Before they proceed with their latest housing crisis task force, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman ought to sit down with Jose Rodriguez.
For 16 years, Rodriguez has led El Concilio, a nonprofit in downtown Stockton, which counsels families facing crises including foreclosure.
Rodriguez watched Tuesday as President Barack Obama delivered his State of the Union address in which he announced that he had directed Holder to create "a special unit of federal prosecutors and leading state attorneys general to expand our investigations into the abusive lending and packaging of risky mortgages that led to the housing crisis." Wednesday, the White House said Schneiderman would represent states on the task force.
More than 3 million homes have been repossessed since the housing crisis began in 2007; the number could double by next year, according to RealtyTrac Inc. The president took office in 2009 and that year created the Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force.
Reuters news service reports that before becoming attorney general, Holder was a partner at the law firm Covington & Burling, which represents a variety of industries including banking in its law practice and its Washington lobbying operation.
On behalf of the American Bankers Association, Covington lobbyists helped shape the Dodd-Frank Act, the 2010 legislation that seeks to regulate financial institutions, the firm boasts.
There's no evidence that Covington asked anything of Holder. But they don't need a discussion. That's how the Washington-Wall Street connection works.
Speaking of that connection, Schneiderman's appointment came as the Obama administration pressures states to join a nationwide settlement of the so-called robo-signing scandal in which mortgage servicers signed mortgage documents without reading them or verifying their accuracy.
Shaun Donovan, head of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, convened a meeting in Chicago on Monday of state attorneys general and their representatives to sell the deal. California Attorney General Kamala Harris sent a representative.
Harris, too, broke away from the robo-signing talks and faces pressure to rejoin. Unlike Holder or Schneiderman, however, she drove to Stockton last week to meet Rodriguez and some people who were losing their homes.
"The reality," Rodriguez said, "is that for some of these folks, it is not going to get better. The number of people we see crying, I have never seen anything like this."
It is 2012. Obama's Justice Department hasn't brought any criminal cases against major banks or Wall Street executives related to the housing crisis. In Stockton, people will continue to come to El Concilio looking for help. Rodriguez will do what he can. But he shouldn't hold out much hope for justice.
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