[classicman]

Pruitt struck his own $18.6 million settlement deal with the same five loan servicers. Pruitt and his staff say that the settlement will help underwater homeowners - those who owe more on their homes than they are worth - who were genuinely the victims of illegal, predatory lending practices. It will not reward home-owners who stopped paying their mortgages over those who continued to make payments even though they were underwater or those who might stop paying just to take advantage of the settlement agreement.

Pruitt said the settlement negotiated by the other 49 attorneys general had gone beyond the scope of state law and had turned into an effort by the Obama administration to restructure the lending industry.

However, a widely circulated blog by Foster Kamer of the New York Observer contended that the Oklahoma settlement agreement will not come close to covering all of the Oklahoma homeowners who are in foreclosure or under water, and that the average aid to victims will be considerably less than under the national settlement.

Details of both the national and Oklahoma settlement agreements are still vague, so it will be some time before the question of whether Oklahoma got a good deal is sorted out. But some other questions linger:

Was Pruitt's decision based on politics? His aides say no; but he did campaign for office on a platform of "pushing back" against Washington, D.C., and the Obama administration.

Would the five lenders have agreed to negotiate a separate settlement with a single state unless they thought it would be a better deal for them than the national settlement?

Finally, if negotiating a stand-alone settlement was such a good thing, why was Pruitt the only attorney general in the nation to do it?

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