"The legal concerns revolve around Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems
Inc., a Reston, Va., corporation set up in the mid-1990s by the mortgage
banking industry to rapidly record the ownership of mortgages so they could
be packaged and sold as securities.

"MERS essentially allowed lenders to sell loans without recording each
transaction with county recorder offices, experts say. That rapid and
sometimes reckless securitization of such loans contributed to the 2008
financial crisis and housing slump.<snip> Since October, federal judges in
five separate Oregon cases have halted foreclosures involving MERS, saying
its participation caused lenders to violate the state's recording law."

http://www.oregonlive.com/business/index.ssf/2011/03/rulings_put_brakes_on_hundreds.html

The report also notes that "MERS is listed as an agent for lenders on more
than 60 million U.S. home loans, about half of all such loans."

-- 
Dwight Wallis, CRM
Multnomah County Records Management Program
1620 SE 190th Avenue
Portland, OR 97233
ph: (503)988-3741
fax: (503)988-3754
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