The Administration continued to push back on one particular story from Shahien Nasiripour by devoting an entire blog post about whether bank servicers can count the incentives from HAMP modifications toward the “credits” in the foreclosure fraud settlement. But Shahien’s story didn’t make that claim (thought the title hinted), and we’re still without actual terms to see how it all works.

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.

The New York Times today looks at single point of contact, a standard for servicing which has been mandated on at least a couple of occasions, without success. Requiring a single point of access has been required in settlements before, but consumer advocates say little has changed, leaving us to wonder whether any of the new settlement terms will be enforced.

The state and federal regulators may complain that criticism of the bank settlement without actual terms are distortion, and that they have a very difficult job to figure out the terms for 49 states and multiple federal agencies, and they’re just working out the complexities. Well, they should have thought of that when they announced a settlement to great fanfare. Terms matter, and without them, the settlement is no more than a theory.

Shahien Nasiripous has posted two stories for the Financial Times about the intersection of the foreclosure fraud settlement and HAMP. I wrote previously about how HAMP modifications could count toward the settlement, meaning that banks would get partially paid out. Shahien confirms this.

Almost a week after the announcement of a foreclosure fraud settlement, experts are trying to determine what’s in it, given the absence of a term sheet. This chart at analyst SNL’s site shows one problem: it has a total settlement listed at $25 billion, but just California and Florida’s numbers add up to $26.4 billion.

We’re going to have to endure this misguided lines of argument from those savvy business reporters, and CNBC’s Diana Olick is at the head of the pack. So we might as well take on her poor arguments about the foreclosure fraud settlement directly.

Because there’s no actual term sheet for the foreclosure fraud deal it’s virtually impossible to assess it, and every group who released a press statement calling it “a drop in the bucket” or a “down payment” or a “first step” should withdraw before the facts are known. But we should be talking about how the settlement will interact with the existing Administration policies around housing.

“Attorney General Kamala D. Harris Secures $18 Billion California Commitment for Struggling Homeowners,” the headline blares. But wait: the foreclosure fraud settlement is only a total of $25 billion. Even if you believe HUD Secretary Donovan’s figures about principal reduction credits being worth more in actual principal reduction, you don’t get higher than $40 billion. How did Harris get so much?

I think you can divine what I think of the foreclosure fraud settlement, which releases liability on a host of fraudulent conduct for only a $5 billion guarantee from the banks, as well as $20 billion made up mostly of “credits” that HUD believes will translate into around $34.5 billion overall. The credits play out over three years, so you can adjust for inflation, and in fact if you adjust in that way, as Matt Yglesias does, you find that this is around 10 times less than the tobacco settlement of the late 1990s.