More on MERS:
http://www.washingto...0123003056.html"Virginia delegate Bob Marshall, who has proposed tighter recording requirements, said that "the practice of MERS is going to destroy 400 years of guarantees that American law has sought to give people."
""In theory it's a good idea because it saves everyone a lot of money," said Howard A. Lax, a real estate expert at the law firm of Lipson, Neilson, Cole, Seltzer & Garin. But in practice, he added, MERS "relies on all these people from different financial institutions to give them accurate information. Nobody at MERS is responsible for due diligence, to go back and question whether the information they're getting is accurate. It's just like a computer program. If you're going to put garbage in, you're going to get garbage out."
Phyllis K. Walters, a recorder from Illinois who led the opposition to MERS in the 1990s, said that in her district the chain of title for a parcel of land goes back to 1839 and never got broken until banks started recording, and foreclosing, in the name of MERS.
"If things had been recorded in our offices," she said, "we wouldn't be in this mess."