From Livinglies weblog:
Posted on March 18, 2017 by Neil Garfield
https://livinglies.wordpress.com/
Why would Goldman Sachs buy Delinquent and Defective Mortgages?
Posted on March 18, 2017 by Neil Garfield
By the Lending Lies Staff
Just last year Goldman Sachs entered into settlements with state and federal governments over the sale of toxic mortgage backed securities to investors while subsequently shorting the very same securities they were selling. Goldman would agree to provide $1.8 billion in debt relief to delinquent borrowers. However, since Goldman (and likely no other identifiable party) doesn’t owns the debt, Goldman cuts its losses by repackaging the toxic debt, assigning it an AAA rating and selling it to unsuspecting investors and pension funds for a fee, thus off-loading any liability. Goldman knows the feds won’t do anything to stop its crimes spree- so why not sell mortgage backed securities you know are toxic?
Goldman has once again successfully masterminded a new strategy to satisfy the $1.8 billion settlement without having to fund a dollar of that outstanding obligation, and while also profiting on this RICO scheme.
Goldman’s plan includes buying up billions of dollars of non-performing and defective loans at massive discounts. Goldman just announced they were purchasing 4.5 billion dollars in non-performing loans from Fannie Mae. It would be interesting to research if Fannie Mae discloses that these loans have material defects that cannot be remedied.
Goldman then contacts the homeowners and negotiates loan modifications by incentivizing the homeowner to participate by reducing their principle balance. Most desperate and unsuspecting homeowners have no idea that Goldman is acting as a debt collector and there is no underlying party that owns the debt or has a right to modify the mortgage contract in the first place. Once the modification is signed, in theory, a “new” loan is issued that rectifies all past endorsement, assignment and trust issues, while whitewashing all prior fraud.
The homeowner is now making payments on a new loan that is less than Goldman’s initial discount on the original purchase. Goldman than credits the principle forgiveness against its $1.8 billion dollar mortgage relief obligation while making money! Goldman is able to skirt the punishment and the fine costs them nothing because the debt was acquired at an even larger discount.
Finally, the true ingenuity of this plan emerges. Once the loan is modified and performing, the loans can be repackaged and resold as Triple-A paper once again to unsuspecting buyers.
The Wall Street Journal reports that the debt scavengers at Goldman Sachs are the largest buyer of Fannie Mae’s non-performing loans, having purchased $5.7 billion worth of unpaid loans over the past several months. Goldman Sachs should have been barred from ever participating in mortgage backed securities transactions after its last criminal enterprise.
Over the past year-and-a-half, Goldman Sachs has become the largest buyer of severely delinquent home loans from Fannie Mae. In fact, Goldman has acquired nearly two-thirds of $9.6 billion in loans the agency has auctioned off, representing unpaid loan balances in excess of $5.7 billion, according to the Wall Street Journal’s review of government records.
In all, Goldman has spent roughly $4.5 billion on some 26,000 Fannie-owned loans, according to government records. It has also been buying mortgages, from private sellers and Freddie Mac. Apparently while everyone is unloading zombie mortgage loans, Goldman Sachs is buying as much toxic sludge that is available.
According to the government-sponsored enterprise, the portfolio was split into four pools of loans and auctioned off.
The winning bidder of the smallest of the four pools is Igloo Series II Trust (Balbec Capital). That pool contained 1,465 loans that carry an aggregate unpaid principal balance of $246,748,844.
The pool has an average loan size of $168,429; a weighted average note rate of 4.51%; a weighted average delinquency of 29 months; and a weighted average broker’s price opinion loan-to-value ratio of 78.75%.
The remaining $1.43 billion in unpaid principal balance went to MTGLQ Investors, a “significant subsidiary” of Goldman Sachs.
MTGLQ Investors is now a fixture among the NPL sales from both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Last year, MTGLQ Investors bought billion-dollar pools of NPLs from Fannie and Freddie in several different sales.
In this latest sale, MTGLQ Investors bought the remaining three pools of NPLs.
The first pool contained 3,062 loans that carry an aggregate unpaid principal balance of $496,205,215.
Goldman has an excellent business plan. By renegotiating and repackaging worthless mortgage loans it can polish high-risk loans into grade-A paper. The pension funds take on all of the risk if the homeowners default, and Goldman will have kicked the can down the road to the newest suckers in the scheme.
On Tuesday Goldman won the majority of defective loans at Fannie Mae’s latest auction, its largest to date. The bank bought about 8,000 loans with unpaid balances of $1.4 billion.
Goldman has paid between 50 and 90 cents on the dollar for the loans, according to Fannie Mae, however, some (if not all) of these loans are likely not worth a dime until fraudulently modified.
Meanwhile, because Goldman is getting credit toward fulfilling the terms of its settlement, it can afford to pay more for the delinquent loans than other competing bidders, which essentially means they’ve not only created but they have cornered an entire market.
The BlackRobed Mafia 