I love this story. It’s one of those that calls to mind the old Margaret Mead dictum, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” Icelanders who pelted parliament with rocks in 2009 demanding their leaders and bankers answer for the [...]

I was just on KPFK in Los Angeles with RJ Eskow, and we have fairly similar ideas about the foreclosure fraud settlement, even though they may sound different. He thinks that we need to use the pressure available to ensure that the settlement is a beginning and not an ending. I’m just trying to be [...]

I don’t know if it’s even necessary to parse the President’s statement on the foreclosure fraud settlement today. And I’m not too interested in the justifications on conference calls that have been pushed my way from AG Schneiderman and HUD Secretary Donovan. I want to, rather, go back to December 14, 2010. Tom Miller, the [...]

I think you can divine what I think of the foreclosure fraud settlement which releases liability on a host of fraudulent conduct for only a $5 billion guarantee from the banks, as well as $20 billion made up mostly of “credits” that HUD believes will translate into around $34.5 billion overall. The credits play out [...]

The news about Massachusetts and Nevada potentially having to give up foreclosure fraud suits in order to join the servicing settlement brings up a larger point I’d like to make. Some people criticized me for this post about the “substantial” payment of the settlement using investor money, saying that it read more like a Wall [...]

The STOCK Act was a media-driven bill that politicians felt they could not resist after 60 Minutes ran a (somewhat flawed) exposé on the insider trading activities of members of Congress. Once a must-pass bill like that gets into circulation, it’s going to become an attractive target for messaging amendments where members try to hitch [...]

We open the day by hearing about criminal indictments for bond traders. Federal prosecutors are preparing to file criminal charges against former Wall Street traders alleging they misstated the value of mortgage bonds, an issue central to the 2008 financial crisis, according to people familiar with the matter. The Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s office is planning [...]

One reason why I don’t think we should particularly accept a six-month timeline on significant action from the RMBS working group is that there’s so much already in the public record. I recognize that criminal or civil enforcement actions take voluminous legal work and due diligence, but quite a bit of it has already been [...]

A statement sent my way from Phil Angelides, the chairman of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, plays into this debate over the RMBS working group in some interesting ways. The crux of the matter is that Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a Republican commissioner on the FCIC who did not sign onto the final report, made some statement [...]

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman continued his MSNBC tour by joining Chris Hayes on his Sunday morning show. These interviews really aren’t that good to conduct for TV. If you don’t assume a certain facility with the material on the part of [...]

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy Eric Schneiderman, co-chair of the newly titled “RMBS working group” investigating financial fraud, appeared on the Rachel Maddow Show last night (the interview starts around the 5:00 mark), and there were a few interesting moments. First you have his assessment of the the [...]