Re: last night’s SOTU Address, NY Attorney General Eric Schneiderman will head the mortgage abuse task force to go after companies engaging in shady dealings.

Schneiderman, who was in the audience during the speech and had prime seating in the First Lady’s box, will co-chair what the president described as “a special unit of federal prosecutors and leading state attorney generals” that will “expand our investigations into the abusive lending and packaging of risky mortgages that led to the housing crisis.”
“This new unit will hold accountable those who broke the law, speed assistance to homeowners, and help turn the page on an era of recklessness that hurt so many Americans,” the president said.
Schneiderman, who has pushed to hold the banking industry to task, had previously butted heads with the administration over a proposed settlement deal with banks over questionable foreclosure practices. The first-term AG was even booted from the negotiating committee because of his punitive stance.
But the dispute seems to have paid off for Schneiderman, who is now set to co-chair the new Unit on Mortgage Origination and Securitization Abuses, along with the Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division, Lanny Breuer, and other SEC and DOJ officials, according to the Huffington Post, which first broke news of the new unit just before the speech.

Scheiderman had broken with a previous effort at a national settlement with the banks over their mortgage practices, claiming that it didn’t go far enough in punishing those companies.

That split also hit at the Administration, which backed those talks. It seems that they’ve reconciled and decided to take an even stronger position against the banks that engaged in predatory lending and other activities (including foreclosures, robosigning, etc.).