Our system of government will not survive unless we the people believe that it will respect, abide by, and enforce the Rule of Law, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights against all violators, regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual preference, or class.

We rely on the Department of Justice and our various state attorneys general to protect our inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. They and the police departments they supervise and rely upon to investigate and prosecute crimes, are the law enforcement arms of our federal and state governments.

At the expense of we the people who are victims of the biggest financial fraud committed in history, the Obama Administration’s proposed settlement of the real estate forfeiture crisis protects the banks that willfully and intentionally committed the crime. Moreover, the crime continues and there is no assurance that it will stop if the state attorneys general agree to the proposed settlement.

This situation is upside down and all wrong because the proposed settlement protects and rewards the criminals who committed the biggest financial fraud in history. If this case settles, how can anyone who is not a member of the 1% have any faith that our government will enforce the Rule of Law, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights against all violators, regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual preference, or class?

The answer is self-evident.

We have reached a critical turning point in our history. If the state attorneys general adopt this outrageous and obscene settlement proposal, what little faith people still have in our federal and state governments will evaporate like the morning dew as the Sun rises bringing massive civil unrest and increasingly violent revolution.

Millions of people have been irreparably harmed, including people who were fraudulently induced to purchase intentionally overpriced homes with little or no money down financed by adjustable rate mortgages that would later skyrocket beyond their ability to pay the monthly payments and institutional investors, particularly pension funds, suckered into buying worthless mortgage backed securities. In search of ever higher profits for shareholders and mult-imillion dollar bonuses for CEOs and upper management, the TBTF banks have severely compromised and probably destroyed a working legal system governing real estate transactions to prevent frauds that was developed over hundreds of years reducing risk by protecting the integrity of sales so that buyers and sellers knew what they were purchasing and whether there were any restrictions on their use of the property or clouds on title.

The system was relatively simple. Transactions were recorded in the counties where the properties were located and any member of the public could review who owned what, where it was located, the exact dimensions of property, and whether there were any encroachments, easements, other restrictions, or liens attached to it. There were legal and equitable remedies and insurance, if something went wrong, so that disputes could be resolved reasonably and equitably without violence. In service to their greed to avoid billions of dollars in recording fees and to facilitate the bundling of mortgages into mortgage backed securities to be sliced and diced into ever more exotic financial instruments of mass destruction for sale, the TBTF banks replaced this working legal system with MERS, which is little more than than a legal spreadsheet indicating who owns what. Meanwhile, most of the notes, mortgages, and other documentation no longer exist such that it is virtually impossible to verify the terms of any sales, including limitations on the use of property, the terms of the financial transactions, and who owns the note.

We use the criminal law to punish and deter others from committing similar acts of serious wrongdoing. There is no reasonable question any longer that the TBTF banks committed serious financial wrongdoing by willfully and intentionally engaging in a widespread conspiracy for profit by which they have destroyed the legal real estate recording system and caused trillions of dollars in losses.

The bankers who perpetrated this horrific financial crime must be held accountable by the criminal laws and the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) in 18 USC 1961 is the perfect vehicle with which to prosecute them. If ever there were criminal enterprises worthy of being put out of business, the TBTF banks are such enterprises.

There is no mystery to the process because the Department of Justice has written the book on how to successfully prosecute criminal organizations using the RICO statute. I know what I am talking about because I have defended people they have prosecuted.

Under threat of long prison sentences if they do not cooperate and testify against higher-ups, flip the less culpable defendants with easy cases to prove (i.e., the robo-signers and their bosses for forgeries and false statements under oath) and move up the tree of rot branch by branch building your case against the big boys.

Then you take them down. Hard.

The distressed homeowners also need principal write-downs to current fair-market value with credit for all payments made.

As I said at the beginning. We the people rely on the government to protect our inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. If our federal and state governments through the Department of Justice and the state attorneys general sign-off on this settlement proposal, they will have joined the criminal predation leaving us with no recourse except to defend ourselves by fighting back with all means at our disposal.

It’s your move.

Cross posted at my law blog.