Bex is "surprised" to be there, especially as Mo is "boring". But ha, she got 65% of the vote (and not the 33% Luke predicted). She sees her nominations VT, but all the people who put her up are predictable, and she isn't shocked. "Some people in there... I don't know how they got there," she says, and the crowd whoops. But I don't get this: two-thirds of the voting public don't like her, so why bother being sycophantic?

There is a nasty VT of Luke/Bex being "friends". Oh dear. The crowd makes 'ahh' noises, but you and I don't, right? "I really care about Luke," she says. Good-o. "I don't fancy him." Even better. Watching the clips of her being 'mischevous', I really hope Bex will be one of those housemates people forget (Vanessa 'nose bag', anyone?). She is vile: fame-hungry and self-serving. Just like all the other housemates, you yell. Yes, I know. But the problem with Bex is that she thinks people CARE. Now she can't remember why she doesn't like Rex. She wants Luke to win. Ugh. OR MIKEY. UGH UGH UGH. "You have been a genius housemate," says Davina, which is wrong on so many levels.

I wonder how different the house will be now?

To indistinguishable shouts, Davina leads us to the highlights of yesterday. Apparently, it's the housemates 50thday in the house. Lucky them. Lucky US. Rex licks his hand in the garden. Big Bro gives the housemates their happy packed lunches, as Dale tries to do the shopping list. Luke, obviously, is stirring with Lisa, trying to get her to aim for head of house next week. He says Rex has already stated he will keep the hell/heaven divide as it is. Lisa doesn't like his moaning. Although I haven't noticed that much of Rex's moaning in the last few days. Darnell thinks he is going to be evicted. Bex and Luke, instead of talking about such important issues, instead discuss how they don't fancy each other. Rex tells the diary room that he and Mo's friendship is becoming distant.

Bex says she should wear a  bin bag at her eviction. This needs no punning added. Mo wants a cigarette from Darnell. Darnell instead tells him to do something with his balls. Darnell becomes quite cross indeed. "Don't push me, dude. I'm not playing with you," he says, witha mouthful of what looks like coleslaw. He storms off. Kat looks confused, and sits frowning, with one arm sticking out. As Davina takes us to the break, I can hear the crowd. "Get Bex out!" they command, as we all hope for their request to be fulfilled.

Bex, dressed as some kind of grotesque Heidi, says she doesn't care if people don't like her. THAT'S LUCKY. Kat also thinks Bex doesn't like her or Rachel (she's right). However, Bex witters and pretends that this is not true. Dale has been told he needs to entertain the house, but, as he is prone to do, he has lied to the others and said that hell and heaven have to entertain, and that there will be a party. Bex gets her boobs out, as that is the only thing she knows how to do. Thoughtfully, Big Brother has covered this outbreak with the eviction number banners. Lisa comes out dressed possibly as Bex, with a blackened tooth. "What's funny?" she asks. Lisa, Rachel and Kat scream at the cameras. Bex then gives Luke a resuscitation kiss in the bogs. THIS IS NOT ENTERTAINMENT. Luke wets himself. OK, he doesn't. Now they are taking a vote of who is likely to win. "Who is the most hated housemate (outside)?" asks Luke, for his own gain, obviously. Mo, Rex and Bex score highly. "Bex will be hated a lot," says Stu.

Oooh, the shopping has arrived. The prizes this week include a hell to heaven ticket, a paddling pool, and a fake dog poo. "Oh my god, I'm so excited," says Sara, making her appearance for the day. Mo gets the hell-heaven ticket. Hooray. However, Sara has been given the ticket, and she has to wear a Hawaiian shirt and take a video. "I do look like an American tourist," she says to Mikey, who, let's not forget, is blind. "How do you think you can be more entertaining?" Big Brother asks Dale in the diary room. The answer? NOT AT ALL. He still has this peculiar obsession with getting nominated, which is only going to miserably backfire (as we all know, as soon as he's up, he'll be out).

And now it is the party. The housemates play some kind of drinking game with an orange. They are actually drinking raw egg as a punishment. Ugh, egg house. Mo doesn't get the orange passed to him in time, and his punishment is to snog Mo. Punishment indeed. Luke is holding down his egg vomit. He goes and mills round the garden by himself. Mo knows Bex's game, though. "She pulled Luke to survive," he says. Bex feels bad, apparently. Luke wants a word with Mo. OH NOES! Bex goes outside and smokes, listening in. "Tonight has been really good," she answers, oddly. Luke goes to the bedroom, and proclaims sickness. Outside, Mo tells Bex she only did it to make Luke jealous. Hms. In the main house, they are throwing eggs. Dale breaks one in Lisa's hair. There is something very spiteful in this gesture, whether or not it's in the rules of the 'game'. Now Luke is sad in the bedroom with Bex. "It bothered me, Rebecca," he says. "It's not as if we're together... I'm just disappointed," he says. "You're drunk, as well," he says, possibly hoping for another hand manoeuvre in the dark. Now Luke admits that he likes Bex. UGH. I actually can't look. "I actually like ya, and that's not a lie," she says to him. YOU'RE NOT SURVIVING, SO DON'T EVEN TRY IT.

AND SHE IS GONE. Night night!

You're in luck. Your mortgage lender has flipped, sliced and diced your loan--and now no one knows who holds it.

In 2006 Michelle Tucker, a 35-year-old UPS package processor and mother of two, was hit by a one-two punch. Her husband had surgery on his shoulder and was forced to stop taking construction jobs around town that helped pay the bills. Worse, the adjustable mortgage with the low teaser rate she took out on her three-bedroom home in Jacksonville, Fla. adjusted, now to 10%, nearly double her old rate. She defaulted. Soon after, the lender filed suit to foreclose.

Then a stroke of luck: A Legal Aid lawyer, April Charney, got the foreclosure withdrawn after discovering that the company that filed to foreclose didn't own the Tuckers' loan. The owner was actually a securitized pool of loans overseen by Deutsche Bank. And Charney has documents showing the pool bought the loan after the Tuckers defaulted--an illegal purchase for most pools, including this one. That means a court might refuse to recognize it owns the loan. Charney is arguing it should do just that.

"I buy time, then get lenders to cut interest rates and fees," says Charney, who claims she's stopped dozens of foreclosures over ownership issues. Other lawyers are making similar moves in Maryland, New York, Massachusetts, Ohio, Kansas and Washington State--often forcing sloppy lenders to offer generous terms to avoid litigation.

Talk about shooting yourself in the foot. These days just about every mortgage is flipped by a lender to another one or sliced up into pools of securitized packages that are sold on Wall Street. The financial engineering helped oil the housing boom by making credit more available. But stalled housing prices and rising defaults have revealed a mess: In the rush to flip paper, lots of the new lenders or pools don't have the proper paperwork to show they even hold the mortgage.

There is a case in Kansas with no documents to show a bank owns the loan it says it does. In another, ownership of a loan was recorded on a single date in the name of two different lenders. In March last year Deutsche Bank filed to foreclose on a seven-bedroom home in Worcester, Mass. owned by Sima Shwartz. But it came out that Deutsche was assigned the loan in May or June--that is, after the foreclosure filing. A U.S. bankruptcy court judge in April slammed Deutsche for its "jumble of documents" and ruled the bank could not evict Shwartz.

This sloppiness offers glorious reprieves for some defaulted homeowners but just headaches for lenders. One Maryland man, holding documents suggesting his loan was held simultaneously by a pool of loans and a bank, is still in his home--five years after foreclosure was filed.

Charney, the Tuckers' lawyer in Jacksonville, stumbled upon the industry's paperwork problem two years ago after noticing that nearly all lenders seeking to foreclose against clients were filing "affidavits of lost notes"--essentially requests that a judge assume they own the loan since no proof is at hand. She eventually took on a prominent foreclosure filer--Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, a Vienna, Va. company whose name is on 30% of the mortgages in county clerk offices around the country. Earlier this year mers, which represented banks and pools in at least 20,000 foreclosure filings in Florida since 2001, suspended lenders from filing in its name. It says that with two recent court decisions in its favor it may lift the moratorium soon.

For the lenders, a possibly bigger threat on the horizon is that homeowners' lawyers will bust up the "holder in due course" doctrine that makes it easier for subsequent owners of an IOU to collect. This doctrine says that certain defenses the evictee can use against the original lender (such as predatory lending) cannot be used against an innocent purchaser of the mortgage. The rule is enshrined in many federal and state statutes, but a judge could nonetheless find a way to side with the homeowner, particularly if a loan is purchased after it goes into default.

"It's clearly the direction to go," says Ohio Attorney General Marc Dann. He recently announced he'll amend his suit against defunct lender New Century to possibly list as defendants the banks overseeing pools that bought its loans. "These pools are more than innocent holders."

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In January 2004, Richard Aldrich, a California state appeals court judge, decided to refinance his 8,200-square-foot house next to a Jack Nicklaus-designed golf course at the Sherwood Country Club in Westlake Village. He turned to a prominent Sherwood member: Countrywide Financial chief executive Angelo Mozilo.

Aldrich’s application was assigned to a loan officer named Robert Feinberg; the judge was seeking a $1 million loan and a $900,000 line of credit. By email, Feinberg alerted Mozilo that the credit line was “above what guidelines allow.” Mozilo responded, “Go ahead and approve the loan, and close it as soon as possible. Don’t worry about this deal, it’s golden.” Countrywide further waived half a point, or $5,000 on the million-dollar loan. (Homebuyers can reduce their interest rates by paying points, which are equal to 1 percent of the value of a loan.)

That wasn’t Aldrich’s only contact with Countrywide. At the time he refinanced, a class action lawsuit against Countrywide was pending before the appellate court, brought by borrowers contending that the company offered an inadequate payment to settle allegations that it charged excessive fees for credit reports. That August, Aldrich was part of a three-judge panel that unanimously rejected the borrowers’ appeal. (View a slideshow featuring "V.I.P." loan recipients.)

According to a person familiar with the case, Aldrich did not disclose his relationship with Countrywide to the plaintiffs or offer to recuse himself. California’s judicial code of ethics states that judges cannot accept gifts or favors from donors “whose interests have come or are reasonably likely” to come before them, nor can they take out a loan at better terms than are available to other borrowers. Reached by phone, Aldrich denied receiving a below-market loan and hung up.

