Some Attorneys General from across the country remained hell bent on falling down for the banks, and sacrificing the consumers they took an oath to serve and protect, famously warning in a letter that fighting for consumers risked a “moral hazard” (no comment on the real moral hazard of just letting the banksters walk on all their crimes)
But a handful of leaders finally stood up and saw all this for what it’s worth….and the talks have collapsed….From FireDogLake;
There are so many people responsible for yesterday’s demise of the 50-state foreclosure fraud whitewash, I don’t quite know where to begin. And to be sure, we’re still in the early innings of this fight.
But I think we’ve all become inured to an era of ” looking forward, not backward” and retroactive immunity for both official and corporate crimes, that it’s hard to even process what happened here. The Bush Administration and their private military and intelligence contractors committed acts of torture and murder, and nobody but low-level officials gets prosecuted. Indefinite detention is found to violate the Constitution, and Congress passes a law immunizing the government for that crime and effectively suspending habeas corpus for non-citizens. The government partners with the telecom industry to capture a massive web of the private communications of US citizens without a warrant, and Congress passes a law letting the industry off the hook for the crimes. Financial misdeeds lead to a near-collapse of the US economy, and Congress rewards the firms responsible with a bailout. The culture of no accountability has been the signifying feature of the last decade. Firedoglake
