To read more and apply, go to: https://www.indeed.com/job/remote-front-desk-legal-assistant-96a089bf3979d3f6.

Our South Florida law firm helps people with estate planning, mortgage foreclosure defense, real estate closings, probate and trust administration, and accidents and injuries. Based in Hollywood, Florida but serving clients throughout the state. Let the Law Offices of Evan M. Rosen, P.A. serve you!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Evan and everyone at the Law Offices of Evan M. Rosen, P.A.

Our law firm helps people with real estate closings, foreclosure defense, personal injury, probate, and estate planning. Based in Hollywood, Florida but serving clients throughout the state. Let the Law Offices of Evan M. Rosen, P.A. serve you!

Here are the reports: 

September 2023 Broward County Single Family Homes

September 2023 Broward County Townhouses and Condos

September 2023 Miami-Dade County Single Family Homes

September 2023 Miami-Dade County Townhouses and Condos

September 2023 Palm Beach County Single Family Homes

September 2023 Palm Beach County Townhouses and Condos

Due to listing data being uploaded sometimes weeks after a transaction closes, these reports are often released a few weeks behind. The delay is required to make sure the reports are as accurate as possible.

Our firm helps people with real estate closings, foreclosure defense, estate planning, and probate. Let the Law Offices of Evan M. Rosen, P.A. serve you!

Knowledge is power and here is the latest:

June 2022 Miami-Dade County Single Family Homes

June 2022 Miami-Dade County Townhouses and Condos

June 2022 Broward-County Single Family Homes

June 2022 Broward County Townhouses and Condos

June 2022 Palm Beach County Single Family Homes

June 2022 Palm Beach County Townhouses and Condos

If you or someone you know needs help with a real estate, foreclosure defense, consumer protection, or personal injury matter, please contact us. Let the Law Offices of Evan M. Rosen, P.A. serve you!

March 2022 Miami-Dade Single Family Homes

March 2022 Miami-Dade County Townhouses and Condos

March 2022 Broward County Single Family Homes

March 2022 Broward County Townhouses and Condos

March 2022 Palm Beach County Single Family Homes

March 2022 Palm Beach County Townhouses and Condos

If you or someone you know needs help with a real estate, foreclosure defense, consumer protection, or personal injury matter, please contact us. Let the Law Offices of Evan M. Rosen, P.A. serve you!

In summary, we are seeing increases in sales activity and prices across the board in South Florida. Inventory (supply) is also dropping.

Knowledge is power and here is the latest:

November 2020 Broward County Single Family Homes Report

November 2020 Broward County Townhouses and Condos Report

November 2020 Miami-Dade County Single Family Homes Report

November 2020 Miami-Dade County Townhouses and Condos Report

November 2020 Palm Beach County Single Family Homes Report

November 2020 Palm Beach County Townhouses and Condos Report

In addition to foreclosure defense, debt defense, consumer protection, and bankruptcy, our office continues to help people buy, sell, and refinance real estate. From contract to closing, we can help with all aspects of real estate transactions.

If you or someone you know needs help defending against foreclosure, fighting improper debt collection, obtaining a fresh start in bankruptcy, or buying, selling, or refinancing real estate, please contact us. Let the Law Offices of Evan M. Rosen, P.A. serve you!

For over two decades, I’ve served clients struggling with health, financial, legal, and family issues. Some of my clients have gone on to do very well, some seem to stay stuck, and most are somewhere in the middle. Successful people have a distinct approach to life, work, and problem-solving. And unsuccessful people have a unique approach too, only it holds them back.

As someone who has been fascinated by these distinctions and who believes everyone has the potential for success, I’ve read tons of self-help books and have attended well-known self-improvement workshops. I’ve also interviewed many extremely successful people to find out what makes them tick. And I’ve taken and kept notes from all of it.

About a year ago, I started compiling my notes and workbooks from these experiences–organizing everything in a way that is easy to follow. The result is “Ignite Your Mission to Success,” a seminar and workshop that covers the formula that every successful person uses. Whether it’s Elon Musk, Ray Kroc, or any other very successful person, the formula is the same.

The hour will be fun, uplifting, and eye-opening. And you will not just be sitting in your chair listening/watching the whole time!

Come Join Us for Ignite Your Mission to Success Part I – The Foundation of Success. Click here for more information and to register.

For over two decades, I’ve served clients struggling with health, financial, legal, and family issues. Some of my clients have gone on to do very well, some seem to stay stuck, and most are somewhere in the middle. Successful people have a distinct approach to life, work, and problem-solving. And unsuccessful people have a unique approach too, only it holds them back.

As someone who has been fascinated by these distinctions and who believes everyone has the potential for success, I’ve read tons of self-help books and have attended well-known self-improvement workshops. I’ve also interviewed many extremely successful people to find out what makes them tick. And I’ve taken and kept notes from all of it.

About a year ago, I started compiling my notes and workbooks from these experiences–organizing everything in a way that is easy to follow. The result is “Ignite Your Mission to Success,” a seminar and workshop that covers the formula that every successful person uses. Whether it’s Elon Musk, Ray Kroc, or any other very successful person, the formula is the same.

The hour will be fun, uplifting, and eye-opening. And you will not just be sitting in your chair listening/watching the whole time!

Come Join Us for Ignite Your Mission to Success Part I – The Foundation of Success. Click here for more information and to register.

Evan

For over two decades, I’ve served clients struggling with health, financial, legal, and family issues. Some of my clients have gone on to do very well, some seem to stay stuck, and most are somewhere in the middle. I’ve noticed there are thought and behavior patterns among them. Successful people have a distinct approach to life, work, and problem-solving. And unsuccessful people have a unique approach too, only it holds them back. I’ve been conscious of this for years and have taken notes on it. I’ve also interviewed many extremely successful people to find out what makes them tick. And since I was a teenager, I’ve read tons of self-help books and have attended well-known self-improvement workshops. I’ve taken and kept notes on that too.

About a year ago, I started compiling all my notes and workbooks from these experiences–organizing everything in a way that is easy to follow. And the result is “Ignite Your Mission to Success,” a seminar and workshop that covers every step of the formula for success. It includes worksheets and exercises to help guide you through everything. But instead of spending thousands of dollars and several long days together (like almost all other self-help seminars/workshops), we will cover the material over the course of ten one-hour, reasonably priced Zoom-based webinars. The registration and fee covers one webinar. New invitations will be sent each week. And while it’s best to attend all of the webinars as the content flows from one to the next, you can attend any of them and benefit from it.

The hour will be fun, uplifting, and eye-opening. And you will not just be sitting in your chair listening/watching the whole time!

