Minnesota AG: 'No Way To Liablility Releases On Securitization Screw-Ups;' Joins Counterparts In Other States Against Free Pass For Banksters

Bloomberg reports:

• Banks shouldn’t be protected from liability for mortgage securitization as part of a national foreclosure settlement, said Minnesota’s attorney general, joining other states voicing concern over the issue.



• Any settlement shouldn’t release the banks from liability for the bundling of mortgages into securities or for the use of a mortgage registry known as MERS, Attorney General Lori Swanson said in a Sept. 9 letter obtained by Bloomberg News.



• “The banks should not be released from liability for conduct that has not been investigated and is not appropriately remedied in any settlement,” Swanson wrote to her counterparts in New York and Iowa.

***

• “We have received Attorney General Swanson’s letter and agree that any agreement must not prevent attorneys general investigating the mortgage crisis from following the facts wherever they lead,” Danny Kanner, a spokesman for New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, said in an e-mail today.

***

• Besides Schneiderman and Swanson, other attorneys general who have spoken out about liability releases are Martha Coakley of Massachusetts, Delaware’s Beau Biden, and Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada.

***

• In her letter, Swanson commended actions by individual attorneys general and lawsuits against banks filed by the Federal Housing Finance Agency(1) over losses on mortgage-backed securities sold to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

For more, see Foreclosure Deal Shouldn’t Waive All Claims, Official Says.

(1) See Unaccountable To Executive Branch, Federal Agency May Be The Needed 'Loose Cannon' To Hold Banksters Personally Responsible For Roles In Fin'l Crisis.