A 21st Century Trust Indenture Act?

MBS investors suffered a serious legal blow a couple of months back when the Second Circuit held that the Trust Indenture Act of 1939 doesn't apply to MBS. 

The Second Circuit's decision hinges on treating a "mortgage" as a "security." That's rather counterintuitive.  The Trust Indenture Act doesn't define "security," but refers to the Securities Act's definitions. The Securities Act defines "security" to include "any note" but the definition bears the caveat "unless the context otherwise requires." I'd think that the context would have pretty easily counseled for reading "note" not to include residential mortgages. What the Securities Act is trying to pick up are issuances of corporate notes.

Frankly, I think the Second Circuit's reading (and the resulting decision) are absurd.  First, it is hard to see any context in which "note" should be read to include "residential mortgage" (especially in light of all of the other things that constitute a "security" under the Securities Act, when Congress could easily have included a "mortgage" in the definition).  Second, the Second Circuit's reading arrives at an absurd policy result.  It excludes from the Trust Indenture Act the very sort of securities (proto-MBS) that were the driving force behind the creation of the Trust Indenture Act of 1939 (and the NY state Trust Indenture Act of 1935 before that).  The groundwork for the federal Trust Indenture Act was a 1936 SEC report authored by William O. Douglas, Jerome Frank, and Abe Fortas (among others) that documented in incredible detail the abusive role of trustees in mortgage bond reorganizations.  (While bankruptcy scholars have tended to focus on the railroad reorganizations chapter of the report, the real estate chapter is just as important, and goes a long way to understanding why Douglas was such a champion of the absolute priority rule.)

The point here isn't to belabor a questionable decision by the Second Circuit (which did not mention the policy issues in its decision, but I don't know if they were argued), but to underscore the ruling's consequence. At least in the 2d Circuit, it's now clear that MBS investors are not protected by the Trust Indenture Act, and that's a bad thing. This decision means that there's very little (if anything) protecting investors from wrongdoing by MBS trustees, whether acts of omission (e.g., failing to police servicers) or commission (e.g., entering into sweetheart settlements of rep and warranty liability). This is exactly what the Trust Indenture Act was supposed to prevent. If Congress cares about investor protection, it's time to devise a 21st century Trust Indenture Act.