Come Join Us for Ignite Your Mission to Success Part I – The Foundation of Success. Click here for more information and to register: https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_1H11-AITS8-PnM9Km10OSA.

Quest is a Fortune 500 and S&P 500 company that grossed over $7.7 billion in 2019. Rather than do the right thing and resolve this, they never responded to our early settlement proposals and appealed the judgment. G-d willing, justice will prevail.

Our latest brief is here.

As covered in our blog, the first Order only suspended and tolled statutes “providing for mortgage foreclosure [and eviction] cause[s] of action.” In the most recent July 29th Order, Governor DeSantis suspended and tolled any statutes “providing for final action at the conclusion of a mortgage foreclosure [or eviction] proceeding under Florida law solely when the proceeding arises from non-payment of mortgage by a single-family mortgagor [or non-payment of rent by a residential tenant] adversely affected by the COVID-19 emergency.” (Emphasis added.) The Order defines “adversely affected by the COVID-19 emergency” as “loss of employment, diminished wages or business income, or other monetary loss realized during the Florida State of Emergency directly impacting the ability of a [single-family mortgagor or residential tenant] to make [mortgage or rent] payments.” The Order only lasts through 12:01 A.M. on September 1st.

Unlike before, new residential foreclosure and eviction suits can now be filed. Pending cases can proceed. But “final action[s]” cannot be taken for people “adversely affected” by COVID-19. The final action in foreclosures and evictions are, at worst, when a writ of possession is issued. That is after a judgment is entered and, for foreclosure, after a sale is completed. So arguably under this new Order, cases can proceed to judgment, but sheriffs cannot remove people from their homes who are “adversely affected by [] COVID-19” until September 1st.

As we addressed in our blog about the April 2nd Order, Governor DeSantis’ emergency powers do not give him the authority to stop foreclosures and evictions. The Florida Supreme Court does have that authority and it initially suspended writs of possession on March 24th in Administrative Order AOSC20-17. The suspension ran through the close of business on April 17th. On April 6th, May 4th, and May 21st, the Court specified that the suspension remained. And on June 8th and June 16th, the Court extended writs of possession through June 30th. But on July 2nd, the Florida Supreme Court entered its most recent Order, deleting the section extending writs of possession. So now that June 30th has passed, the Florida Supreme Court Order suspending writs of possession is no longer in effect.

Just like the April 2nd Order, time will tell as to how Florida’s trial courts apply Governor DeSantis’ most recent executive order. Not every judge applied it the same. It’ll also be interesting to see how banks treat it. For many months now, there have been no new foreclosure filings in Dade, Broward, or Palm-Beach. But that is no longer the case. New lawsuits are now hitting the dockets.

COVID-19 is rapidly changing our court system and the rule of law.  Almost every day courts are issuing new administrative orders. I will continue posting as new developments unfold. As it stands, all state and federal courts are processing cases but there are several limitations.

The most significant development is the push to allow witnesses to be sworn in, and testify, remotely. There is also an effort to allow witnesses to sign declarations, bypassing testimony altogether. (I provide links to these orders below.) Allowing evidentiary hearings with witnesses appearing remotely is a profound change from standard face-to-face witness examination. Examining witnesses in person allows a lawyer to observe non-verbal cues and utilize changes in space to enhance the effectiveness of the exam. Numerous trial workshops and books address this. Think of the famous scene from A Few Good Men (see the end of this video followed by this one) where Lieutenant Daniel Kaffee uses spacial distancing, and more, to crush Colonel Nathan Jessep on cross examination. Online witness examinations will destroy the ability to utilize certain techniques. But as I was taught, great lawyers find new ways to innovate and serve their clients. I suspect advances in technology will create opportunities for new techniques to emerge as well. For example, technology has allowed us to conduct background checks during jury selection. Over the years, I’ve done many depositions remotely and have already developed several techniques suited for this format. I’ll continue to brainstorm and roll play as the transition to online trials and depositions advances.

Federal Court – Southern District of Florida:
Chief United States Bankruptcy Judge Isicoff has issued an order allowing evidentiary matters to proceed without live witnesses. (Florida has an almost identical law to the one Judge Isicoff is relying on. I expect we’ll soon see something similar in state court.)

Florida Supreme Court:
All statewide orders can be found here. The most notable for now is the push for remote testimony and swearing of witnesses. See floridasupremecourt.org and paragraph five of this: floridasupremecourt.org

Florida’s Five District Courts of Appeal:
First District (Panhandle/Gainesville/Jacksonville)
Second District (West Coast)
Third District (Miami and the Keys)
Fourth District (Broward, Palm Beach, Indian River, Martin, Okeechobee, and St. Lucie counties)
Fifth District (Daytona, Orlando, and several other nearby counties)
At this point, all appellate courts are proceeding as normal, except that oral arguments for April have been canceled. But in appellate cases, oral arguments are not required. The great majority of our appellate cases over the years have been resolved without that process. Florida’s district courts of appeal have announced that they will review the cases that have oral arguments set for April and will determine which of those cases can be decided without rescheduling in-person oral arguments.

Numerous appellate decisions continue to be issued almost daily. (Throughout the majority of my legal career, I spend most, if not all, of one day each weekend studying new appellate decisions. I typically review the key cases the day they are issued during the week, and then over the weekend, I study, catalog, and save all potentially applicable cases in our cloud-based legal library. Due to the number or appellate decisions that continue to be issued, this process has not changed, so far.)

Broward Circuit Court (Seventeenth Judicial Circuit):
This is the latest order: 17th.flcourts.org “Normal operations” are suspended from March 16th to April 17th. There are various details as to how “mission critical events and proceedings” will be handled. The only mention of foreclosures is that “sales” currently scheduled are suspended and will be rescheduled. But foreclosures appear under the “not mission critical” section of the Order. And for that, “court proceedings are suspended and may only be performed if the presiding judge determines that the matter may effectively be conducted remotely using communication equipment. If the parties or their counsel do not wish to conduct their proceedings using communication equipment or do not have the capability to do so, the proceedings must be continued and rescheduled until at least April 20, 2020, unless all parties stipulate to the matter being determined based solely on the submission of written memoranda. Any such stipulation shall be evidenced by an agreement filed with the Clerk.” As it stands, hearings are being set and cases are proceeding under this paradigm. Evictions, in landlord/tenant matters, are suspended.

On or about April 2, 2020, Broward’s foreclosure division updated its procedures. As it stands, case management conferences and trials for April and May are canceled. But non-evidentiary hearings can proceed via Zoom.

