It seems like ir was just earlier this evening, I was wondering what political calculus could be driving numerous states Attorneys General to walk away from the so-called “50 State Deal” on “Robosigning”. (Wait, it was just earlier this evening)
Well, now we know why. The New York Times just described the recent transition of New York AG Schneiderman from a very (for New York, anyway) low key Attorney General to Political superstar:
The other day, in his office down on Wall Street, Eric T. Schneiderman owned up to an awkward truth.
Until fairly recently, he acknowledged, if you had asked the average passer-by to name New York’s attorney general, you might have gotten a mystified “Huh?” or the answer that it was Andrew M. Cuomo (the governor who used to have the job) or Eliot Spitzer (the disgraced former governor who had it before that), rather than the correct response: Mr. Schneiderman.
In the eight months since he has assumed the office, the emphatically unglamorous Mr. Schneiderman has maintained a low profile for the state’s top law-enforcement officer, charting a busy but anonymous course between Spitzerian aggression and Cuomoesque charm. Even his own press aide, Danny Kanner, recently confessed that, before this summer, his own parents did not know who Mr. Schneiderman was. “And I’m their kid; I work for the guy,” Mr. Kanner said.
But then came August, when Mr. Schneiderman, 56, rejected a proposed nationwide settlement releasing some of the country’s biggest banks from a lawsuit brought by the states claiming misconduct in the mortgage markets. Almost overnight, he found his own name mentioned in a series of laudatory articles in publications as varied as Rolling Stone, The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle and the Web site Gawker.
Adding fuel to the profile-raising fire were the phone calls Mr. Schneiderman received this summer from officials in the Obama administration who pressured him to smarten up and join his counterparts in other states in settling the case. There were reports that a Federal Reserve official, Kathryn S. Wylde, had harangued him in public for his stubbornness (at the funeral for Hugh L. Carey, the former New York governor, no less). At the end of August, an unrepentant Mr. Schneiderman was kicked off the executive committee of attorneys general in charge of the case by its leader, Tom Miller, the attorney general of Iowa.
The cynic in me wonders if perhaps the fact that the flood of adoring correspondence was accompanied by, “Small tsunami of campaign donations,” might have something to do with the increasing numbers of Attorneys General who are balking at signing an agreement exchanging a token payment for immunity for the banksters.
He goes next.
While I certainly agree that there is personal incentive for Schneiderman to resist going along with the agreement, there remains the true issues that this is not just a simple matter of whether robo signing is ok. Yhe real issue is that the banks have indulged in a massive tax evasion scheme, by not recording mortgage transfers with county recorders, as required by law typically. This has not only cost these counties many billions of much needed dollars, it has legally left the mortgage holder without legal standing to foreclose, since they are not recordrd as the mortgage holder.
If the banks are given mass dispensation on the federal level, this criminal tax fraud will go unpunished.
Big Bro: They are already trying, witness the my post, "The Banks are Going Spitzer on New York AG Schneiderman."
DJ: Correct, but incomplete. There is a world of fraud and criminal activity in addition to the violations of NY State trust law.
Also, I did nott want to imply that Schneiderman was doing this for political gain. NY AGs have always been the most aggressive in pursuing the banksters, but that other AGs are taking a cue from the response to his actions.
Yes there is, you are absolutely correct. I was simply focust on the "robosigning" for this instance.
You know, they actually should get reelection contributions for doing this. It's the right thing to do and it should be encouraged. If this is part of the motivation, I'm okay with that.