Countrywide’s generosity to Aldrich reflected a broader strategy. Through a program that provided loans on favorable terms to V.I.P. borrowers, the nation’s largest mortgage lender curried favor with politicians, government officials, and business partners who were in a position to influence policy, profits, or public opinion. While some may not have been fully aware of the special terms, many took the bait. Some, including Aldrich, appear to have skirted or violated conflict-of-interest rules or ethics policies.

Feinberg, who served as gatekeeper for the V.I.P. program from 2000 to 2004, wrote hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of loans—as much as $400 million in 2003 alone—for customers whom his superiors had singled out for special treatment. After he filled out the applications, they were processed by a V.I.P.-loan underwriting unit, which had its own branch number in Countrywide’s recordkeeping system.

The vigor with which Countrywide chased V.I.P.’s was matched only by the aggressiveness with which it marketed loans to risky borrowers. In the past year, Countrywide morphed into the Chernobyl of the mortgage meltdown, with the F.B.I. investigating its lending practices, its stock plummeting, and Bank of America buying the company at a fire-sale price. Much as the high­fliers of the internet bubble crashed overnight, the company that symbolized the housing market’s boom has quickly come to define its collapse.

In June, Condé Nast Portfolio disclosed the names of five V.I.P.-loan recipients: Senators Christopher Dodd and Kent Conrad, former cabinet members Alphonso Jackson and Donna Shalala, and former United Nations Ambassador Richard Holbrooke. The Wall Street Journal reported that James Johnson and Franklin Raines, both former C.E.O.’s of government-sponsored mortgage buyer Fannie Mae, received favorable rates.

But many other V.I.P. borrowers haven’t been named until now, including former Countrywide director Henry Cisneros, who served as secretary of Housing and Urban Development in the Clinton administration; former White House staffer Paul Begala, now a commentator on CNN; and Postmaster General John Potter. Countrywide also offered special discounts to Congressional staffers involved in housing issues.

Current or prospective business partners who received special treatment include former C.E.O.’s William Esrey of Sprint, which teamed up with Countrywide to provide property information to homebuyers on their cell phones, and Bruce Karatz of KB Home, a leading homebuilder that refers customers to Countrywide for mortgages. The biggest subset of V.I.P.’s included Mozilo’s network of friends, business associates, and people he wanted to ingratiate himself and his company with; they were known in company emails and memos by the initials F.O.A.—Friends of Angelo.

A Countrywide spokesperson declined to comment for this article and turned down Condé Nast Portfolio’s request for an interview with Mozilo. Feinberg, the V.I.P.-loan officer, eventually grew disillusioned with the loan program. He left Countrywide in 2007 and agreed to be interviewed.

Fallout from the controversy has been swift and promises to spread. The Senate Ethics Committee is reportedly probing Countrywide’s loans to Dodd and Conrad, and two Republican members of Congress urged the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee to investigate as well. As Dodd shepherded a sweeping housing-reform package through Congress, his credibility was damaged, with newspaper editorials questioning whether his personal ties to Countrywide colored provisions giving relief to lenders. Senators John Cornyn and Barbara Boxer introduced an amendment requiring their colleagues to disclose detailed information about their mortgages. As housing values drop and foreclosures multiply, the Countrywide V.I.P. program has emerged as the latest business scandal to fuel a sense that insiders benefited disproportionately from the housing frenzy—and everyday consumers are paying the price.

According to Feinberg and company documents, V.I.P.’s nearly always received better deals than those available to most borrowers. Countrywide often waived up to two points and eliminated fees amounting to hundreds of dollars for underwriting, processing, and document preparation. Internal company emails often referred to these fees as “junk” or “garbage.” If interest rates fell while a V.I.P. loan was pending, Countrywide provided a free float-down to the lower rate, eschewing its usual charge of half a point. Some V.I.P.’s who bought or refinanced investment properties were given the lower interest rate reserved for primary residences. Because Mozilo informally preapproved his F.O.A.’s, many of them barely bothered to document their assets and enjoyed exceptions to normal procedures or shortcuts around them.

After the scandal erupted in June, several V.I.P.’s said they hadn’t realized that they received discounts. While Feinberg says he didn’t tell borrowers exactly how many points were waived on their loans, he says he told them that their fees were waived and usually assured them that they were getting special treatment or the Friends of Angelo discount. He also contends that he or other Countrywide employees almost always let borrowers know when they received a free float-down to a lower interest rate.

In 2002, Mozilo tried to snag a senator he anticipated might become the biggest V.I.P. of all: a U.S. president. On December 11, Peter Segal, a Washington real estate lawyer who worked closely with Countrywide, alerted Mozilo by email that he represented the seller of a $3.8 million Georgetown home that North Carolina Senator John Edwards was buying. Segal told Mozilo that he had encouraged Edwards to contact Stephen Brandt, who oversaw Countrywide’s V.I.P. loans. There was just one problem: The senator needed to close by December 23. “The timetable is ambitious, but he is a future presidential candidate and I think we [ought] to stretch for him,” Segal wrote.

Mozilo pounced. “Edwards will probably be either the vice pres or pres candidate for the Democrats for 2004,” he informed Brandt via email. “Do whatever it takes to get it closed by the 23rd and call me for the pricing.”

At Brandt’s behest, Feinberg immediately called Edwards’ assistant to convey Countrywide’s eagerness to help, but she fended him off. Oblivious to the behind-the-scenes maneuvers, the senator borrowed from a North Carolina bank.

Among mortgage companies, Countrywide’s visibility in Washington has increased dramatically in recent years. In 2005, it spent $1.5 million lobbying the federal government, more than five times its 2000 level and about the same as mortgage and banking giant Wells Fargo. At the time, Countrywide was backing legislation for national lending standards and opposing a plan to shrink its federally sponsored business partners Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

To gain access and “keep their edge,” says retired managing director Sidney Lenz, who oversaw government relations for Countrywide, the company’s lobbyists identified potential customers on Capitol Hill and in federal agencies and directed them to the V.I.P. program. The company’s lobbyists were “incredibly receptive” to loan requests from officials, she says, and it paid off. “Countrywide had an incredibly good relationship with Congress. It was not unusual for us to get a call saying, ‘A bill’s being introduced. It’s a little technical, and there are parts we don’t understand. Can you help educate us on this?’ ”

Federal rules prohibit members of Congress and their staff from accepting preferential loans, and many officials and employees elsewhere in government face similar restrictions. Senate rules bar members and staff from knowingly accepting gifts of $100 or more in a given year or any gifts from companies that, like Countrywide, employ registered lobbyists; gifts include loans on terms that are not available to the general public. Countrywide’s ethics code bars directors, officers, and employees from “improperly influencing the decisions of government employees or contractors by offering or promising to give money, gifts, loans, rewards, favors, or anything else of value.”

Nevertheless, Jimmie Williams, a Countrywide lobbyist in Washington, was remarkably candid in emails about the purpose of V.I.P. loans. In November 2002, for instance, Williams urged Feinberg’s boss, Doug Perry, to give “specialized handling” to an application from a staff lawyer for the House subcommittee that monitors the Department of Housing and Urban Development. HUD regulates real estate settlements and closing costs and runs the Federal Housing Administration, the agency that guarantees mortgages. Williams pointed out that Clinton Jones III, senior counsel of the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Housing and Community Opportunity, was “also an adviser to ranking Republican members of Congress responsible for legislation of interest to the financial services industry and of importance to Countrywide.”

Perry then emailed Feinberg: “Can you please handle this? .5 off. No garbage fees.”

Once Feinberg completed the paperwork, Jones borrowed $101,800 in February 2003. Countrywide waived five-eighths of a point, or about $625. Jones, now vice president for industry relations at Fannie Mae, acknowledges being told that the V.I.P. unit was handling his loan. Still, he says, he’s shocked to learn of his discount. “I thought I was just getting great service,” he says. “I didn’t know there was a shaving of points.” Williams, who is currently state director for federal residential-mortgage bundler Freddie Mac, declined to comment.

In March 2004, Williams sought a V.I.P. loan for the top aide of a Democratic congressman from North Carolina who was raising concerns about deceptive lending to low-income homebuyers. Williams asked Perry, “Could you please assist Joyce Brayboy, chief of staff to Congressman Mel Watt, with a loan?” Brayboy was considering choosing another lender, he wrote, but “would like to see if Countrywide has a better product.... Joyce reports directly to Congressman Mel Watt, who introduced predatory-lending ­legislation to address unscrupulous lending practices, and they do view Countrywide as a trusted adviser.”

Now senior vice president for the Glover Park Group, a communications consultancy, Brayboy says she “never applied for” and has “never had a mortgage loan with Countrywide, and certainly never had a discussion with anyone about getting special treatment.”

The lobbyist’s contacts extended beyond Congress. In December 2003, Williams notified Perry that the daughter of Alphonso Jackson was seeking a second mortgage. Jackson, a friend and Texas neighbor of President Bush, was then acting secretary of HUD. The daughter’s loan didn’t materialize. But that same month, Jackson, who had already refinanced his Alexandria, Virginia, townhouse through the V.I.P. program, applied for a $308,000 mortgage to buy a vacation home on a golf course in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. His loan came through on January 21, 2004, a week before President Bush named him HUD secretary. Feinberg says both of Jackson’s loans came with discounts.

Jackson resigned in March 2008 amid allegations of cronyism that were unrelated to his Countrywide loans. Defending the transactions, he says that he was a Countrywide customer long before he worked for HUD. Asked if he received breaks on the loans, he says, “Not to my knowledge. If I did, it certainly wasn’t discussed with me.”

Countrywide also lavished V.I.P. loans on former Clinton-administration bigwigs. Former Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala received two loans with rates floated down in 2002. “Angelo asked me to ensure that we ‘knock her socks off’ with our great service,” Brandt emailed Feinberg.

At Mozilo’s urging, former Clinton White House staffer Paul Begala borrowed $484,500 to refinance his McLean, Virginia, home in 2002, but he says he didn’t seek special treatment. Begala was giving a speech to a mortgage bankers group when he met the Countrywide chief. “He disagreed with my political views,” Begala says. “I’m surprised to find I’m a Friend of Angelo.”

