It's a good piece. It's even an "important" piece, in the sense that the cloistered elites who run the country could learn something of the reality of life out in the country at large if this piece makes it to their desks. D.C.-based news organizations should report from "the rest of America" more often, because in Washington mass foreclosures and double-digit unemployment are usually seen as abstract problems slightly less pressing than the fact that Social Security will, decades from now, pay out slightly more than it takes in. (Joe Klein, who is basically a buffoon, returned from his stunt "2010 road trip" sounding suddenly much less buffoonish. Getting outside the bubble is often instructive.)

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Rather than settling anything, this agreement is simply a continuation of the policy framework of both the Bush and the Obama administrations. So what, exactly, is that framework? It is, as Damon Silvers of the Congressional Oversight Panel, which monitored the bailouts, once put it, to preserve the capital structures of the largest banks. "We can either have a rational resolution to the foreclosure crisis or we can preserve the capital structure of the banks," said Silvers in October, 2010. "We can’t do both." Writing down debt that cannot be paid back -- the approach Franklin Roosevelt took -- is off the table, as it would jeopardize the equity keeping those banks afloat.

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Freddie Mac paid Gingrich's consulting firm at least $1.6 million for his time. Exactly how much -- and how much went to Gingrich -- is still unknown, because reporters haven't seen the contract between Freddie Mac and Gingrich's Center for Health Transformation. Gingrich initially said Freddie Mac refused to waive a confidentiality agreement that would allow him to release the contract. But:

Freddie Mac officials said last week that Gingrich was “welcome” to release the contract, under which his consulting firm was paid at least $1.6 million over eight years for his services.

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It makes sense that old people would have more money than young people, because they have been working and saving longer. But this wealth gap is massive by historical standards. In 1984, old people were a mere 10 times richer than young people. Not only have old people gotten richer since then, but the median net worth of households headed by young people has declined considerably.

Households headed by adults ages 35 and younger had a median net worth of $3,662 in 2009. That marks a 68% decline in wealth, compared to that same age group 25 years earlier.

Over the same time frame, households headed by adults ages 65 years and older, have seen just the opposite. Their wealth rose 42%, to a median of $170,494.

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Dimon is a Democrat and former BFF of President Barack Obama, but one day Obama said "fat cat bankers" and everyone on Wall Street threw a tremendous tantrum. The president has gone on to lightly criticize the financial industry and endorse a plan to slightly raise income taxes on very wealthy people, which has reportedly driven scores of Democratic backers from the finance industry into the open arms of the GOP.

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These securities were sold pursuant to registration statements, including prospectuses and prospectus supplements that formed part of those registration statements, which contained materially false or misleading statements and omissions. Defendants falsely represented that the underlying mortgage loans complied with certain underwriting guidelines and standards, including representations that significantly overstated the ability of the borrowers to repay their mortgage loans.

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The reports say the government would seek billions of dollars in losses in compensation. The reports cited people that were not identified.

The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal say the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which oversees mortgage buyers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, could file a lawsuit within days.

The reports say securities that were backed by subprime and other risky loans but were deemed safe investments by ratings agencies are the ones at issue in this case.

The Times says the FHFA would not seek recovery of the total amount of the loans because some still have value.

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The agency says it has also lowered the ratings for: farm lenders; long-term U.S. government-backed debt issued by 32 banks and credit unions; and three major clearinghouses, which are used to execute trades of stocks, bonds and options.

All the downgrades were from AAA to AA+. S&P says the agencies and banks all have debt that is exposed to economic volatility and a further downgrade of long-term U.S. debt.

Officials at Standard & Poor's say they will also indicate shortly how local and state governments will be affected by their decision on Friday to lower the long-term U.S. debt from AAA to AA+.

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The DOJ action -- currently in pre-lawsuit negotiations as the bank hopes to settle and avoid a public lawsuit -- is not the first instance of discrimination allegations brought against Wells Fargo. In an ongoing case, the city of Baltimore is also charging that predominantly black neighborhoods were targeted, even though the bank knew that borrowers in these areas were likely to default ultimately. (Defaults in these instances didn't matter to the mortgage lending giant, since the loans had been sold on to investors). Wells Fargo denies the accusations.

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According to analysis by the Pew Research Center of newly available government data from 2009, the disparities in household wealth are the greatest since the government began tracking such data 25 years ago. The gulf separating white wealth from that of other groups is twice as wide as it was in the two decades prior to the financial crisis.

"The bursting of the housing market bubble in 2006 and the recession that followed from late 2007 to mid-2009 took a far greater toll on the wealth of minorities than whites," reports the study. Hispanics were hardest hit by the housing meltdown because they are concentrated in areas that suffered the biggest depreciation in home values -- Arizona, California, Florida and Nevada.

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How could this be?

Charles R. Morris, a former banker and the author of "The Trillion Dollar Meltdown," told Salon on Wednesday that while it is clear that BofA behaved with "no shame," there are numerous reasons why the feds left the bank alone.

For instance, unlike in a case of insider trading, when the guilty party is caught red-handed on the phone, "it's really hard to make these criminal cases stick and if you really want to get the top guy, it will take forever," Morris said.

