Monday, October 24, 2011
MERS
[ed. President Obama proposed today to help hundreds of thousands of homeowners refinance their mortgages at a better interest rate. But, as always, there might be a little devil in the details. If you're unfamiliar with MERS, read on and reflect on all the ways bankers have gamed the system.]
by NY Times
The Mortgage Electronic Registration System, or MERS, is owned by banks and mortgage finance firms. It was created during the housing boom to smooth the process of turning mortgages into complex securities -- and to allow lenders to avoid paying registration fees to counties each time the mortgage changed hands. It is the nation's largest electronic mortgage tracking system.
In the fall of 2010, as evidence mounted that many foreclosures may have been mishandled, the system was faulted for sloppiness and questions were raised about whether it was used to sidestep legal requirements. The rising calls for halts to foreclosures suggested that the new approach could in fact have created huge new vulnerabilities for lenders.
In October, on the same day that all 50 state attorneys general announced that they would investigate foreclosure practices, JPMorgan Chase & Company became the first big lender to acknowledge that it had stopped using MERS for foreclosures.
The registration system is an electronic database meant to replace the reams of paper that were once the cornerstone of the residential mortgage market. The registry was also meant to eliminate the need to record changes in property ownership in local land records.
About 60 percent of mortgages in this country show up in local records as being owned by the service. In fact, none are owned by MERS. It was created to act as an agent for others, whether banks or securitization trusts, which own the actual mortgages -- an arrangement that lawyers for homeowners and some judges have called into question.
For centuries, when a property changed hands, the transaction was submitted to county clerks who recorded it and filed it away. These records ensured that the history of a property’s ownership was complete and that the priority of multiple liens placed on the property — a mortgage and a home equity loan, for example — was accurate.
During the mortgage lending spree, however, home loans changed hands constantly. Those that ended up packaged inside of mortgage pools, for instance, were often involved in a dizzying series of transactions. So to avoid the costs and complexity of tracking all these exchanges, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the mortgage industry set up MERS to record loan assignments electronically. This company didn’t own the mortgages it registered, but it was listed in public records either as a nominee for the actual owner of the note or as the original mortgage holder.
by NY Times The Mortgage Electronic Registration System, or MERS, is owned by banks and mortgage finance firms. It was created during the housing boom to smooth the process of turning mortgages into complex securities -- and to allow lenders to avoid paying registration fees to counties each time the mortgage changed hands. It is the nation's largest electronic mortgage tracking system.
In the fall of 2010, as evidence mounted that many foreclosures may have been mishandled, the system was faulted for sloppiness and questions were raised about whether it was used to sidestep legal requirements. The rising calls for halts to foreclosures suggested that the new approach could in fact have created huge new vulnerabilities for lenders.
In October, on the same day that all 50 state attorneys general announced that they would investigate foreclosure practices, JPMorgan Chase & Company became the first big lender to acknowledge that it had stopped using MERS for foreclosures.
The registration system is an electronic database meant to replace the reams of paper that were once the cornerstone of the residential mortgage market. The registry was also meant to eliminate the need to record changes in property ownership in local land records.
About 60 percent of mortgages in this country show up in local records as being owned by the service. In fact, none are owned by MERS. It was created to act as an agent for others, whether banks or securitization trusts, which own the actual mortgages -- an arrangement that lawyers for homeowners and some judges have called into question.
For centuries, when a property changed hands, the transaction was submitted to county clerks who recorded it and filed it away. These records ensured that the history of a property’s ownership was complete and that the priority of multiple liens placed on the property — a mortgage and a home equity loan, for example — was accurate.
During the mortgage lending spree, however, home loans changed hands constantly. Those that ended up packaged inside of mortgage pools, for instance, were often involved in a dizzying series of transactions. So to avoid the costs and complexity of tracking all these exchanges, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the mortgage industry set up MERS to record loan assignments electronically. This company didn’t own the mortgages it registered, but it was listed in public records either as a nominee for the actual owner of the note or as the original mortgage holder.
