The authorities have fallen silent lately about a possible settlement over foreclosure abuses at big servicing companies.
The talks began in earnest last March, and people keep whispering that a deal is nigh. But last week, a spokesman for Shaun Donovan, the secretary of Housing and Urban Development and a lead negotiator, said that there was nothing new to report.
That’s probably not a terrible thing. After all, no deal is better than a bad deal. State and federal authorities jumped into these talks without conducting serious investigations into foreclosure shenanigans. Why strike a deal — one that would, say, shield from new litigation over toxic , flawed securitizations and the mess at MERS, the registry that has made such a jumble of land records — without knowing what happened?
