Settlement – Schmettlement. It’s a Gift to the Banks

NOBODY seems to like the grand settlement reached yesterday between the various States attorneys general and “the Banks”  – except, well, the Banks.

One commentator said:

“The bottom-line: This Settlement is only a drop in the bucket of the monetary relief that is truly needed to enable upside-down owners to keep their homes and get our nation’s real estate and economy back on track. It will have no real or lasting effect except for the few lucky homeowners that get enough funds to make a difference. For the lenders, this relatively small penalty will not be likely to punish them for their abuses nor deter them from such conduct in the future.  So, who wins from this Settlement?  Once again, it’s not the homeowners.”

Another:

“12 Reason Not to Like the Mortgage Settlement…

… 1. We’ve now set a price for forgeries and fabricating documents. It’s $2000 per loan. …
… 2. That $26 billion is actually $5 billion of bank money and the rest is your money. …
… 3. That $5 billion divided among the big banks wouldn’t even represent a significant quarterly hit. …
… 4. That $20 billion actually makes bank second liens sounder, so this deal is a stealth bailout that strengthens bank balance sheets at the expense of the broader public. …
… 5. The enforcement is a joke. …
… 6. The past history of servicer consent decrees shows the servicers all fail to comply. Why? …
… 7. The cave-in Nevada and Arizona on the Countrywide settlement suit is a special gift for Bank of America, who is by far the worst offender in the chain of title disaster (since, according to sworn testimony of its own employee in Kemp v. Countrywide, Countrywide failed to comply with trust delivery requirements). …
… 8. If the new federal task force were intended to be serious, this deal would have not have been settled. You never settle before investigating. …
… 9. There is plenty of evidence of widespread abuses not that are appear not to be on the attorney generals’ or media’s radar, such as servicer driven foreclosures and looting of investors’ funds via impermissible and inflated charges. …
… 10. A deal on robosiginging serves to cover up the much deeper chain of title problem. …
… 11. Don’t bet on a deus ex machina in terms of the new federal foreclosure task force to improve this picture much. …
… 12. We’ll now have to listen to banks and their sycophant defenders declaring victory despite being wrong on the law and the facts. …”

Almost everyone agrees, that teh best thing to come out of it is that teh Banks get immnunity from prosecution. 

But, “best” for who?

Certainly not the 20+ million who got screwed by the feeding frenzy of the 2000’s that has nearly killed our economy.

But, hey, that’s just my opinion.