"You don't have a clean smoking gun," he explained. "It seems to me that Goldman Sachs was pretty much the only competent bank, in that when they took a view, they really took it and managed it up and down the institution." But proving "intent" at the top can be problematic.

Even with a case like Bear Stearns -- where there seems to be ample grounds for a criminal case (email trails that have come up in lawsuits that have reached discovery and Senate investigations show clear instances of fraud) -- criminal charges might not stick, Morris noted.

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The deal, announced Wednesday, comes after a group of 22 investors demanded that the Charlotte, N.C. bank repurchase $47 billion in mortgages that its Countrywide unit sold to them in the form of bonds.

The group, which includes the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Pimco Investment Management, and Blackrock Financial Management, argued that Countrywide enriched itself at the expense of investors by continuing to service bad loans while running up servicing fees.

Bank of America, which bought Countrywide in 2008 for $4 billion, has denied those claims.

Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan said Wednesday that the settlement would minimize "future economic uncertainty" in the banking business and "clean up the mortgage issues largely stemming from our purchase of Countrywide."

The settlement is subject to court approval and covers 530 trusts with original principal balance of $424 billion.

Citi analyst Keith Horowitz said the settlement, which amounts to only 2 percent of the original principal balance, removes one of the largest investor risks for Bank of America.

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The annual wealth report from Merrill Lynch and Capgemini found that the wealth of High Net Worth Individuals (HNWI) reached $42.7 trillion in 2010. An HNWI is defined as someone who has more than $1million in free cash and there are now more such individuals (11 million) than ever. The 2010 figure of combined wealth of HNWIs has risen 10 percent on the 2009 number and has surpassed the previous peak of $40.7 trillion reached in 2007.

Ultra-high net worth individuals -- those with more than $30 million in free cash -- saw their investments jump over 11 percent in 2010, to $15 trillion concentrated among 103,000 people (less, even, than 1 percent of the world's HNWIs).

In terms of where to find rich people, the Guardian reports:

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Case in point: Last week's decision to absolve the management of an investment fund, Janus Capital Group, for any legal responsibility for misleading information contained in prospectuses for mutual funds created under the supervision of Janus.

The fund industry is cheering, and rightly so. The best explanation for what's at stake is provided by Steve Waldman at interfluidity.com but the essential point is simple. The Supreme Court just made it much, much harder for shareholders in mutual funds to sue the operators of those funds for exactly the kind of misrepresentations and malfeasances that were at the heart of the mortgage lending securitization fiasco that blew up the financial system and crashed the economy.

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In April the government called on 16 mortgage lenders and servicers to reimburse homeowners who were incorrectly foreclosed upon. The lenders and servicers were also given 45 days hire auditors to show how many homeowners could have avoided foreclosure in 2009 and 2010. They would then be required to submit plans that show how they intend to fix their practices.

Regulators said Monday that Department of Justice asked that they give the banks and financial firms another 30 days to coordinate with state and federal agencies.

Citibank, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo were among the lenders cited in the report.

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My initial response: Today is a good day to be Matt Taibbi.

Last June, Michael Hasting's stunning Rolling Stone article on General Stanley McChrystal ended that soldier's career. In December, one week after Jeff Goodell's blistering profile of Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship appeared in the same magazine, the coal baron resigned.

Is it too much to hope that Matt Taibbi could complete the trifecta? Last week Rolling Stone published Taibbi's latest frontal assault on his favorite vampire squid, "The People vs. Goldman Sachs." Drawing heavily upon the 650-page report issued by Senator Carl Levin's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, "Wall Street and the Financial Crisis: Anatomy of a Financial Collapse," Taibbi made a powerful case for prosecuting the investment bank for fraud and its executives for perjury.

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Morgenson mentioned the incident during an interview with NPR earlier this week, saying that Frank was "one of [Fannie Mae's] really big beneficiaries, albeit indirectly."

Frank is rejecting claims that this was unethical. He told the Boston Herald on Wednesday night: "If it is (a conflict of interest), then much of Washington is involved (in conflicts) ... It is a common thing in Washington for members of Congress to have spouses work for the federal government. There is no rule against it at all."

According to Frank, he did not solicit Moses' hiring, but just gave his approval when asked by a Fannie Mae executive. Frank noted too that when Moses worked at the agency (until 1998) he was not on a congressional subcommittee overseeing the mortgage leviathan specifically. The Herald also reports that Frank abstained from voting on a Republican amendment to limit executive compensation at the government-backed lenders, explicitly stating that his companion worked at Fannie as his reason for abstention.

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Wallison's views on what caused the crunch are so far out on the right-wing ledge that he couldn't even get the three other Republican members of the FCIC to agree with his theories, and had to release his own minority-minority dissent.

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On Sunday's "Your Money" on CNN, Taibbi pushes his point against Megan McArdle of the Atlantic Monthly. McArdle, described on CrooksAndLiars.com as a "Wall Street apologist" essentially suggests that we shouldn't prosecute the bankers, because convictions are too difficult to get and that they probably meant well really. Taibbi is, unsurprisingly, unconvinced:

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