Richard Holbrooke, who was an adviser to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, also garnered V.I.P. loans, as did his family. Countrywide waived at least 1.25 points, or $15,000, on Holbrooke’s $1.2 million loan in 2003 to refinance a vacation home in Telluride, Colorado. “Per Angelo this loan is to be at zero points,” Perry wrote.

Holbrooke’s wife, author Kati Marton, borrowed a total of $1.4 million to refinance two properties. “These loans are incredibly important to Angelo and as such they are incredibly important to us,” Perry emailed Feinberg. Holbrooke’s son, David, received a half-point discount, or $2,800, on a $559,500 loan when he and his wife refinanced their co-op in a Brooklyn, New York, high-rise, and five-eighths of a point, or $2,600, off when they bought the floor above it.

Countrywide also kept an eye on its own backyard. A managing director emailed Feinberg and Perry on August 12, 2003, letting them know that the company was planning a “highly visible and controversial” expansion of its headquarters in Calabasas, California, and had been “meeting with many city officials to try to develop the proper political strategy” that will provide the company with “the most success. One of those individuals is Robert Yalda, the city’s director of transportation and intergovernmental affairs. He is in the process of buying a house and needs some help.” That day, Yalda applied for a $500,000 mortgage. Now the public works director of Calabasas, Yalda acknowledges seeking a V.I.P. loan but maintains that he acted appropriately because he wasn’t responsible for approving the expansion; his role was to assess its impact on traffic. Countrywide never followed through on the expansion project.

Countrywide carefully weighed the potential political value of a client against the financial cost of a V.I.P. discount. Williams, the lobbyist, encountered internal resistance when he urged a favor for Billings, Montana, mayor Charles Tooley—hardly a household name. Tooley wanted to cancel the private mortgage insurance on his loan in 2002.

Lenz, then Williams’ boss, responded in an email that she was “usually in favor of settling on the side of the borrower with political influence” but doubted that Tooley had much. “In this case, I think the MI payment for the life of the loan has the potential of being a greater number than the Mayor of Billings, Montana’s influence.”

Williams countered that Tooley “will be mayor of one of Montana’s largest cities until 2005” and is “also very likely to hit the speaking circuit.”

Tooley says he doesn’t remember how the issue was resolved, but, he says, it “worked out to our satisfaction.”

Perhaps countrywide’s most troubling V.I.P. loans went to Democratic Senators Dodd and Conrad. As chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, Dodd is at the forefront of efforts to remedy the housing crisis. In May, he introduced a foreclosure-rescue bill that would extend up to $300 billion in government-backed loans to struggling borrowers if lenders forgave a portion of their debt. Conrad chairs the taxation subcommittee of the Senate Finance Committee, which often considers proposals affecting Countrywide, such as tax credits for first-time or low-income homebuyers.

Feinberg was dismayed to watch a cable-television interview in August 2007 in which Dodd called for predatory lenders to face criminal charges. Feinberg, who handled four loans for the Connecticut Democrat in 2002 and 2003, finds Dodd’s position “hypocritical.”

On June 12, Condé Nast Portfolio revealed those loans at an inopportune time for Dodd. The report, published on Portfolio.com, dampened speculation that Dodd might become Barack Obama’s running mate. Not only had Obama attacked Countrywide for “infecting the economy,” but James Johnson, who was advising the candidate on selecting a vice president, had resigned from the campaign after the Wall Street Journal reported on his own V.I.P. loans. Dodd’s involvement in the Countrywide scandal complicated his efforts to shepherd the housing-reform package through Congress.

On June 13, Dodd issued a statement that he did not know about the favorable treatment and “did not seek or expect any.” Four days later, he reversed himself, acknowledging that he knew Countrywide had placed him in a V.I.P. program. He said that he and his wife “assumed” it was “more of a courtesy” and that he had “negotiated a mortgage at a competitive rate, a prevailing rate.”

However, Dodd received discounts on at least two of the transactions, Countrywide documents show. In 2003, he borrowed $506,000 to refinance his Washington townhouse and $275,042 to refinance a home in East Haddam, Connecticut. When he applied, Countrywide waived three-eighths of a point, or about $2,000, on the first loan, and one-fourth of a point, or about $700, on the second. With that pricing built in, the interest rate on the loans, originally 4.875 percent, was reduced to 4.25 percent on the Washington home and 4.5 percent on the Connecticut property.

Feinberg says that he spoke to the senator once or twice and frequently emailed or talked to Jackie Clegg, Dodd’s wife. Clegg says that she can’t recall whom she communicated with at Countrywide and that two other banks offered comparable rates.

Like Dodd, Conrad was slow to acknowledge his witting participation in the V.I.P. program. Initially, the North Dakota Democrat said in a statement that he had “no way of knowing” how Countrywide categorized his loan and that he “never asked for, expected, or was aware of any special treatment.” But during an interview, he acknowledges, “I knew I was at a V.I.P.-employees unit. I thought that meant I was getting good service. Maybe I was naive.”

In March 2004, Conrad wanted to refinance his vacation home. The senator, who says he felt cheated by a mortgage broker during a prior refinancing, consulted James Johnson, an old friend who, he says, “knew more about mortgages than anybody I know.” When he called Johnson, the former Fannie Mae C.E.O. said, “Kent, I’m sitting with a guy you should talk to,” and handed the phone to Mozilo, who was glad to help.

Feinberg emailed Mozilo on March 17: “I have spoken with Kent Conrad and he wants to refinance to a 15-year mortgage. The rate we are looking at is a 4.875% and it has a one-point charge.” Mozilo replied, “Take off one point,” and Feinberg complied. Since Conrad borrowed $1.07 million, one point equaled $10,700.

A month later, Conrad was back in touch, seeking to refinance an eight-unit apartment building that he and his brothers owned in Bismarck, North Dakota. Since Countrywide normally made loans only for buildings of four or fewer units, Feinberg consulted Mozilo. “I did advise [Conrad] that I would check with you first,” Feinberg wrote.

“Please speak directly to Dave Spector,” Mozilo replied, referring to the senior managing director for secondary marketing. “See if he can make an exception due to the fact that the borrower is a Senator.” Spector then authorized the loan, according to emails.

Spector, who left Countrywide in 2006, says he can’t recall the loan. If he did approve it, he says, it was because he believed that it could be sold to investors, not because of Conrad’s prominence.

After being apprised of the emails, Conrad concedes he knew that the North Dakota loan violated company policy. The exception “seemed like a total nothing,” he says. “I could have gotten that loan any day of the week at home.” Conrad tried to make amends by giving $10,700 to charity and paying off the debt on the eight-unit property.

As countrywide grew, it used V.I.P. loans to cultivate a variety of current and prospective business partners. In June 2003, Bruce Karatz’s accountant let Feinberg know that the C.E.O. of KB Home, one of the country’s largest homebuilders, wanted to refinance his own residence for $3.3 million. Feinberg notified Mozilo, who was gung ho. Karatz, Mozilo wrote, “is a close friend and potentially a business partner. Do the financing as he requested. Make the process as easy as possible. Take ½ point off and no extra fees.”

Karatz borrowed from another lender instead. But he co-signed when two of his sons bought homes with V.I.P. loans from Countrywide in 2003 and 2004. The lender waived three-fourths of a point, or $3,750, on a $500,000 mortgage for a penthouse condo in Los Angeles, and seven-eighths of a point, or about $5,000, on a $590,000 mortgage for a residence in Beverly Hills. In 2005, KB Home formed a joint venture with Countrywide to set up KB Home customers with residential loans from Countrywide.

Countrywide’s V.I.P. loans to business partners raise conflict-of-interest issues akin to those posed by its seduction of public officials. Many publicly traded companies bar executives from taking gifts that could compromise their ability to act in the shareholders’ best interests. Countrywide’s ethics code forbids directors, officers, and employees from giving “courtesies or gifts intended to influence business decisions.” KB Home’s code of conduct prohibits employees from accepting a noncash gift of more than $200 from any company that “does or seeks to do business” with KB Home unless the gift is approved by an ethics officer and isn’t likely to lead to “special consideration” for the donor. A KB Home spokesperson declined to comment on the loans to Karatz’s sons. So did Karatz, who resigned in 2006 after an internal investigation showed that he had reaped $13 million by backdating stock options.

Countrywide has been a Sprint customer since 1987, and its partner since 2000 in ventures like providing mobile access to property data. In 2002, Mozilo brought Sprint chairman and C.E.O., William Esrey, into the F.O.A. club. Esrey, whom Perry described in one email as an “ultra V.I.P.,” borrowed $1.8 million to finance his mountainside vacation home in Vail, Colorado—an alpine-style, 8,300-square-foot villa with five bedrooms, six baths, and an outdoor Jacuzzi. Countrywide waived seven-eighths of a point, or about $15,000, on that transaction, and another 1.25 points, or about $9,000, on a $748,100 refinancing that year of Esrey’s house in Mission Hills, Kansas.

In its code of conduct, Sprint—which merged with Nextel in 2005—instructs employees and board members to structure relationships with current or potential business partners “so that they could not reasonably appear to affect your independent and sound judgment on behalf of Sprint Nextel.” A Sprint spokesperson referred questions to Esrey, who retired in 2003. He did not return messages.

Depending on the year, government-sponsored Fannie Mae bought from between 10 and 30 percent of its loans from Countrywide, giving the company a volume discount, Paul Muolo writes in his new book Chain of Blame. For their part, current and former Fannie Mae executives received preferential terms on V.I.P. loans. Former Fannie Mae C.E.O. James Johnson was given home loans at relatively low interest rates. As Condé Nast Portfolio has reported, Countrywide waived points for Johnson. Documents show that after leaving Fannie Mae, Johnson received more than $7 million in V.I.P. loans. In 2003, Countrywide took 1.375 points, about $13,000, off a nearly $1 million loan to refinance his Washington home. When he borrowed almost $1.3 million that year to refinance a four-bedroom, five-bathroom home next to a golf course in Palm Desert, California, Countrywide waived 1.875 points, or about $24,000. In 2004, Johnson borrowed $3 million to upgrade to a larger estate—a 5,875-square-foot house with a guesthouse and pool—on the same golf course. When Feinberg noted that the size of the loan exceeded Countrywide’s limit for a second-home mortgage, Mozilo told him to “do the deal.”

