Too Big to Fail (TBTF)

The last 24 hours have witnessed some remarkable historical revisionism on financial regulation coming out of the GOP.

First, we had one of the most bizarre and simply untrue attack ads I've ever seen, courtesy of Karl Rove's Crossroads GPS outfit. The ad calumnies Elizabeth Warren, claiming that first she was responsible for the TARP bailout and then set out to butter up bankers. Is this man on drugs? Rove seems to be confusing Elizabeth Warren with George W. Bush. 

The New York Times came out with a strong editorial urging state AGs and the Administration not to rush into the proposed multi-state settlement deal. I think it's worthwhile reviewing what we know about the deal and the arguments for and against it.

The NY Times had some details today about the multi-state attorney general mortgage servicing settlement in the works. It looks every bit as awful as one might have feared. Here's the criticial take-away:  this is bupkis. It gives meaningless relief to a meaningless number of randomly or adversely selected homeowners.  It doesn't do justice, even by halves. 

A simple google search for "foreclosure file reviewer" turns up a bunch of interesting things, including who is searching, what Level 2 means (as opposed to Level 1 or Level 3) and the involvement of Promontory, a financial services consulting firm headed by a former Comptroller of the Currency:

I happened to walk by Zuccoti Park in Manhattan yesterday, where the Occupy Wall Street protest is centered. I picked up a few pieces of protester literature. I can't say that I was in any way comprehensive in my collection. Some of the literature was just nuts, e.g., a flier blathering about admiralty law usurping the common law and the Trading with the Enemies Act. This flier could just as easily have been found at a Tea Party gathering. It gave new meaning to the term "fringe banking."