The MERS System has been sharply criticized. See, e.g., Tanya Marsh, Foreclosures and the Failure of the American Land Title Recording System, 111 Colum. L.Rev. Sidebar 19, 23-24 (2011) (noting that MERS has been a “controversial innovation” and highlighting that the System’s “inherent opaqueness” may conceal “shoddy recordkeeping practices”); Christopher L. Peterson, Foreclosure, Subprime Mortgage Lending, and the Mortgage Electronic Registration System, 78 U. Cin. L.Rev. 1359, 1374, 1407 (2010) (outlining MERS’s “ [questionable” legal foundations and arguing that “[t]he shift away from recording loans in the name of actual mortgagees and assignees represents an important policy change that erodes not only the tax base of local gove 3, 285 P.3d 34 (2012) (en banc) (<HOLDING>); see also MERSCORP, Inc. v. Romaine, 8 N.Y.3d
holding that mers is an ineligible beneficiary within the terms of the washington deed of trust act if it never held the promissory note or other debt instrument secured by the deed of trust and that characterizing mers as the beneficiary has the capacity to deceive and may give rise to an action under the consumer protection act holding that because mers receives no payments on the debt it is not the beneficiary even though it is so designated in the deed of trust holding that mers may be a beneficiary as nominee for the lender that assignments of the deed of trust between mers members need not be recorded that mers was not liable to the borrower in negligence and that the idaho consumer protection act did not provide a cause of action to the borrower holding that mers was not the beneficiary of a deed of trust under the oregon trust deed act absent conveyance to mers of the beneficial right to repayment and that mers could not hold or transfer legal title to the deed as the lenders nominee holding that mers is capable of being a valid beneficiary of a deed of trust and that while entitlement to enforce both the deed of trust and the promissory note is required to foreclose nothing requires those documents to be unified from the point of inception of the loan