Jon Herington (Steely Dan)
by Fretboard Journal
For the last decade or so, Jon Herington has been playing alongside Donald Fagan and Walter Becker at Steely Dan tour stops. Night after night, he's performing some of the most complicated arrangements ever crafted for pop music, playing parts originally forged into our memories by guitar legends such as Jeff "Skunk" Baxter and Larry Carlton. Yet, as anyone who has caught Steely Dan recently can attest, Herington is living up to this monumental task. The NYC-based musician, who also plays alongside Madeleine Peyroux and has his own solo career, made time to talk to the Fretboard Journal before his recent Seattle tour date. Look for a longer piece with Herrington in a forthcoming Journal.
FJ: Steely Dan must have one of the more fanatical fan bases around. And every night, you're asked to play on these incredibly complex tunes that the fans have committed to memory, both note and tone-wise. How do you approach a gig like that?
JH: I certainly don’t try all the time to get the sounds that are on the records. For one, it would be really difficult to do. But I often will go for something sort of similar, just because it does seem like what the tune calls for, often. For instance, on "Peg," it would probably sound a little odd not to use a sort of cranked up sound that has some sustain and distortion. (...)
The challenge with this gig is to find a way to keep the level of quality of the playing -- the soloing -- up high, because the records are so great that way. Also, to make sure there’s room for me to do something that’s fresh and spontaneous and not feel locked in to repeating myself all the time. People know the guitar solos on the records better than I do sometimes.
Read more:
Droning On
by Sam Biddle, Gizmodo
Today, our president said every soldier in Iraq is coming home, leading many to believe The War Is Over. Except it's not. Getting humans out of there is great, but the fact is war today doesn't need humans at all.
The recently-ended Libyan war is the perfect example of why soldiers aren't requisite for warfare, and why boots off the ground don't mean much anymore. The rebel ground campaign was the majority of the war, but the aerial minority made revolution possible. The US had neither the support nor the means to invade Libya. It would've been both a political and military blunder. So we had robots do the work for us—and it worked, perfectly. Qaddafi's air defenses and armor were obliterated from control rooms a world away. And this same drone aegis has no reason to leave Iraq—the war in the sky will continue indefinitely, and invisibly.
In Virginia and secret bases throughout Afghanistan and Pakistan, the CIA controls a fleet of MQ-1 Predator and MQ-9 Reaper drones, capable of nailing targets with hundred pound Hellfire missiles as they buzz along near-silently overhead. It's a power unprecedented in the history of blowing thing sup, and not one the CIA is going to relinquish. The fleet isn't accountable to the public. As the Washington Post reported earlier this year, "The CIA doesn't officially acknowledge the drone program, let alone provide public explanation about who shoots and who dies, and by what rules." And given the agency's explosion of counter-terror operators, laboring to dig up "targeting" data and pulling triggers, the agency has every reason to stay aloft in Iraq. "Presumably, we're finding people to blow up in Yemen," agrees defense think tank GlobalSecurity's John Pike, "so [from the CIA's perspective] there will be some who need to be blown up in Iraq." Pike, who has testified before Congress in matters of national defense and collaborated with NASA, knows drones. And he doesn't think they're going anywhere.
"UAVs provide a persistent surveillance capability that satellites do not," Pike explains, giving the government more reason to keep them flying over Baghdad long after american soldiers have been shipped home. The war on terror is indefinite and sprawling, with every inch of the globe a potential target. The near future of Iraq—especially post-occupation—will be a shaky one. The CIA doesn't want shaky futures. "Any area where we feel the government doesn't have effective control of its territory, and [it] can't be solved via law enforcement—that's why we have drones." Iraq has no air force. Iraq's ability to prevent itself from harboring enemies of the CIA is dubious. This gives America's drone fleet a self-justification to fly ad infinitum, and for a smaller war of distant humming and craters to continue as long as the CIA wants.
