On Thursday the Obama administration and state officials announced a $26 billion settlement with five of the nation's biggest banks over a range of foreclosure fraud abuses. Forty-nine states, all but Oklahoma, signed onto the largest government-industry settlement in more than a decade. The Washington Post reports:

The deal aims to help troubled borrowers by reducing the amount they owe on their mortgages, lowering their interest rates and paying restitution to homeowners who suffered mortgage-related abuses. It will force lenders to revamp how they interact with troubled homeowners and bar them from trying to foreclose on borrowers while simultaneously negotiating mortgage modifications.

In addition, firms will have to make sure borrowers have a single point of contact with a lender, rather than being shuttled to different employees with each interaction.

... Under the terms of the deal, banks would have three years to complete principal writedowns, refinancings and other relief. But officials said they structured the deal so that it provides incentives for actions taken within the first 12 months, in an effort to get aid to homeowners sooner rather than later.

About $17 billion from the settlement will go toward foreclosure-prevention actions, such as mortgage modifications and reducing the loan balances for underwater borrowers. About $5 billion will be in direct cash penalties, which provide $1,800 to $2,000 for homeowners who qualify for the direct payments.

In remarks on the settlement, President Obama criticized various bank abuses that pushed borrowers into foreclosure. "In many cases, they didn't even verify that these foreclosures were actually legitimate," he said. "Some of the people they hired to process foreclosures used fake signatures on fake documents to speed up the foreclosure process. Some of them didn't read what they were signing at all."

But many housing advocates have criticized the settlement as a mere slap on the wrist, given the damage that lenders caused to millions of families -- especially African Americans and Latinos, who were twice as susceptible (pdf) to foreclosure as whites -- not to mention the hit to the broader economy. The president admitted to the shortcomings.

"No compensation, no amount of money, no measure of justice, is enough to make it right for a family who's had their piece of the American dream wrongly taken from them.  And no action, no matter how meaningful, is going to, by itself, entirely heal the housing market," he said. "But this settlement is a start. And we're going to make sure that the banks live up to their end of the bargain. If they don't, we've set up an independent inspector, a monitor, that has the power to make sure they pay exactly what they agreed to pay, plus a penalty if they fail to act in accordance with this agreement."

He continued that the government could build on the settlement if Congress would pass his recently unveiled mortgage plan, making it easier to refinance for borrowers who are current on their loans.

"There's no excuse for doing nothing to help more families avoid foreclosure," he said. "We are Americans, and we look out for one another; we get each other's backs. That's not a Democratic issue, that's not a Republican issue. That's who we are as Americans."

The president did not mention progress on the new unit of federal prosecutors, announced in his State of the Union address, to further investigate abusive lending practices -- or whether their investigations might lead to criminal prosecutions around this issue. While the settlement will help stop the fraudulent industry practices that it identifies and keep more struggling borrowers in their homes, without criminal liability, the response feels conspicuously incomplete.

Cynthia Gordy is The Root's Washington reporter.

Nestled in last week's jobs report showing that the unemployment rate dropped to 8.3 percent in January (and fell from 15.8 to 13.6 percent for African Americans), there was also hopeful news for veterans.

As Think Progress reports, in the past year the unemployment rate for veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars fell 6 percentage points, from 15.2 percent in January 2011 to 9.1 percent last month. There was also a sharp drop for the entire U.S. veteran population, from 9.9 percent a year ago to 7.5 percent now -- lower than the national average.

It's big news for veterans, whose unemployment rates have perennially hovered above the national average. The numbers for black veterans have been especially dismal, with a Department of Labor report (pdf) released last November showing that African Americans are disproportionately represented among unemployed vets (accounting for 17.5 percent in 2010, despite making up only 11.9 percent of the veteran labor force). The report also showed that in 2010, black veterans had a 12.7 percent unemployment rate, compared with 9.1 percent for white veterans, 9.2 for Latinos and 4.4 for Asian Americans.

On Friday President Obama expanded on his efforts to help more unemployed veterans find jobs, calling on Congress to increase funding in the 2013 budget for programs that hire veterans in local police and fire departments. His proposed budget, which he unveils next week, will include an additional $5 billion for those programs.

The president also put forward the creation of a $1 billion Veterans Jobs Corps that he claimed would place as many as 20,000 veterans in jobs preserving and restoring trails, roads, levees and other federal, state, local and tribal lands.

"Our veterans are some of the most highly trained, highly educated, highly skilled workers that we've got," the president said on Friday. "These are the Americans we want to keep serving here at home as we rebuild this country. So we're going to do everything we can to make sure that when our troops come home, they come home to new jobs and new opportunities and new ways to serve their country."

Despite the combined $6 billion price tag for the president's proposals, support for veterans is one of the few areas with bipartisan approval, so he stands a chance here. Last year when Democrats introduced various aspects of his American Jobs Act in individual pieces, the only bill to make it through was one that provided tax breaks for employers who hire veterans. It passed in a near-unanimous vote.

Cynthia Gordy is The Root's Washington reporter.

On Saturday the Republican presidential race moves on to the Nevada caucuses. According to the Las Vegas Review-Journal poll, Mitt Romney is "headed for a blowout victory" in the state, leading Newt Gingrich by 20 points among likely caucus-goers. After his wide margin of victory last month in Florida, some pundits have all but declared Romney the Republican nominee.

