Foreclosure-Gate: Banks Offer Paltry $5 Billion In Exchange For Expungement Of Charges

05-11-2011 • ZeroHedge.com

Needless to say this is a sham of a farce of a "settlement", and amounts to one quarter in trading perfection for the likes of the afore discussed JPM, BofA or Goldman. Recall that Goldman pays well over three times this amount in bonuses each year. On the other hand, this is merely a counteroffer to the $20 billion preliminary bid. Which means that the final number to put the entire robosigning affair behind us will be about $10 billion give or take. And banks can go back to doing what they do best: post 0 trading losses per quarter, and other such infinite sigma events. From the WSJ: Bank representatives met Tuesday with state and federal officials in the latest round of negotiations. On Friday, banks received revised term sheets from government negotiators. One sheet revised proposed changes in mortgage-servicing practices. The second term sheet governs how penalties would be allocated; among other things, it details how they would have to reduce loan balances for certain borrowers. The banks intend to propose that as much as $5 billion be used to compensate any borrowers previously wronged in the foreclosure process and provide transition assistance for borrowers who are ousted from their homes, according to people familiar with the matter. One idea is that foreclosed borrowers could receive several months of free rent once they find new housing, one of these people said. Not only that, but the $5 billion token amount is supposed to be a broad release, in essence granting banks immunity from any and all future related lawsuits: