CISPA: Will Your Favorite Website Be Used to Spy on You?

by Christine Springer on April 26, 2013

The US Law that Will Turn Websites into Government Spies - Kill CISPADid the headline get your attention? Good.

This is a bit off topic for me, but it really makes me angry and I think I stand a pretty good chance of reaching A LOT of people with this information.

I want you, the readers, to be aware of the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, also known as CISPA, because it’s a threat to your privacy.

If this seems like deja vu, it’s because of last year’s massive protest relating to SOPA. SOPA died because people just like you spoke up and called your elected leaders to tell them to vote against SOPA.

Fight For the Future, a great resource for this issue, says this about CISPA:

“It’s time to get pissed. The U.S. law that would turn Google, Facebook, and Twitter into legally immune government spies just passed the House.

This bill affects everyone — not just U.S. citizens. Anyone with a Facebook account could now have their data shipped directly to the U.S. government. That’s why Internet users overwhelmingly oppose this bill. Over 1.5 million people signed petitions against it. But Congress didn’t listen.

Does this remind you of something? Yep, this is the exact position we were in with SOPA last year. Then the Internet rose up and we made history with the SOPA strike.

This spring, we’re going to organize the largest online privacy protest in history to make sure that CISPA goes the same route as SOPA and doesn’t become the law that breaks … read more . . .

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LASP™ Lesson 12: Recap and Wrap Up

by Christine Springer on April 25, 2013

LASP™ Lesson 12: Recap and Wrap Up At last, we’ve reached the end of the Loan Audit School for Professionals™ series. This is lesson 12 and this is the wrap up. By now, you’ve worked through your workbook, and you understand the steps to auditing.

It starts with preparation: find a quiet place to work, gather all your documents, a pencil, your worksheets, a calculator, a ruler, and maybe something to drink.

Work your way through the workbook and follow the steps, and keep track of the findings of your research. There is a checklist in the back of the book, along with space to write down your notes, and remember that you can also use the space provided in the worksheets provided with the workbooks.

One last thing: don’t forget to check the Loan Audit Tips category for updates! That’s where I will put the new things I find in between the versions of the digital materials.

For those of you who need some help with writing, I have asked my friend Amanda Collins from the Grammar Doctors to write a guest post and film a follow up video with me to share some secrets to writing a great report that accurately conveys your findings to your clients and attorneys.

Go here to get the DIY for Professionals workbook, and here to get the DIY for Borrowers product.

… read more . . .

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LASP™ Lesson 11: Securitization Basics and Discussion of Evidence

by Christine Springer on April 24, 2013

LASP™ Lesson 11: Securitization Basics and Discussion of Evidence This is Lesson 11 of my video lesson series for professionals. If your brain is fried after the previous two, this one’s easy! This lesson is about the basics of securitization and the evidence related to it. You may already be familiar with this information if you’ve been paying attention for the last several years.

A lot of people may not realize that there are many types of debt that gets packaged as a security and sold to investors. Your car loan and credit cards might be securitized. Think about it: if you were a bank, would you want all that sitting on your books? Probably not. A bank is not making money unless it’s loaning money. Selling off debt it is owed allows it to free up capital. This is one reason why the banks have resisted regulation to hold more capital in reserve — they can’t make money on it if they can’t loan it out. Banks are definitely profit driven as we’ve seen in the past five years. There are multiple financial incentives for a bank to foreclose instead of modifying, and the point of these lessons is to help you find an incentives to work with you instead of foreclosing on your house.

The biggest and most obvious issue with securitization of residential loans is that there were so many loans being originated that proper paperwork was just not feasible. They turned to MERS to track securitized loans. This seems like the most obvious explanation to … read more . . .

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LASP™ Lesson 10: Locating and Understanding the Mortgage Schedule on the PSA

by Christine Springer on April 23, 2013

LASP™ Lesson 10: Locating and Understanding the Mortgage Schedule on the PSA I’m pleased to present Lesson 10 of Loan Audit School for Professionals! We’re down to the last several lessons and I’m excited to bring these lessons to a close this week.

In this video, I cover how to find the Mortgage Loan Schedule on the PSA and how I found a loan on a mortgage schedule. I also cover how to to read the information on the columns.

I mention the Securitization Handout that I uploaded to Issuu. I know it looks like something a child could draw, but sometimes simpler is better when it comes to visualizing how things come together. You can use the process of elimination with this handout to figure out what happened to your loan.

I know I’ve said this before, but we are looking at things from the reverse, and it requires some analytical thinking and putting together the puzzle pieces to figure out what happened. You never know what you’re going to find, and that’s why it’s important to do your own investigative work into finding out the facts of your own loan.

Something else I want to mention: if it’s taking you awhile to really grasp these concepts don’t worry! Just keep going on with the lessons. Watch the videos several times if you have to, and work through the workbook several times if you need to. I did not reach the level of understanding that I have overnight, and it’s OK if you don’t either. This is complicated stuff, especially if … read more . . .

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LASP™ Lesson 9: Finding the Name of the Mortgage Pool and Locating the PSA

by Christine Springer on April 22, 2013

LASP™ Lesson 9: Finding the Name of the Mortgage Pool and Locating the PSAThis week, I’m going to post the remaining video lessons to finish up the LASP™ series. This is Lesson 9, and in this video I talk about finding the name of the mortgage pool, and how to locate your Pooling and Servicing Agreement, which may be helpful if you’re fighting foreclosure and the foreclosing entity is a mortgage trust.

Following up on the theme of investigation running through these lessons on where to look for this information, you might not find a PSA at all. That’s not unusual. The bottom line is that you are investigating and you just never know where the information you’re seeking will turn up.

In this lesson, I also got on a bit of a tangent about securitization auditing. I hope it clears up a lot of confusion about why I don’t like securitization audits. The point is, where is the documentation showing the loan was properly conveyed into the mortgage pool? It was never done. That’s why the banks turned to MERS — it was simply too much paperwork, and that’s why we have robo-signer problems. They had to create the paperwork to foreclose of millions of Americans on short notice.

In the next lesson I will talk about how to look for the mortgage schedule, and in another lesson I’ll cover how to read a mortgage schedule.

Go here to get the DIY Mortgage Review for Professionals.

… read more . . .

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