Short Sale Saga, So Suspicous (Updated 3/3/10)

——————————Update 3/3/2010—————————————–

After not hearing from them for months, Greentree is still trying to collect, although they know California law is on my side according to the rep I spoke to on the phone. I may eventually have to have my lawyer send them a Cease and Desist letter, then fight them in court. They claim they can take up to 11 years to send a 1099 form and that this is up to the lender.  Tom’s comment makes sense. They may want to keep the debt open so they can use it for the profit scheme he describes.  Some feds should investigate them.

——————————Update 10/6/2009—————————————–

I am happy to report that I am truly shocked. Green Tree has accepted the short payoff of $3,000 on my $60,000 HELOC (including the $5,000 or so in fees that they tacked on according to a letter they sent…) Wow.

Meanwhile, a foreclosure sale date has been set as Oct 22.  Will the short sale beat the foreclosure and cancel it out? My agent seems confident that it will.

—————————— Update 10/2/2009 ————————————

A manager at Green Tree is supposedly going to get back to my Real Estate Agent on Tuesday about accepting the short payoff for my $60,000 HELOC.  (Update: He did!)

My research shows that Green Tree is much hated on the net.

Green Tree debt collectors supposedly killed one man while trying to get money from him. Also, one Real Estate Agent in Nevada says that if Green Tree (who she calls “a division of Bank of America” ) owns your loan, then you can forget about the short sale.

Let Green Tree try something. With the case of Mooney vs Green Tree Servicing, LLC as precedent, my lawyer and I will be happy to collect $40,000 in punitive damages from them if they call my friends, co-workers or relatives, address me in a harassing manner, threaten to “go public” and publish my debt in the local paper.

“Green Tree did not retreat or relent even when the illegality of its acts was exposed. “

If Green Tree didn’t learn from paying $40,000, perhaps the next judge will grant me the $500,000 in damages that Mooney requested but the first judge rejected due to Green Tree not showing a pattern of this abuse with multiple people.

My mood is grim. I feel I’m about to do battle. I will be truly shocked if my Short Sale goes through.

I am a scrupulous person who is a victim of a predatory lender who lied to me in order to sell me an adjustable rate mortgage when I requested a 30 year fixed rate.

——————————————————— Original post ———————————————–

I bought a home at the height of the market and got talked into an adjustable rate mortgage which I could not afford once it adjusted. Since my home’s value fell dramatically, I choose to let it go. A short sale is preferable to a foreclosure in my case, but today on the supposed close of escrow, I’m still the owner. Bank of America has pulled a couple of fast ones and I’d like others going through this to be aware of these snags:

- If the Bank makes an offer and the buyer accepts, the Buyer’s bank still has to send an appraiser.

- If the buyer’s bank’s appraisal comes in less than the seller’s banks Buyer’s Price Opinion (BPO), then the seller’s Bank will have to go back to the investors to get approval.

- Even after that approval was written, my short sale negotiator for B of A wrote the contract up for $500 less, shorting the buyer’s bank by $500. Not acceptable, so they have to go back to the Investors again!

- Another snag (game by B of A?) I have a first and second mortgage.  The short sale was approved, but in the middle of that, B of A sold the 2nd loan to another company, Green Tree. Green Tree did not have records of owning the 2nd loan due, supposedly, to a delay in the paper work, so they could not approve the short pay off.  Now that they finally do acknowledge holding the loan, they are requesting the entire Short Sale package again.  They supposedly had to accept all conditions in place when they accepted the loan, but this is not what they are doing.

Today, I should no longer own my sinking ship of a home. But I still do.

My suspicion is that the bank makes more in fees from a foreclosure so they are doing everything they can to make the short sale fail. Another part of this game is that I’m still responsible for the HOA dues of around $250/month.

China ‘completes 3D moon map’

China has completed a high-resolution, three-dimensional map of the entire surface of the moon, in an important step towards a future lunar landing, an expert involved in the project said Tuesday.

After putting its first man into space in 2003 — only the third nation to do so — China is aiming to launch an unmanned rover on the moon’s surface by 2012 and a manned mission to the moon by around 2020.

The map was made using image data obtained by a camera on Chang’e 1, China’s first lunar probe, Liu Xianlin of the Chinese Academy of Surveying and Mapping, who headed the project review panel, told AFP.

Liu called the achievement an important step for China along the path towards a future lunar landing.