Like Holbrooke, his former partner in a Washington consulting firm, Johnson is a vice chairman at private banking firm Perseus. Brian Brooks, a lawyer for Johnson, says his client never asked for a discount and that it is “common knowledge” that individuals of high net worth receive lower rates than other borrowers.

In 2003, using V.I.P. loans for nearly $1 million apiece, Franklin Raines, Fannie Mae’s chairman and C.E.O. from 1999 to 2004, twice refinanced his seven-bedroom home, which has a pool and movie theater. What hasn’t been reported is that on the day Raines applied for one loan, his assistant left a message with a Countrywide receptionist: “Per Angelo, Frank needs to refi.” Perry notified Feinberg, “One point off, no junk.” Fannie Mae’s code of conduct prohibits directors from using their position to receive “improper personal benefits.” Raines did not return messages.

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act prohibits companies from making below-market loans to directors and executives. After the law’s passage in 2002, at least three Countrywide directors—Henry Cisneros, Robert Donato, and Harley Snyder—refinanced properties through the V.I.P. program. Snyder’s son, Andrew, bought a home with a V.I.P. loan in 2003. Possible discounts on these loans could not be ascertained because the documents were unavailable. Harley Snyder declined to comment, and Donato did not return a message. Cisneros, who left Countrywide’s board last year, says he “went to great lengths” to avoid receiving a break. He says the loan officer who now handles V.I.P. applicants assured him that he received market terms. “I have done business with Countrywide because I wanted to show confidence in the company,” he says.

For Mozilo, Friends of Angelo were a source of pride. A former loan officer who founded Countrywide in 1969, he proffered mortgages to relatives, friends, and even chance acquaintances long after the company became a huge business. The wide assortment of F.O.A.’s mirrored Mozilo’s background, habits, and interests. For example, both Mozilo and Postmaster General John Potter are alumni of Fordham University, in New York. When Mozilo met Potter at a conference and learned that he needed a mortgage, he referred Potter to the V.I.P. program, which took a point off and waived fees for his $322,700 loan. Potter says he didn’t know he received a break.

By the late 1990s, with F.O.A.’s scattered among branches nationwide, the company decided to centralize the process at its call center in Rosemead, California. Several loan officers there funneled the paperwork to an underwriting unit originally set up to process discounted loans for employees. The concept, one insider says, was to ensure that key customers received proper attention and avoided “unnecessary disruptions” in branch operations.

During his first two years in the call center, Feinberg never heard of the V.I.P. program. The 43-year-old Feinberg had dropped out of college and managed a gym (he refers to himself self-deprecatingly as a “dumb bodybuilder”) before joining Countrywide’s loss-mitigation office in 1996, where he negotiated with borrowers who were behind on their payments. He transferred to the call center in 1998.

Telemarketing proved to be his true calling. Feinberg generated so many loans that he won a company-paid vacation to Maui. In the fall of 2000, Perry assigned Feinberg his first F.O.A., a California manufacturer. “Be careful,” Perry told Feinberg. “He knows Angelo, and Angelo called me directly to make sure we take care of him. I have to report back, so don’t fuck anything up, and keep me posted.”

The customer was satisfied, and Feinberg was soon handling V.I.P.’s full-time, putting him in a privileged position in the call center. Under managers Brandt and Perry, most loan officers worked as many as 65 hours a week, marketing mortgage refinancing and home-equity credit lines to callers from across the country. They left their cubicles only 10 minutes a day, to fetch a company-provided lunch of pizza or tacos, which they ate at their desks. There was no letup; as soon as a loan officer hung up the phone, the next call would be sent from the queue. An electronic overhead screen displayed average customer hold times. Supervisors monitored their phone conversations, docking pay for the slightest deviations from scripted patter. The oppressive conditions drove call-center loan officers, including Feinberg, to sue Countrywide for overtime pay and meal breaks; the company settled the case in 2005 for $30 million.

In the V.I.P. program, Feinberg rarely took random calls and didn’t have to follow the script. He found that most V.I.P.’s earned high incomes and had credit scores. But since it was understood that Mozilo would approve their loans, they were often lax about providing paperwork. When Feinberg asked how to fill in the blanks, Perry told him to do his best: “This is how F.O.A.’s work, so just get used to it.”

With falling interest rates spurring a go-go housing market, the call center was operating at maximum capacity. The V.I.P. ranks swelled. High-profile clients included iconic anchorman Walter Cronkite, actors Stanley Tucci and the late Roy Scheider, and the late film director Robert Altman. Feinberg relished his contacts with the rich and famous. “When you were working V.I.P. loans, you felt like a V.I.P. yourself,” he says.

“Our V.I.P. unit is struggling under the weight of significant pipeline,” one of its supervisors emailed Brandt in October 2002. “We cannot afford to underserve this critical V.I.P. customer base. Incoming daily flow has significantly grown from historic levels, not only because of current market conditions, but because of increased ‘friends of’ referrals from persons below the managing director ranks.”

The supervisor’s memo categorized V.I.P. loans by priority, the highest being F.O.A. and F.O.S.—friend of Stanford Kurland, who was chief operating officer until 2006. Kurland referred a handful of friends to Feinberg for V.I.P. treatment, including a Paramount television executive who refinanced five properties on Cape Cod. Next in priority came personal loans for Mozilo, Kurland, and their families, followed by loans for lesser executives. As the backlog piled up, Feinberg and his colleagues shunted loans for minor luminaries to Countrywide’s branch in Glendale, California.

One Manhattan business manager for prominent people in entertainment, government, and industry sent about a dozen clients to Feinberg. The V.I.P. program offered “marginally better” terms than other lenders, he says. “We couldn’t afford to not have the best for our clients.”

In April 2004, Feinberg’s superiors switched him back to regular call-center duties; he says he was never told why. Disappointed, he transferred to the Glendale branch. He tried to keep doing V.I.P. loans, but the branches operated under a financial system that was different from the call center’s: The discounts came out of either the branch’s profit or a loan officer’s commission.

As criticism of Countrywide’s lending tactics mounted, Feinberg became disenchanted with the V.I.P. program and his role in it. He came to regard favors for the well-connected as a sign that Countrywide had strayed from its mission of helping ordinary Americans own their homes. No longer seeing a future for himself at the company, Feinberg quit in November 2007.

Feinberg and his wife live in a two-story San Fernando Valley home, which he bought in 2003 with a Countrywide mortgage; he says he received the standard one-point discount for employees. There, he has saved stacks of documents about the V.I.P. operation: loan analyses comparing “policy” with “actl chrgd,” “pipeline” reports that tracked loans from application to funding, and printouts of emailed instructions from Mozilo and other Countrywide executives.

After a heart attack in February, Feinberg has lost 35 pounds and is looking for work. He says recruiters are often taken aback when, scanning his résumé for job experience, they come upon “V.I.P. Account Executive. Advised on V.I.P. referrals from the C.E.O., C.F.O., president, and senior management.”

Former colleagues told Feinberg recently that Countrywide was still making V.I.P. loans, but far fewer than in his heyday. He expects Bank of America to shutter the program. A Bank of America spokesperson says that senior executives there “do not get involved in the origination of mortgages.”

At least one F.O.A. remains loyal to the program. In 2003, when Philip Ballinger was dean of admissions at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington, he planned to move to the more expensive Seattle area. Another Gonzaga administrator told Ballinger that Mozilo, a trustee, made loans at special rates to university staff. Gonzaga’s chancellor then spoke to Mozilo, and the next day, Perry instructed Feinberg to take “.75 off, no junk, V.I.P., fast processing.” Ballinger, who bought his home with a $312,000 Countrywide mortgage, says the terms were better than he could get from any other major lender.

His 10-year mortgage adjusts to a new rate in 2013. Asked whether he would ever refinance with another V.I.P. loan, Ballinger, now admissions director at the University of Washington, says, “I’d hope it’s a perpetual thing.”

And the "free market" enthusiasts that oppose a bailout for homeowners suddenly don't like their own theory when the chips fall back on them. The SINGLE TRANSACTION approach advocated in this blog is the key to proving your case. Pay attention to both ends and all the logistical errors and ignorance of property law that took place in between the investor's funding of the loan and the borrower signing the loan documents.

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New York Sues UBS for Securities Fraud

The attorney general of New York accused UBS of consumer and securities fraud on Thursday, saying the bank had misled investors when it sold them auction-rate securities.

Auction-rate securities are preferred shares or debt instruments with rates that reset regularly, usually every week, in auctions overseen by the brokerage firms that originally sold them. But the $300 billion market for these instruments collapsed in February, trapping investors who had been told that they were safe and easy to cash in.

Even as a senior executive at UBS called the market “a complete loser,” the bank continued to pitch the securities as short-term, liquid investments, according to the civil complaint filed by Andrew M. Cuomo, attorney general of New York.

At the same time, seven executives at the bank sold their personal holdings of the securities, which totaled $21 million, to avoid losses, according to the complaint.

“Once they knew the auctions were failing, they removed their personal money and corporate money from the auctions and were still bringing consumers into the auctions,” Mr. Cuomo said. “Now people have their funds locked up in a way they can’t access them.”

UBS halted the auctions of these securities on Feb. 13, leaving more than 50,000 UBS customers holding about $37 billion in the investments, according to the complaint. These investors — city governments, companies, individual investors — remain unable to sell them in many cases.

UBS has offered to lend its customers up to 100 percent of the value of the securities until liquidity returns. Mr. Cuomo has asked the bank to return the full value of the securities to investors in cash.

The bank rebutted Mr. Cuomo’s accusations. “We will vigorously defend ourselves against this complaint,” UBS said. “It is frustrating that the New York attorney general has filed this complaint while we have been fully engaged in good-faith negotiations with his office to bring liquidity to our clients holding auction-rate securities.”

Mr. Cuomo’s office is the third state authority take UBS to task over the auction-rate market, after William F. Galvin, the secretary of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and the Texas State Securities Board.

Mr. Cuomo’s case could have greater impact because UBS’s bond desk is based in New York, giving Mr. Cuomo the right to bring a case on behalf of UBS customers everywhere.

The case centers on e-mail messages among UBS executives and the attorney general expects to bring several more cases in coming weeks related to the auction-rate market.

At UBS, senior executives were aware of the growing problem in the auction-rate market by December last year and, despite concerns from the bank’s risk officer, they covered up problems while continuing to sell the securities to investors, the New York complaint says.

