia rules that the law’s mandate that all Americans have coverage, or pay a fine if they do not, exceeds federal authority.”

David,

You are now saying that you can’t understand what the reason is for the foreclosures, after previously, repeatedly saying that the banks wouldn’t foreclose, due to their exposure to 2nds. It depends on their exposure on the particular homes they’re foreclosing now. Let’s assume they’re only resuming foreclosing on homes whose loans are owned by 3rd parties to whom they’ve been forwarding payments out of their own pockets for months or years. That’s the impetus to foreclose now: to stop having to fork over. And it’s also because the market is tanking continuously. The longer they wait to foreclose, the less return they’ll get at a foreclosure sale. At some point I’d guess there won’t be anyone left buying foreclosures, except the bottom-most of bottom feeders. So it’s better to foreclose now, before it’s too late.

So they’re foreclosing now before it’s too late, in order to recoup their fees off the top of whatever they’re able to sell the homes for. Alternatively, if they foreclose on homes on which they are exposed to the 2nds, at least they can stop forking over payments to the fictitious MBS trusts, and they won’t have to write down the 2nds unless they actually sell the homes. Cleveland is rife with abandoned bank walkaways. Trying to find the proper party to dun for the taxes and maintenance is not easy. Remember the story of Isaac Dieudonne, the child who drowned in the swimming pool of a bank walkaway in Florida?

Because of the confusing paper trail, [Dieudonnes' lawyer] has named 20 defendants in the case. They include banks that once owned the mortgage, companies that serviced the loan, property maintenance companies and even a company that was holding the mortgage for the banks.

The banks are cutting their losses. Apparently they’ve now decided that foreclosing, even without a market to sell the homes, is more profitable, or less of a money-loser. The homes themselves are incidental. The families? Who cares.

There could also be hidden government-sponsored ‘shared-loss’ agreements that reimburse the banks for their losses when they foreclose. The OneWest/FDIC scam is an excellent example. There are over 50 different lenders and servicers who have Shared-Loss Agreements executed with the FDIC.

But I cannot see their end game here. With almost 11 million properties in negative equity – over 1 in 5 of the outstanding mortgages in the United States – it’s not like the problem is showing signs of abating. And contrary to myth, foreclosures exacerbate the problem, perpetuating a vicious circle that does lower prices. ……… brings down the prices.

Ok then it is a “meat axe approach” to ( ________ what can you call this?) But off the top, I think it analogous to conventional war.

Tear things up destroy, bring it all down… subjugate and reap the spoils. (Privatize/ “we’ll all get rich…!” Mr. desert boots PB &co. ) And in that vein, the vanquished will bare the burden and pay the reparations. To wit: those who own property, pay taxes, can be tapped… will pay shortfalls that the destruction causes as drop of the prices, which are relative anyway/ (put a helicopter on it.)

Banks used to tout being averse to holding RE, too much hassle, this is complety different now with MERS etc. And a gauntlet of fees affixed throughout the “process.”

Let’s see here… how about… “financial transnational warfare, enhanced with electronics and metrics.” And this is just one of “the thousands of ‘points of light’.” It’s almost Christmassy.

LAWYERS WHO FILE FORECLOSURES SHOULD ALSO BE INVESTIGATED

Foreclosure lawyers are officers of the court; knowledge of applicable laws and civil procedure is not required from mortgage lenders, nor loan servicers. In states that require judicial foreclosures, lawyers are the ones who file lawsuits to seize and sell property; and lawyers are responsible for filing and recording foreclosure property deeds.

Inadequate or questionable foreclosure leads to useless property deeds that impede real estate sales; title insurance companies reluctant to cover foreclosed properties; mortgage default claims are being disputed due to defective foreclosures. . .Sample of fraudulent foreclosures by certain foreclosure mills:

–Deliberately utilize defunct lenders or lenders without “standing” to intentionally execute false foreclosure proceedings in civil as well as bankruptcy courtrooms.
– Create and conceal malpractice, delaying foreclosures, engineer various litigations to generate billable legal fees.
– Orchestrate sham foreclosure auctions; property never becomes acquired by lenders, but by ‘straw buyers’
– Commit wrongs which are actionable (unfair debt collection, fraud, various torts) that give rise to lawsuits from property owners,
– Engage in self-dealing foreclosures by which some lawyers gain for themselves foreclosed properties
–Foreclosures via names of defunct lenders allow ’straw buyers’ illegally convey property deeds, flip real estate, and create blighted communities
– Unconscionably create false deficiency judgments against property owners after straw buyers acquire homes for pennies on the dollar
– Intentionally file Bankruptcy court “Motion to Lift” and “Proof of Claim” on behalf of NON-EXISTENT lenders, concealing fact of “non-secured” mortgage debt.
–Involved in fraudulent collection of property damage and mortgage insurance for illegally foreclosed homes
–Fraudulent foreclosures abet loss of property taxes to city revenue, rodents, vagrants, and blight. – Thousands of families are being made unlawfully homeless, scores of homes have been fraudulently flipped and communities are blighted from null foreclosure proceedings.
**more: Request for Congressional Foreclosure Panel to Examine Foreclosure Lawyers
http://www.change.org/petitions/view/request_for_congressional_foreclosure_panel_to_examine_foreclosure_lawyers#

L. Randall Wray solves the mystery of the rush to foreclosure in his newest post:

In his Anatomy of Mortgage Fraud Pt II: The Mother of All Frauds Wray points out that the servicers are now hurriedly foreclosing and selling the properties off at fire sale prices and “pay[ing] pennies on the dollar to [MBS] securities holders before they discover they’ve been scammed from here to Pluto.” The banks are destroying the notes that they kept in their warehouses all along (as Wray explained in Part I), in order to destroy evidence that the notes were never conveyed into the trusts, so that there will be no way for the trusts to sue them. This comports with Paul Jackson’s assertions at Housingwire that the intent to convey the notes into the trusts is all that matters. Jackson is a housing industry apologist, and the theory he propounds is the only one that can cover for the banks’ current effort to unwind the fraudulent trusts via massive foreclosures and payouts (at pennies on the dollar), before being hit with an avalanche of requests to pay back the trusts at face value.

This is why the banks are foreclosing en masse now, and why they are selling the REOs in large lots, regardless of the losses. Being caught in the fraud of the empty trusts would be far worse.