血液血清分离仪多少钱:Settling Foreclosure Abuses - NYTimes.com

State attorneys general are the traditional defenders of consumers. So when all 50 of them announced an investigation last fall into foreclosure practices at the nation’s big banks, there was hope for an unsparing inquiry and a meaningful settlement. Most of all, we hoped that banks would be compelled, at long last, to aggressively modify millions of additional loans.

Unfortunately, a draft settlement recently presented to the nation’s biggest banks is unclear on how to achieve that goal. And even before the terms have been clarified, House and Senate Republicans are attacking the proposal. They are arguing, in effect, that banks should not be held accountable for their misdeeds.

The proposal would impose sound reforms, like requiring banks to halt a foreclosure while a loan modification is pending and to streamline the modification process. But there is no mention of how much money banks would have to put toward reworking bad loans or a target number of new loan modifications. It is also impossible to know the extent to which banks would be shielded from future lawsuits in exchange for settling. Without those details, it is all too easy to envision a settlement in which homeowners receive little and banks win broad release from legal liability for unspecified abuses.

Our doubts about the outcome are worsened by the dissension among government officials about what a settlement should achieve. The Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency — the banks’ staunchest defenders — have argued for minimal fines. State officials, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau want the broader redress that would come with more loan modifications. Since the aim is for state and federal agencies to join in one global settlement with the banks, differences among people who should be on the same side do not bode well.

Into that mix, The Times’s Gretchen Morgenson reported this week that before the release of the draft settlement, the attorneys general did not conduct a full inquiry with subpoenaed documents and sworn depositions. A spokesman for Tom Miller, the Iowa attorney general, who leads the group, defended the investigation. He said the state attorneys, long steeped in foreclosure issues, had extensive knowledge of the problems and needed solutions.

Of course, knowledge is good, but in settlement talks, leverage is better. Banks are vulnerable to prosecution because of robo-signing, as the practice, exposed last year, of filing false court documents in an effort to speed foreclosures is known. But will their feet be held to the fire over other damaging practices? A brief sampling of violations — aired in court cases, Congressional testimony and academic research — include excessive fees, improper denial of loan modifications, irregularities in the packaging of mortgages and conflicts of interest that lead banks to favor foreclosures over modifications.

Unless an inquiry uncovers the extent of those and other violations, it will be impossible to gauge if a settlement is fair. Even the seemingly large settlement sum of $20 billion that has been floated would be a small price for banks to pay if the quid pro quo is to sweep potentially widespread abuses under the rug.

For too long, bank misbehavior has been indulged by lawmakers, regulators, Obama officials and Bush officials before them. As a result, foreclosures have proliferated and loan workouts have lagged, devastating homeowners and the housing market, and Americans’ trust in political and financial institutions.

A powerful settlement could begin to repair all that. If it is not forthcoming, state attorneys general should keep open their options to pursue the banks in courts across the land.