Dade Circuit Court (Eleventh Judicial Circuit):
Pursuant to the latest order, all “non-emergency court proceedings” scheduled from March 17th through March 27th are canceled. Hearings and trials set beyond that remain on the calendar for now. (We have trials set for April 1st and April 6th. Both of those remain scheduled, for now.) By separate announcement, evictions in landlord/tenant cases have been suspended.

Palm Beach Circuit Court (Fifteenth Judicial Circuit):
Similarly, cases are continuing with various restrictions. Under the latest order, the court remains open for “essential” proceedings. In-person, non-essential proceedings are suspended until May 1st. Jury proceedings are suspended indefinitely. But the presiding judge in each case is authorized to develop their own procedures to proceed with all “non-essential court proceedings” remotely.  So far, it appears evictions have not been suspended.

HUD/FNMA/FHLMC/Federal Government:
This past week the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (“HUD”) announced that it is suspending foreclosure for the next sixty days on FHA-insured loans for single family homes and reverse mortgages. The Federal Housing Finance Agency (“FHFA”) made a similar announcement for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac loans. But FHFA went a step further by vaguely referencing temporary relief for those who are unable to pay due to the coronavirus. It seems this only applies to those who, but for the coronavirus, would be current on their loan.

On March 20th, as part of a call to work on a case, I spoke with the managing partner of one of Florida’s largest foreclosure law firms. Before we dove into the matter, I was eager to hear what was going on in the banking world, how everyone is handling COVID-19, and what the industry’s position is on the last regulatory comments. This particular firm represents many banks and servicers and the seasoned bank lawyer told me that their clients had varying ideas on how they planned to handle the crisis. The firm was getting different instructions from different people. We’ve seen this dynamic before.

During hurricanes and while loan modification applications are under review, there are similar directives demanding banks and servicers to stop prosecuting foreclosures. But HUD, FHFA, and other regulatory agencies do not have authority to unilaterally command the courts to change their procedures. We have seen many instances in the past where banks, servicers, lawyers, and judges ignore regulatory comments, like the ones FHFA and HUD issued this past week. However, this situation is unlike any other we’ve seen. I expect much more specifics and binding changes will be made soon.

I know this is a lot of information and like the virus itself, much of the particulars still need to be sorted out. For example, as I was finishing up this e-mail my Google “foreclosure” news alert served up a Bloomberg article indicating Wells Fargo will halt residential property foreclosure sales, evictions, and automobile repossessions. I don’t see anything posted on Wells Fargo’s website and even if true, sales, evictions, and repossessions are the tail end of those legal proceedings. So at best, Wells Fargo cases will continue to press forward but somehow they will try to stop the process just before closing it out? When it comes to foreclosures, sales come after final judgments, and the courts control the sale process as mandated by section 45.031, Florida Statutes. Wells Fargo does not control our courts’ judicial sales process. At best, they can ask the court to cancel or reschedule a sale and then it’s up to the court to grant or deny that request. Still, I’m grateful for the apparent effort. And again, I expect more specifics will be coming from the financial industry, regulators, and our government soon.

If you have any specific questions, please feel free to e-mail or call and I’ll respond as soon as I can. Since March 13th, our office team continues to work from home. Our phones and computers have been 100% cloud-based for many years so the shift has been seamless. And the pandemic has not slowed our workload one bit so far. Banks are still pushing cases and we are still working weekdays, nights, and weekends to serve our clients. Of course, during all of this, we’ll continue thinking of our family, friends, clients (as well as their families and friends).

I’d like to leave you with a helpful tidbit. An orthodontist friend of mine posted a great video about how to make masks should you need them, or want to create and donate them.

Evan and all of us at the Law Offices of Evan M. Rosen, P.A.

For more information, go to:

https://www.martindale.com/ratings-and-reviews

https://www.martindale.com/attorney/mr-evan-maxwell-rosen-788352

We help clients defend against foreclosure, fight improper debt collection, and seek justice for their injuries. Let the Law Offices of Evan M. Rosen Serve You!

If I could have your attention please Some words I’d like to say I’m so glad we’re all together What an amazing day!

So much we’ve accomplished Together over this past year Helped so many others There is a lot for us to cheer

As of last count 257 trials we’ve attended A challenge it’s been, The results have been splendid

And let’s not forget We also won some appeals All on behalf of homeowners For us, they are head over heels

Some major changes We’ve worked through together One of which Keeps us out of the bad weather

We are also now able to walk To one of the busiest courthouses Where we face bank lawyers Many of whom are such louses!

Another change Welcomes a new attorney to our ranks How great he is At f–king with the banks!

So many changes are behind us We have let the dust settle After this break is over We can put the pedal to the metal!

We are lining up our hearings Getting Randy acclimated to our ways Hopefully for our clients We’ll continue to amaze

Two steps back And now a running jump ahead Our excellent reputation Should soon be even more widespread

Warriors of justice like us There are so few We all care so much for our cause What a special crew

I always brag How together we are like no others But the truth is, in this fight We have many brothers

What we are Is the people’s bail-out We’ll have a place in history About this, there is no doubt

Most important to me To our mission we stay true Helping those in their pursuit of happiness That’s what we do!

For your ability Our office is a showcase Stay focused on the details And we’ll continue to make the world a better place

At this time, I ask Please raise your glasses To us and the miracles we are a part of Not to the banks, who are such asses!

Happy Holidays!

Evan and all of us at The Law Offices of Evan M. Rosen, P.A.

On voir dire, the witness from Seterus testified that he just saw the original note today for the first time and learned of the file a few weeks ago in prep for trial.  Same facts as Kelsey vs SunTrust Mortgage, Inc. I argued authenticity of the note.  Also, the note the Plaintiff had in Court was different than note attached to complaint!  I argued several cases that say the Plaintiff is bound by its pleadings.  The pleadings frame the case and are considered judicial admissions. Objections overruled – Note in evidence.

Mortgage – No evidence it was ever recorded (no stamps from the clerk’s office) and it was not even certified!  I argued that it was not self authenticating and based on Yang v. Sebasian Lakes Condominium Assoc, Glarum v Lasalle Bank National Association and my voir dire of the Seterus representative, who confirmed he knew nothing about a Suntrust mortgage, the mortgage is also hearsay.  Objections overruled – Mortgage in evidence.

Next, I did an extensive voir dire on the acceleration letter and loan history.  The witness from Seterus was honest.  No cutsey B.S. like some of the other robo-witnesses.  He just flat out has no idea what happens at Suntrust because he works for Seterus and has never worked for Suntrust.  Yet, both the acceleration letter and loan history are from Suntrust.  I explain to the Judge and make authentication and hearsay objections.  Overruled – Both the acceleration letter and loan history are in evidence.

