Tag: Politics

This morning the US 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that California’s Prop 8 is unconstitutional striking down the ban on gay marriage under both the Due Process and Equal Protection clauses of the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment. The ruling is limited and specific to California only.

“Proposition 8 served no purpose, and had no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians in California,” the court said.

The ruling upheld a decision by retired Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn R. Walker, who struck down the ballot measure in 2010 after holding an unprecedented trial on the nature of sexual orientation and the history of marriage.

The ruling makes same sex marriage legal again in California but it is expected that the court will not permit marriages to take place while the appeals are in progress. The backers of Prop 8 have stated that they will appeal this ruling but have not said if they would request a the full 9th Court to hear the appeal or take it directly to the US Supreme Court.

Ninth Circuit Prop. 8 decision

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Joe Nocera; Poisoned Politics of Keystone XL

On Monday, Stephen Harper, the prime minister of Canada, traveled to China for a week of high-level meetings.  He brought with him a handful of his cabinet ministers, including Joe Oliver, his tough-talking minister of natural resources who, until recently, had been withering in his scorn for the opponents of the Keystone XL oil pipeline, which President Obama rejected a few weeks ago.  The pipeline, of course, was intended to transport vast oil reserves in Alberta to the American refineries on the Gulf of Mexico.

Oliver no longer talks so freely about the environmental critics of the Keystone pipeline; all of Harper’s ministers have been instructed to stop making comments that might be construed as interfering in the American presidential election.  But there are other, more diplomatic, ways to send messages.  Like going to China with your cabinet members and cutting energy deals with a country that has, as The Globe and Mail in Toronto put it recently, a “thirst for Canadian oil.”  Oil, I might add, that may be a little dirtier than the crude that pours forth from the Saudi Arabian desert – that is one of the main reasons environmentalists say they oppose Keystone – but is hardly the environmental disaster many suppose.

New York Times Editorial: The Payroll Tax Fight

Republicans in Congress seem to have forgotten the embarrassment they suffered late last year for trying to block a payroll tax cut for millions of wage-earners. The two-month extension they reluctantly approved will run out in three weeks, yet, again, they are stalling a full-year’s tax cut with extraneous issues and political ploys. [..]

Republicans, on the other hand, are only interested in extending the tax benefits for working Americans if they can punish other groups. They want to extend the freeze on wages for federal workers to a third consecutive year, and appeal to their base by barring the use of welfare debit cards at casinos and strip clubs. This is hardly a national problem; a few states have allowed that, but most have cracked down on it.

Republicans seem no more serious about cutting the tax and stimulating the economy than they were in December. They may be furious that President Obama is campaigning against a do-nothing Congress, but they don’t seem as if they’re planning to actually do something.

As the the multistate foreclosure settlement inches to some conclusion, the Big Banks have dropped the other shoe. They won’t sign on to the agreement unless Schneiderman drops his law suit against them and MERS. The proposed settlement would also require the attorneys general from Nevada, Massachusetts and Arizona to drop their litigation should they decide to sign onto the agreement:

Bank of America Corp., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Wells Fargo & Co. made a last-minute demand that New York drop claims filed against them Feb. 3 as a condition of the settlement, a person familiar with the matter said. [..]

New York sued Bank of America, JPMorgan and Wells Fargo in state court in Brooklyn, saying their use of a mortgage database known as MERS led to improper foreclosures. Schneiderman said the banks’ use of the Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems database misled homeowners, undermined foreclosure proceedings and created uncertainty about ownership interests in properties.

The banks have asked that many of the claims in the complaint be thrown out, said the person. The other two banks involved in the nationwide settlement proposal, Ally Financial Inc. and Citigroup Inc., weren’t named in the complaint. [..]

The proposed settlement already requires Massachusetts, Nevada and Arizona, which have sued banks involved in the talks, to settle their claims, a person familiar with them said.

Nevada and Arizona each sued Bank of America over mortgage- servicing practices, accusing it of misleading consumers, while Massachusetts sued all five banks.

It appears that the agreement would give the banks immunity from prosecution and civil suits from mortgage origination fraud. The settlement does not prevent an investigation into mortgage securitization (secondary mortgage fraud), it would give the banks a free pass on all the fraudulent foreclosures and mortgages that are the primary cause of the housing market crash.

