This settlement arises from multiple abuses found in the servicing of loans and the foreclosure process over the past several years. At the height of the housing bubble, banks sliced and diced mortgages and traded them with little regard for the rules following land recording or securitization to such a sloppy extent that they lost track of the true owner on potentially millions of homes.

To cover up for this massive failure, banks and their servicing units have been found to have routinely forged, back-dated and fabricated documents at county recorder offices and state courts across the country. Furthermore, they employed “robo-signers,” who signed hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of documents and affidavits without any knowledge of the underlying mortgages. In addition, investigations uncovered massive servicing abuses, including illegal fees charged to borrowers, putting borrowers into foreclosure at the same time as they were working out loan modifications, failing to honor previous settlements where promises were made on modifications, and countless other errors that maximized servicer profits and gouged homeowners.

There are also cases of wrongful foreclosures where homeowners have been turned out of their homes without just cause, and servicer-driven foreclosures, where servicers illegally added late fees and applied payments inaccurately, pushing the homeowner into foreclosure. This is but a smattering of the examples of foreclosure fraud and servicer abuse found in a series of interlocking investigations, court depositions, reviews of documents in registers of deeds offices, and homeowner testimonials.

Cal. AG Kamala Harris wants to do investigations on origination fraud, on borrowers not learning the true terms of their deals until after signing. But the 2008 Countrywide deal extinguished many of those claims, and on others, the statute of limitations has run out. So by calling the settlement term sheet “inadequate,” Harris was playing for a bigger deal, perhaps a way to access longer federal jurisdictions on origination claims, more of a share of the financial benefit, or something.

As reported here at Firedoglake three days ago, Occupy Pittsburgh, which has been occupying land owned by a bank known as BNY Mellon for over a hundred days, is to be evicted by the bank after noon today. The eviction comes after a judge issued a decision siding with the “bank’s claim of immediate and irreparable harm” if the occupation remained on the property. We will cover this live.

We can talk about official malfeasance or conservative demonization but a lot of this has to do with the fact that the traditional media, the sources where most people get their news, don’t understand pretty much anything about housing. I mean not even the most basic stuff.

The Administration will release details on its mass refi proposal today, which is a bid to increase funds in the hands of homeowners at a low cost to the government. This is a stimulus policy, which could be effective depending on the scale. But refis aren’t enough to save people’s homes, and certainly not underwater homes.

The Obama administration’s new proposals to help struggling home owners avoid foreclosure will help some, but they’re too limited. Here are some ideas that would accomplish a lot more.

The President statement yesterday in Las Vegas on the Administration’s new refinancing initiative was circumspect about their claims. There’s a debate now about how effective and far reaching this will be, with some arguing it could have a significant economic effect, and others far more skeptical.

The White House will announce that millions more underwater homeowners can take advantage of a refinancing program if their loan is owned or guaranteed by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. This is a plan the President announced as part of his American Jobs Act speech It will open up the Home Affordable Refinancing Program to everyone who’s current on their loan, regardless of how far underwater they are.

The remaining state AG’s still trying to reach a settlement with banks over foreclosure fraud have come up with yet another idea: require the banks to allow some “underwater” owners to refinance. It looks similar to a plan proposed for mortgages owned by Fannie/Freddie.

One of the reasons that Mark Zandi and some other commentators gave the American Jobs Act high but not outstanding marks is because it did little to end the foreclosure crisis, which continues to be a lead weight on the economy. Only the $15 billion for the Neighborhood Stabilization Fund is at all housing-focused, and that’s mainly about fixing up homes in local communities (though a more innovative approach would put that money into mandatory mediation or some other program that saves homes from foreclosure).