It’s starting to look like Chairman Jon Liebowitz intentionally kept the commissioners from all meeting in one place and discovering what one another felt, because according to Commissioner J. Thomas Rosch, a majority favored bringing a suit against Google for manipulating search results. But because Liebowitz skirted Sunshine Act Meeting Laws by only meet with one Commissioner at a time, they had no chance to hear each others’ views since November.

So now we have an answer to the talk of a settlement in the BP oil disaster case. The company will pay a total of $4.5 billion in fines and payments, as well as admit to criminal charges. But the fines and payments do not include civil violations of either the Clean Water Act or the Oil Pollution Act, which carry additional fines of up to $21 billion.

Yesterday, Bank of America fired off one of their biggest settlements yet, spending $2.4 billion to quiet claims with investors over their purchase of Merrill Lynch.

This was outright securities fraud, and I’m more than surprised that the investors plaintiffs, led by public pension funds in Ohio and Texas, accepted this.

Sunday night I brought you the story of a young woman whose horrific sexual assault was compounded by her attackers posting pictures on the internet. Even worse, attorneys for the convicted juveniles were seeking contempt charges against her for posting their names on Twitter after she first heard about the plea deal in the courtroom, with no consultation with the prosecution. Today, the contempt request was dropped by attorneys for the two convicted sexual assaulters.

As people increasingly realize that the mortgage settlement was an enforcement fraud, attention’s turned to the “new” joint Federal/State task force that’s supposed to make the settlement into a “down payment,” by delivering much more. And so far people don’t like what they see, and are saying so. What’s striking about the resulting PR push back, however, is that it just highlights how banker-fraud-friendly our federal government is.

The Congressional Progressive Caucus met with New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman today for a hearing on how to prevent a million foreclosures. Not much happened at the hearing. More interesting was a letter sent by members of the CPC authored by Maxine Waters to Eric Schneiderman asking him to hire Rep. Brad Miller to run the fraud task force.

During the many months over which we read excellent posts from David Dayen, Yves Smith and others about the on/off negotiations between state Attorneys General, the Administration and the five major banks, I assumed, and I suspect many others also believed, that the settlement negotiations were essentially a law enforcement matter. Thus, any settlement should be judged on principles relating to fairness and criminal justice. It now appears that that interpretation was fundamentally inaccurate.

The robo-signing is the smoking gun that is the key to proving every other part of this criminal conspiracy, which is why the banks had to have robo-singing immunized.

So, homeowners are screwed.

Beyond the details now pouring out from Dayen, Yves Smith and others, what are we seeing?

The Obama Administration has followed a predictable pattern we now recognize. It has consistently functioned like criminal defense counsel, whose mission is to get their criminal clients, the major corporations and executives who fund their elections, off with no admission of guilt, no forced resignations, and as little harm to their reputation, or that of the counsel, as possible. To do this, they neutralize anyone with an ounce of public purpose in their veins.

This is great. Mary Meeker has a report out called USA Inc, telling us all why Social Security benefits should be cut for the good of America. “By 2037, cumulative deficits from Social Security could add another $11.6 trillion to the public debt,” warns the cautious and prudent-sounding Meeker.

I’ll leave it to the wonks to rip apart her latest bag o’ bullshit and her hallmark brand of fact-stuffing, but in case anyone has forgotten about the role Meeker played in the dot-com boom, let me remind you.