Siegel: Welcome back in. Mike Siegel here. Good to have you with us as we get back into the conversation. I will just say without getting too technical and continuing briefly about that whole issue of the mortgage crisis that we have and these foreclosures that were done improperly. Now all 50 states, by the way, are investigating and are doing so to determine what culpability or liability there might be. It seems to me that we as individuals, when acting negligently with a financial institution, wind up having to pay the price in some form. Whether it is forgetting to make a payment on time and paying a late fee, whether it is additional interest because you didn't pay a payment on time, whether it was not timely notification on a payment to a financial institution, you pay the consequence. Now we have these financial institutions…I would make the case that it is fraud. It is fraud because they knowingly hired people, had to, or already had people working in the banks, to simply stamp these foreclosures with signatures. That is not how you do things, folks. Every piece of real estate in this country, under real estate law, and every state is what is called unique….in other words, if you have a lemon for a car… you buy a car and it is a lemon, all the dealer has to do is replace that car with a comparable vehicle of the same value. The same is true if you get a defective shirt from a clothing store. You know how that goes. We buy products, we buy services. Go to a restaurant, if a meal is not done properly, either they redo it or refund the money. Well, that is not the case in real estate. Every piece of real estate under the law is unique, which means you cannot just simply have one replace another. So, that brings us back to the point of the legal documents being very precise and very clear. You cannot have fudging. You cannot have ambiguities. There are some elements of even the document used most in this country, the promissory note, that there are questions about whether it is negotiable because of the way it is written. There is a debate about that. It gets to the point where there is not the proper clarity under the law. Most people wouldn't even care about this or realize it. You just want to sign the papers, move into your home and enjoy your home; or sign the papers, get your proceeds from the sale, and move on. These should not be problems. We presumably have banks, lawyers, title companies, escrow companies, doing the job they are supposed to do and not fudging around. Well, they did. So, when a bank hires a person or has a person already there simply stamp the documents, and they are doing thousands every month, you cannot possibly read them. Because, you see folks, if they had read them they might realize that in that particular file of that particular piece of property there wasn't the proper promissory note, and that is what is unfolding now as a huge issue. So, we have got a true dilemma here, and it is one that is tragically unfortunately and could have been avoided. You have got the so-called experts, who are supposed to have covered themselves with this and they didn't do it.

I suppose I could give you an example to make clear what I am talking about. I was once representing a client as an attorney who was doing some work in public relations for a major company in this country. They put out skin care products and other cosmetic products. The company will remain unnamed, huge company though, trust me. The friend of mine who was my client asked me to review the new document to retain her services as an independent contractor in public relations for this company. So, I reviewed the contract and in it it said that the company would not be liable for anything this person did with third parties. In other words, if the PR person, the public relations person, went to a third party and said, a newspaper, and said "would you do an interview with the vice president of communication of this company?" and arranges the interview. If the company did not want to do the interview, they would say that we don't have to do that, we are not liable for the actions of this other person. If the PR person had committed to doing something that might have cost some money that was within the authority that she was given by the company, and then under that contract they say, "well look, it says here we are not liable for contracts you make with third parties, we don't have to comply." So, I made the point to her that this is wrong. That they cannot just waive their responsibility for your dealings with third parties. Obviously, as a public relations person you deal with third parties all the time. You are trying to get public relations for your company. So, you are going to have to have the authority to make certain deals. Well, she went back to the company and told them what I had said. The answer she got from their bank of lawyers at this huge company was that her attorney, meaning me, must have gone through the document with a fine tooth comb because he was right. That you cannot waive your responsibility when you hire somebody to do that work. Now, why do I bring that up? Because that negligence in that contract, that they shouldn't have had that clause in there, is the very same kind of problem that we are facing with the situation with mortgages, except in this case it is far more serious because it is affecting the entire real estate market in America. It is having a profound effect. It is an earthquake. It is a troubling problem. And it is astonishing to me that it has been allowed to get this far, where banks would just simply rubber stamp documents for real estate when each file on each piece of real estate must be meticulously reviewed individually to make sure that you have the proper documents, giving you the authority to do the foreclosure and to take the property away from the home owner. So, those of you out there as home owners, I would ask you to ask the foreclosing bank or institution that did it to get the documents and the promissory note.

Mike Siegel. Good to have you with us.