California is wooed in mortgage settlement talks

By Felix Salmon: Yesterday brought dueling stories in the NYT and the WSJ on the status of the bank foreclosure-settlement talks.

Robert Siegel talks to Wall Street Journal reporter Ruth Simon about the removal Tuesday of New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman from a committee of state attorneys general investigating mortgage abuses. In recent months, Schneiderman voiced concerns over a proposed settlement between major banks and a coalition of federal and state officials over claims of foreclosure abuses. He has come under increasing pressure to approve the deal.

The Attorneys General from nine states are calling for a change of leadership a

Egan-Jones may have been barred from rating sovereigns for 18 months due to missing a comma here or there in its NRSRO application (when everyone knows this was merely retribution for downgrading the US ahead of all the other rating agencies), but now the time has come for that other rating agency which dared to follow in EJ's footsteps and downgrade the US of AmericaAA+ in August 2011 to be punished: Standard & Poors. Moments ago we learned that federal and state prosecutors will five civil charges against S&P for its mortgage bond ratings during the housing crisis.

Today, under guise of helping "responsible homeowners" president Obama published details of Plan to Help Homeowners and Heal the Housing Market Key Aspects of the President’s Plan as Presented

Remember that big, ballyhooed mortgage settlement of early last year? The one where homeowners got $25 billion of relief (well actually only around $5 billion in cold cash, but why bother with pesky details?) The one made possible by Eric Schneiderman abandoning his fellow state attorneys general to grasp the brass ring of a do-just-about-nothing Residential Mortgage-Backed Task Force?