On cross examination, I cover that the amount in default in the acceleration letter is wrong.  We find more and more of these mistakes during our very thorough, item by item review of the pay history.   Also, the witness can’t compute any totals. I tee up the issues up via my questions and then argue Sas v. Federal National Mortgage Association.  There are all kinds of other Paragraph 22 problems with the standard Suntrust acceleration letter which I walk the witness through.

The Judge did keep out a Fannie Mae screen shot and Power of Attorney based on my reliance on Binger v. King Pest Control – neither were listed on the exhibit list nor provided in response to our request to make copies of exhibits available.

At the close of the Plaintiff’s case, I move for involuntary dismissal. I go back over all of the above issues, adding in the witness’ lack of comfort and familiarity with the pay history.  I also rely on my “reverse Elston” as I call it.  On cross, I get the Seterus rep to admit there’s no records evidencing that Seterus is authorized to testify, foreclose, enforce, or possess on behalf of the Plaintiff, Fannie Mae.  The acceleration letter is deficient and there was no evidence it was mailed – I was able to obtain a crystal clear admission on that point via my cross examination as well.

In response, Plaintiff’s attorney mis-characterizes all the evidence, as they typically do.  I take careful notes and call her out on it.  Then, the Plaintiff’s attorney repeats some nonsense and adds something to the effect of, “Judge, everyone knows Plaintiff owns the loan, you can look it up online!”  In my response, I deflate a couple of her issues, highlight that the Plaintiff has had over 2 years to prepare for this day, their day in court, to meet their burden etc…  Then, with a look of bewilderment, I slowly repeat the Plaintiff’s argument back to the court, verbatim, about “everyone knows…look it up online!?!”  Judge cuts me off, she’s finally had enough – Involuntary Dismissal GRANTED! 

Once again, the lesson rebranded in my psyche –  stay focused, stay calm and keep pushing!  Keep making simple, concise evidentiary and procedural objections, demonstrating that you know exactly what you are doing, and keep handing the judge cases on key points.  What I cannot accurately recount above, without the transcript, is all the evidentiary and procedural objections that I raised throughout this trial. It depends on the Plaintiff and the witness and moreover, the questions asked, but in this trial I had so much to which I needed to object.  I was standing up to object so much to make objections that about half way through the trial, I just stopped sitting back down and stayed standing.  By diligently and consistently pressing, only with good faith, legally sound objections and argument, eventually, the cumulative effect paid off. This is certainly not the first time we have won a case after most of the trial has gone horribly wrong. Hopefully, it won’t be the last.

This particular judge’s courtroom has been a known slaughterhouse for the defense.  I was told by an excellent foreclosure defense attorney, who lost three recent trials with this Judge, that this may have been that Judge’s first defense ruling. Hopefully, we’ve helped this judge see the light and come around to many more defense rulings in the future!

I had the pleasure of having an attendee from one of my Foreclosure Trial Workshops observe this trial.  She gave me the second nicest compliment I’ve received from a fellow lawyer.  She said watching me in trial was “like watching ice skating.”  I was completely relaxed, completely focused and just kept pushing – mostly with a smile on my face.  (If you’re curious, the nicest compliment I’ve ever received from a lawyer came from a bank lawyer, from a large law firm.  At a case status conference he told an associate from our office that he will do whatever it takes to push their client to settle because, “I’ve seen Evan in trial and I really don’t want to face that again!”)

~

If you are in Florida and are looking for help with debt, foreclosure, real estate or want more information about bankruptcy law, call us at (855) 55-ROSEN or fill out our online form for a FREE CONSULTATION. Let the lawyers and staff at the Law Offices of Evan M. Rosen serve you!

Of course, initially, my mind repeated an internal loop of things I could have said or done differently. Mentioning the Boultbee case which stands for the proposition that a denial along with raising the specific statute, similar to the specific paragraph in the mortgage, in an affirmative defense, without more, is enough to adequately deny the general allegation that conditions precedent have been met to shift the burden back to the Plaintiff to prove that element of their case, is one example.  We did cite that case in our brief but this point is in a footnote.  I sure hope the Judges see that.  There were others but that was the one that bothered me most. This may or may not have made a difference and second guessing your performance as a lawyer is part of the job.  However, overall, I knew the law and was proud of the way things went.  I received a number of calls and emails from trial and appellate lawyers whom I respect and admire and the feedback was positive.  Especially since appellate law sets precedent, this was reassuring. As much as my focus is on serving my clients, I know that many others can be affected by this ruling.

Taking a further step back, I can’t help but wonder whether or not this case would have even needed to be appealed if it were not a foreclosure case.  A few years ago, just before the foreclosure crisis, I was in the middle of a 5-day jury trial.  In the case, like in almost all others, the Judge was called upon to rule as to whether or not a document could be admitted into evidence for the jury to consider in its deliberations.  It was a small, one of many, physical therapy bill.  Rather than seek someone from the physical therapist’s office to admit the bill in a case that involved major surgeries, we sought to admit it through the testimony of a doctor.  The doctor knew the bill was fair and accurate, and even knew that the services were ordered, reasonable, and necessary.  However, as required by Florida Statutes 90.803(6), he could not testify as to when the bill was made, how it was made, how it was kept, and whether or not it was made by a person with knowledge. We had admitted similar evidence in other cases usually by agreement but this opposing lawyer would not stipulate.  Because the doctor couldn’t truthfully testify to the issues or “prongs” required by 90.803(6), the judge properly excluded the bill from coming into evidence.  We had our client later testify based on her personal knowledge as to the amount of that bill so no harm was done.

However, while preparing for the Murillo appeal, that fairly routine trial experience, one of many as a litigator for over 15 years, kept coming to mind.  In this pending appeal, while the witness for the Plaintiff did actually work for the bank, her knowledge of relevant portions of the bank’s vast operations were just as foreign to her as the physical therapist’s business records were to the doctor.  This bank witness worked only in cases in litigation.  She never testified that she had any training in record preparation or maintenance, or whether or not the record was prepared by a person with knowledge. She admitted to never playing any role in how records were made or kept by the bank.  Yet for some reason, up until now, that was good enough in this case.

The evidence code is a body of law which guides what our courts, judges, and juries can and cannot consider in its deliberations.  It applies equally to all cases.  Criminal and civil, murder and personal injury, and yes, foreclosures. It matters not.  Lady justice is blindfolded so that all who come before her and the causes they seek to remedy are treated equally.

