Game Over: California Attorney General Breaks From “50 State” Mortgage Settlement « naked capitalism

A major blow the the 50 state mortgage settlement with the big banks occurred today as California pulls out of the talks stating that they could not accept the terms. It is beyond me how any state could accept the terms that would give the banks a free pass for all the fraudulent activity that has gone on the past few years. If the Obama administration would stop pushing so hard to give the banks a free pass there actually may be some progress that could occur. The people seem to be catching on to the facts that just about everyone got screwed by the banks and banking system this go round. Anyone who thinks other wise either works for the banks or has their head buried in the sand. We are finally seeing a bit of media coverage of the anger that is simmering across the country at our government for abandoning the people and siding with the banks. It has been a disgusting turn of events that have shown criminal bankers leaving their posts to join the White House administration and to advise the President. Yes it is true. After driving the country into the worst economic crisis ever bank leaders have been give positions in the inner circle of the White House. Corruption has gone from Wall Street to Washington and the big money is controlling both. Until we see justice for the people and we see people held accountable rather than being given billions in bonuses our government will have a credibility problem. Obama has already shown his true colors and now is trying to figure out how to fool enough voters to get re elected. He is not the President of the people. He is the President for the corporate class and elites from Wall Street and else where.
Here is a bit of the story from Naked Capitalism.

We’ve been saying for months that the 50 state attorney general settlement was not going to happen. Despite the vigorous efforts by people on the side of the Federal regulators involved in the negotiations and Tom Miller’s (the AG leading the negotiations’) office to make it seem as if the deal was moving forward, the content of the reports showed otherwise. There was a huge gap between the positions of the banks and even the bank friendly position of the state AGs at the table and the banking regulators. Like the Vietnam War, where negotiations of two fundamentally opposed dragged on till one side capitulated, there was not going to be a settlement that was anything other than an abject sellout with a 11 figure payoff to mask that fact. And there were too many attorneys general who were already troubled by the terms of the deal that Miller had put forward for that to happen.
Now that Kamala Harris, the California state attorney general, has officially abandoned the talks, they don’t mean much, at least from the state side. The departure of such a big state, in population, foreclosure exposure, and Electoral college terms, along with other states (New York, Delaware, Nevada, Massachusetts, Kentucky, Minnesota, likely Arizona) means any settlement has limited practical meaning from the state side and even less credibility. It also considerably raises the odds of other states bolting. And needless to say, this is a major repudiation of the Obama Administration “let’s sweep foreclosure fraud under the rug” strategy.
It’s also worth noting that Credo led a major campaign in California to pressure Harris to seek better terms or else abandon the talks. We’ve been generally critical of the left in the US, but it’s important to distinguish that our criticism is of what is probably best thought of at the “establishment left” or the “Rubin/Hamilton Project/Blue Dog/Third Way” let, which is pro corporate but less aggressively so than the right so as to maintain some credibility with the traditional Democratic base. There are some groups like Credo which stand for a just society and are effective operationally which are gaining traction as more people recognize that the Democratic party only occasionally stands up for their economic interests.

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