Yesterday, the San Francisco Assessor-Recorder, Phil Ting, released the results of a cursory review of foreclosure documents, finding widespread irregularities in the vast majority of them. The documents included foreclosures from 2011, after the point at which the banks allegedly “fixed” their foreclosure document problems.

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.

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

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a Republican commissioner on the FCIC who did not sign onto the final report, made some statement to the media about how the FCIC already investigated the areas of inquiry concerning the crash of the housing bubble and found no criminal wrongdoing. But the Chair of the FCIC, Phil Angelides points to the FCIC’s report noting there were criminal referrals, and that was a year ago.

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman continued his MSNBC tour by joining Chris Hayes on his Sunday morning show. These interviews really aren’t that good to conduct for TV. If you don’t assume a certain facility with the material on the part of your audience, you end up recapitulating a lot of what we already know, and never get around to asking new questions about the matter at hand, namely the RMBS working group and its powers. But Hayes, because he had an extended period of time, managed to get three key points out of Schneiderman:

Eric Schneiderman, co-chair of the newly titled “RMBS working group” investigating financial fraud, appeared on the Rachel Maddow Show last night (the interview starts around the 5:00 mark), and there were a few interesting moments. First you have his assessment of the the fraud involved here, which he definitively cast as a pre-crisis issue. Schneiderman, from his public statements, is less concerned with the faulty documentation used to foreclose on borrowers; I would imagine he sees this as the cover-up for the initial crime of securitization fraud, and going back even further origination fraud. He sees that as where the banks’ real exposure lies. And so the working group will look at “all of the conduct that blew up the economy,” not the conduct being engaged in to paper over (literally) all that.

Former Obama Administration transition official Mike Lux was the first to report that the liability release on foreclosure fraud “looks tight.” In other words, the release is limited to mostly post-crisis conduct, basically robo-signing and servicer abuse. Private right of action would still be available under any settlement – Attorneys General cannot stop the right of an individual to sue over misconduct – and there would be no criminal liability release. In addition, these avenues of inquiry would still be available.

First, let’s talk about the settlement. The good news here is that the Justice Democrats aren’t jumping off the boat just yet. Delaware’s Beau Biden reaffirmed his stance against the settlement because he wanted to pursue his own investigations. And California’s Kamala Harris reiterated her stance last night.

There’s already a financial fraud task force. In fact, this Unit on Mortgage Origination and Securitization Abuses will be part of Obama’s “new” Financial Fraud Task Force. That originated in November 2009, based on legislation from Congress. And the same ineffective enforcement people are on the original group.

This isn’t a victory. Schneiderman may be trying to work from within, but he’s saddled with a panel full of co-chairs tied to banks with a history of obstructing accountability. The united front of Justice Democrats has been nicked. And progressive critics of the Settlement sellout are praising the mechanism that seems structured to fail while letting the Settlement proceed.