Almost a week after the announcement of a foreclosure fraud settlement, experts are trying to determine what’s in it, given the absence of a term sheet. This chart at analyst SNL’s site shows one problem: it has a total settlement listed at $25 billion, but just California and Florida’s numbers add up to $26.4 billion. [...]

I think I’ve made my position on the foreclosure fraud settlement pretty clear. Nevertheless, there’s a time to stew and a time to figure out how to make this work as well as possible. I think there are some tangible steps that can be taken, if not to improve the deal, then to improve housing [...]

Forty-nine states, every one but Oklahoma, as well as federal regulators will participate in a foreclosure fraud settlement that will release the five biggest banks (Wells Fargo, Citi, Ally/GMAC, JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America) and their mortgage servicing units from liability for robo-signing and other forms of servicer abuse, in exchange for $25 billion [...]

As you may know, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals found California’s Proposition 8 unconstitutional this morning. This furthers a process that will almost certainly end in the Supreme Court, with a precedent-setting ruling on the right of same-sex couples to marry. However, the ruling today is limited to the circumstances of the California initiative, [...]

I want to circle back to today’s New York Times story on the looming foreclosure fraud settlement. With the return to talks of New York and California (though I don’t really think they were ever all that far away), we can infer that pretty much every other state, save perhaps Delaware and Nevada and Massachusetts, [...]

I’m not going to get into the drama of Barack Obama’s run-in with Arizona Governor Jan Brewer at the airport. It’s just cable news fodder, so let them handle it. What does interest me is the fact that the biggest sub-group of Arizonans fascinated with the exchange are the Latino community, an indicator of why [...]

Somebody really wants this foreclosure fraud settlement to go through. So much so that California was offered a sum to participate in the settlement sure to piss off the other 49 AGs across the country. Only California was guaranteed earmarked funds from the settlement. Earlier we heard they would get $8 billion out of the [...]

When I started digging into whether this Monday meeting with HUD and DoJ officials to go over a proposal for a foreclosure fraud settlement was legitimate, I couldn’t find one state Attorney General who mattered actually committed to showing up. When I say AGs who “matter,” I mean the ones who have been critical of [...]

One thing missing from all the stories about this alleged key foreclosure fraud meeting in Chicago on Monday were confirmations from the state AGs, particularly the ones who have been resistant to a settlement, that they would attend. So I did some calling around. And I could not find one state Attorney General committed to [...]

Brian Beutler writes that President Obama will likely have to make more recess appointments if he wants to staff key positions, including the newly-created vacancy at the Office of Management and Budget, as Jack Lew has become White House Chief of Staff. The assumption here is that Republicans will react to recess appointments at the [...]

California’s ambitious high speed rail program hit a snag yesterday when a peer review group recommended a halt to continued bond funding of the project until a long-term funding source can be secured. Let’s back up a bit. In 2008, California voters passed a proposition enabling bond financing of a high speed rail network stretching [...]