No Banker Left Behind

How do we hate the mortgage fraud settlement? Let us count the ways. First, there are Yves Smith's dozen reasons why the deal stinks. (She should know -- she writes from the unique perspective of a shadow banking heretic who escaped to tell about it). And Dave Dayen, Jon Walker and Matt Taibbi, who has dutifully confessed that his initial optimism was woefully misplaced. As was mine, believing somehow that my attorney general (Eric Schneiderman) was the reincarnation of Eliot Spitzer -- who isn't dead, but simply marginalized and only occasionally allowed to speak truth to power on Current TV.

That we would be screwed once again was to be expected. But what is still breathtaking to me is the unbridled arrogance of President Obama in pretending this is a great deal for people. I missed his TV appearance yesterday, but just looked at the grim photos and the transcript. Yes, they actually had the nerve to preserve the broadcast of their litany of lies, the likes of which we haven't heard since.... oh, maybe a week ago when Obama bragged on the exquisite execution and precise precision of his officially nonexistent war crimes.  And the pictures memorializing yesterdays's heinous event actually reminded me of the publicity shot from The Sopranos. Mobsters, no matter the particular racket or crime family from which they hail, all seem to share the same body language and facial expressions: hands folded casually in front of their pricey dark suits, each oozing a uniform aspect of smug, sullen, cocky arrogance: 

You can read the transcript of Obama's bravura performance here. I am not going to parse the whole speech: its mendacity and unmitigated gall speak for themselves. But here are a few excerpts from a somewhat more truthful rough draft rescued from my imaginary waste basket:


All right, good afternoon, everybody.  Before I start, I just want to introduce my enforcers the folks on stage here, because the extraordinary work that they did is the reason that a lot of families are going to be screwed helped all across the country.....

The criminal actions of too big to exist banks and our complicit government housing bubble that burst nearly six years ago triggered, as we all know, the worst economic crisis of our lifetimes.  It cost millions of innocent Americans their jobs and their homes.  And because I refused to break up the banks and bring back Glass-Steagall it remains one of the biggest drags on our economy.

Last fall, my administration unveiled a series of steps but failed to actually follow through on to help all responsible homeowners refinance their mortgages to take advantage of historically low rates.  And last week, I urged Congress to pass a plan that would help millions more Americans refinance and stay in their homes.  And I indicated that the American people need Congress to act on this piece of legislation. Election time is fast approaching, the Occupy movement happened, and I had to pretend to care.

But in the meantime, we can't wait to get things done and to provide relief to America's homeowners.  We need to pretend to keep doing everything we can to help homeowners and our economy.  And today, with the help of Democratic and Republican attorney generals from nearly every state in the country, and taking our marching orders from the banks themselves we are about to take a unprecented leap into the arms of our Wall Street masters major step on our own.
   
We have reached a paltry landmark settlement with the nation’s largest banks that will speed relief to their bottom lines and secure the bonuses of their CEOs hardest-hit homeowners, aid and abet end some of the most criminal abusive practices of the mortgage industry, and begin to turn the page on an era of recklessness that continues to leave has left so much damage in its wake.

By now, it’s well known that millions of professionals in the monied burbs Americans who did the right thing and the responsible thing -- shopped for a house, secured a mortgage that they could afford, made their payments on time -- were, nevertheless, hurt badly by the irresponsible actions of others:  by lenders who tricked and defrauded sold loans to people who couldn’t afford them; by buyers who knew who were snookered into signing documents they didn't understand  couldn’t afford them; by speculators who were looking to make a quick buck; by banks that took risky mortgages, packaged them up, and knowingly and fraudulently and maliciously traded them off for large profits.

It was the worst and biggest case of massive fraud and theft and forgery in the history of the world wrong.  And it is still costing cost more than 4 million families their homes to foreclosure.

Even worse, many companies that handled these foreclosures were such heartless bastards they planned ahead of time to steal people's homes out from under them didn’t give people a fighting chance to hold onto their homes.  In many cases, they deliberately committed fraud didn’t even verify that these foreclosures were actually legitimate.  Some of the people they hired to process foreclosures used fake signatures to -- on fake documents to speed up the foreclosure process.  Some of them didn’t read what they were signing at all. The deal I am agreeing to today absolves all these felons of criminal responsibility.