So where does this leave the new unit the President Obama created to investigate mortgage fraud? Professor of law and economics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, Bill Black, spoke with Theresa Riley on Bill Moyers & Compnany:

The special new unit is a charade. There will be no prosecutions of any elite criminals. Obama has made sure of that.

Meanwhile the agreement is inching towards a conclusion with Iowa Attorney General announcing that 40 states have agreed to sign:

“The sign-on deadline for the proposed joint state-federal mortgage servicing settlement passed Monday with more than 40 states signing on,” Miller said “This enables us to move forward into the very final stages of remaining work.Federal and state officials, as well as representatives from the banks, continue to address matters that they must complete before finalizing any settlement.”

Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden, who spoke with MSNBC’s Dylan Ratigan, indicated he will sign on only if he can continue to pursue MERS and not be precluded from adding the banks from the suit.

Apparently Missouri’s Attorney General didn’t get the word about not filing suits. He not only filed a criminal lawsuit against DocX, one of the largest companies that provided home foreclosure services to lenders across the nation, for forgery in the preparation of documents used to evict financially strained borrowers from their homes but arrested Lorraine O. Brown, the company’s founder and former president.

Chris Koster, the Missouri attorney general, will prosecute the case. “The grand jury indictment alleges that mass-produced fraudulent signatures on notarized real estate documents constitutes forgery,” Mr. Koster said in a statement. “Today’s indictment reflects our firm conviction that when you sign your name to a legal document, it matters.”

Mr. Koster said his office’s investigation was continuing. This suggests he may hope to persuade Ms. Brown to cooperate in his investigation of the parent company. If convicted, Ms. Brown could face up to seven years in prison for each forgery count. DocX could be fined up to $10,000 for each forgery conviction.

Hey, Mr. President, this is what needs to be done on a federal level.

There is still no agreement on bailing out Greece as Greek Premier Lucas Papademos failed to get his government’s coalition parties to agree to the severe austerity terms set out by the European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund:

After five hours of discussions, the three leaders of Greece’s national unity government had not accepted demands by international lenders for immediate deep spending cuts and labour market reforms as part of a new medium-term package.

Mr Papademos said the political leaders had agreed on some “basic issues”, including making spending cuts this year of 1.5 percentage points of gross domestic product, or about €3bn, according to a statement from his office. [..]

The talks with the three leaders of a national unity government came after the government failed to persuade the so-called “troika”- representatives of the European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund – to ease conditions for the rescue deal.

Patience with Greek politicians has evaporated among its creditors. During a conference call on Saturday, eurozone finance ministers bluntly told Athens to deliver on its promises and agree to reforms or face default next month.

David Dayen at FDL News Desk points out that the Greeks are being asked to destroy themselves for a bailout and calls the terms “insane”:

The deal calls for Greece to run a primary budget surplus (not counting interest payments on debt) in 2013 of over 2% of GDP, rising to over 4% by 2014. That implies massive cuts to public spending in the middle of a 5-year recession, if not a depression. As Antonis Samaras, leader of the New Democracy Party, told the Financial Times, “They’re asking for more recession than the country can take.” Samaras also has highlighted that the troika seeks cuts in private sector wages as part of the deal, of up to 25%. There would also be a 35% cut in supplementary pensions.

Trying to pressure for a settlement that many Greek leaders feel would damage the Greek economy and prolong the five year Greek recession, French President Nicholas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Andrea Merkel issued statements and made a proposal that would reassure creditors:

Nicolas Sarkozy, French president, and Angela Merkel, German chancellor, also proposed that a special closed account be created for the interest due on Greek debt to reassure creditors that they would be paid.

“The situation of Greece has to be fixed once and for all,” Mr Sarkozy said after the two leaders met in Paris. He said the terms of a bail-out deal were “on the table” and called on all the main political leaders urgently to back them, adding “time is running out”.

“Our Greek friends must take responsibility and vote for the reforms to which they are committed. This concerns everybody – the prime minister, the leader of the socialist party and the leader of the [centre-right] New Democracy party.”