In January, when UBS executives halted some of the auctions, the bank’s head of public finance banking wrote in an e-mail message that UBS officials should not tell bankers about those auctions because “it will be another indication (perhaps preliminarily) that we are killing this thing.”

The bank’s global head of municipal securities wrote some of the more colorful e-mail messages, saying in January that it would be “scary and delicate” to tell the bank’s financial advisers who sold the securities about the growing problem. In February, that executive described the situation in the market as “absolute torture.”

Lawyers specializing in white-collar crime said they expected to see many more cases filed in the coming months. Bank of America, Merrill Lynch and Wachovia have been named by other state regulators as targets in auction-rate investigations.

“When there is a financial crisis and the public is looking for scalps, the law enforcement officers will respond in kind,” said Bradley D. Simon, a lawyer with Simon & Partners in New York.

Housing Bill Has Something for Nearly Everyone

If you are ignoring the housing bailout bill because you think it benefits only troubled homeowners, you may miss out on a windfall.

The bill, expected to be passed by the Senate in the next few days and then signed by President Bush, does offer incentives to certain overextended borrowers and their mortgage lenders.

But it also includes many handouts to first-time homebuyers, longtime homeowners, returning veterans and senior citizens seeking to tap their home equity without getting hit with big fees. Millions of people have the potential to benefit in some way.

Huge numbers of people buying homes for the first time, for instance, will be eligible for what amounts to an interest-free loan from the government. Meanwhile, older Americans will now be able to borrow more and possibly pay less for reverse mortgages that allow them tap the equity in their homes.

Whether larding up the bill with all these benefits is good for taxpayers is a debate for another part of the newspaper. But there is no shame in taking advantage of what is offered. In fact, you would be foolish not to.

Here are some of the new benefits:

RENEGOTIATING MORTGAGES Part of the bill is devoted to the creation of a program that may allow some people to cancel their old mortgage loans and replace them with new fixed-rate loans lasting at least 30 years. The amount of the new loans would be no more than 90 percent of what their property is actually worth now.

So who is eligible? You need to have originated your troubled loan or loans on or before Jan. 1, 2008. The loans in question must be on your primary residence. Vacation homes and investment properties are ineligible. You will also need to verify your income, which many borrowers did not have to do in recent years.

Also, as of March 1, 2008, your monthly housing payment (including the principal on all your various mortgage payments, interest, taxes and insurance) has to have been at least 31 percent of your monthly household income. So if you were earning $5,000 a month and had housing payments of $3,000, you are eligible. But if you had payments of just $1,400, you would not be, presumably because that loan is affordable given the size of your income.

Lenders, however, are not required to give you a better deal under the new law, even if you do meet the qualifications. They may not be willing to negotiate unless they think you are truly on the cusp of foreclosure.

If you manage to get a new loan, you cannot take out a home equity loan for at least five years after you get the new mortgage. You will also have to pay a 1.5 percent fee each year on the remaining balance. Finally, you have to hand over no less than 50 percent of any appreciation on the home to the government once you sell. Sell the house in less than five years, and you will have to turn over as much as all of the gain.

This program ends on Sept. 30, 2011. While it does not officially take effect until Oct. 1, lenders may be willing to start their negotiations with borrowers now.

BREAK FOR FIRST-TIME BUYERS If you are buying a home for the first time, and it is your primary residence, you are eligible for a federal tax credit of $7,500 or 10 percent of the purchase price, whichever is smaller. With a tax credit, you subtract the credit amount from the total you would otherwise pay to the Internal Revenue Service. So if you owe $1,500 and you qualify for the credit, you would end up getting a $6,000 refund.

There are two big catches, though. If you earn a modified adjusted gross income of more than $75,000, or $150,000 if you are married and filing your tax return jointly, the credit starts to phase out. For single people, it phases out completely at $95,000 of annual income, while for married people filing jointly, it phases out at $170,000.

But you have to pay back the credit over the next 15 years, in equal amounts each year when you pay your federal taxes. That makes this more like an interest-free loan than a true credit. According to the National Association of Realtors, there were about 2.5 million first-time home buyers in 2007. A large proportion of them would have qualified for this credit, but whether it is enough to push would-be buyers over the edge this year remains to be seen.

The tax credit is retroactive to home purchases on April 9, 2008, and expires on July 1, 2009. If you purchase a home from Jan. 1, 2009 to June 30, 2009, you can claim the tax credit on your 2008 tax return.

ADDITIONAL DEDUCTION If you are a homeowner who takes the standard deduction on your federal income taxes and does not itemize, this one is for you. You can now take an additional federal tax deduction of $500, or $1,000 if you are married and filing your tax returns jointly. Again, this one is gravy; you get it in addition to the standard deduction.

Since itemizers are often people who pay a lot of mortgage interest, this deduction will generally benefit people who pay little or none, like those who have paid off their mortgages entirely or close to it. There is one hitch here: you will need to report the property taxes you paid on your tax form. If they are less than $500 (or $1,000 if you are married and filing a joint return), your deduction will be limited to the amount of the property tax you paid.

REVERSE MORTGAGE CHANGES Reverse mortgages allow older Americans, generally 62 and older, to get a lump sum or a monthly check that comes out of their home equity. They do not have to pay the money back until they stop living there permanently or their heirs sell the house.

The problem with these loans, however, is that they often come with high fees. Moreover, some salespeople pressure borrowers who are applying for the loan to purchase annuities, long-term care insurance or other financial products that are not necessarily in the borrower’s best interest.

The bill tries to address both issues. First, it limits origination fees on reverse mortgages at 2 percent of any loan up to $200,000 and 1 percent beyond that, up to a maximum of $6,000.

The bill also states explicitly that borrowers cannot be forced to purchase an annuity or other financial or insurance product as a condition of qualifying for a reverse mortgage.

Finally, the bill raises the maximum amount that people can borrow. Before, the limits were set on a county by county basis, according to AARP’s legislative policy director, David Certner. The biggest allowable mortgage available anywhere was just over $400,000. Now, there is a nationwide cap of $625,500.

REDEFINITION OF JUMBO LOANS Often, if you want the mortgage loan with the lowest possible interest rate, it has to be small enough to be purchased by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac from whatever bank or other institution originated it.

Under the new bill, Fannie and Freddie have permanent authority to buy bigger loans in areas with high housing costs. (Temporary measures allow them to buy bigger loans, but those expire on Dec. 31.) They can buy loans up to 115 percent of the local median home price, though they cannot buy any loans larger than $625,500. Any larger loan will generally be a jumbo loan, which will cost more in interest.

A BREAK FOR VETERANS Lenders will have to wait nine months, instead of 90 days, before beginning foreclosure proceedings on homes owned by someone returning from the military. Lenders must also wait a year before raising interest rates on a mortgage held by someone returning from military service.

These provisions expire on Dec. 31, 2010.

Hi. Pleased to make your acquaintance. I was a Florida trial lawyer, still licensed. Also member of the Federal Trial Bar and Federal Bankruptcy Bar, Southern District of Florida.

Last night on the Lehrer report on PBS, there was an extensive piece on the homeowner, mortgage and credit crisis. They now estimate that there will be 6.5 million foreclosures in the next three years, that the housing market cannot recover until at least 2011, but that we must save the falsely rated derivatives as mortgage backed securities or the entire credit system will come falling down. The real bottom line is that there ought to be 6.5 million "foreclosures." In fact there should be twice that many. Because under basic black letter property law in effect for centuries in common law, statutes and practice and procedure, these people now own their homes free and clear of any mortgage or encumbrance. They merely have to step up and say it in the right way at the right time and in the right place.

Yes I am nuts. But I am also right. And I have the proof. More than 100 people have used the theories and strategies that I created as the "Garfield Continuum" both pro se and with counsel. In ALL cases, without exception, what started as a foreclosure by the lender ended with a foreclosure OF the lender and anyone else claiming rights through the lender, the note and the mortgage. As a result of the information that I have dispersed, pro se litigants in 7 states have walked away with their homes free and clear of the 1st mortgage, second mortgage and HELOC.

Nonetheless I urgently recommend that people secure counsel. My advice is heeded but there is nobody to take their case because the lawyers mistakenly believe that there is little or no money in it for them and that the issue of foreclosure defense has been "foreclosed" for decades. The few lawyers that have heeded my suggestions, have found themselves inundated with cases, retainers, contingency fees and awards of refunds, rebates, damages, attorney fees and costs.

An oversimplification of the bottom line is this: the "lender" was never the real lender, never was out of pocket for the funding of the loan, and has been paid in full on the mortgage and note, PLUS 2.5% premium as fee for posing as the lender at closing, giving cover to mortgage aggregators and Wall Street investment banks.

Thus the "lender" has no economic stake in the mortgage or note which translates as no standing. But more importantly, the cloud on title can ONLY be cured by figuratively foreclosing on the lender. No matter what the "lender" does, including issue a satisfaction of mortgage on payment or short sale, or negotiation of new terms, or even selling property acquired at foreclosure auction, there still remains dozens, perhaps hundreds or even thousands of people who are possessed of documents that purport to give them rights to that same mortgage and note from that same borrower in connection with that same loan closing on the same property.

If the borrower owes money to anyone it most certainly is not the "lender" and the real "lender" can't step forward because they would be admitting non-disclosure of parties, fees and terms at the loan closing. Cases in neighboring New York, nearby Ohio, New Jersey and Pennsylvania resulted in angry judges detecting fraud and forgery not only in the closing documents but in the attempt to prove up the loan for foreclosure purposes.

I was retired, minding my own business when approximately a year ago I realized what was happening in the mortgage business, the effect of securitization, and that nobody seemed to be getting it. By October, when I had the family fly in from the East Coast for a reunion, including grandchildren, I asked my older daughter what a blog was and how I would get one. Livinglies was born with the idea of exposing fraud in the marketplace. Within a few weeks my suspicions about the mortgage market mounted and despite having the respect of many people on Wall Street because of my associations there, and despite my good reputation in the legal field, I was treated as chicken little. Perhaps the view that I was trying to make myself useful in the boredom of retirement, South of Phoenix.  Even my good friend Brad Keiser now executive Director of the Foreclosure Defense Institute, didn't give me any real traction.