But former Republican National Committee Chair Michael Steele says, considering that we're only five contests into the 50-state primary season, nobody can claim a lock on the nomination yet. "Did we think that this race would even go this long?" he said in an interview with The Root. "I mean, a lot of people were predicting that it would have been over in Iowa and New Hampshire. Now people are trying to say, 'Well, this is it this time.' I don't know about that, but the one thing that I do know is that the voters in the Republican primary want their opportunity to speak."

Additionally, the huddle of caucuses in the coming week (Maine, Colorado and Minnesota) may give other candidates a unique opportunity to pick up steam. As Sarah Schweitzer of the Boston Globe explains, the time-consuming caucus format rewards candidates with long, detailed campaigning efforts and loyal bases. "Caucuses are thought to offer Paul the greatest leverage because they tend to be sparsely attended by the most motivated voters -- meaning that highly organized campaigns like Paul's have the advantage," she writes.

Steele, who oversaw the RNC process of changing the rules for this year's Republican primaries, which allocate delegates using a proportional system instead of using the previous winner-takes-all rule, said the changes were designed to keep the race from wrapping up too early. "When we sat down and developed a strategy for this primary, one of the things that was foremost in our minds was fleshing this out. We didn't want it to end in February," he said. "I'd like to see this move into March and maybe even early April to allow for a fuller discussion."

Aside from letting the voters steer that discussion instead of anointing an "establishment" winner before the contest is over, the protracted GOP race is also a good deal for the Obama campaign. As the candidates battle one another, the president -- who knowingly unveiled a new housing plan this week, just before the contest in Nevada (the nation's leader in foreclosures) -- continues his campaign narrative generally unchallenged.

Do you think the Republican nomination is already a lock, or is nothing decided yet?

Cynthia Gordy is The Root's Washington reporter.

On Monday, President Obama took interview questions through a virtual "Hangout" on the social networking site Google+.

According to Google, 1.6 million votes were cast on 133,000 questions submitted last week by YouTube users. The president tackled some of the highest-rated questions, with five selected participants on Google+ engaging with him live, and the other questions chosen from submitted YouTube videos. The live Hangout format also allowed the participants to push back on the president's answers.

Moderated by Steve Grove, head of community partnerships at Google+, the conversation touched on concerns for small-business owners, students and veterans. In some of its lighter moments, Obama was asked to perform a jig (thankfully, he declined) and greeted by YouTube celebrity and spot-on Obama impersonator AlphaCat (with the president quipping that the only thing missing from the impression was some gray hair). Here are a few policy questions that made the cut.

In a YouTube video, a 52-year-old Occupy protester in Portland, Ore., explained that she is a taxpayer who has been unemployed for five years. She asked, "Do you have a plan for me?"

Obama first answered that the most important thing he can do to help the unemployed is to grow the economy, pointing to his long-term proposals to give federal incentives to companies that keep jobs in the United States, expanding the America energy industry and changing the tax code so that everyone pays his or her fair share.

"Obviously, for someone who's been laid off and they're 50 and older, it's a lot tougher," Obama said, trying to speak to the woman's immediate needs. He held up as a hopeful example a guest at his State of the Union address who, after being laid off in his 50s, got trained in a new field through a one-year community college program and found employment. "It is possible, but we've got to create more of those ladders of opportunity."

In the Google+ Hangout, a college student questioned the president's push for Americans to pursue higher education at a time when so many are struggling for basic necessities. He asked, "What is your plan to help students pay off all their student loans?"

President Obama clarified that he promotes any education beyond high school, whether it be a four-year institution, community college or vocational training. He also mentioned a new proposal to shift federal aid away from colleges and universities that don't stop increasing tuition and toward schools that do find creative ways to keep costs down.

When the student followed up by asking what advice he has for students worried about amassing loan debt when they might not find a job after they've graduated, Obama said that they have to more responsibly think ahead about what they want to do when they get to college. "Your counselors and other adults can potentially help you to identify what are going to be some of the growth areas of the future so you can make a good investment," Obama said.

Despite the valid concerns of student debt, he said it's still a solid investment to make. "The unemployment rate for folks who only have a high school diploma is multiple times higher than for folks who've got a college degree," he said.

Through YouTube, a homeless veteran in Boston asked, "Why do we send money to places like Pakistan and other places that are known to give money to terrorism ... when we've got guys out here homeless?"

The president first underscored his goal to eliminate veterans' homelessness, partially through increasing the Veterans Affairs budget. On foreign aid generally, he said that the 1 percent of the federal budget spent on foreign aid mostly goes to countries helping us with our national security.

"I do agree that a country like Pakistan is one where our relations have gotten more strained because there are a lot of extremists inside that country, and either for lack of capacity or political will, they haven't taken them all on," Obama said of the veteran's specific question. "We always try to find the right balance, making sure that if we're providing them with aid, they're also providing us with assistance in terms of making our people safer. There are times when they disappoint us in terms of their performance, but we're going to keep trying to engage as many countries as possible."

Cynthia Gordy is The Root's Washington reporter.