Ms Merkel added: “We want Greece to stay in the euro … but I also say there can be no new Greek programme if agreement is not reached with the troika [European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund]. All those who bear responsibility in Greece must know we will not deviate from this position.”

She added: “Time is running short. A lot is at stake for the entire eurozone.”

The stalemate had its effect on stock markets today with US stocks taking a dip

The three major U.S. stock market indices retreated slightly on Monday as investors continued to await the outcome of a potential Greek sovereign debt deal with private creditors. At 2:30pm Eastern Time, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) had lost 40 points, or 0.3 percent, to 12,822 while the NASDAQ Composite had backed down 0.2 percent to 2,899. Meanwhile, the S&P 500 was down 0.2% to 1,342 points.

The austerity measures have already caused a 6% drop in the GDP which increases the debt to GDP ratio. the last thing Greece needs, or for that matter Europe,is more austerity.

President Barack Obama has announced the appointment of Jeremiah Norton, a JP Morgan Chase & Co. executive, to the five-member board of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. once again putting an insider in  a position to protect the banks at the expense of tax payers. The announcement was made late Friday in the usual news dump but this is not new except that Norton is now the “official” nominee.

Jeremiah O. Norton, 34, who is an executive director in the bank’s JPMorgan Securities unit, previously served as a policy adviser in the U.S. Treasury Department during the administration of President George W. Bush. Before that, he was an aide to a Republican congressman, Edward Royce of California.

Norton joins two Democrats and a fellow Republican whose confirmations to FDIC leadership posts have been delayed by Senate Republicans who have complained that Obama used a recess appointment to install Richard Cordray, a former Ohio attorney general, as director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau without formal Senate approval. Cordray, in his role as consumer bureau director, also has a seat on the five-member FDIC board.

His name was mentioned back in late December in an article from the American Banker. In an article by bmaz at emptywheel

Oh, and in case you had any question on what side of the 1%/99% divide Barack Obama and his Administration are on, yet another answer was given today with the announcement of their proposed selection for the critical “independent” seat on the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC):

   The Obama administration is considering nominating Jeremiah Norton, an executive director for JPMorgan Chase’s investment bank, to sit on the FDIC’s board of directors.

Who is Jeremiah Norton? Well, as this quote states, he executive director of the investment banking shop and one of Obama’s buddy, Jamie Dimon’s, right hand men. Oh, and before that, Norton was former Goldman Sachs honcho Henry Paulson’s right hand man in the Bush Treasury Department and assisted Paulson in getting Goldman Sachs a backdoor bailout through AIG.

Norton was one of the chief architects of TARP who helped convince Paulson that the banks were “Too Big To Fail” and “helped craft the takeover of Fannie and Freddie” and he isn’t without opposition form the right:

Norton himself had initial doubts about the plan. “This is crazy,” he reportedly said at the time. But ultimately he and Jester sold Paulson on TARP, (Andrew Ross) Sorkin explains. “Based on the work of Jester, Norton, and assistant secretary for financial institutions David] Nason, [Paulson] wanted to forge ahead and invest $250 billion of the TARP funds into the banking system,” Sorkin wrote. Norton contributed similarly to the government takeover of Fannie and Freddie. “It was a difficult decision, the secretary didn’t want to be here, to go into the firms,” Norton [told C-SPAN in 2008. But, he concluded, “this action was necessary to prevent systemic risk that would harm the broader economy.”

Norton still might encounter some objections from the right, as both TARP and the government conservatorship of Fannie and Freddie have come under growing fire from the tea party wing of the GOP. What’s more, the Congressional Budget Office recently raised the cost of TARP in 2012, and the government control of Fannie and Freddie has extended well beyond the 15-month “timeout” that Norton, Paulson and others had originally envisioned.

This is the second time that the White House has taken the Senate GOP leadership’s advice on FDIC leadership, having already followed Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY) recommendation to pick Thomas Hoenig for another key FDIC post whose nomination brings ant- TBTF positions to the table:

Hoenig is a vocal critic of large banks, technically known as “systemically important financial institutions,” or SIFI, under the recent Dodd-Frank regulatory reform of the financial system. Of course, they’re more popularly known as the “too big to fail” banks that are a focus of the Occupy Wall Street protests.