“This map finishes the primary prospecting of the moon and lays the foundation for further surveys such as choosing the landing point or the path of a satellite,” he told AFP.

Liu said China’s map of the moon was the world’s highest-resolution lunar chart. Japan had also launched a lunar probe, but either had not completed its own map or had not yet publicised it, he said.

The United States, meanwhile, sent a probe in the 1990s but the accuracy of their map was not as good, according to Liu.

Chen Yongqi, a professor in the department of land surveying and geo-informatics at Hong Kong Polytechnic University, said the map would help China understand the structure of the moon.

“Another objective is to understand the soil of the lunar surface and mineral distribution,” he said.

China plans to launch a second lunar probe in October 2010, which will generate a map of an even higher resolution, according to Liu.

via AFP: China ‘completes 3D moon map’.

Stem cells point to space ills

Stem cells exposed to microgravity express different proteins than those grown in normal gravity, say Australian researchers.

The finding may explain why long-term exposure to microgravity causes astronaut health issues such as loss of bone density and muscle wasting.

The research, led by biologist Dr Brendan Burns of the University of New South Wales in Sydney, will be presented this week at the 9th Australian Space Sciences Conference.

Burns, along with graduate researchers Elizabeth Blaber and Helder Marcal, used a NASA rotating-wall vessel to simulate microgravity, which is experienced by astronauts in low Earth orbit, to analyse its effect on human embryonic stem cells.

Stem cells are cells that have yet to differentiate into cells with specialised functions.

The researchers isolated and identified proteins expressed by the cells and compared these to proteins from cells grown under normal gravity conditions.

Their results showed 75% of the proteins from the cells exposed to microgravity were not found in those grown under normal gravity.

“A lot of work has been done on microgravity at a systemic level, such as the effects on the immune system. No one has really looked at the effect of microgravity at a cellular level and we think that is a huge gap,” says Burns.

Less antioxidants

“What we’ve found is a range of different proteins that are potentially important for astronaut health were more or less predominant in terms of different gravity.”

In particular, cells exposed to microgravity produced more proteins that negatively regulate bone density. In the human body, these changes in bone tissue could result in decreases in bone density, leading to osteoporosis.

“Although it has long been known that microgravity affects bone density, what kinds of genes and proteins that are affected by microgravity to cause this condition isn’t known,” says Burns.

The microgravity-exposed cells also produced fewer proteins with antioxidant effects, he says. Antioxidants protect the body from reactive oxidants that can damage DNA.

“We’re trying to get down to the nuts and bolts of what is causing these issues at a cellular level,” says Burns.

via Stem cells point to space ills › News in Science (ABC Science).

High-Res Images of New Territory on Mercury

Flying within 228 kilometers of the surface of Mercury on Sept. 29, the Messenger spacecraft snapped portraits of a portion of the planet that had never before been imaged close up.

Messenger also examined in greater detail Mercury’s western hemisphere, which had been imaged during a previous passage in October 2008 (SN Online: 10/29/08).

The Sept. 29 encounter was the third and last flyby and gave the craft the gravitational assistance it needs to settle in March 2011 into a yearlong orbit around Mercury, the solar system’s innermost and least explored planet. The first images from the latest encounter, which detail 5 percent of the planet that hadn’t been examined by spacecraft before, were released on Sept. 30 and more are expected over the next few days.

Images: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington

via High-Res Images of New Territory on Mercury | Wired Science | Wired.com.

On September 29, 2009, the MESSENGER spacecraft passed by Mercury for the third time, flying 141.7 miles above the planet’s rocky surface for a final gravity assist that will enable it to enter orbit about Mercury in 2011. During the encounter, the MESSENGER cameras imaged a portion of Mercury’s never-before-seen surface and the Mercury Atmospheric and Surface Composition Spectrometer (MASCS) observed Mercury’s exospheric “tail” during approach. With more than 90 percent of the planet’s surface already imaged, MESSENGER’s science team had drafted an ambitious observation campaign designed to tease out additional details from features uncovered during the first two flybys. But an unexpected signal loss prior to closest approach hampered those plans. – messenger.jhuapl.edu

Quantum Entanglement Visible to the Naked Eye

By linking the electrical currents of two superconductors large enough to be seen with the naked eye, researchers have extended the domain of observable quantum effects. Billions of flowing electrons in the superconductors can collectively exhibit a weird quantum property called entanglement, usually confined to the realm of tiny particles, scientists report in the September 24 Nature.