I predicted 2 years ago with unfortunate accuracy how this was going to turn out. I proposed solutions, part of which were heard by Barney Frank and incorporated into the Bill passed by the House yesterday. He understood the gravity of the situation but he also understands the reality of politics. The Bill might help some people in an odd sort of way but it is a distraction from the real correction required. If we are going to have a trustworthy financial system and securities exchange and trading in which the investors repose confidence in their transactions, we must revert to the truth and not cover it up by a thinly veiled attempt to grant credibility to the plausible deniability built into the mortgage meltdown scheme.

The fact is that the law has not changed and that distracting people from their rights under the law puts them at greater risk, while further eroding our economic system because we all know that deception, fraudulent practices and and predatory sales tactics were in vogue from 2001 to 2008. Throwing more new newly created dollars into a system already bloated with too many dollars with cause further devaluation and spawn far greater inflation than we have seen in our lifetimes.

The same people that assert themselves as "free market" proponents are attempting to privatize profit and socialize losses. Read the financial news from abroad and find that none of the central bankers are amused or satisfied by the approach we are taking. Those with the power and money are closest to the microphone so we hear a skewed story.

In a market that purports to be free, the chips fall where they may. The foreclosing party in all these cases has already been paid, now wants the property too, and a judgment for deficiency and attorney fees as well. THAT is where the windfall is, not the with the homeowner. If the real parties in interest step forward then they can assert their claims subject to the borrowers set-offs for fraud, TILA violations etc at closing.

The total mortgage market affected is around $15 trillion dollars and with even modest fees, the world of attorneys will be making something on the order of one trillion dollars. Despite this fact, the foreclosures proceed at the rate of 8,000 new foreclosures per day, Legal Aid is overflowing, and private attorneys won't take the case because they think they are going to get stiffed on fees. I am not looking to practice law again, although I can serve as co-counsel where necessary and we have ghost writers for your pleadings. We are looking for competent litigators to whom we can refer cases, complete with mortgage audits that do most of the work for you, forms to use in court, and research to assist you in presenting precedent on the trial and appellate court levels across the country. The lawyers who get in on the front end of this will become quite wealthy. Plus you get to win a lot in court, which you must admit is more fun than losing.

On Tuesday I completed partial filming of a documentary for release in October, and TV ad spots for a platform that Brad Keiser is heading up as the Executive Director. Some rather irreverent but powerful people from Hollywood are producing and directing the documentary, based upon my book, THE HOMEOWNER'S WAR, HOW TO SUE YOUR LENDER, KEEP YOUR HOUSE, COLLECT DAMAGES AND THANK YOUR LAWYER, for release in September. I can't disclose any more details except that the documentary is already scheduled for showing at Sundance in Utah.

On September 4, I will spend a day in Santa Monica with lawyers and explain the ins and outs of securitization so they can be ready for what will be thrown back at them by the other side. Sometimes Justice just happens

By a vote of
9 to 0

Steven
has been evicted

HOH

Description of event: What's missing from the BB house?
The HGs compete Head to Head.
1st up: April vs Dan. - April's out.
Renny v Libra - Renny's out
Memphis v Angie - Angie's out.
Ollie v Jerry - Jerry's out
Michelle v Keesha - Michelle's out
Libra v Dan - Dan's out.
Memphis v Keesha - Memphis is out.
Ollie v Libra - Ollie's out
Keesha v Libra... for HoH...

Keesha is the New HoH

In the midst of the all out war within my own home with pestilence I couldn't help compare it to a recent episode with a not so desirable tenant. 

Like his mouse counterpart, his amazing ability to be elusive was only matched by his ability to remain completely ignorant to the idea that what he was doing was wrong. Multiple attempts to remove him without the expense of legal council failed. Proper notice and engaging the legal system started a chain of events as frustrating as thinking you are rid of your mice only to find your new bag of celebratory mini-powered donuts was decimated by the not so cute "Jerry" in the walls.

My experiences with these bipedal antagonists historically has resulted in mutually parting before an attorney is retained. This may also be my reluctance to call an exterminator, why pay someone when I can do it myself. Other blogs located here will shed more light on my philosphy of such.

This go around, the elusive & incomprehensible tenant decided to use his rights to the fullest extent of the law governing this great State & County. Luckily for him, the local landlord-tenant laws say "up-yours" to landlords and "oh, you deal in drugs..here's a couple more months to wait it out until we allow your landlord to navigate the headaches of our legal time line" to tenants.

In fairness, A great part of the local laws is that no notice has to be given to start the process. Attorney's have to be involved to file with the court for possession specifically so you will have attorney fees to take into account. The problem starts with lack of funding & man-power (or woman-power) to address the legal needs of a county that boasts 38% of its cohabitants are renters. Back logs of complaints, filings and dockets fill the coffers of the judges, servers & finally the deputies that act as the final hand pushing folks out the door legally.

Locally, four (4) deputies are responsible for all types of evictions, including but not limited to (notice the legal language) residential, commercial, retail, whathaveyou. That is simply not enough personnel to accommodate the needs of the local masses.

To my story. Once my attorney filed for a rent & possession a court date was set for four weeks later. The tenant had the chance to show up and plead his/her case against the landlord for being wrongly evicted, charged without reason, whatever. I have been told that 99% of the time the tenant does not show up. If they do show up another court date is set and you have all parties there to plead their case in a very Judge Judy fashion. This time was not that rare exception, the facts were plain....no rent paid....you have to leave the property within 10 days or else.

I should interject here that when the defendant or "tenant" is summonsed or served papers to show up in court, if they are not handed the papers personally than the landlord can only sue for possession. That means any tenant can simply not answer the door and they won't be on the hook for past due rent, damages & any other applicable charges for this court date. If you think a process server waits in dark sunglasses in a plain colored sedan until the tenant runs from the apartment building to the car and then dramatically runs down a moving car to issue the papers, think again. They (the sever) could seemingly care less if the person gets the papers in person or simply posts the notice on the font door (also assuming thier is an actual unit # on the door...if not, sorry back of the time-line buster) in a much less dramatic way. So of course my tenant is nowhere to be found and all we get filed with the court is possession only. If we want to pursue the money part of the eviction, it is up to the landlord to file yet again with yet more fees and yet more waiting to maybe get your money back.

Big surprise, the judge orders the 10 days and my tenant stays all ten, all the while entertaining prostitutes and drug activity. I am not one to exaggerate the facts here, a dealer or someone with loads of cash and a fair amount of drugs was arrested on the way to my tenants front door. Luckily for the busted, he spared my tenant from an expedited eviction which is supposed to the fast track to getting a drug related tenant out, but the reality is it is not much faster since everyone moves like molasses during these summer months. Unfortunately for me and the neighbors we get to put up with more naughty tenant behaviour since our hands are tied to what the legal limits allow....which means time, too much time.

The 10 days come and go, a writ of execution is files, more fees paid and I have to schedule a time with the deputy to physically remove the personal belongings of the tenant and if we are lucky, remove said tenant as well in a sensationalized sending off filled with expletives, throwing of things, finger pointing and shallow threats involving the words and phrases like "all of you" and "you will see". Again, I was not so lucky with the way I envisoned this scenario actually playing out.

The deputy scheduled a time for me to go look at the property again to make sure he was still there and then he would post another notice stating the tenant has another 2-3 days to remove his belongings or else. This was sounding very similar to the time I needed some work done to my car at the dealership who scheduled a time for me to drive an hour with lil' kids in the car only to get there and have to schedule an anothdr time to get the work done. In a Seinfeld voice I remember saying "so I need to schedule a time to schedule a time". The same feeling arose but instead of displacing my offspring for a short period of time I was trying to displace an offender of the law at many counts for eternity. So I comply with the deputy by overstating the obvious to the deputy, "he is still here sir".

"Great" he said to me. "I will be by in two to three days to post that notice and then you will have to check again to make sure he has not left. If he is still there after that 2-3 days, then I will come to supervise the eviction." That time passes, tenant is still there. I call and of course I have to schedule a time the following week to actually meet the deputy there at the building. He cancels on me that next week not once but twice. I finally nail him down to a date and time which is now a full calender month from when the court ordered the tenant to leave. I show up and deputy doolittle does just that....absolutely nothing. He stood there the whole time and complained that I did not have enough trash bags and manpower to complete the job. Apparently you have to have trash bags and 4 able bodies to move the personal belongings of a tenant out. I asked where I might have found this information out, a website, some literature, anywhere. He said there was no way for me to know and he should just leave since I didn't meet the requirements. I am reverting back to the painful childhood memories of not being able to ride the thriller at Disneyland due to being vertically challenged at this point. So I pay money for this eviction and I still have to follow your arbitrary rules, I'm sorry did I miss the point in which we turned into Pirates?

Keep in mind the unit my tenant occupied is less than 450 square feet. This deputy was just being "overworked and underpaid" (code for a not so nice adjective) from the moment I met him. Oh well, the deed was done and the last reminder of my pestilent tenant lays in waste along the curb waiting for one of the last great services the city offers, bulky item pick up. Of course that too won't be offered anymore in the near future as a side note.

From start to finish it took nearly four months to get the tenant out of the building. In that time I was able to kill nearly two dozen mice in my home.  My mice to tenant ratio is skewed grossly at this point. I highly recommend the old fashion mouse traps with a little piece of feta cheese as added bait. For tenants who duck rent, play with drugs and deal in the red lights I suggest doing your homework before you sign a lease, and be wary of all potential tenants no matter how innocent and docile they seem. I could not have been more surprised by this tenant.

I suppose you have to pick your poison in this not so complimentary comparison. Mice will eat your food, nibble through any surface in order to survive and leave little reminders of their stay with you in the form of deposits. A bad tenant will waste good money, bring down the neighborhood with their tomfoolery and give you plenty of reason to second guess your next potential tenant. You know, I think it a perfect comparison when looked at it with the right vantage point. 

Obligatory disclaimer: Consult an attorney with intimate knowledge of your city, county or state before taking any action against a tenant. Do not consider this information as reliable or guaranteed.

One thing I want to mention was the fact that they wanted to show voting percentages with faces only once, but then they decided to show them again. This changed the voting, against Ben's favour. I thought showing the faces was unnecessary and probably showing them twice helped Terri win the money. Speculation on forums say that the shows being bias to Terri. Maybe it has been but the voting percentages and faces shouldn't have been shown.

