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No move afoot to strip these banks of their corporate charter that I know of. Massive fraud has been alleged but not yet proved.

The answer is that all kinds of individual and class action suits are still available. But they will be hard to win since you're going to have to come up with a plaintiff who can actually show that he or she was foreclosed because of bank misconduct, as opposed to being delinquent on payments.

Actually, the practices at issue in this case had nothing to do with the collapse, since it's all about alleged malfeasance during foreclosures AFTER the economic collapse began.

The settlement is limited to mortgages held in banks' own portfolios. I don't believe there was any claim that Fannie and Freddie engaged in the wrongdoing at issue here, namely robo-signing.

Not in this settlement, apparently.

I feel your pain. It does seem strange that the way to get "relief" is to miss payments.

That's why I wonder about the politics of this deal. Administration assumes public sympathizes with the "victim" borrowers, but I am not sure that's true.

No mortgages backed by Freddie are eligible.

PNC might join the deal later.

Yes, which means a lot of the advertised "relief" is pretty notional.

There are a lot of questions here that essentially ask me to advise individuals on their particular circumstances. I am not qualified to do that. However, part of the settlement is money to the state attorneys general for more housing counselors and homeowner assistance, so perhaps that will aid some of you. Meanwhile, it is clear to me that the more programs they announce, the more they just confuse people -- initially at least.

Good question. It will probably take at least until April to get cranked up, though the banks have had time to prepare already. The deal does give them strong incentives to ramp it up in the first year, though.

Good luck proving any of that in any individual case in court. But at least the settlement bans dual tracking for the future.

Did those states actually win suits or just settlements? My clear understanding, from multiple sources, including those who advocated this agreement, is that practically no one was foreclosed on who was current on their mortgage, because of fraud or any other reason. Why would a bank foreclose on a performing loan?

There's a difference between an illegal foreclosure and an unjustified one. That's the paradox at the heart of this case. Obviously, the banks broke all kinds of legal rules by robo-signing, false affidavits, etc., etc. But the loans that were foreclosed on were, indeed, delinquent in almost every case.

There is a long list of safeguards imposed in the settlement, the gist of which is to ensure no more robo-signing or fake affidavits. Probably the most important is to restrict dual tracking.

You're not going to like this answer, but I feel I have to give it to you straight: why should you qualify for any relief.  It sounds to me like you took out a loan you could afford, then refinanced it on terms that you accepted voluntarily and can still meet even though you regret them. What is the problem? And more to the point, given all the people at there in much worse shape, what is the argument for focusing on cases like yours?

In response to several questions like this: the settlement does NOT guarantee that banks or their employees will escape criminal liability. In fact, that is specifically reserved. All the settlement does is limit their liability to civil lawsuits related to mortgage process misconduct.