Under Dodd-Frank, the FDIC will be responsible for unwinding failing big banks.

In a June speech, Hoenig — who headed the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City — called those institutions “fundamentally inconsistent with capitalism.”

“They are inherently destabilizing to global markets and detrimental to world growth,” he said. “So long as the concept of a SIFI exists, and there are institutions so powerful and considered so important that they require special support and different rules, the future of capitalism is at risk and our market economy is in peril.” [..]

Hoenig’s criticism of Fed policy made him a favorite among Congressional Republicans. Last fall, as Republicans prepared to assume control of the House after their midterm win, Hoenig was invited to speak to Republican members of Congress behind closed doors.

He also testified earlier this year before the House subcommittee on monetary policy chaired by Ron Paul, a noted Fed critic and presidential candidate, who would like to abolish the central bank altogether.

Republicans’ previous praise for Hoenig may make it difficult for them to block his confirmation, even if they oppose his views on the Volcker rule and bank regulation, said Boston University law professor Cornelius Hurley, a former counsel to the Fed Board of Governors.

“A brilliant political step, Hoenig’s nomination puts Senate Republicans in a very difficult spot in voting on his vice-chairmanship,” said Hurley. “His experience and point of view on systemic risk may foretell a pivot away from the failing policies of (Treasury Secretary)Timothy Geithner and (and former Obama adviser) Larry Summers toward more meaningful structural reform of our financial system.”

Obama keeps trying to make “deals with the devil” that will only continue toprotect the banks and harm the economy.  

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Paul Krugman: Things Are Not O.K.

In a better world – specifically, a world with a better policy elite – a good jobs report would be cause for unalloyed celebration. In the world we actually inhabit, however, every silver lining comes with a cloud. Friday’s report was, in fact, much better than expected, and has made many people, myself included, more optimistic. But there’s a real danger that this optimism will be self-defeating, because it will encourage and empower the purge-and-liquidate crowd. [..]

And every time we get a bit of good news, the purge-and-liquidate types pop up, saying that it’s time to stop focusing on job creation.

Sure enough, no sooner were the new numbers out than James Bullard, the president of the St. Louis Fed, declared that the new numbers make further Fed action to promote growth unnecessary. And the sad truth is that the good jobs numbers have definitely made it less likely that the Fed will take the expansionary action it should.

So here’s what needs to be said about the latest numbers: yes, we’re doing a bit better, but no, things are not O.K. – not remotely O.K. This is still a terrible economy, and policy makers should be doing much more than they are to make it better.

New York Times Editorail: Shall We Call It the ‘Bronze Standard’?

President Obama usually deserves high marks for his efforts to curb the spread of dangerous nuclear technology. But his administration’s decision not to insist on an important nonproliferation provision in nuclear cooperation agreements is a serious retreat.

Under American law, countries are required to negotiate detailed agreements before they are allowed to buy American nuclear reactors, fuel and services. The United States has signed many of them and many more are expected as additional countries pursue nuclear power.

The Obama administration set a rigorous new standard in 2009. It signed an agreement with the United Arab Emirates in which the U.A.E promised, in exchange for access to American technology, to forswear uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing. Those are the processes for making nuclear fuel for reactors – or weapons.

There was a deluge of news about banking and foreclosure fraud over the weekend much of it going unnoticed because of the Super Bowl. There was the revelation that Fannie Mae has known about mortgage and foreclosure fraud for 10 years, knew it was fraud but did nothing to stop it. This morning there was another surge with the news about the state attorneys general agreement. It looks like two of the biggest holdouts, New York and California, may sign the agreement even though public details are still very vague. I suspect that the secrecy about the final agreement may be because it let the banks off the hook for the biggest fraud ever perpetrated on investors, robosigning.