Last year for BB on Channel Ten. I guess we will see BB somewhere on Aussie TV in the near future. Thanks to www.bigbrother.com.au for provision of all images used in my posts. Thanks to the show for hosting another successful season. I enjoyed it alot. Will be the most memorable of course.

Rex = Ego. 

Yeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaahhhh. 

Positive Positive Positive.

Funny twirly eye makeup.

Why the hate?

Union Jack. UGH.

Bianca Gascoigne is, in every way, truly shiteous. Why would anyone want to put themselves anywhere even near that?

Snoring.

Dull interview. God. There's nothing there, on either side of the interview. No interesting questions, no interesting answers. Davina seems bored beyond belief.

Singing. OH MY GOD. Jazz. 

(Jazz, you know, used to be another word for Wank. As in, Jazz Mags.) 

Belinda's Vulva. And Labia. 

Belinda becomes a stand-up comic.

Davina pimps DVD.

RACHEL REALLY IS THAT NICE.

The fat lady sings, and it's all over, for another week. 

(Incidentally, I think we're in for a week of surprises and things. Ratings have fallen again, and you know what that means...)

Anyway, to the matter at hand: Big Brother. In the background of the live show there is an enormous sigh that reads TOILET next to a huge video screen of Belinda. Hm. Oh! TOILET is actually a video clip of what they can show of Rex. As he is in the toilet. Doing a poo. Day 43 actually began with a ridiculously untidy room in Hell, and Kat and Rachel in the Heaven bedroom singing a lovely song called Pinky Girl (which Kat ends with a cry of, yes, Cookie Power). During a discussion of the shopping list, Mikey suggests that he will eat Corn Flakes with water instead of milk. Also, he doesn't eat eggs. Imagine not eating eggs or milk! Ridiculous. It is decided, therefore, that everyone in the house will get a pack of eggs each, apart from Mikey who will get chocolate and cereal.

Big Brother then gives the housemates packed lunches for the day. They are full of delights. Rachel swaps a Penguin and some crisps for somebody's apple. There is something deeply wrong with her. Mikey offers his milk to anyone who wants it. Nobody does. "Oh! A Kraft cheese slice!" yells happy Stuart. Simple pleasures, eh? Rex has a long black hair on his back. Kat finds it hirarious. She would. "GET BEX OUT!" shout the chant, alongside chants of "GET LUKE OUT!" It makes it sound a bit odd. "There's nobody called Lex in the house!" the fairweather watcher might say. Darnell, for 1 week, orders 150 eggs. I am not joking. 150 eggs. FOR ONE WEEK.  They would be horrendously eggbound. Also, who buys eggs that cost £1.50 for 15? Value eggs are the worst kind. I'll bet they come from chickens that look like this:

THAT LOOKS LIKE LUKE! Ha!

Anyway, maybe you can tell that I am bored by a) some rubbish throwing-stuff fight and b) Stuart moaning about wanting to go. At Big Bother Towers earlier we had a chat about how people don't really want to leave. If they did, they would. They aren't in prison, and they have absolute free will. You want to leave? Great. Do. Stop whining about it. 

Darnell comes out of the diary room and tells everyone that he made a mistake with the shopping order. He makes everyone run through every possible item on the list to guess what he forget. "It was the potatoes!" he says. Potatoes? The one thing you could eat every meal and be fine? What a plonker. They could eat a jacket potato every night with beans, or cheese, or tuna, or salad, or whatever, and that would be awesome. Mikey gets told he can't order any chocolate ("It costs £3.50 a bar!" Darnell says, clearly ordering Ferrero Rocher rather than Dairy Milk) and Darnell didn't order the right flour for cakes. Luke moans that Darnell ordered nothing he can eat. "I'll be five stone next week," he yells, "I am going to faint!" Promises promises, Luke. 

(Btw, what's the weight that people die at? Isn't it 4st6lbs? Hurry up, Luke.)

Lisa does gardening, and says the word "whopping" far too much. The gang sings Old MacDonald. Darnell sings an adaptation of the song, adapting the verse about Old MacDonald's Manatee to become "Old Macdonald had a Bex, EIEIO, With her boobs out here and her boobs out there." I'm amazed she didn't take offence.

Davina's hair is stupid. Remember when Cameron Diaz put semen on her hair in that film? That's Davina. No wonder she isn't pregnant this series. 

Anyway. There's another conversation about the shopping list, and it's become apparent that Darnell only ordered Eggs, Plain Flour, Custard Creams, Tuna and Bread. Stuart tells Luke that he looks like "Betty... Spencer... Frank Spencer."  I don't hate Stuart, I really don't, but I do think he is astonishingly dense. It's almost terrifying. Oh, and some Oil. Darnell ordered some Oil. Well done. They count the biscuits out. This is absolutely riveting. No, really, it is. Suggestion for a spin-off: Biscuit Counting with Stuart. BB gives the gang a box of fruit and veg as a special prize. Rex asks if anyone knows what an artichoke is. I don't know what's worse, the fact that he is so patronising, or the fact that nobody does. Dale gets huffy about this question, but doesn't know the answer. OH WELL. Bex says that if her bra gets too big for her, and she loses weight, she will sue Big Brother. Uh, okay. Sure. 

Stuart goes to jail for asking to be nominated. Hell people get hot water and a 'Send a Heavenly Housemate to Jail Card'. Belinda has to choose someone. Mikey has some plastic tits on his head. Darnell is sent to luxury jail with a blanket and some pillows. He goes into the jail, and I really pray that it's a lift and will descend into an amazing new world we've never seen. It doesn't. We have a cut to HOURS LATER, and suddenly Sara and Lisa are wearing S&M outfits made out of bin bags. I AM NOT JOKING. Lisa sings Big Spender and gets sprayed with a water pistol by Kat, and acts like she is a) loving it and b) it is a lovely gift from Mario. You know. A gift.

An hour later, and Rex is doing some pretty good beat boxing. UGH UGH UGH! Bex is wearing a Bin Bag now. Sara sits on the Diary Room chair in between Bex and Lisa. She looks like a little girl between them. She looks bored and tired and upset and broken. Lisa looks like usual. Bex looks like Bonnie Tyler with a pie and crack addiction. Lisa has a man's arms/shoulder. Bex has a man's legs. Sara might have a cock. Who knows? Another hour later, and Darnell is out of prison. There's a conversation about age, and everyone declares Maysoon's 28 years as being "proper old". I'M GLAD I'M NOT THAT OLD HA HA ROFL. 

Touching moment: Stuart goes to the diary room and cries about how much he misses his daughter, and how he wants to see her. No cynicism from me: It's genuinely quite sweet. On an utterly unrelated note, the amount of women who are flicking their beans at him RIGHT NOW is insane. Cut to: the bedroom in Hell, where Bex drags her arse over to Luke's bed and lies it on top of him. It's lovely. "You're insufferably," he says. Yeah. Right.

So, time for the evictee to be announced. And it is...

...

...

...

BELINDA! Goodbye Hoggle: we barely knew you.

(Oh yeah: And screw you, BB scriptwriters! We had "So good she named herself thrice" days ago. MONIES TO US NOW PLEASE.)

SECURITIZATION AND MORTGAGE DEFENSE/OFFENSE WORKSHOP

September 4, 2008 (9AM TO 5PM)

LOEWS HOTEL, SANTA MONICA, CALIFORNIA

IN 2009, 14 MILLION HOMEOWNERS WILL DEMAND THEIR HOMES FREE AND CLEAR

WILL YOU BE READY TO REPRESENT THEM?

REGISTER NOW - PayPal, Visa, MasterCard

The conspiracy to defraud homeowners will be thrown to its knees, and lenders will be called upon to produce the note or let the property go.

If you know anything about mortgage backed securities, the answer is clear. Precedent setting orders/opinions in New York, New Jersey, Michigan, Florida, Ohio and other states have already decided in favor of the homeowners – with more following every day.

Welcome to the emergence of mortgages interwoven the new world of derivatives, asset backed securities, credit market vehicles, ratings and appraisal practices, issuance of negotiable instruments, and administrative rules and regulations on the state and federal level.

Are your legal skills up to the challenge? Or are you malpracticing, unaware of this legal new world order called securitization?

If your practice has anything to do with bankruptcies, foreclosure, or real estate, be prepared to be sued yourself for not knowing the myriad state and federal laws that protect homeowners from predatory lenders. Further, there is now a proven legal strategy for not only protecting homeowners, but establishing legally that they already own their homes free and clear of all mortgage encumbrances.

Major changes in real property law and foreclosure defense arose as a result of the securitization of loans. This presents a huge opportunity for attorneys to enlarge their practice, win more cases, and earn substantial fees.

ATTORNEYS BEWARE: The typical predatory lender is in violation of an excess of a dozen statutory acts plus over twenty causes of action.

GARFIELD’S CONTINIUM workshop will teach you in one day how to upgrade your skills and embark on an exciting new legal journey, taught by Neil Garfield, who created the Continium, a combined and coordinated group of legal strategies that capitalize on the current securitization climate.

Held in sun-drenched Santa Monica, this exciting venue offers insight, invigoration and introspection, into the kind of practice you have, and the kind of practice you will create in response to a historical era in homeowner’s rights. Topics include the mortgage meltdown, securitization and its impact, foreclosure and bankruptcy old and new order, mortgage audits and strategies, defensive and offensive legal strategies, courtroom tools and winning arguments.

Perfect for litigators, mediators and judges, too.

WORKSHOP AGENDA

9:00-9:30 Past and Current Status of Mortgages, Notes and Foreclosures

9:30-10:00 Mortgage Meltdown

10:00-10:30 Securitization Process

10:30-11:00 Securitization Parties

11:00-11:30 Securitization Victims

11:30-12:00 Legal Consequences of Securitization

12:00-1:00p Special Lunch Forum: From the Lender’s Perspective: Guest Speaker Brad Kaiser

1:00-1:30 Overview of Defensive Strategies

1:30-2:00 Overview of Offensive Strategies

2:00-2:30 Ethical and Malpractice Considerations

2:30-3:00 Bankruptcy Errors and Omissions

3:00-3:30 Boots on the Ground: Getting the Word Out

3:30-4:00 Attorney Fees

4:00-5:00 Networking Q and A

5:00-7:00p COCKTAIL RECEPTION WITH NEIL GARFIELD AND ASSOCIATES

NOTE: LAYPERSONS AND THE MEDIA WILL NOT BE PERMITTED. NO AUDIO/VIDEO TAPING IS ALLOWED

CLE CREDITS: This course does not provide CLE credits

COST OF SEMINAR IS $595.00 PER PERSON, GROUP PRICE IS $495 FOR FIRM MEMBERS

TO REGISTER: click the link below or for more information email us at homeownerswar@aol.com

REGISTER NOW

Neil F. Garfield, M.B.A., J.D., 61, is the winner of dozens of academic awards, a popular speaker, and author of technical treatises on law and economics. He has come out of retirement with a bang and financial institutions should take note. He knows them from the inside out, who the deciders are, and how they arrived at a catastrophic scheme to defraud people, agencies, institutions and governments all over the world.

