South By North Strategies, Ltd.

The Huffington Post reports on Washington’s failures to deal with the nation’s economic problems in 2011.

Those meager provisions likely prevented the economy from falling back into recession, but in the year since Obama cut that deal with congressional Republicans, economic growth has averaged a pathetic 1.2 percent. The unemployment rate has fallen from a horrific 9.8 percent to a merely terrible 8.6 percent. But much of that progress is illusory — millions of out-of-work Americans have simply given up all hope of finding a job, a situation that isn’t captured by the unemployment statistics.
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Today there are nearly 1 million homes scheduled for a foreclosure auction, down from about 1.5 million at this time last year, but again, there’s less to the improvement than meets the eye. Widespread legal challenges to fraudulent foreclosures have forced banks to slow down the eviction process.
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The same Wall Street firms that sent the economy into a tailspin remain broadly unaccountable. The robo-signing of foreclosure documents, in which banks process foreclosures at lightening speed without proper review, is still taking place. Most of the major new bank regulations required by 2010’s Wall Street reform legislation have been delayed. The new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, perhaps the signature achievement of last year’s bill, has no director. The Federal Reserve Board of Governors is short two members.