So how will we ever know when we continue attacks inside Iraq? We won't—except "the people who get blown up. And even they won't know what happened," says Pike.
via:
Photo by USAF
Today, our president said every soldier in Iraq is coming home, leading many to believe The War Is Over. Except it's not. Getting humans out of there is great, but the fact is war today doesn't need humans at all.
The recently-ended Libyan war is the perfect example of why soldiers aren't requisite for warfare, and why boots off the ground don't mean much anymore. The rebel ground campaign was the majority of the war, but the aerial minority made revolution possible. The US had neither the support nor the means to invade Libya. It would've been both a political and military blunder. So we had robots do the work for us—and it worked, perfectly. Qaddafi's air defenses and armor were obliterated from control rooms a world away. And this same drone aegis has no reason to leave Iraq—the war in the sky will continue indefinitely, and invisibly.In Virginia and secret bases throughout Afghanistan and Pakistan, the CIA controls a fleet of MQ-1 Predator and MQ-9 Reaper drones, capable of nailing targets with hundred pound Hellfire missiles as they buzz along near-silently overhead. It's a power unprecedented in the history of blowing thing sup, and not one the CIA is going to relinquish. The fleet isn't accountable to the public. As the Washington Post reported earlier this year, "The CIA doesn't officially acknowledge the drone program, let alone provide public explanation about who shoots and who dies, and by what rules." And given the agency's explosion of counter-terror operators, laboring to dig up "targeting" data and pulling triggers, the agency has every reason to stay aloft in Iraq. "Presumably, we're finding people to blow up in Yemen," agrees defense think tank GlobalSecurity's John Pike, "so [from the CIA's perspective] there will be some who need to be blown up in Iraq." Pike, who has testified before Congress in matters of national defense and collaborated with NASA, knows drones. And he doesn't think they're going anywhere.
"UAVs provide a persistent surveillance capability that satellites do not," Pike explains, giving the government more reason to keep them flying over Baghdad long after american soldiers have been shipped home. The war on terror is indefinite and sprawling, with every inch of the globe a potential target. The near future of Iraq—especially post-occupation—will be a shaky one. The CIA doesn't want shaky futures. "Any area where we feel the government doesn't have effective control of its territory, and [it] can't be solved via law enforcement—that's why we have drones." Iraq has no air force. Iraq's ability to prevent itself from harboring enemies of the CIA is dubious. This gives America's drone fleet a self-justification to fly ad infinitum, and for a smaller war of distant humming and craters to continue as long as the CIA wants.
So how will we ever know when we continue attacks inside Iraq? We won't—except "the people who get blown up. And even they won't know what happened," says Pike.
via:
Photo by USAF
Seasonal Investing
by Barry Ritholtz, The Big Picture
Let’s take a quick look at the history off the seasonal advantages. “The Best Six Months of the Year” was first described by Yale Hirsch in Stock Traders Almanac decades ago. The historical chart below via Investech Research reveals the surprising degree of seasonality for investors, going back 50 years.
Here are the specifics of seasonality: Imagine we start with two $10,000 accounts, and use them to make investments in an S&P 500 Index fund. One account invests in one 6-month period, the other invests in the remaining 6-month period. Account A is invested from November 1st through April 30th each year, while Account B is invested from May 1st through October 31st.
Here are the numbers:
Source:InvesTech Research, October 21, 2011
Technical and Monetary Investment Analysis, Vol11 Iss11
via:
Let’s take a quick look at the history off the seasonal advantages. “The Best Six Months of the Year” was first described by Yale Hirsch in Stock Traders Almanac decades ago. The historical chart below via Investech Research reveals the surprising degree of seasonality for investors, going back 50 years.
Here are the specifics of seasonality: Imagine we start with two $10,000 accounts, and use them to make investments in an S&P 500 Index fund. One account invests in one 6-month period, the other invests in the remaining 6-month period. Account A is invested from November 1st through April 30th each year, while Account B is invested from May 1st through October 31st.
Here are the numbers:
• Account A portfolio grew from $10,000 to over $438,967. That is a 42-fold increase.By selecting the seasonally strong period from November through April, you capture 97.1% of the available performance over the past 52 years. (Note the November-April seasonality fared poorly in 2007 and 2008).
