I think it was more of a convenience issue. When you sell portions of a mortgage in various investment vehicles, how do you transfer a portion of the physical note with each new owner? The banks passed the chain of title to MERS and MERS kept track of who owned what without ever changing the physical note…
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you transfer the note to a corporation Call it
Fannie Mae and then Fannie sells bonds itself or
shares.
Funny, Fannie managed to do this for 40 years without trouble.