“It’s an exciting piece of work,” comments physicist Steven Girvin of Yale University. “People are interested in pushing the boundaries of quantum mechanics.”

Entanglement is one of the strangest consequences of quantum mechanics. After interacting in a certain way, objects become mysteriously linked, or entangled, so that what happens to one seems to affect the fate of the other. For the most part, researchers have only found signs of entanglement between tiny particles, such as ions, atoms and photons.

John Martinis and colleagues at the University of California, Santa Barbara looked for entanglement between two superconductors, each less than a millimeter across. These superconducting circuits, made of aluminum, were separated by a few millimeters on an electronic chip. At low temperatures, electrons in the superconductors flow collectively, unfettered by resistance.

Despite each superconductor’s relatively large size, the electrons within move together in a naturally coherent way. “There are very few moving parts, so to speak,” Girvin says, which helped the scientists spot evidence of entanglement. “It’s a general fact that the larger an object is, the more classical it is in its behavior, and the more difficult it is to see quantum mechanical effects.”

In the new study, researchers used a microwave pulse to attempt to entangle the electrical currents of the two superconductors. If the currents were quantum-mechanically linked, one current would flow clockwise at the time of measurement (assigned a value of 0), while the other would flow counterclockwise when measured (assigned a value of 1), Martinis says. On the other hand, the currents’ directions would be completely independent of each other if everyday, classical physics were at work.

After attempting to entangle the superconducting circuits, Martinis and his team measured the directions of the currents 34.1 million times. When one current flowed clockwise (measured as a 0), the team found, the other flowed counterclockwise (measured as a 1) with very high probability. So the two were linked in a way that only quantum mechanics could explain.

“It has to be in this weird quantum state for you to get those particular probabilities that we measure,” Martinis says. “The percentages of those different things are not something that you can classically predict.”

Finding entanglement between superconductors is “a fairly important milestone,” comments Anthony Leggett of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The new study “does seem to be rather unambiguous evidence for entanglement.”

Such entangled superconductors might be used as a component in a powerful quantum computer, Leggett says. “People are very interested in the possibility of building a quantum computer,” and these kinds of systems may be quite good for that, he says.

Martinis says that the technology for building advanced electrical circuits may be used to build quantum circuits, too. “The hope is that since we know how to put together integrated circuits in complex ways, that maybe we can make very complex quantum circuits in the same way,” he says.

He cautions, though, that a good quantum computer is a long way off. Researchers still need to find a way to make entangled superconducting circuits last longer. And a good quantum computer would need more than two circuits. Martinis says his group will try to entangle three and four such circuits next. …

via Quantum Entanglement Visible to the Naked Eye | Wired Science | Wired.com.

Doctors ‘forced’ to allow suicide

Doctors were forced to allow a suicidal woman who had swallowed anti-freeze to die, because she refused medical help.

Kerrie Wooltorton, 26, of Norwich, had also made a “living will” requesting no intervention if she tried to take her own life, a Norwich inquest heard.

Doctors would have risked breaking the law by treating her, the coroner said.

The Norwich and Norwich University Hospital said Miss Wooltorton was conscious and doctors were convinced of her mental competence.

She died four days after being admitted to the hospital.

The hospital said the living will did not play a part in the decision.

Miss Wooltorton had accepted lifesaving dialysis at the hospital after drinking anti-freeze several times in the year before her death, an earlier hearing was told.

“Any treatment… in the absence of her consent would have been unlawful,” said coroner William Armstrong.

The inquest was told Miss Wooltorton had mental capacity and had the right to refuse medical intervention.

“Even when she was losing consciousness she was absolutely clear in refusing treatment,” said Mr Armstrong.

At the opening of the inquest in October 2008, it was said that Miss Wooltorton had an “untreatable” emotionally unstable personality disorder.

Consultant renal physician Alexander Heaton said his team had monitored Miss Wooltorton for any signs of ambivalence in her decision when she was admitted to hospital on 18 September, 2007.

“It’s my duty to follow her wishes,” he told the inquest.

“I would have been breaking the law and I wasn’t worried about her suing me.

“But I think she would have asked, ‘What do I have to do to tell you what my wishes are?’.

“She had made them abundantly clear and I was content that that was the case.”

