http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/30/business/30nocera.html?src=me&ref=business
The State AG's have a score to settle.
They tried to save their states from the predatory lenders only to be stopped out by the federal bank regulators.
That may have stopped them at the time from taking out the large investment banks but it didn't stop them from taking out the predators that operated outside the national bank system.
So with that experience behind them, they are now primed and ready to take on the large investment banks, with the use of enough kryptonite to take them down.
Have you noticed that the lead dogs investigating the mortgage foreclosure mess are not any federal prosecutors or national bank regulators, but rather the state attorneys general? I sure have. I can’t think of a more encouraging development.
Yeah, yeah, a handful of federal investigations have also been announced, but we all know that they’re not going to amount to a hill of beans. Ever since the financial crisis began two years ago, the federal overseers of the banking industry have been consistently unwilling to take the rod to the institutions they regulate. The robo-signing scandal — and it is, unquestionably, a scandal — hasn’t changed that attitude one iota.
The Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve have made it clear that they are more concerned about keeping the foreclosure mill going full speed than they are about determining whether the banks broke the law. Somehow throwing people out of their homes quickly is supposed to help the economy. Or so they keep telling us.
Ah, but the states. They’re a different story.
