Peter Baker has an almost 6500-word article describing Obama’s efforts to fix the economy. But nowhere in this epic does Peter Baker once use the word “foreclosure.” Or “housing.” Or, god forbid, “HAMP.”

You’d think after it had become the poster child for robo-signing foreclosure fraud, at a time when it was facing a class action suit arising out of that fraud, and at a time when all servicers had been anxiously awaiting the result of the US Bank v. Ibanez suit in MA, GMAC would be very very careful about the way its purchase of mortgage notes interacted with its servicing department.

You’d be wrong.

How in hell could the government give those who have been harmed redress if the government is only reviewing a select subset of the loan files? Is the government going to provide everyone who believes they were screwed some legal aid to prove their claim?

MERS is a screw-up. Congress should let them run the entire property registration system. How do these fit together? Money is such a lubricant.

Your honor, I’m so incompetent I can’t find my paper. Save me, pretty please. The banks that wrote the law on promissory notes put in Plan B just in case.

This is my response to the question of what Obama could do now to address the country’s current problems, without the need to pass a bill through Congress.

Only three of the top five servicers have issued moratoria of any sort (and some of those are limited to judicial states). Citi (with 6.3% of the market) and Wells Fargo (with 16.9%) have not issued moratoria at all.

The Federal Housing Administration Commissioner, David Stevens, has joined David Axelrod in stating that the Administration sees no reason to halt all foreclosures. That’s not a surprise in itself–it was pretty clear that Axe’s statement reflected official Administration policy.

An extended metaphor: Mortgages as meat, and banks & mortgage lenders as sausage makers.

Trust me — it makes sense!

any people in the states worst hit by the foreclosure crisis–FL, NV, AZ, CA–have to stick with crappy jobs because there’s no way they can move to where people are hiring.