http://www.salon.com/2013/02/13/wall_street_wins_again/

A year ago, President Obama gestured toward the first lady’s box at the State of the Union address at Eric Schneiderman, the attorney general of New York. Schneiderman had just agreed to co-chair the Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities working group, an initiative between state and federal law enforcement officials and bank regulators, designed to investigate and prosecute fraudulent Wall Street activity that led to both the creation of the housing bubble and its collapse. In exchange, Schneiderman dropped his objections to a settlement over some of the banks’ fraudulent post-crash activity, particularly around fraud in foreclosure processing.

Recent profiles of this event have called last night’s State of the Union the “anniversary” of the formation of the working group. But you can’t really have an anniversary of something that never existed in the first place. There never was a Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities working group, never a so-called task force dedicated to ferreting out Wall Street fraud — the deceptive origination of mortgage loans, sale of worthless mortgage-backed securities for huge sums, and subsequent unloading of toxic debt to unsuspecting buyers. The working group fails to exist as a tangible entity to this day. What does exist is the same years-old Financial Fraud Enforcement Group that serves as a conduit for press releases about investigative actions already in progress....



The dog and pony show rolls on.

2/14/2013 6:31:52 PM

Probably one of the most fair and major policy complaints I have with the Obama administration, their running of the SEC, and the Justice Department.

2/15/2013 12:42:44 AM

Liz Warren's take
http://www.upworthy.com/elizabeth-warren-asks-the-most-obvious-question-ever-and-stumps-a-bunch-of-bank

Truly awesome!

2/15/2013 12:40:18 PM

lol, the real beauty of that is the fact that repubs blocked her appointment to head the consumer protection agency, so she ran for congress and won (against a candidate heavily backed by the finance industry). Then they tried their best to keep her off this committee.

2/15/2013 12:53:47 PM