Die alone

He added: “She was in no state to resist me and I could have forced treatment on her, but I don’t think it was the right thing to do. I feel it would have been assault.”

Her written directive also stated that if she called an ambulance it was not a plea for help but because she did not want to die alone and in pain, the hearing was told.

Speaking at the resumption of the inquest, Mr Armstrong said: “The doctor went over and above what was required of him.

“He discussed the case with clinical colleagues, took a second opinion from a fellow consultant and sought advice from the medical director.

“A deliberate decision to die may appear repugnant, but any treatment to have saved Kerrie’s life in the absence of her consent would have been unlawful.”

Recording a narrative verdict, he said Miss Wooltorton had died as a result of “deliberately consuming a poisonous substance in the full knowledge that death could result”.

“She had capacity to consent to treatment which, it is more likely than not, would have prevented her death.

“She refused that treatment in full knowledge of the consequences and died as a result,” he said. …

via BBC NEWS | UK | England | Norfolk | Doctors ‘forced’ to allow suicide.

I’m curious. Is how you feel about the story above influenced by knowing that the planet is overpopulated with humans?

Health bill survives attacks — vote by week’s end?

A White House-backed overhaul of the nation’s health care system weathered repeated challenges from Republican critics over taxes, abortion and more on Wednesday, and the bill’s architect claimed enough votes to push it through the Senate Finance Committee as early as week’s end.

“We’re coming to closure,” said Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., the committee chairman, as President Barack Obama lobbied at least one wavering Democrat by phone to swing behind the measure.

Baucus said, “It’s clear to me we’re going to get it passed,” although he sidestepped a question about possible Republican support. Olympia Snowe of Maine is the only GOP senator whose vote is in doubt, and she has yet to tip her hand. While she has voted with Democrats on some key tests — to allow the government to dictate the types of coverage that must be included in insurance policies, for example — she has also sided with fellow Republicans on other contentious issues.

In a reflection of the intensity on both sides of the Capitol, Democratic Rep. Alan Grayson of Florida was unrepentant after claiming the Republican plan for health care was for Americans to “die quickly.” Refusing to apologize, he said, “People like elected officials with guts who say what they mean. … I stand by what I said.”

That controversy aside, House Democratic leaders struggled to reduce their legislation to the $900 billion, 10-year cost that Obama has specified. Officials said numerous alternatives were under review to reduce subsidies that are designed to defray the cost of insurance for millions.

Passage in the Finance Committee would clear the way for debate on the Senate floor in mid-October on the bill, designed to accomplish Obama’s aims of expanding access to insurance as well as slowing the rate of growth in health care spending overall. The bill includes numerous consumer protections, such as limits on copays and deductibles, and relies on federal subsidies to help lower-income families purchase coverage. Its cost is estimated at $900 billion over a decade.

While the legislation would not allow the government to sell insurance in competition with private companies, as Obama and numerous Democrats would like, the White House was working to make sure that some version cleared committee.

via Health bill survives attacks — vote by week’s end? – Yahoo! News.

With the shape the economy is in now, I don’t think we can afford this.

FBI denies editing Oklahoma City bombing tapes

The FBI says it did not edit videotapes of the aftermath of the 1995 bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building before turning them over to an attorney who is conducting an unofficial inquiry into the bombing.

The FBI turned over more than two dozen tapes taken from security cameras on buildings and other locations around the federal building to Salt Lake City attorney Jesse Trentadue, who obtained them through the federal Freedom of Information Act. Trentadue said the tapes are blank at various times in the minutes before the blast.

“They have been edited,” Trentadue said Wednesday.

The soundless recordings show people rushing from nearby buildings immediately after a 4,000 pound fertilizer-and-fuel-oil bomb detonated in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building on April 19, 1995, killing 168 people, including 19 children, and injuring hundreds more.

Some show people fleeing through corridors cluttered with debris. None shows the actual explosion that ripped through the federal building.

Trentadue said the absence of footage before the blast indicates something was on the tapes that the FBI did not want to make public.

“They don’t do anything by accident,” he said.

A spokesman for the FBI in Washington, Paul Bresson, said in an e-mail to The Associated Press that the agency did not edit the tapes before turning them over to Trentadue.

Bresson said the FBI identified 26 videos in its files in response to an April request by Trentadue for video from security cameras in 11 different locations. FBI agents did not report finding any security tapes from the federal building itself.