A foundational bedrock to the ideal of equal application of the law, the evidence code was designed to protect us from incorrect or inaccurate information.  Whether it be information which has been manipulated solely for trial, deliberately or by accident, or just information which circumstances show a “lack of trustworthiness.”  The code is the equivalent of a computer’s anti-virus software, acting as a barrier so that information of questionable reliability does not unduly influence the rule of law in any particular case.  Sure, there are times when cases are won or lost on evidentiary technicalities, when justice might require a different outcome.  However, eventually the rule of law, when applied correctly, almost always gets it right.

Besides, we are all bound by the law.  This is one of the chief principles of a civilized society.  A Judge regarded as among the most brilliant in the history of South Florida jurisprudence, who served as Chief Justice of his district for 21 years and yet still serves on the bench, once summed it up in a specially concurring legal opinion, “[a]s someone – probably either St. Thomas More or George Costanza – must have said, the law is the law. Notwithstanding the distasteful consequences of applying it in this case, it must be served.”

Also, not far from my thoughts are the injustice of this entire crisis that we are still very much working through.  After Wall Street’s greed filled treasure bath and endless admissions to crimes resulting in the near decimation of our middle class, rather than hold them accountable, we coddled them back to life with trillions of dollars in near zero percent federal reserve loans.  And we did this so they can now repossess houses by the thousands, per week?  These houses are then sold in bulk at steep discounts to hedge funds and other insiders and “investors.”  I struggle to see the fairness or logic in this. Yet, even principal reductions, which may yield more to the banks then the status quo, do not work for so many who cannot afford their homes even if the loan balance was slashed to fair market value.  All I ask for is to just apply the rule of law.

Which leads me to my last point, paradigm shift. Not only are we suddenly facing a new reality of dispossessing so many of their homes with no end in sight, of letting the financial industry escape accountability while moon walking away with golden parachutes and yacht-loads of loot, but there also seems to have been a shift in how we tolerate lies and false statements.  In the Murillo case, opposing counsel in his oral argument and brief made statement after statement which the record and transcript clearly show in black and white to be false.  Their recitations of my objections, my answer to the Complaint, and the witness’ testimony, in multiple respects, were just not accurate.  An extremely accomplished judge with nearly 400 jury trials under her, Tae Kwon Do black belt, should be able to rely on appellee’s brief when reading back passages in Court without me pointing out that what she just read and what was stated more than once in that brief was not true.  The witness never testified that she had daily involvement in a supervisory capacity, that it was customary to prepare and maintain the Notice of Acceleration, that there was a procedure for creating these notices nor that she was familiar with that practice and procedure. Yet all of these false statements were in appellee’s brief, in some instances, multiple times and others with cites to the record that do not support the the appellee’s statements!  In addition, the appellee in their brief misstates the holding of what the 2004 version of Jackson v. State case held!

I am regularly served with documents certified by lawyers as being given to me on a certain day yet I receive it on a different day, irrefutably email time stamped.  I’ve recently seen responses somehow dated before the documents which prompted the response and conveniently also not filed with the court when they were dated.  I’ve stood with gaping jaw, watching countless lawyers appear in court, never having opened the file, totally unprepared, making it up as they go.  Apparently, some think the recipe for turning falsehoods into truths through repetition works in more than just politics.  In a court of law and in communicating with judges and other lawyers, misquoting the record numerous times in an attempt to “win” the case, filing documents with false certifications, back dating, and appearing in court completely unprepared used to be sanctionable conduct.  In my universe, this is the greatest paradigm shift.  I find myself having to fight back from becoming tolerant of these intolerable offenses.  If I got as frustrated as I used to get every time I saw or heard a statement from a lawyer who either knows or seemingly should know that statement was false, I probably would have had to check into Bellevue by now.  So I’ve had to, for my own sanity, learn to emotionally let it go while taking as much action as I can. I can’t solve the world’s problems but I can keep fighting for truth and the rule of law.

I know that it won’t come easy.  Great achievement only comes with great sacrifice, which I’ll continue to do while serving others in the meaningful way that law has provided.  I also know I’m not alone.  There are still plenty of others, in judge’s benches and jury boxes, and in and out of courtrooms doing the same, serving others and standing up for the rule of law.  We all want the same thing, a system that works for all, as best as possible, that we can count on regardless of the money, property, or liberty at stake, and one in which false statements and lack of professional diligence are not tolerated.

As soon as the results are in from Murillo v BAC, I’ll be sure to post!

~

If you are in South Florida and are looking for help with debt, foreclosure, student loans, real estate or want more information about bankruptcy law, call us at (754) 400-5150 or fill out our online form for a FREE CONSULTATION.  Let the lawyers and staff at the Law Offices of Evan M. Rosen serve you!

We are a debt relief agency.  In addition to other legal services, we help clients file for bankruptcy relief under the Bankruptcy Code.

“The enactment of §702.015 is useless, unnecessary and will not expedite the foreclosure process. It gives inadequate remedies to persons who may be seriously injured. It does not give any consideration to existing law on several points. The real problem faced in the foreclosure crisis has been the unwillingness of trial courts to insist on plaintiffs properly preparing the pleadings under existing law, enforcing existing law on the standing of plaintiffs; the refusal of appellate courts to properly enforce existing law on standing in foreclosures; and the unwillingness of banks to promptly push foreclosures to judgment to avoid paying real property taxes, condominium assessments and maintenance for the foreclosed property.”

Copy of the letter below…

If you are in South Florida and are looking for help with debt, foreclosure, real estate or want more information about bankruptcy law, call us at (754) 400-5150 or fill out our online form for a FREE CONSULTATION.  Let the lawyers and staff at the Law Offices of Evan M. Rosen serve you!

Suspicious signatures.
False addresses.
Unauthorized signers.
Omissions of authentic signer identification.
Rights of the public violated.
Replacement documents when no originals had been executed.
Predictions of onslaught of lawsuits.
Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigating.
Lawyers for Obama and Romney voice concern, outrage.
State officials clamor for answers and procedures to address the “chaos”.

So, what did it take for attention to be paid to mass document fraud?

No.  Sadly, it was not the dispossession of tens of millions of American people that won the urgent attention of regulators, elected officials, political party operatives, and law enforcement.  Rather it is the emerging story of a Republican party registering agent accused of widespread voter registration fraud in Florida.  Read more here.

~

If you are looking for help with debt, foreclosure, real estate or want more information about bankruptcy law, call us at (754) 400-5150 or fill out our online form for a FREE CONSULTATION. Let the lawyers and staff at the Law Offices of Evan M. Rosen serve you!

We are a debt relief agency. In addition to other legal services, we help clients file for bankruptcy relief under the Bankruptcy Code.

