The Roundup for May 9, 2011 /.firedoglake

[sasha031]

Felt like a placeholder news day, the kind of day that has to go in between days where actual news is broken. I don’t even have much left over:

• Krugman really nails elite failure here. Almost everything that’s happened in the past decade can be attributed to this.

• Joe Biden has another deficit meeting on Tuesday, but I suspect more will be get done when President Obama meets with Senate caucuses of both parties later in the week.

• State AGs don’t need any help preventing a settlement with the nation’s largest banks over foreclosure fraud, but Republican House members are trying to help them anyway, armed with a disingenuous study about strategic default underwritten by the financial services industry. This argument is everywhere now.

• Republicans wanting to serve the banks should be more concerned about the growing abuses on military foreclosures which are roiling the industry, and yet another precedent in an appellate court in North Carolina on chain of title issues.

• Before providing loan modifications, banks want homeowners to waive their right to sue the banks for anything relating to the loan. That’s one way to avoid responsibility.

• Corporate lobbyists are trying their best to stop that executive order that would force any multinational doing business with the US government to disclose their political donations.

• A bipartisan group of lawmakers urged the President to use the bin Laden killing as a pretext to transition away from war in Afghanistan and begin the drawdown. David Petraeus played some serious defense on this today.

• Sheila Bair, one of the more effective regulators in the entire government, will leave the FDIC in July at the close of her five-year term.

• As everyone in Washington talks about the deficit, a massive defense authorization bill is moving through Congress with most of the cuts removed.
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