Well, after Dear Leader's minions, including and starting with Little Timmy Geithner, along New York Fed members and others, have spent months attacking N.Y. Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, color me skeptical at least, and cynical at most, that any talk of a federal lawsuit against banksters for their alphabet soup diarrhea of CDOs, CDSs, etc., is anything more than a hill of diarrhea-inducing beans.
UPDATE: The suit's been filed. Adding to my skepticism? It names no dollar amount for damages sought. (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac reportedly lost $196 billoin on the alphabet soup crap.)
Look, here's how this will likely play out.
1. Team Obama goes through motions of filing suit.
2. Goddam Sachs, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley et al plead remorse.
3. Said banksters eventually agree to a settlement. (This is part of "doing God's work," of course.)
4. Money for said settlement is pennies on the dollar, payable over a decade or more. Updated with the new link, 10 percent of this is about $20 billion. And, not coincidentally, that's what Team Obama suggested in initial settlement talks. Even prorated by company size among the 17 defendants, that's, say, $3 billion for Bank of America. BofA had that much profit in one quarter in 2010.
5. Said money is used by Team Obama to create a successor to HARP and HAMP called HEMP: "Home Equity Maintenance Program." God, I love being snarky.
6. Said program is started, oh, say, July 2012? Just in time for the Democratic National Convention and some appropriate re-election PR?
7. Team Obama tells Schneiderman: "We really, really tried. This is the best we can do. Now, for the last time, stop bothering the banksters."
Meanwhile, the mainstream media is piling on Schneiderman, at least the WaPost. Naked Capitalism wonders if its ownership of Kaplan, and Schneiderman's investigation of for-profit colleges, just might have something to do with that.
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