New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley have called for Federal Housing Finance Agency head and notorious Wall Street puppet Edward DeMarco to be removed from office.

In an op-ed in Politico, Schneiderman and Coakley join a long line of critics noting DeMarco’s commitment to screwing homeowners.

Of all the thumbsuckers about the second-term Obama agenda I’ve read, the ones that reflect the least contact with reality concern Administration housing policy.

It’s beyond clear that the first-term policy framework sought to protect banks and allocate losses from the collapse of the housing bubble elsewhere. That was the point behind HAMP, designed to “foam the runway” for the banks, allowing them to squeeze out a few extra payments from borrowers and absorb foreclosures more slowly. That was the point behind the foreclosure fraud settlement, reacting to the largest consumer fraud in the history of the world by immunizing the conduct in exchange for a pittance of a fine. That was the point behind a financial fraud task force that turned up precious little financial fraud and sought criminal prosecutions of no individual.

Zach Carter find yet another indicator that, after the election, Barack Obama plans to fire Federal Housing Finance Agency Administrator Ed DeMarco. But this claim has even less meat on its bones than the previous pledge.

It comes from Bank of America analyst Ralph Axel, who argues that the Administration plans to use housing policy as its “secret weapon.”

In one of the more cynical campaign promises I’ve seen in a while, the Obama Administration has apparently been running around to housing advocates telling them they will fire Ed DeMarco as head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency… after the election.

Mike Konczal decided to do some sorely missed actual reporting at last week’s debate, seeking out Glenn Hubbard, one of Mitt Romney’s key economic advisers, for a discussion on housing policy.

Goldman Sachs announced in a regulatory filing that the Securities and Exchange Commission has closed their investigation into the firm misleading investors on a $1.3 billion subprime mortgage-backed security deal.

Last week, when Ed DeMarco rejected principal reductions on Fannie and Freddie loans, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner pronounced himself disappointed. Housing advocates called for DeMarco to be fired; I explained why that won’t happen. And here’s another reason, courtesy Joseph Cotterill. The truth is that the Treasury Department has all the tools it needs to [...]

Ed DeMarco is really feeling his oats, no doubt thanks to projections of profits at Fannie and Freddie paradoxically spurred by a housing shortage. (Those profits are at least partially derived from Fannie and Freddie evading local government transfer taxes, by the way, not DeMarco’s “responsible stewardship.”) He rejected principal reductions as a means to solve the foreclosure crisis. And now, he’s going after another potential solution floated by some local governments: eminent domain.

The question that many of us asked in the wake of the revelations about money laundering at Standard Chartered Bank is why the federal regulators did apparently nothing, and that this had to get revealed by New York’s Department of Financial Services.

I went through last week why I don’t think Ed DeMarco will be fired. Now Neil BArofsky, who has a passing knowledge of the individuals involved, entered this debate. Geithner has used the moral hazard/strategic default argument plenty of times over the past few years. Now it could be that Treasury has magically turned the corner and gotten the message that the economy needs widespread debt relief. But the fact that this lines up perfectly with the upcoming Presidential election is enough to make one skeptical.