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.

I didn’t think much of the HAMP changes announced last Friday, but my pessimism mainly came from the fact that HAMP itself is an irreparably damaged program that nobody wants to use. There’s also the point that the GSEs are generally uninterested in a principal reduction program, and servicers are conflicted. There’s little reason to hope these changes will help much.

Pro Publica, in conjunction with NPR, reported that Freddie Mac invested millions betting against home owners paying their mortgages, meaning that had a conflict of interest in helping owners refinance to avoid foreclosures. That’s somewhat tangential to what Eric Schneiderman wants to delve into because it’s post-crash conduct, but it still shows the element we’re dealing with and how many revelations are already out there

Newt Gingrich’s contract with Freddie Mac is out, and when you boil it all down, his job description boils down to “. . . whatever duties as may be assigned.”

Kind of makes you wonder what those might have been. I’m sure the folks around here will have a few good ideas about what Newt might have done that would have been worth $25,000 a month.

There’s wide agreement President Obama will likely have to make more recess appointments if he wants to staff key positions, including the newly-created vacancy at the Office of Management and Budget, as Jack Lew has become White House Chief of Staff. The assumption here is that Republicans will react to recess appointments at the CFPB and the NLRB by refusing to confirm any other Presidential appointee. Now California Dems want a recess appointment for the FHFA.

If Fannie and Freddie are guilty of misleading investors, they deserve to pay the penalty. And yet, I do sense more enthusiasm to go after these government sponsored enterprises than to go after the private banking firms which were far more responsible for subprime. This feeds a false narrative that government somehow caused the financial crisis by forcing lending to poor people. Fannie and Freddie followed the market in subprime and did not originate it.

The likely outcome on Keystone XL fits a narrative for the GOP. So they want to see the President cancel the pipeline to make it a campaign issue. The counter-argument for the Democrats is that the demand by House Republicans to give an answer within 60 days on a pipeline whose route remained in flux killed the permit. So this becomes your run-of-the-mill he-said/she-said, and the pipeline doesn’t get built. My understanding is that it would not impact the possibility of the pipeline being approved after the elections, when more time is given to the environmental impact. So that’s a fight environmentalists will still have to wage.

Perhaps trying to make up for the smackdown they took at the hands of Judge Jed Rakoff, who accused them of letting big banks get off scot-free, the Securities and Exchange Commission filed civil charges against six former executives at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, including the CEO, accusing them of securities fraud.

Democrats released the details of the compromise measure for the payroll tax cut, and there are basically three components to the pay-for for the legislation, which now only increases and extends the employee side of the payroll tax cut.

Bloomberg News has another blockbuster story today on the heels of its release of information about Federal Reserve bailouts. Here they have former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson essentially aiding and abetting an insider trading scheme while in office. But will there be prosecutions?