• Account B portfolio barely doubled to $22,659.
Source:InvesTech Research, October 21, 2011
Technical and Monetary Investment Analysis, Vol11 Iss11
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Happy Birthday iPod!
Daniel J. Levitin, a neuroscientist at McGill University, is the author of “This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession.”
Oct. 23 is the 10th anniversary of the iPod. Daniel Levitin reflects on the little gizmo and the many ways it has changed our lives — and the way we listen. via: NY Times
Has the iPod brought more music — more rhythm — into our lives?
Yes. The average 12-year-old can hold in her hand more songs than my great-grandfather would have heard in his entire lifetime. Also, digital music is a great democratizing force for musicians. They no longer have to go through the narrow turnstile of record companies.
Does listening to music through headphones — rather than loudspeakers — affect what we hear?
Headphones potentially offer greater clarity, but at the loss of power and low bass response. Another difference with headphones — a team of researchers in Britain just reported that using headphones reduces your sense of personal space on subways: you’re willing to let someone stand closer to you if you’ve got your tunes playing.
Does listening to an iPod affect your hearing?
Adolescents routinely listen to their iPods at levels exceeding 95 to 100 decibels. That’s about the same loudness you’d hear standing near the tarmac as a 747 takes off. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health allows only eight hours a day of 85 decibels in the workplace; more than that, you’re going to damage your hearing. The hair cells in the ear are very delicate. Once damaged, they usually don’t recover.
Is iPod sound quality better or worse than a basic home stereo system?
Worse. The MP3 standard ruined high fidelity. It’s possible to upload CD-quality onto the iPod. But most people opt for the default, lousy quality of MP3 and M4A compression. An entire generation has grown up never knowing high fidelity, never hearing what the artists heard in the studio when they were recording. This is a real shame.
In your book “This Is Your Brain on Music,” you say music works like a drug. Say more.
Listening to music with others causes the release of oxytocin, a chemical associated with feelings of trust and bonding. That’s partly why music listeners become so connected to the artists they like. Plus, the nucleus accumbens — the brain’s well-known pleasure center — modulates levels of dopamine, the so-called feel-good hormone. (This same brain structure is active when people have sex, or when cocaine addicts take cocaine.)
Can music have mood-altering effects?
Lots of people use music for emotional regulation. It’s similar to the way people use drugs such as caffeine and alcohol: they play a certain kind of music to help get them going in the morning, another kind to unwind after work. Brain surgeons perform their most concentration-intensive procedures while music plays in the background.
iPods change the way we “share” music. For one thing, we don’t listen together. So?
Music listening used to be an activity that we did with great ceremony. We’d invite friends over and sit down, pass the album cover around, study the artwork. And when the record started, we’d listen intently together and do nothing else. In short: music listening was deeply social. The iPod has turned music listening into a mostly solitary experience.
Read more:
Has the iPod brought more music — more rhythm — into our lives?
Yes. The average 12-year-old can hold in her hand more songs than my great-grandfather would have heard in his entire lifetime. Also, digital music is a great democratizing force for musicians. They no longer have to go through the narrow turnstile of record companies.
Does listening to music through headphones — rather than loudspeakers — affect what we hear?
Headphones potentially offer greater clarity, but at the loss of power and low bass response. Another difference with headphones — a team of researchers in Britain just reported that using headphones reduces your sense of personal space on subways: you’re willing to let someone stand closer to you if you’ve got your tunes playing.
Does listening to an iPod affect your hearing?
Adolescents routinely listen to their iPods at levels exceeding 95 to 100 decibels. That’s about the same loudness you’d hear standing near the tarmac as a 747 takes off. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health allows only eight hours a day of 85 decibels in the workplace; more than that, you’re going to damage your hearing. The hair cells in the ear are very delicate. Once damaged, they usually don’t recover.
Is iPod sound quality better or worse than a basic home stereo system?
