The growing scandal over the improper, and perhaps fraudulent, foreclosures on homes by US banks is becoming both a financial and a political hot potato. Wall Street is being forced to admit to yet more unsavoury practices linked to mortgage bonds and President Barack Obama has been dragged into the affair.
...
The banks and their defenders mutter that this is all a bureaucratic technicality and much ado about nothing...

They are wrong, and the fact that they regard court proceedings to repossess homes so lightly is a worrying reflection on Wall Street's ethical standards, or lack of them. At worst, the banks may have been lying to courts over a vital safeguard in property law - the sanctity of documents.

This scandal is a mirror image of the lax and often improper lending practices that grew up in the years before the 2008 financial crisis as Wall Street raced to extend mortgages in order to have fodder for asset-backed securities. They never took seriously the importance of lending soundly and thoughtfully to homeowners.