A Victory for the Public on Foreclosures?

Matt Taibbi | Rolling Stone

So there was big news yesterday on the foreclosure settlement front. We still have to wait and see what the final deal looks like, but there are reports out that the long-awaited settlement is a far, far better deal for the public than expected. If these reports are true, it looks like New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and California AG Kamala Harris have scored an enormous victory in narrowing the scope of the settlement to the point where it really only covers robosigning abuses.

According to reports (like this one in the Huffington Post), the deal will not include:

1. Criminal liability.
2. Tax liability
3. Fair lending, fair housing, or any other civil rights claim.
4. Federal Housing Finance Agency or the GSEs [Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac]
5. CFPB claims for the period after they came into existence in July 2011
6. SEC claims
7. National Credit Union Association Claims
8. FDIC claims
9. Federal Reserve Board claims
10. MERS claims

If that is true, and all of those things are out of the deal, and the banks are still exposed to liability not only for all of those things, but also for the broad range of offenses related to securitization, then $25 billion, dare I say it, might not even be a completely sucky number. It's far less than the real liability, but it's a much bigger sum than I ever thought would be negotiated just for robosigning.

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One for #OWS → Here is how Obama fits into the problem #tcot

Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone explains how Obama brought in a whole bunch of people from Wall Street, the very day he got elected.

Obama's Harvard classmate Michael Fromen is put in charge of running the Economic Transition Team, basically of hiring people for the team. He also brought in Jamie Ruben, son of Citigroup's Bob Ruben (head of Goldman Sachs - 1990-1992, head of Clinton's National Economic Council, who, as Treasury Secretary, made the Citigroup merger possible, then off to Citigroup.

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And, here's a list of Goldman Sachs personnel in the Obama White House, including Elena Kagan.