“The FBI made no edits or redactions in the processing of these videos,” Bresson said. “The tapes are typical security cameras — the view switches camera to camera every few seconds.”

Bresson declined to expand on the FBI’s e-mail statement when contacted Wednesday.

via FBI denies editing Oklahoma City bombing tapes – Yahoo! News.

Spiritual Women Have More Sex

Is it sexy to be spiritual? New research has found that spirituality has a greater effect on the sex lives of young adults – especially women – than religion, impulsivity, or alcohol.

“I think people have been well aware of the role that religious and spiritual matters play in everyday life for a very long time,” said Jessica Burris, one of the study’s researchers at the University of Kentucky. “But in the research literature, the unique qualities of spirituality – apart from religiousness – are not usually considered.”

According to a research measure known as the Spiritual Transcendence Scale, those qualities are connectedness, universality, and prayer fulfillment. But the data found that of the three, connectedness plays the largest role in spiritual sexuality and leads to more sex with more partners, often without the use of condoms.

“Believing one is intimately tied to other human beings and that interconnectedness and harmony are indispensible may lead one to believe sexual intimacy possesses a divine or transcendent quality in itself,” Burris writes. “In fact, ascribing sacred qualities to sex has been positively associated with positive affective reactions to sex, frequency of sex, and number of sexual partners among university students.”

The study’s participants indeed were university students; 353 undergraduates (61 percent of whom were female) answered a questionnaire that asked them about their alcohol use, impulsivity, religiousness, spirituality, and sexual practices. The statements on spirituality, which were ranked by level of agreement, included “In the quiet of my prayers and/or meditations, I find a sense of wholeness,” and “Although individual people may be difficult, I feel an emotional bond with all of humanity.”

The study found that spiritual men weren’t sexually affected – in fact, their frequency of sex decreased. The researchers figure men might not view spirituality as sexual because they biologically don’t think of sex as a gateway to emotional intimacy.

For women, however, spirituality was the strongest predictor for the number of sexual partners, the frequency of sex, and the tendency to have sex without a condom.

“It is possible female young adults yearn for greater connectedness with other humans,” Burris writes. “Spirituality, at least for women, could be considered a risk factor.” …

via Spiritual Women Have More Sex – Yahoo! News.

Nero’s rotating banquet hall unveiled in Rome

Not only was Nero a Roman emperor, it turns out he may also have been the father of the revolving restaurant.

Archaeologists unveiled Tuesday what they think are the remains of Nero’s extravagant banquet hall, a circular space that rotated day and night to imitate the Earth’s movement and impress his guests.

The room, part of Nero’s Golden Palace, a sprawling residence built in the first century A.D., is thought to have been built to entertain government officials and VIPs, said lead archaeologist Francoise Villedieu.

The emperor, known for his lavish and depraved lifestyle, ruled from 37 A.D. to 68 A.D.

The dig so far has turned up the foundations of the room, the rotating mechanism underneath and part of an attached space believed to be the kitchens, she said.

“This cannot be compared to anything that we know of in ancient Roman architecture,” Villedieu told reporters during a tour of the cordoned-off dig.

She said the location of the discovery atop the Palatine Hill, the rotating structure and references to it in ancient biographies of Nero make the attribution to the emperor most likely.

The partially excavated site is part of the sumptuous residence, also known by its Latin name Domus Aurea, which rose over the ruins of a fire that destroyed much of Rome in A.D. 64.

The purported main dining room, with a diameter of over 50 feet (16 meters), rested upon a 13-foot (4-meter) wide pillar and four spherical mechanisms that, likely powered by a constant flow of water, rotated the structure.

The discovery was made during routine maintenance of the fragile Palatine area, officials said.

Latin biographer and historian Suetonius, who chronicled his times and wrote the biographies of 12 Roman rulers, refers to a main dining room that revolved “day and night, in time with the sky.”

Angelo Bottini, the state’s top official for archaeology in Rome, said the ceiling of the rotating room might have been the one mentioned by Suetonius, who wrote of ivory panels sliding back and forth to shower flowers and perfumes on the guests below.

“The heart of every activity in ancient Rome was the banquet, together with some form of entertainment,” Bottini said at the dig. “Nero was like the sun, and people were revolving around the emperor.”

via Nero’s rotating banquet hall unveiled in Rome – Yahoo! News.