This final note today, an update on the mortgage paperwork mess that was much in the news before Thanksgiving, the stories about robosigners processing tens of thousands of mortgages in an impossibly short period of time.

Part of the question in those cases was who actually held the mortgage on a house, and if a bank didn't know where its mortgage paperwork was after it had sold all the loans out as mortgage-backed securities, could it foreclose?

Ummm, no.

The State Supreme Judicial Court in Massachusetts said today if the bank can't find the right papers, tough beans. No foreclosure. Which explains why big bank stocks had such a rough day today.