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 policy overall to the benefit of homeowners rather than bank balance sheets.

Yesterday, we began to get some accountability for foreclosure fraud in the unlikeliest of places: Missouri. This one blindsided us. Koster, a former Republican who switched parties to the Democrats in 2007, has simply not been front and center, and yet here he comes with a criminal indictment of one of the worst document processors in the country. And the indictment goes all the way to the top of the company, to its founder, who faces seven years in prison.