“Everyone knows that he is fantastically rich, having scored great success, the legend goes, as a “turnaround specialist,” a shrewd financial operator who revived moribund companies as a high-priced consultant for a storied Wall Street private equity firm. But what most voters don’t know is the way Mitt Romney actually made his fortune: by borrowing vast sums of money that other people were forced to pay back. This is the plain, stark reality that has somehow eluded America’s top political journalists for two consecutive presidential campaigns: Mitt Romney is one of the greatest and most irresponsible debt creators of all time. In the past few decades, in fact, Romney has piled more debt onto more unsuspecting companies, written more gigantic checks that other people have to cover, than perhaps all but a handful of people on planet Earth.”

“The result has been a brilliant comedy: A man makes a $250 million fortune loading up companies with debt and then extracting million-dollar fees from those same companies, in exchange for the generous service of telling them who needs to be fired in order to finance the debt payments he saddled them with in the first place. That same man then runs for president riding an image of children roasting on flames of debt, choosing as his running mate perhaps the only politician in America more pompous and self-righteous on the subject of the evils of borrowed money than the candidate himself. If Romney pulls off this whopper, you’ll have to tip your hat to him: No one in history has ever successfully run for president riding this big of a lie. It’s almost enough to make you think he really is qualified for the White House.”

“Mitt Romney – a man whose own father built cars and nurtured communities, and was one of the old-school industrial anachronisms pushed aside by the new generation’s wealth grab – has emerged now to sell this make-nothing, take-everything, screw-everyone ethos to the world. He’s Gordon Gekko, but a new and improved version, with better PR – and a bigger goal. A takeover artist all his life, Romney is now trying to take over America itself. And if his own history is any guide, we’ll all end up paying for the acquisition.”

“Willard “Mitt” Romney’s background in many ways suggests a man who was born to be president – disgustingly rich from birth, raised in prep schools, no early exposure to minorities outside of maids, a powerful daddy to clean up his missteps, and timely exemptions from military service. In Romney’s bio there are some eerie early-life similarities to other recent presidential figures. (Is America really ready for another Republican president who was a prep-school cheerleader?) And like other great presidential double-talkers such as Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, Romney has shown particular aptitude in the area of telling multiple factual versions of his own life story.

“I longed in many respects to actually be in Vietnam and be representing our country there,” he claimed years after the war. To a different audience, he said, “I was not planning on signing up for the military. It was not my desire to go off and serve in Vietnam.”

“Like John F. Kennedy and George W. Bush, men whose way into power was smoothed by celebrity fathers but who rebelled against their parental legacy as mature politicians, Mitt Romney’s career has been both a tribute to and a repudiation of his famous father. George Romney in the 1950s became CEO of American Motors Corp., made a modest fortune betting on energy efficiency in an age of gas guzzlers and ended up serving as governor of the state of Michigan only two generations removed from the Romney clan’s tradition of polygamy. For Mitt, who grew up worshipping his tall, craggily handsome, politically moderate father, life was less rocky: Cranbrook prep school in suburban Detroit, followed by Stanford in the Sixties, a missionary term in which he spent two and a half years trying (as he said) to persuade the French to “give up your wine,” and Harvard Business School in the Seventies. Then, faced with making a career choice, Mitt chose an odd one: Already married and a father of two, he left Harvard and eschewed both politics and the law to enter the at-the-time unsexy world of financial consulting.”

“The reality is that toward the middle of his career at Bain, Romney made a fateful strategic decision: He moved away from creating companies like Staples through venture capital schemes, and toward a business model that involved borrowing huge sums of money to take over existing firms, then extracting value from them by force. He decided, as he later put it, that “there’s a lot greater risk in a startup than there is in acquiring an existing company.” In the Eighties, when Romney made this move, this form of financial piracy became known as a leveraged buyout, and it achieved iconic status thanks to Gordon Gekko in Wall Street. Gekko’s business strategy was essentially identical to the Romney–Bain model, only Gekko called himself a “liberator” of companies instead of a “helper.”

“Here’s how Romney would go about “liberating” a company: A private equity firm like Bain typically seeks out floundering businesses with good cash flows. It then puts down a relatively small amount of its own money and runs to a big bank like Goldman Sachs or Citigroup for the rest of the financing. (Most leveraged buyouts are financed with 60 to 90 percent borrowed cash.) The takeover firm then uses that borrowed money to buy a controlling stake in the target company, either with or without its consent. When an LBO is done without the consent of the target, it’s called a hostile takeover; such thrilling acts of corporate piracy were made legend in the Eighties, most notably the 1988 attack by notorious corporate raiders Kohlberg Kravis Roberts against RJR Nabisco, a deal memorialized in the bookBarbarians at the Gate.”

“Romney and Bain avoided the hostile approach, preferring to secure the cooperation of their takeover targets by buying off a company’s management with lucrative bonuses. Once management is on board, the rest is just math. So if the target company is worth $500 million, Bain might put down $20 million of its own cash, then borrow $350 million from an investment bank to take over a controlling stake.”

“But here’s the catch. When Bain borrows all of that money from the bank, it’s the target company that ends up on the hook for all of the debt.
“Now your troubled firm – let’s say you make tricycles in Alabama – has been taken over by a bunch of slick Wall Street dudes who kicked in as little as five percent as a down payment. So in addition to whatever problems you had before, Tricycle Inc. now owes Goldman or Citigroup $350 million. With all that new debt service to pay, the company’s bottom line is suddenly untenable: You almost have to start firing people immediately just to get your costs down to a manageable level.”

“That interest,” says Lynn Turner, former chief accountant of the Securities and Exchange Commission, “just sucks the profit out of the company.”

“Once all that debt is added, one of two things can happen. The company can fire workers and slash benefits to pay off all its new obligations to Goldman Sachs and Bain, leaving it ripe to be resold by Bain at a huge profit. Or it can go bankrupt – this happens after about seven percent of all private equity buyouts – leaving behind one or more shuttered factory towns. Either way, Bain wins. By power-sucking cash value from even the most rapidly dying firms, private equity raiders like Bain almost always get their cash out before a target goes belly up.

This business model wasn’t really “helping,” of course – and it wasn’t new. Fans of mob movies will recognize what’s known as the “bust-out,” in which a gangster takes over a restaurant or sporting goods store and then monetizes his investment by running up giant debts on the company’s credit line. (Think Paulie buying all those cases of Cutty Sark in Goodfellas.) When the note comes due, the mobster simply torches the restaurant and collects the insurance money. Reduced to their most basic level, the leveraged buyouts engineered by Romney followed exactly the same business model. “It’s the bust-out,” one Wall Street trader says with a laugh. “That’s all it is.”

