Banks fork over $11.6 billion to Fannie Mae for bad Loans.

You've got to wonder why US banks are still paying massive fines when the cause of the Great Recession can be directly connected to poor people insisting on taking out bad mortgages. Or at least that’s what Republicans keep telling us:

Financial Times: US banks agreed to pay out more than $20bn on Monday in two settlements to resolve claims arising from the mortgage crisis, with compensation for bad loans wiping out most of Bank of America’s earnings for a second successive quarter.

Was it really the fault of poor people buying homes, or…

BofA, the second-biggest US bank by assets, agreed to pay $11.6bn to Fannie Mae, the government-controlled mortgage company, to resolve a protracted legal battle over bad loans.

In a separate settlement, 10 mortgage lenders, including BofA, Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup, agreed to pay more than $8.5bn to settle regulators’ allegations that they were guilty of widespread abuse of the foreclosure system that allowed banks to seize homes from defaulting borrowers. The two settlements add to the tens of billions banks have already paid out in fines and compensation for loose lending standards in the run-up to the financial crisis and the lax manner in which they dealt with home repossessions.

What the lame stream media isn't telling you is that poor people intimidated and forced banks to make these bad loans. Poor things.