What are we to make of this nice-sounding article by Brady Dennis about a “foreclosure review” for borrowers?

More than 4 million borrowers who have faced foreclosure since early 2009 will have the chance to have their cases reviewed for potential wrongdoing, federal regulators and some of the nation’s largest mortgage servicers announced Tuesday.

The reviews stem from a deal forged earlier this year in which 14 servicers agreed to hire independent consultants to evaluate whether borrowers suffered financial injury during the foreclosure process. If a review finds errors or abuses by the financial firms, the consultants will determine what recompense wronged homeowners deserve.

On Tuesday, servicers began mailing letters to the estimated 4 million borrowers whose loans were in the process of foreclosure between Jan. 1, 2009, and Dec. 31, 2010, detailing how to request a review of an individual case.

The answer is that we shouldn’t make anything of it. This is part of the consent order between banks and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, known around these parts as the Office of Bank Advocacy. And they just aren’t to be trusted as a legitimate regulator. The servicer reforms in the consent decree consist mainly of the servicers being told to follow current guidelines. And these foreclosure reviews are a joke. The third party, “independent” reviewers? They’re hired by the banks. And they’re bringing in entry-level functionaries, the equivalent of robo-signers, to do the reviews. Let’s just say I don’t expect them to be exactly rigorous. And that’s even worse, because at the end of the process, the banks will be able to say that an independent review cleared them of wrongful foreclosures. And a federal regulator backed them up on it!

Nothing could be further from the truth. Legitimate third-party reviews like the one by Abigail Field for Fortune show major deficiencies and wrongful securitizations which cloud chain of title and lead to foreclosures that don’t follow legally established processes. We have this information already. These sham foreclosure reviews aren’t going to tell us anything.

This is the systemic fraud which state and federal regulators are trying so hard to indemnify the banks for. Whether or not this will happen, by all accounts, hinges on whether California AG Kamala Harris decides to settle. Pretty much every report highlights this fact. The Street:

According to the report, the major remaining hurdles to the settlement — which will include penalties for improper foreclosure filings, as well as large outlays for principal reductions to facilitate mortgage loan refinancing — are “to convince California Attorney General Kamala Harris that the deal is large enough and provides enough political cover to sign onto,” and “to convince the servicers, especially Bank of America (BAC), that the liability release is worth the penalty it will be paying.”

Housing Wire:

Analysts at FBR Capital Markets believe the deal hinges on decisions from California AG Kamala Harris and the largest servicer BofA. It must be both large enough for Harris and release enough liability for BofA in order to achieve a multistate deal. Otherwise, FBR analysts said, the AGs could begin splitting off even more.

American Banker:

The price tag to settle the state and federal investigation of bank foreclosure practices has increased by at least $5 billion in recent weeks,” to $25 billion, the Journal reports, citing anonymous sources. In return for extra money, the megaservicers could cut their liability for dodgy lending practices during the go-go years, the story says. But any deal still hinges on bringing California attorney general Kamala Harris back into the fold. The last trial balloon that got leaked to the Journal doesn’t seem to have done the trick.

San Francisco Chronicle:

This action is separate from the ongoing investigation by state attorneys general of robo-signing. Sources said a settlement in that action could happen this month. California Attorney General Kamala Harris withdrew from the negotiations, but sources said she might back a deal in which banks agree to refinance underwater mortgages that they own.

Harris holds virtually all the cards, and she has about a week to make the decision. She should know that California doesn’t have a lot of bank-owned homes, so this settlement will pretty much not help her constituents even if it were applied correctly. She should know the banks have a track record of not following through on settlement promises, particularly when it comes to promised loan modifications. She should know that other AG’s have gotten massively higher settlement terms from servicers for abuse and fraud, like the $57,000 per borrower Catherine Cortez Masto got out of Morgan Stanley. She should know that robo-signing continues unabated, and settling on ongoing abuses just tells the guilty party that they shouldn’t fear reprisal. She should know that any first-year law student would tell you that you don’t settle with someone until you’ve actually done an investigation. She should know that voter anger that has inspired protests around the country is focused very directly on justice and accountability, especially for the banks, and that this is the worst possible time for any AG’s career to let those banks off the hook for crimes.

She should know that any AG signing onto a settlement of this type has no business being a law enforcement official anymore.