It’s not often that the homeowner advocates at the Center for Responsible Lending and the bank lobbyists at the Financial Services Roundtable agree on anything. But they’re teaming up on urging Congress to extend the Mortgage Forgiveness Debt Relief Act, which would continue the foreclosure crisis-era policy of forgiving payment of taxes on debt forgiveness like a principal reduction or a short sale.

In letters to the Senate Finance Committee and the House Ways and Means Committee, which have jurisdiction over tax law, CRL and the FSR describe the debt relief law as “critical to helping homeowners and communities struggling with the ongoing foreclosure crisis.” They also note that failing to extend the law would threaten a housing recovery.

I generally agree with Peter Henning that Eric Schneiderman’s plaintive wail for more resources for the RMBS working group, the task force looking into fraud in the mortgage securitization business, suggests that there will not be any meaningful prosecutions coming out of Washington against Wall Street. And he marshals a bunch of other evidence.