New York’s Attorney General, Schneiderman, is apparently the last hold-out preventing Wall Street from gracefully completing the heist that left them with untold billions in profits, while thoroughly trashing the mortgage market and setting off the on-going recession. The White House (eager, no doubt to clear the way for fundraising for the ’12 re-election campaign) is pushing hard to get all the state Attorney Generals to sign on to a $20bn settlement deal that would immunize Bank of America and the rest of the money mafia from further criminal or civil prosecution, effectively letting them get away with a fine and a stern warning. They must be laughing all the way to the bank at the thought of this…

But Schneiderman is having none of it. He’s in the middle of his own thorough investigation of the mortgage scam shenannigans, and he has made it clear that he has no interest in selling out his potential cases by signing on to a get-out-of-jail-free card for the banks. Predictably, he is now being vilified by the Administration’s henchmen and the bank’s paid-for friends on various oversight boards. More on the whole sordid affair from Matt Taibbi in the latest issue of Rolling Stone Magazine.

So, what I’m wondering is this: when did Bill Sorrell in Montpelier decide that he was on board with this grand giveaway to the banks? It’s one thing that he’s reluctant to do much digging himself (I don’t know if the settlement amount is reasonable or not, but he seems to have readily compromised with Countrywide/BofA locally, rather than explore more drastic measures), but it would be nice if he would refrain from sabotaging the honest work by his colleague in New York and not simply sign on to a White House-brokered deal that epitomizes the corrupt relationship between our politicians and the crooks in the financial world.