$25B mortgage settlement is only a start

Go get 'em, Eric.

After a ridiculously drawn-out negotiation, the nation's top mortgage servicers have agreed to pay $25 billion in mea-culpa money for their assorted sins in the collapse of the housing market. Checks of up to $2,000 will eventually reach 750,000 people across America who lost their homes to foreclosure between 2008 and 2011.

Which is a nice start -- but clearly only a start. Now it's up New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, more than anyone else anywhere, to create a strong finish for all those borrowers who were pressured, tricked, defrauded, deceived or otherwise victimized by rapacious mortgage practices.

Schneiderman played a key role in negotiating the big settlement, pressuring the financial institutions to sweeten their original offers. But his next moves may matter even more -- keeping up the heat, continuing to investigate, finding fresh new ways for the mortgage abusers to compensate.

"There are huge tax-fraud implications to some of the stuff that went on," he said, hinting he might try to sic the IRS on Bank of America, JPMorgan, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, Ally Financial and their friends. With a jurisdiction that includes Wall Street, the center of American finance, none of these companies can afford to ignore Schneiderman.

This still won't be enough to save every underwater homeowner in Nassau and Suffolk counties. But it may shake loose some lower interest rates or principal payments.

"This is a down payment," Schneiderman said of what's been agreed to so far.

As mortgage bankers know, down payments are just the beginning. Interest and penalties come next.

LET'S ALL MOVE TO . . .

1. Bubble Acres

2. Underwater Gulch

3. Fannie Freddie Farms

4. Usury Row

5. Overextended Avenue

ASKED AND UNANSWERED: Now that Suffolk Comptroller Joseph Sawicki has ordered a "very serious audit" of double-dipping county employees, does his choice of words make you wonder: Were all those previous audits supposed to be lighthearted and fun? . . . It's just a coincidence, right? Since Nassau Republican lawmakers have thrown so much county legal work at politically connected law firms, it wouldn't be fair now would it to arbitrarily exclude fine firms like those associated with Dean Skelos, Joe Mondello, Ed Mangano and Tom Gulotta? . . . "Fiscal emergency" in Long Beach? Wait, how's that different from last week in Long Beach? Or next?

THE NEWS IN SONG:

"House Where Nobody Lives" by Tom Waits, tinyurl.com/nobodyshome

LONG ISLANDER OF THE WEEK: KEVIN BRENNAN

Ten days ago, no one was even dreaming of this. But Kevin Brennan is already back home in Garden City Park. The 28-year-old NYPD officer was shot in the head in Brooklyn on Jan. 31. And on Friday, he was wheeled out of Bellevue Hospital to the sound of bagpipes and thunderous applause. Police Commissioner Ray Kelly called the recovery "a miracle." Brennan's friends and family, knowing his tenacity, weren't quite as surprised. But he had a baby daughter at home, they said. And he was never much for hospitals, anyway. Welcome home.

Email ellis@henican.com
Follow on Twitter @henican