We've got to think about that. We did think about it, a little, and came to the conclusion that the American people are not as important as the banks. You work and you save your entire life to buy a home.  That's where you raise your family.  That's where your kids' memories are formed.  That's your stake, your claim on the American Dream.  And the person signing the document couldn’t take enough time to even make sure that the foreclosure was legitimate. And the person signing the document knew damn well what they were doing was illegal and immoral. He or she was getting paid minimum wage in a foreclosure mill working as a subcontractor to the criminal banking cabal. We should not be calling it "carelessness."

These practices were plainly felonies punishable by long prison terms. irresponsible.  And we are allowing them refused to let them go unanswered.  So about a year ago, our federal law enforcement agencies teamed up with state attorneys general to get to the bottom of these abuses to try to force a sweetheart deal to please the banks and sweep the whole thing under the rug.  The travesty settlement we’ve reached today, thanks to the co-optation and passive aggression work of some of the fucks folks who are on this stage -- this is the largest criminal conspiracy joint federal-state settlement in our nation’s history -- is the result of that extraordinary cooperation and complete takeover of our democracy by fascist elements.

Under the terms of this settlement, America’s biggest banks -- banks that were rescued by taxpayer dollars -- are getting yet another taxpayer bailout.will be required to right these wrongs.  That means simply paying a small fee of less than a penny for each dollar they stole more than just paying a fee.  These banks will put billions of dollars of other people's money towards relief for a mere fraction of families across the nation.  They’ll theoretically provide refinancing for borrowers that are stuck in high interest rate mortgages.  They’ll possibly but not probably and not in time to help reduce loans for families who owe more on their homes than they’re worth.  And they will deliver another kick in the teeth some measure of justice for families that have already been victims of Class A felonies abusive practices. If people who were robbed even get their moving costs covered maybe three years hence, they'll be lucky. 

All told, this isn’t good at all just good for those families -- it’s good for the banks their neighborhoods, it's good for their the bankers' families, and it's good for increased Wall Street donations to my SuperPac our economy.

This settlement also protects our ability to further ignore investigate the crimes practices that are stilling causing caused this mess.  And this lie is important for my own political prospects.  The woefully inadequate mortgage fraud task force I announced in my State of the Union address retains its full authority to cursorally aggressively investigate the packaging and selling of risky mortgages that led to this crisis.  This investigation is already well underway and will end mere days after the statute of limitations runs out and millions more families are kicked to the curb.  And working closely with the co-opted and bought-off state attorneys general, we're going to keep at it until I am safely re-elected we hold those who broke the law fully accountable.

Now, let me tell last whopper before I go count the Wall Street money in my war chest  I want to be clear.  No compensation, no amount of money, no measure of justice is enough to make it right for a family who's had their piece of the American Dream wrongly taken from them. This deal sucks -- so what?  And no action, no matter how meaningful, is going to, by itself, entirely heal the housing market. So shut the hell up if you don't like it. But this settlement is a pathetic response to a crime against humanity start.  And we're going to make sure that the banks live up to their end of the bargain until, in keeping with past promises and past behavior, we won't.  If they don’t, we've set up an independent inspector whom the banks have approved, a monitor that has the power to make sure they pay exactly the peanuts what they agreed to pay, plus a lashing with a wet noodle penalty if they fail to act in accordance with this agreement.  So this will be a big help. to the banksters.

Of course, even with this settlement, there's still millions of responsible homeowners who are out there who will still be illegally foreclosed on doing their best.  And what they need us to do is get back on their feet. and make a campaign donation to me. We've still got to stoke the fires of my personality cult of our economic recovery.  So now is not the time to pull back.

And the conspiratorial bipartisan nature of this settlement and the appalling outstanding work that these state attorneys general did is a testament to what happens when money rules politics everybody is only concerned with their own re-elections.is pulling in the same direction.  And that’s what today's settlement is all about -- screwing standing up for for the American people, absolving and continuing to reward and enable holding those who broke the law accountable, restoring confidence to in to our rentier class housing market and our financial sector, getting things moving and allowing the financial predators to get bigger in order to strengthen their chokehold on our very lives.  And we're going to keep on at it until the 99% are rendered moot everyone shares in America's comeback.

So, consiglieres ladies and gentlemen, thank you for selling out your outstanding efforts.  We are very, very proud of you.  And we look forward to seeing this settlement lead to some miniscule small measure of relief to a pathetic few lot of property owners families out there that need help.  And that’s going to strengthen my re-election chances the American economy overall. 
So thank you very much.