Here’s what we know:

New York AG Eric Schneiderman filed a law suit in NY State Court in Brooklyn on Friday charging them with deceptive and fraudulent practices that harmed homeowners and undermined the judicial foreclosure process. David Dayen at FDL thinks this is a “carve out” that paved the way for other state AG’s to do the same and still be able to sign onto the federally negotiated agreement:

The answer is, according to what I’ve learned, is that it’s a carve-out. Schneiderman can pursue this case and also theoretically join a settlement. This may or may not be true of other cases with other AGs. The timing of Illinois’ lawsuit against Nationwide Title Clearing yesterday seems significant in that regard; perhaps Lisa Madigan also secured a carve-out for her case. It’s plausible to think that AGs are being told to get out their lawsuits now, prior to a settlement, and they would be allowed in the event of a settlement. Schneiderman still hasn’t agreed to the settlement, but in the event that he does, the case dropped today would be able to go forward. [..]

Like me, Dayen doesn’t see the advantage for the banks to sign off on the agreement if they can’t stop suits like Schneiderman’s and others in Illinois, Massachusetts and Nevada. There are a lot of questions.

Late last night, during the Super Bowl, the story broke in the New York Times that the deal with the states was about to be closed:

The biggest remaining holdout, California, has returned to the negotiating table after a four-month absence, a change of heart that could increase the pot for mortgage relief nationwide to $25 billion from $19 billion.

Another important potential backer, Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman of New York, has also signaled that he sees progress on provisions that prevented him from supporting it in the past.

The potential support from California and New York comes in exchange for tightening provisions of the settlement to preserve the right to investigate past misdeeds by banks, and stepping up oversight to ensure that the financial institutions live up to the deal and distribute the money to the hardest-hit homeowners.

The settlement would require banks to provide billions of dollars in aid to homeowners who have lost their homes to foreclosure or who are still at risk, after years of failed attempts by the White House and other government officials to alter the behavior of the biggest banks.

Yves Smith at naked capitalism was not surprised and expressed her doubts about Schneiderman’s ability to beat the Obama administration’s protectionism:

Kamala Harris, the California AG, was widely seen as “political” and therefore was not seen as a solid holdout. I remain disappointed by the conduct of our attorney general Eric Schneiderman, who is also now participating in the talks. His decision to join a Federal task force undermined the opposition to the settlement and looks to have cleared the way for the Administration to craft a win on this deal (note it is still possible it will not get done, but the odds were low as of last week and appear to be sinking further).

Assuming a deal is inked, Schneiderman and new partners in the Administration will no doubt contend that his involvement in the negotiations resulted in an improvement in terms for homeowners and states. I’m also told that he sincerely believes he can get a serious investigation underway and take advantage of Federal statutes with longer statutes of limitations than most state level ones.

Schneiderman may think he can beat the Administration at its own game, and if he can, more power to him, but I would not bet on him coming out on top.

It is too late (it was probably too late when Schneiderman sat in Michelle Obama’s box during the State of the Union address) but if you are in California or New York, you might as well call or e-mail your AG and give them a piece of your mind. Keeping the pressure on Schneiderman and Harris, and supporting AGs like Beau Biden of Delaware, Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, and Martha Coakley of Massachusetts, are the best hope we have at this point.

For New York, call 800 771-7755, 212 416-8000 or 518 474-5481 use the web form here or at his fundraising office. For Kamala Harris, call 916 445-9555 or this web form.

There are also questions about who will actually pay for this bank bailout which in actuality amounts to only $5 billion in cash and the rest in mortgage modifications. It does nothing to correct or compensate homeowners who have already been foreclosed on or who are so underwater that they don’t qualify for modification. Again Yves Smith explains the role of second liens in this bank bailout

To give a brief recap of the post: both a small group discussion with Shaun Donovan (reported by Dave Dayen of Firedoglake and separately by Shahien Nasirpour of the Financial Times) and the Schneiderman MERS lawsuit on Friday confirm our previously-stated hypothesis that the settlement is really a transfer from mortgage investors to banks. That is why the banks remain willing to participate as the release has been whittled down to appease the formerly dissenting attorneys general (remember, the old reason for the banks to go along was that it was a cash for release deal: the banks were willing to pay hard money to get a significant waiver of liability).

The reason this settlement amounts to a transfer is the banks will be given credit towards the total reported value of the settlement for modifying mortgages that they do not own, meaning that economic loss will be borne by investors. Servicers have an obvious incentive to shift losses onto other parties whenever possible, and so the only principal mods they are likely to do of loans they own are one they would have done anyhow.

