{"id":184774,"date":"2012-01-24T19:50:00","date_gmt":"2012-01-25T00:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2012\/01\/24\/well-heres-one-announcement-obama-wont-make-at-the-sotu\/"},"modified":"2012-01-24T19:50:00","modified_gmt":"2012-01-25T00:50:00","slug":"well-heres-one-announcement-obama-wont-make-at-the-sotu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2012\/01\/24\/well-heres-one-announcement-obama-wont-make-at-the-sotu\/","title":{"rendered":"Well, Here’s One Announcement Obama Won’t Make at the SOTU"},"content":{"rendered":"

He might be making some comments about working toward a sellout to<\/strike> settlement with the big banks and the mortgage services.<\/p>\n

The reason that he won’t be touting the settlement is because there is no<\/b> settlement<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE<\/div>\n
January 23, 2012<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n

STATEMENT FROM [Iowa] <\/span>ATTORNEY GENERAL TOM MILLER <\/span>[Obama toady<\/strike> Lead AG in the negotiations]<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n
(CHICAGO, Illinois) State Attorneys General from both parties, along with our federal partners, are today discussing the details of the progress we have made so far in settlement negotiations, including the terms we must still resolve. We have not yet reached an agreement with the nation\u2019s five largest servicers, and we won\u2019t reach a settlement any time this week. <\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

As you can tell, I not<\/b> a big fan of the settlement, and I think we can thank the people who have opposed the deal as currently structured, most notably Yves Smith<\/a>, who has done yeoman work on teasing out the details and communicating what it all means for months, the recent condemnation of the deal by AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka<\/a> is also significant. (And, as an FYI, everyone’s favorite right wing nuts, Judicial Watch, has filed suits to get related documents<\/a>)<\/p>\n

This resembles the groundswell that led to Obama vetoing HR 3808<\/a>, which allowed some states shoddy documentation practices to go national.<\/p>\n

With the increasing complaints from consumer activists<\/a> about the settlement.<\/p>\n

What are the problems? <\/p>\n

Well on the micro level (courtesy of Yves Smith<\/a>), it gives the banksters an incentive to pawn the losses off against the the mortgages that they recapitalized, avoiding the hit themselves, and giving it to pension funds, it incentivizes targeting the largest loans, and so benefits the richest, and there are no meaningful mechanisms to enforce good behavior from the mortgage servicers.<\/p>\n

On the macro level, let’s roll Simon Johnson<\/a>: <\/p>\n

The financial sector has been the Obama administration\u2019s Achilles\u2019 heel. Despite coming to power in the middle of the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression with a broad mandate for \u201cchange,\u201d the administration has consistently deferred to big banks and done its best to keep them in business \u201cas is.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Read the rest, really).<\/p>\n

The real underlying message much of the disgust with how the government in general, and the Obama administration in particular function is that there has been a failure to stop the looting, and start prosecuting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

He might be making some comments about working toward a sellout to settlement with the big banks and the mortgage services. The reason that he won’t be touting the settlement is because there is no settlement: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE January 23, 2012 STATEMENT FROM [Iowa] ATTORNEY GENERAL TOM MILLER [Obama toady Lead AG in the …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[970,1004,1088,1173],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-184774","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corruption","category-finance","category-real-estate","category-white-house"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184774"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184774"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184774\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}