Worse. The MP3 standard ruined high fidelity. It’s possible to upload CD-quality onto the iPod. But most people opt for the default, lousy quality of MP3 and M4A compression. An entire generation has grown up never knowing high fidelity, never hearing what the artists heard in the studio when they were recording. This is a real shame.
In your book “This Is Your Brain on Music,” you say music works like a drug. Say more.
Listening to music with others causes the release of oxytocin, a chemical associated with feelings of trust and bonding. That’s partly why music listeners become so connected to the artists they like. Plus, the nucleus accumbens — the brain’s well-known pleasure center — modulates levels of dopamine, the so-called feel-good hormone. (This same brain structure is active when people have sex, or when cocaine addicts take cocaine.)
Can music have mood-altering effects?
Lots of people use music for emotional regulation. It’s similar to the way people use drugs such as caffeine and alcohol: they play a certain kind of music to help get them going in the morning, another kind to unwind after work. Brain surgeons perform their most concentration-intensive procedures while music plays in the background.
iPods change the way we “share” music. For one thing, we don’t listen together. So?
Music listening used to be an activity that we did with great ceremony. We’d invite friends over and sit down, pass the album cover around, study the artwork. And when the record started, we’d listen intently together and do nothing else. In short: music listening was deeply social. The iPod has turned music listening into a mostly solitary experience.
Read more:
Sunday, October 23, 2011
A Cultural Thought Experiment
[ed. I had never heard of Charlie Stross until today, but this is quite an amazing essay. If you read it be sure to check out some of the links he provides.]
by Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing
Charlie Stross goes on a tear with "A cultural thought experiment," looking at what the wealth of the 1 percent means, what it can't buy them, and how it might be viewed from a future society.
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by Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing
Charlie Stross goes on a tear with "A cultural thought experiment," looking at what the wealth of the 1 percent means, what it can't buy them, and how it might be viewed from a future society.
The diminishing marginal utility law dictates that the more money we have, the less utility we get from any additional incremental gain. And this bites the top 1% very hard indeed.
Examine the world around us from the point of view of someone with a net income of $5M/year ...
Food is essentially free; you can afford to spend $1000 per meal, three meals a day, in the most expensive restaurants in London or Tokyo or Manhattan, and not make a dent in your income. (Oddly, even the hyper-rich don't typically spend $1000 on lunch every day: a more realistic expectation might be to dine out expensively twice a week, for $100K/year, and have the best of everything in-house the rest of the time, with a live-in chef, for another $100K/year.)
Clothing is essentially free; want a different $5000 suit for every day of the week? That's going to set you back only $35K! Spouse wants a dozen designer evening gowns a year? That's still going to be on the low side of $200K.
Housing is essentially free; $1000/day will rent you a penthouse suite in a five star hotel in Manhattan, while your mortgageable income will let you buy a palace in the $5-20M range. (There are places where you may need to spend more than $20M to buy a house; but not many of them.)
You don't have to do housework, interior decorating, cooking, driving, DIY home improvements, flight booking, or shopping (unless you want to). People can be hired to do any of the above for rates ranging from $15K to $100K per year, depending on the complexity of the job. And you earn $100K per week.A cultural thought experiment [antipope.org]
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[ed. Who doesn't love diatoms?]
Diatoms are a major group of algae, and are one of the most common types of phytoplankton. Most diatoms are unicellular, although they can exist as colonies in the shape of filaments or ribbons (e.g.Fragillaria), fans (e.g. Meridion), zigzags (e.g. Tabellaria), or stellate colonies (e.g. Asterionella). Diatoms are producers within the food chain. A characteristic feature of diatom cells is that they are encased within a unique cell wall made of silica (hydrated silicon dioxide) called a frustule. These frustules show a wide diversity in form, but usually consist of two asymmetrical sides with a split between them, hence the group name. Fossil evidence suggests that they originated during, or before, the early Jurassic Period. Diatom communities are a popular tool for monitoring environmental conditions, past and present, and are commonly used in studies of water quality… (read more: Wikipedia)
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