In addition, default rates are higher among borrowers with second liens, and second liens are almost entirely held on bank balance sheets. Which banks? Oh, the ones that happen to be the four biggest servicers: Bank of America, Citigroup, JP Morgan, and Wells. And those second lien holdings are collectively in the hundreds of billions. Were they written down to the degree that some mortgage investors argue is warranted, it would reveal that these banks were seriously undercapitalized.

As we stressed, this plan is a serious violation of property rights (not that that should be any surprise at this point). The creditor hierarchy is clear: second liens should be written off in their entirety before first liens are touched. Yet we also linked to evidence in the post from top mortgage analyst Laurie Goodman that servicers were already doing everything they could to favor their second liens over firsts. This settlement would give official sanction to this practice.

I also want to flag, a second time, an appalling throwaway comment in a New York Times update tonight:

  The settlement, if all states participate, will also include $3 billion to lower the rates of mortgage holders who are current.

In other words, the agreement bails out homeowners that don’t need it while throwing those who are in the deepest trouble  because of that second lien (mortgage) to the sharks. Those second liens are a big problem, as Yves notes:

   As leading mortgage analyst Laurie Goodman pointed out in a late 2010 presentation, just over half of the private label (non Fannie/Freddie) securitizations have second liens behind them (overwhelmingly home equity lines of credit). Moreover, homes with first liens only have far lower delinquency rates than homes with both first and second liens. Separately, various studies have found that defaults are also correlated with how far underwater a borrower is. If a borrower is too far in negative equity territory, it makes less sense for them to struggle to stay current, no matter how much they love their home […]

   [Banks] also have been modifying first liens to preserve their second liens. If you reduce the payments on the first mortgage, the borrower has more money left to pay the second lien. From the transcript of Goodman’s 2010 presentation:

   “Clearly there’s a differential standard of managing second liens and securitizations versus second liens in bank portfolios. It’s very clear banks are doing all they can to get the, to keep, to get the first lien modified in order to keep the second intact, and that is just a huge conflict of interest.”

   Legally, the hierarchy of payment OUGHT to be clear: a second should be wiped out before a first lien is touched. That’s how it works in a foreclosure or a bankruptcy: only after the first lien was paid in full would a second lien get anything. But that isn’t what is happening now.

Homeowners with second liens are in far more trouble. Which brings us to this revelation that Fannie Mae knew all about the wide spread mortgage abuses for 10 years and ignored it:

YEARS before the housing bust – before all those home loans turned sour and millions of Americans faced foreclosure – a wealthy businessman in Florida set out to blow the whistle on the mortgage game. [..]

What Fannie Mae knew about abusive foreclosure practices, and when it knew it, are crucial questions as Congress and the Obama administration weigh the future of the company and its cousin, Freddie Mac. These giants eventually blew themselves apart and, so far, they have cost taxpayers $150 billion. But before that, their size and reach – not only through their own businesses, but also through the vast amount of work they farm out to law firms and loan servicers – meant that Fannie and Freddie shaped the standards for the entire mortgage industry.

Almost all of the abuses that Mr.(Nye) Lavalle began identifying in 2003 have since come to widespread attention. The revelations have roiled the mortgage industry and left Fannie, Freddie and big banks with potentially enormous legal liabilities. More worrying is that the kinds of problems that Mr. Lavalle flagged so long ago, and that Fannie apparently ignored, have evicted people from their homes through improper or fraudulent foreclosures.

This is a huge financial problem that will still loom over the economy, especially if the banks, Fannie and Freddie are not being held legally and financially responsible for setting this all in motion. The likelihood that Schneiderman will have any success in prosecuting or obtaining a satisfactory restitution for the victims of this massive fraud against an administration that has protected the perpetrators is slim to none. I wish him luck but I will be truly disappointed if he signs this agreement.

