I got a wonderful Valentines Day present for the California crew. Do you know that insane clown posse from out west? You should, one of them is going to be your President someday.

• Phil Angelides – Prime cover-upper in the investigation into the cause of the housing market crash.
• Kamala Harris – first pretty openly Marxist state attorney general
• Gavin Newsom – Rule of Law? We marry gay people whether you like it or not
• Antonio Villaraigosa, nee Tony Villar, married and combined names; wife had kids, then cancer, Tony had the smoking hot latina TV reporters. Labor union head, LA Mayor, newly appointed Chair Democrat Convention.

Yeah, they really needed some cash, to keep all the projects rolling the election preparations going, and those mean TEA Partiers in the House are trying to stop the Uncle Sugar Express. Sure, some will say it is just a back-door way for the Feds to bail out big blue states. $18B of the $25B is going to California., allowing the blue states to again avoid dealing with fiscal reality and to keep pushing the ball down the field until we’re past the tipping point. Now let’s dust off those plans for the Jerry Brown High Speed Rail project (Jerry pipes in: not the Edmund Brown Aqueduct, my daddy built that! This is MY train!) and start spending that cash – we have an election to win.
Oops, I haven’t cashed my Dreams royalty checks lately, could you get this for me until Tuesday. It’s only $40B.

Plunging deeper into the farce-hole, the FT reports tonight that Obama’s foreclosure settlement with the banks over their improper seizure of tax-paying US citizens’ homes will in fact be subsidized by those very same US taxpayers. It is a hidden clause (that has not been made public yet) that allows the banks to count future loan modifications under the $30bn (taxpayer funded) HAMP initiative towards their $35bn agreement to restructure obligations under the new settlement. As the FT goes on to note, BofA will be able to use future mods made under HAMP towards the $7.6bn in borrower assistance it is committed to provide – which means, in a (as TARP inspector general Neil Barofsky describes) ‘scandalous’ turn of events the bank will receive payments for averting a borrower default and be reimbursed by the taxpayer for the principal write-down. We have much stronger words for how we are feeling about this but Barofsky sums it up calmly “It turns the notion that this is about justice and accountability on its head”. Are the Big Five banks truly beyond the law?

 

(h/t geoffb)