The California Attorney General has returned to the 'robo-signing' talks after a four-month absence to possibly take part in a multi-state settlement with the nation's largest residential servicers, according to combined press reports early Monday morning.

Barbara Desoer, the president of Bank of America's home loans division who was once considered a possible successor to former Chief Executive Ken Lewis, will retire at the end of February, BofA said Friday.

Federal banking agencies seem to be making little progress in promulgating regulations that will set the ground rules for a revival of the private-label MBS market.

Standard and Poor's expects bank card charge-offs to stay at low levels in 2012 as long as trusts maintain current credit compositions. The rating agency's analysts said that this is positive for credit card ABS collateral.

The Federal Reserve and the Obama administration have put the continued poor state of the housing market front and center on their agendas in the first month of 2012 and now into early February.

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman today filed a lawsuit against Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, and Wells Fargo charging that using Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems' (MERS) electronic mortgage registry has resulted in a wide range of deceptive and fraudulent foreclosure filings in New York state and federal courts.

Mark Gollin has joined Carlton as managing director who will run the company's European capital markets business.

Assured Guaranty has filed a lawsuit against UBS' real estate securities unit over breach of contract claims.

Interactive Mortgage Advisors (IMA) Denver, is selling a $589 million portfolio of residential servicing rights backed by Fannie Mae and Ginnie Mae mortgages.

CoBiz Financial will begin providing asset-based loans to middle market businesses through its newly formed CoBiz Structured Finance.

It appears that possible salary and bonus caps at the GSEs are not hurting the recruiting efforts of at least Fannie Mae.