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

The Sunday Talking Heads:

Up with Chris Hayes: Sunday’s guests Amy Goodman of (@democracynow), Melissa Harris-Perry (@MHarrisPerry) host of MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry, Dave Weigel (@daveweigel) MSNBC contributor and Slate political reporter, Michael Brendan Dougherty (@michaelbd) politics editor for Business Insider, Eli Lake (@elilake) senior national security reporter for Newsweek / The Daily Beast, Anne-Marie Slaughter (@SlaughterAM) former director of policy planning for the U.S. Department of State and University of Princeton professor of politics and international affairs, and Michelle Goldberg (@michelleinbklyn), senior contributing writer for Newsweek / The Daily Beast.

This Week with George Stephanopolis: Guests are REpublican GOP presidential candidate Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX), former Obama advisor Lawrence Summers, top Romney economic advisor Glenn Hubbard, and Diane Swonk of Mesirow Financial. Roundtable guests are ABC’s George Will, political strategist and ABC News political analyst Matthew Dowd, AOL Huffington Post Media Group president Arianna Huffington, and radio host and Bigjournalism.com editor Dana Loesch debate all the week’s politics.

Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer: This week’s guests are GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani. The Boston Globe’s Michael Kranish, author of The Real Romney, CBS News’ Chief White House Correspondent Norah O’Donnell and CBS News’ Political Director John Dickerson analyze Campaign 2012. Former RNC chairman and co-founder of American Crossroads PAC, Ed Gillespie, discusses the impact of super PACs.

The Chris Matthews Show: This week’s guests are Katty Kay, BBC Washington Correspondent; Michael Duffy TIME Magazine Assistant Managing Editor: Andrew Sullivan, The Daily Beast Editor, The Dish; and Kathleen Parker, The Washington Post Columnist.

Meet the Press with David Gregory: Sunday’s guests are GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick (D), New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg (I) and Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels (R). Roundtable guests are Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-CA), NY Times columnist David Brooks, GOP strategist Alex Castellanos, and MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow.

State of the Union with Candy Crowley: Guests are Virginia Governor and Republican Governors Association Chair Bob McDonnell and Maryland Governor and Democratic Governors Association Chair Martin O’Malley, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins and Former House Majority Leader Dick Armey and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-MI). Joining for a discussion panel are Former CBO Directors Alice Rivlin, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, and CNN Senior Political Analyst Ron Brownstein.

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Joan Walsh and Rebecca Traister: Susan G. Komen’s priceless gift

A radical decision woke the country up to an alarming rightward drift, and gave new life to women’s health advocacy

The startling intensity that we saw this week in response to Susan G. Komen for the Cure’s decision to pull its grants from Planned Parenthood – an intensity that prompted the Komen foundation to reverse its decision today – may be the best thing that’s happened to the conversation about reproductive rights in this country for decades. It certainly should be.

Practically since Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973, reproductive rights activists have been left to play stilted defense against ideological opponents who grabbed the language of morality, life, love and family as their own, always deploying it with reference to the fetus. The rhetoric around reproductive rights, which has more recently begun to creep into arguments over contraception, has become suffocating in its emotional self-righteousness, but too muscular, too ubiquitous to effectively combat.

But the overreach by the Komen foundation, while surely intended to strike yet another blow on the side of antiabortion activism, succeeded instead in waking a powerful constituency – armed with precisely the language and emotional heft they’ve been lacking for too long.

George Zornick: Schneiderman Goes After Banks for Foreclosure Fraud

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman filed a major lawsuit today against three major too-big-to-fail banks, charging them with rampant foreclosure fraud in the wake of the housing crisis. It’s a crucially important lawsuit in its own right, but also raises major questions about the nature of the supposedly looming federal and state settlement with these same banks.

Schneiderman is acting here as New York attorney general-not as co-chair of the new federal task force on the financial crisis. That effort aims to uncover wrongdoing before the crash-or, “the stuff that blew up the economy,” as he put it last week.

This is different. Schneiderman, on behalf of New York State, is accusing Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, and Wells Fargo of serious and wide-ranging abuses with foreclosures-of improperly foreclosing on homes they didn’t have the correct ownership of or paperwork for. Specifically, Schneiderman is targeting the Mortgage Electronic Registry System (MERS), which he also names in the lawsuit. MERS is a private, national database of foreclosures created by the banks and used widely for taking people’s homes-but since it wasn’t public and run by the financial institutions that stood to gain from rapid foreclosures, there were (shockingly!) a lot of errors and improper filings.