Settlement? How about jail instead

Column

Take a drive through Tampa or Hillsborough County and you can't miss the hundreds of empty houses littering developments and neighborhoods. They are distinctive in their boarded or busted windows and peeling paint, sitting on overgrown lots choked with thigh-high weeds.

Those empty houses used to be homes, though, filled with people who had plans. Each one tells a story that once seemed bright but ended in foreclosure.

Maybe there were kids who played in the yard. Perhaps there was a young couple beginning a life together or retirees sold on the Florida dream.

Some of the pain was unavoidable, but a lot of it could have been prevented. We can say that after Thursday's announcement five of the largest banks in the United States falsified documents so they could seize homes from thousands of people who had fallen behind on their mortgages.

It's not enough.

This fraud was so sweeping, even $25 billion amounts to basically pennies on the dollar. Victims get pittance checks of maybe $1,800 each. If they haven't lost their homes yet, they get a chance to refinance at about 2 points higher than the current going rate.

The banks in many cases win immunity from further claims. What the creeps who did this should win is an extended stay in the House of a Thousand Bars.

Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, who was at the negotiating table along with state and federal officials, declared she is "proud of what we've done for this state."

By that standard, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers didn't really finish in last place, they won the Super Bowl.

This doesn't even begin to address the dubious lending practices that led to the housing collapse in the first place.

Banks sold buyers on the myth it made good financial sense to spend more than they could possibly afford. They drew up the type of loans you'd expect to get from a guy named Louie the Legbreaker.

Then, as the owners were awash in red ink, the lenders in many cases took the houses back before they should have been legally allowed.

There should be special wrath for such behavior, but the banks got their pinkie finger dusted with a feather.

The housing collapse was a manufactured financial catastrophe for Tampa and surrounding areas, and using fraudulent documents to foreclose these homes was arrogance run amok.

Behavior like that should have a higher consequence than $1,800 a pop. Instead, the guys who did this are laughing all the way to the Hamptons.