For more information on Neil Garfield visit his website at

http://livinglies.wordpress.com

Also, there's the fact of Rex. He clearly wants to go, but hates quitting so will not walk. His attempts to get people to vote for him are actually quite hilarious, and that makes me want to see him stay in for a bit longer lol.

So, tune in at 9pm on C4 to start watching!

JK

• EMERGENCY WORKSHOP ANNOUNCEMENT COMING UP FOR SEPTEMBER 4
• DVD ARGUMENTS IN PRODUCTION
• DOCUMENTARY IN PRODUCTION
• BOOK FOR LAYMAN ABOUT TO BE BE PUBLISHED

There are people to save, money to be made, and lives to be enriched. If you are filing bankruptcy actions the old way, you are only delaying the inevitable foreclosure. You could have stopped it. If you are asked for advice or filing defensive pleadings in the foreclosure the old way, you are only delaying the inevitable. You could not only stop it, you could take control of the mortgage and note for your client.

I am inundated by new cases from all over the country and I don't have the time to deal with them all. We are taking care of some of that today with a new response system. But without local lawyers licensed in the jurisdictions where the property is located, I can't really do anything effective --- only you can do that.

We have twelve million homes to reach, and over one trillion dollar dollars in fees, mostly paid by lenders. This is far bigger than personal injury, will improve the quality and profitability of your law practice and raise your standing in litigation when you keep on winning.

Respond to ngarfield@msn.com with your contact info, bar number, states in which your license is active, and type of pratice you are currently running.

By a Vote of
9 to 1

Brian was evicted from the BB House. Adios Will wannabe.

Jessie is the new HOH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Tenants Facing Foreclosure - MassLegalHelp

Well after the current series of Australian Big Brother finishes this month, there will be no more series in Australia, the lucky things.  In the Australian house at the moment, Pamela Anderson is currently making a guest appearance.  So can anyone tell me why can't the UK series finish this year as well???

Whilst over here, Mario was kicked out during Fridays eviction.

Lisa is in the bedroom, practising her squat thrusts. Luke and Bex are on the Bed of Desire discussing the night before. Bex states that she told Luke she could pull him, a fact Luke denies. They call each other beasts and argue about who started it. Lisa is wearing Expression Number 3, vacant slight smile. I bet on the inside she is pishing herself at these two. Young love. Bex is telling Luke how she viewed it and then Luke calls out, "I do regret last night, Lisa" and Lisa asks, "Why, was it that bad?" They both deny it was bad; it was just cringe-worthy. Luke says that his parents will cringe but Bex's mum will laugh and say that Bex corrupted that poor, young, innocent boy. When Lisa asks who started it they both place the onus on each other. Lisa agrees that Luke probably started it since he is a man, after all. Luke states that they have to remember that they have been in there 5 weeks and Rebecca has been offering it on a silver platter, which Bex laughingly denies. The mood is good here; just reading it they could be interpreted as saying some cold things to each other, but there are a lot of glances back and forth between them and a lot of smiles. They are obviously uncomfortable but not screamingly so. Luke tells Bex to move to a separate bed, but Bex is staying put, she just won't be touching him.

1:42 pm.Some of the HMs are in the garden. Sara and Stu are on the same sunbed. Sara has her back to Stu, sitting upright with her back against his knees. She thrills him with the news that she didn't wash her hair in the shower. The Flirt and Seduction Meter is set to HIGH as she asks Stu if she smells nice. Stu rolls his eyes and hauls himself up to smell the Seductress Sara. He obligingly sniffs and tells her she smells, "All right". Sara uses Stu's change in position to sit with Stu's legs on either side of him and she contorts her head back to gaze into his eyes. He shakes his head slightly then slaps her cheeks softly, Morecambe and Wise style. Sara gives words to her desire to have dimples, like Mo. Stu asks Mo to grin and show off his dimples which he obligingly does. Sara tells them that she loves dimples and they turn her on. The world rests easier knowing this.

Mikey is in the Diary Room shouting about Bex and Luke getting it on the night before. He is disgusted that non-smoker Luke could French Kiss a smoker. Hormones are powerful things, Mikey Boy.

Lisa and Mario and in the bath. Lisa is complaining that they started off naked and then they started wearing clothes. At first I thought she meant in the house, but it turns out she is talking about evolution. Why did they start cutting their nails? Cutting their hair? Shaving off their beards? Methinks Lisa is getting a wee bit pissed off with the constant buff, puff and polishing. Mario says that the thought is deep, but shouldn't affect Lisa. She thinks that she comes from her ancestors, an idea that Mario tells her isn't shared by everybody. Yeah, OK Mario, you just keep sitting there polishing Lisa's leg with that exfoliating glove. Paddy Power will give you 10-1 odds that once you are out the house that glove is left to turn to mould.

Living Room. Belinda is asking Darnell if he could ever go back or redeem himself. Darnell shakes his head and says, "Never. I am banned from America for life." Big Bad Darnell. He explains that he was in the US illegally, then in 2004 he was caught drug trafficking, but it was just carrying a bit of weed. Once he was in the system it alerted the authorities to the fact that he was an illegal alien and they kicked him out. His mum and stepdad are still in the US; if his stepdad had adopted him then he would still be in the US. He had been on probation for two years for the weed offence, and on his last probabtion meeting the Immigration Police were waiting for him, put him in prison for being an illegal alien and he was there for eight months. Belinda queries his statement that his parents didn't know where he was, but he says they lived in St Louis and he was in Minneapolis. Kat asks why they didn't contact his family and Darnell tells her that, "They don't do that shit, man. If they think you're a criminal they don't call (his) mom and say hey how's she doing." The HMs all laugh at this. Kat gives him a squeeze and says, "Aww, why don't they call your mummy for you?" whilst laughing.

4:43 pm. It's pishing down, and some of the HMs are in the Luxury Bedroom. Stu and Sara are lying on the bed chatting. Stu is sad because only a few people in the house "get him" and one of them may be leaving tonight, and they think he is nice. Sara tells him that she likes him so why is her discounting her? Stu goes on that only a few people like him, and one of them might be leaving. This explains why Stu looked panic-stricken during the live eviction show. Sara does not want Stu thinking about Bex, she wants the spotlight firmly on her so asks Stu if his gang includes her now. He says, "Hopefully, unless you're lying to me. I know Bex likes me." Sara then gets the focus back to ME ME ME! and asks if she comes across as quite genuine (or desperate, take your pick. She is working it here, no doubt about it. Run Forrest, Run!) Stu is non-commital when he says that she does, and Sara pushes the point. When Stu agrees a bit more forcefully she says, "Ooh my heart is thumping a bit." I was fully expecting her to grab Stu's hand and place it over her heart, thus allowing him to cop a feel but she isn't that manipulative. Give it time.

Bex is in the Diary Room. She says that she is all right about the coming eviction; she wants to go. She is sure it will be her as she is loud and annoying and that snogging Luke probably didn't help her chances. She says that she finds the whole thing funny and blames it on the drink. Ah, the perils of cheap wine. She actually blames her part of it on the drink, she doesn't know what Luke's excuse is. Oh, I dunno. What could Luke possibly be thinking? A man, sharing a bed with a woman whom he obviously likes, who is a bit worse for wear and asking for a kiss? What could have been going through his mind. It's a mystery all right. When quizzed by Big Brother Bex denies fancying Luke. She says that she takes things too far and apologises to Big Brother that their love story is "going no further". She gives hope to all the fans of the cute chipmunk loving by adding, "but you never know". Then she realises what she has just said and shuts up.

6.33pm. Lisa and Belinda are at the sofas, talking about make up. Belinda asks Lisa if she finds that as she has gotten older, does she use more make-up? (Call the grammar police on that sentence. I tried to parse it a hundred different ways, but failed to transcribe it in a way that wouldn't make Lyn Truss weep. Hey Ho). Lisa snaps "I use less" and as a collective the audience gasp, "You have GOT to be shittin' me." The thought of Lisa with more make up on keeps me entertained in a happy manner for a few minutes, then I snap back to the recap. Belinda, agog and her voice higher by at least half an octave clarifies, "You use less now than you used to?" and Lisa confirms that her heavy duty trowel has been assigned to the past. She used to wear thick black eyeliner, heavy eyeshadow, thicker eyebrows and false eyelashes all the time, along with bright, shocking, illuminous (not a real word) pink or red lipstick. Bloody hell, she must have looked like Aunt Sally. She states that she has toned it down to look a lot more classy. Right there, right there is where Belinda missed a trick. She stayed totally silent. Anyone else would have passed a compliment, any compliment. She didn't have to lie or be false, all she had to do is pick one good thing to say about Lisa and say it then. "I love your skin", "I wish I could apply powder like that, it always looks so flawless", " You've got a real talent for picking eyeshadow colours, your eyes always look so striking.". Instead Belinda says nothing, leaving the comment hanging in the air so that her silence is construed as an insult. After a few beats, Belinda talks about society and the impression that make up can give. More psycho babble bollocks about make up and society flows between them and then the editors play a blinder. They cut to Dale, whose head is bobbing back and forth between them in the manner of a Wimbledon spectator. Dale thinks, "...........?". For a change, we all agree with him.

Luxury bedroom. Rachel is helping Mikey look for a ring that he has lost. The old carrot diviners have obviously failed Mikey this time. They kneel beside his bed and start hauling out boxes from underneath the mattress. All of a sudden Rachel shouts, "Oh!" Now, we can see from her expression and her body language that she has obvious