No Love on Valentine's Day [MERS]

So MERS cannot act as an agent of the banks in mortgage transfers on Bloomberg.

Merscorp Inc., operator of the electronic-registration system that contains about half of all U.S. home mortgages, has no right to transfer the mortgages under its membership rules, a judge said.

MERS holds about 50% of all residential mortgages in the US so the impact is non-trivial. This is bad timing because, according to Case-Shiller, housing is starting to turn negative again. The Case-Shiller Index is a very lagging indicator so price depreciation is probably further along than indicated in the index.