Attorney General Tom Miller of Iowa, who is leading the whitewash once known as the 50 state attorney mortgage settlement negotiations (7 have defected), reliably, every few weeks, has gotten word to the media that a deal is weeks away. This has been going on so long that it is easy to ignore it, particularly since the absence of key states is going to reduce the importance of any settlement being reached.

Note we’ve been skeptics of a deal happening unless the AGs capitulated on a release of liability. Remember the overall context: even though there is rampant evidence of all sorts of mortgage abuses (see the interview of Attorney General Beau Biden for a quick overview), the attorneys generals never investigated (I have this from a senior person on the Federal regulatory side, there was not even document discovery before the negotiations started). You can’t negotiate if you don’t have a credible threat to go to court.