Private equity firms aren’t necessarily evil by definition. There are many stories of successful turnarounds fueled by private equity, often involving multiple floundering businesses that are rolled into a single entity, eliminating duplicative overhead. Experian, the giant credit-rating tyrant, was acquired by Bain in the Nineties and went on to become an industry leader.

But there’s a key difference between private equity firms and the businesses that were America’s original industrial cornerstones, like the elder Romney’s AMC. Everyone had a stake in the success of those old businesses, which spread prosperity by putting people to work. But even private equity’s most enthusiastic adherents have difficulty explaining its benefit to society. Marc Wolpow, a former Bain colleague of Romney’s, told reporters during Mitt’s first Senate run that Romney erred in trying to sell his business as good for everyone. “I believed he was making a mistake by framing himself as a job creator,” said Wolpow. “That was not his or Bain’s or the industry’s primary objective. The objective of the LBO business is maximizing returns for investors.” When it comes to private equity, American workers – not to mention their families and communities – simply don’t enter into the equation.

Take a typical Bain transaction involving an Indiana-based company called American Pad and Paper. Bain bought Ampad in 1992 for just $5 million, financing the rest of the deal with borrowed cash. Within three years, Ampad was paying $60 million in annual debt payments, plus an additional $7 million in management fees. A year later, Bain led Ampad to go public, cashed out about $50 million in stock for itself and its investors, charged the firm $2 million for arranging the IPO and pocketed another $5 million in “management” fees. Ampad wound up going bankrupt, and hundreds of workers lost their jobs, but Bain and Romney weren’t crying: They’d made more than $100 million on a $5 million investment.”

Then in 2000, right before Romney gave up his ownership stake in Bain Capital, the firm targeted KB Toys. The debacle that followed serves as a prime example of the conflict between the old model of American business, built from the ground up with sweat and industry know-how, and the new globalist model, the Romney model, which uses leverage as a weapon of high-speed conquest.

In a typical private-equity fragging, Bain put up a mere $18 million to acquire KB Toys and got big banks to finance the remaining $302 million it needed. Less than a year and a half after the purchase, Bain decided to give itself a gift known as a “dividend recapitalization.” The firm induced KB Toys to redeem $121 million in stock and take out more than $66 million in bank loans – $83 million of which went directly into the pockets of Bain’s owners and investors, including Romney. “The dividend recap is like borrowing someone else’s credit card to take out a cash advance, and then leaving them to pay it off,” says Heather Slavkin Corzo, who monitors private equity takeovers as the senior legal policy adviser for the AFL-CIO.

Bain ended up earning a return of at least 370 percent on the deal, while KB Toys fell into bankruptcy, saddled with millions in debt. KB’s former parent company, Big Lots, alleged in bankruptcy court that Bain’s “unjustified” return on the dividend recap was actually “900 percent in a mere 16 months.” Patnode, by contrast, was fired in December 2008, after almost four decades on the job. Like other employees, he didn’t get a single day’s severance

In the end, Bain never bothered to come up with a plan for how KB Toys could meet the 21st-century challenges of video games and cellphone gadgets that were the company’s ostensible downfall. And that’s where Romney’s self-touted reputation as a turnaround specialist is a myth. In the Bain model, the actual turnaround isn’t necessary. It’s just a cover story. It’s nice for the private equity firm if it happens, because it makes the acquired company more attractive for resale or an IPO. But it’s mostly irrelevant to the success of the takeover model, where huge cash returns are extracted whether the captured firm thrives or not.”

“In the Eighties, when Romney and Bain were cutting their teeth in the LBO business, the primary magic trick involved the junk bonds pioneered by convicted felon Mike Milken, which allowed firms like Bain to find easy financing for takeovers by using wildly overpriced distressed corporate bonds as collateral. Junk bonds gave the Gordon Gekkos of the world sudden primacy over old-school industrial titans like the Fords and the Rockefellers: For the first time, the ability to make deals became more valuable than the ability to make stuff, and the ability to instantly engineer billions in illusory financing trumped the comparatively slow process of making and selling products for gradual returns.”

Romney was right in the middle of this radical change. In fact, according to The Boston Globe – whose in-depth reporting on Romney and Bain has spanned three decades – one of Romney’s first LBO deals, and one of his most profitable, involved Mike Milken himself. Bain put down $10 million in cash, got $300 million in financing from Milken and bought a pair of department-store chains, Bealls Brothers and Palais Royal. In what should by now be a familiar outcome, the two chains – which Bain merged into a single outfit called Stage Stores – filed for bankruptcy protection in 2000 under the weight of more than $444 million in debt. As always, Bain took no responsibility for the company’s demise. (If you search the public record, you will not find a single instance of Mitt Romney taking responsibility for a company’s failure.) Instead, Bain blamed Stage’s collapse on “operating problems” that took place three years after Bain cashed out, finishing with a $175 million return on its initial investment of $10 million.

But here’s the interesting twist: Romney made the Bealls-Palais deal just as the federal government was launching charges of massive manipulation and insider trading against Milken and his firm, Drexel Burnham Lambert. After what must have been a lengthy and agonizing period of moral soul-searching, however, Romney decided not to kill the deal, despite its shady financing. “We did not say, ‘Oh, my goodness, Drexel has been accused of something, not been found guilty,’ ” Romney told reporters years after the deal. “Should we basically stop the transaction and blow the whole thing up?”

In an even more incredible disregard for basic morality, Romney forged ahead with the deal even though Milken’s case was being heard by a federal district judge named Milton Pollack, whose wife, Moselle, happened to be the chairwoman of none other than Palais Royal. In short, one of Romney’s first takeover deals was financed by dirty money – and one of the corporate chiefs about to receive a big payout from Bain was married to the judge hearing the case. Although the SEC took no formal action, it issued a sharp criticism, complaining that Romney was allowing Milken’s money to have a possible influence over “the administration of justice.”

“After Milken and his junk bond scheme crashed in the late Eighties, Romney and other takeover artists moved on to Wall Street’s next get-rich-quick scheme: the tech-Internet stock bubble. By 1997 and 1998, there were nearly $400 billion in leveraged buyouts a year, as easy money once again gave these financial piracy firms the ammunition they needed to raid companies like KB Toys. Firms like Bain even have a colorful pirate name for the pools of takeover money they raise in advance from pension funds, university endowments and other institutional investors. “They call it dry powder,” says Slavkin Corzo, the union adviser.

After the Internet bubble burst and private equity started cashing in on Wall Street’s mortgage scam, LBO deals ballooned to almost $900 billion in 2006. Once again, storied companies with long histories and deep regional ties were descended upon by Bain and other pirates, saddled with hundreds of millions in debt, forced to pay huge management fees and “dividend recapitalizations,” and ridden into bankruptcy amid waves of layoffs. Established firms like Del Monte, Hertz and Dollar General were all taken over in a “prairie fire of debt” – one even more destructive than the government borrowing that Romney is flogging on the campaign trial. When Hertz was conquered in 2005 by a trio of private equity firms, including the Carlyle Group, the interest payments on its debt soared by a monstrous 80 percent, forcing the company to eliminate a third of its 32,000 jobs.

In 2010, a year after the last round of Hertz layoffs, Carlyle teamed up with Bain to take $500 million out of another takeover target: the parent company of Dunkin’ Donuts and Baskin-Robbins. Dunkin’ had to take out a $1.25 billion loan to pay a dividend to its new private equity owners. So think of this the next time you go to Dunkin’ Donuts for a cup of coffee: A small cup of joe costs about $1.69 in most outlets, which means that for years to come, Dunkin’ Donuts will have to sell about 2,011,834 small coffees every month – about $3.4 million – just to meet the interest payments on the loan it took out to pay Bain and Carlyle their little one-time dividend. And that doesn’t include the principal on the loan, or the additional millions in debt that Dunkin’ has to pay every year to get out from under the $2.4 billion in debt it’s now saddled with after having the privilege of being taken over – with borrowed money – by the firm that Romney built.”

If you haven’t heard much about how takeover deals like Dunkin’ and KB Toys work, that’s because Mitt Romney and his private equity brethren don’t want you to. The new owners of American industry are the polar opposites of the Milton Hersheys and Andrew Carnegies who built this country, commercial titans who longed to leave visible legacies of their accomplishments, erecting hospitals and schools and libraries, sometimes leaving behind thriving towns that bore their names.

The men of the private equity generation want no such thing. “We try to hide religiously,” explained Steven Feinberg, the CEO of a takeover firm called Cerberus Capital Management that recently drove one of its targets into bankruptcy after saddling it with $2.3 billion in debt. “If anyone at Cerberus has his picture in the paper and a picture of his apartment, we will do more than fire that person,” Feinberg told shareholders in 2007. “We will kill him. The jail sentence will be worth it.”

Which brings us to another aspect of Romney’s business career that has largely been hidden from voters: His personal fortune would not have been possible without the direct assistance of the U.S. government. The taxpayer-funded subsidies that Romney has received go well beyond the humdrum, backdoor, welfare-sucking that all supposedly self-made free marketeers inevitably indulge in. Not that Romney hasn’t done just fine at milking the government when it suits his purposes, the most obvious instance being the incredible $1.5 billion in aid he siphoned out of the U.S. Treasury as head of the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake – a sum greater than all federal spending for the previous seven U.S. Olympic games combined. Romney, the supposed fiscal conservative, blew through an average of $625,000 in taxpayer money per athlete – an astounding increase of 5,582 percent over the $11,000 average at the 1984 games in Los Angeles. In 1993, right as he was preparing to run for the Senate, Romney also engineered a government deal worth at least $10 million for Bain’s consulting firm, when it was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. (See “The Federal Bailout That Saved Romney”)

But the way Romney most directly owes his success to the government is through the structure of the tax code. The entire business of leveraged buyouts wouldn’t be possible without a provision in the federal code that allows companies like Bain to deduct the interest on the debt they use to acquire and loot their targets. This is the same universally beloved tax deduction you can use to write off your mortgage interest payments, so tampering with it is considered political suicide – it’s been called the “third rail of tax reform.” So the Romney who routinely rails against the national debt as some kind of child-killing “mortgage” is the same man who spent decades exploiting a tax deduction specifically designed for mortgage holders in order to bilk every dollar he could out of U.S. businesses before burning them to the ground.”

Because minus that tax break, Romney’s debt-based takeovers would have been unsustainably expensive. Before Lynn Turner became chief accountant of the SEC, where he reviewed filings on takeover deals, he crunched the numbers on leveraged buyouts as an accountant at a Big Four auditing firm. “In the majority of these deals,” Turner says, “the tax deduction has a big enough impact on the bottom line that the takeover wouldn’t work without it.”

Thanks to the tax deduction, in other words, the government actually incentivizes the kind of leverage-based takeovers that Romney built his fortune on. Romney the businessman built his career on two things that Romney the candidate decries: massive debt and dumb federal giveaways. “I don’t know what Romney would be doing but for debt and its tax-advantaged position in the tax code,” says a prominent Wall Street lawyer, “but he wouldn’t be fabulously wealthy.”

“Essentially, Romney got rich in a business that couldn’t exist without a perverse tax break, and he got to keep double his earnings because of another loophole – a pair of bureaucratic accidents that have not only teamed up to threaten us with a Mitt Romney presidency but that make future Romneys far more likely. “Those two tax rules distort the economics of private equity investments, making them much more lucrative than they should be,” says Rebecca Wilkins, senior counsel at the Center for Tax Justice. “So we get more of that activity than the market would support on its own.”

“Romney is the frontman and apostle of an economic revolution, in which transactions are manufactured instead of products, wealth is generated without accompanying prosperity, and Cayman Islands partnerships are lovingly erected and nurtured while American communities fall apart. The entire purpose of the business model that Romney helped pioneer is to move money into the archipelago from the places outside it, using massive amounts of taxpayer-subsidized debt to enrich a handful of billionaires. It’s a vision of society that’s crazy, vicious and almost unbelievably selfish, yet it’s running for president, and it has a chance of winning. Perhaps that change is coming whether we like it or not. Perhaps Mitt Romney is the best man to manage the transition. But it seems a little early to vote for that kind of wholesale surrender.”

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/greed-and-debt-the-true-story-of-mitt-romney-and-bain-capital-20120829#ixzz25QLWzcUj

Yesterday’s a Chicago Tribune article highlighted Citigroup’s settlement where Citigroup will pay $25 million dollars to placate tens of thousands of workers and senior citizens in Ann Arbor, MI and Kansas City, MO whose pension funds were stolen in a massive Citigroup investment scheme.  While $25 million sounds like a lot of money, the scheme was a $1.88 billion dollar fraud, so that works out to a penalty of $13.25 per $1,000 of financial fraud.  The article mentions several other cases that have recently been settled in a similar fashion.

This is what has happened to the retirement savings of tens of millions of Americans across the nation.  Our hard earned pension funds and 401k investments have been exposed to and depleted by a massive Wall Street scheme.  Stay tuned for news of more of these settlements.

Read the Chicago Tribune article, Citigroup to Settle MBS Suit for $24.9 Million, here.