Debt write-downs work. They generate a wealth effect among the population, and they help to end balance-sheet recessions and bring about economic growth. What’s more, Icelandic home values came back, just 3% off their September 2008 pre-crisis level.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the “underwear bomber” who attempted to blow up a Northwest Airlines plane on Christmas Eve 2009, will receive a life sentence in Detroit, the conclusion of a trial that ended abruptly with a guilty plea.

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 realistic about what the settlement means. But one area we agreed is that the lack of deterrence implied by this settlement is absolutely corrosive for the future. Eskow described it as socially corrosive, and a way that people lose faith in their government. I concur completely.

It’s not just that a failure to prosecute makes it more likely that the same bad actors engage in the same bad actions over and over again. It’s not just that this furthers a financial oligarchy that has been historically responsible for most major economic crises in this country. It’s that a two-tiered system of justice is terrible for civil society.

The WaPo editorial board’s biggest problem with the “rough justice” foreclosure fraud settlement is that robo-signing is a “victimless crime” because all those people were behind on their payments anyway, and that lucky duckies foreclosed upon might be getting $2,000 erroneously. That’s the media we have.

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.

Last week it seemed Eric Schneiderman’s suit against MERS and three banks using MERS represented a carve-out on the final foreclosure fraud settlement. There was speculation that other states might have carve-outs or grandfathered suits, so they would be able to pursue those investigations and prosecutions and still join the settlement. But Bloomberg reports today that some states with active lawsuits would have to settle them as part of the deal.

Four years ago, the bank Credit Suisse Group announced investigations of traders for misleading investors on the value of mortgage bonds. After four years, the US Attorney just got around to announcing indictments of the same people Credit Suisse handpicked as responsible. The announcement occurs just as the Administration wants to prove their bona fides on financial fraud, with their shiny new task force and everything.

Remember during the debate over the Colombian trade deal when the Administration swore up and down that they would, as a condition of putting the free trade agreement forward, insist on an “action plan” that would end the murder of trade unionists in Colombia and bring about justice for those already killed? Yeah, so, we’re several months beyond the passage of those trade deals – Obama highlighted them in the State of the Union on Tuesday. So how’s that action plan going?

The sad chapter of the Haditha massacre may have been put to bed in a legal sense when Marine Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich received an incomparably light sentence, walking away with no jail time, for ordering the troops under his command to “shoot first, ask questions later” in an incident that killed 24 innocent Iraqis. But this issue isn’t close to being over for the Iraqis in the village of Haditha.

Tonight the President will deliver the State of the Union Address, at the beginning of his run for re-election. Unlike Obama’s other addresses to a joint session of Congress, I wouldn’t expect this one to produce much in the way of a legislative blueprint. It’s an election year, and most of the major issues will be determined by the outcome of that election. The President will instead try to set the agenda for the fall campaign with this speech, and the early excerpts show his focus on an economy “built to last.” Not unlike a Ford truck.