The housing crisis remains one of the biggest drags on the nation’s economy, with millions of Americans mired in the foreclosure process or delinquent or underwater on their mortgages. Few places have been hit as hard as Florida, the state with the fourth-highest foreclosure rate in the country.

In what has been billed as an effort to mitigate the economic impact of the high rate of foreclosures, the Florida state Senate Banking and Insurance Committee passed a measure (over the objections of consumer advocates and homeowners) that would speed up the foreclosure process, SaintPetersBlog reports:

One of the most contentious provisions would reduce the time in which a bank could try to go after a foreclosed-on homeowner for a “deficiency judgment,” which is a court order that requires the former homeowner to pay the bank for the outstanding amount on the loan over the value of the property.

The bill would reduce the time that a bank has to get such an order on a homeowner from five years to one year.

Cutting the time for banks to foreclose on properties to one year would force the process to move much faster than it does now. Nationally, homeowners with mortgages worth less than $250,000 are in default an average of 611 days before they go into foreclosure; for borrowers with $1 million mortgages, the average wait is an average of 792 days. The waiting period in states with high volumes of foreclosures, including Florida, is often even longer.

Such efforts to speed up the foreclosure process, meanwhile, could have widespread negative ramifications for homeowners. In their own efforts to speed up foreclosures, banks have propagated fraudulent techniques like using robo-signers to forge foreclosure documents. As a result, major banks have foreclosed on homeowners who shouldn’t have been in foreclosure (some over mere pennies), attempted to foreclose on homes they don’t even own, or foreclosed on homeowners who were attempting to modify their loans.

If anything, the foreclosure process needs to slow down. In California, another high-foreclosure state, Attorney General Kamala Harris has called on federal housing authorities and Wall Street banks to suspend foreclosures. With big banks and business advocates cheering them on, Florida seems poised to do just the opposite.

Moments ago, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed over 13,000 for the first time since May 19, 2008. The stock market is now up over 56 percent since Obama took office. Today, the stock market was buoyed, in the view of one economist, by “job and income gains…leading to higher confidence and spending growth, in turn driving further spending gains.” Here’s how the stock market has fared under our last three presidents:

The success of the stock market under Obama is particularly notable considering the majority of Republicans believe he is a “socialist,” presumably out to destroy private enterprise.

As House Republicans and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce team up for their latest assault on the Dodd-Frank financial reform law, specifically a rule reining in banks’ risky trading, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) has released its latest Quarterly Banking Profile, which shows that GOP claims regarding Dodd-Frank killing America’s banks have little truth behind them.

The release reports that FDIC-insured commercial banks and savings institutions earned $26.3 billion in profits at the end of last year — a figure that is up 23 percent from earnings reported in the final quarter of 2010 — making 2011′s fourth-quarter the most profitable period for the industry since 2006:

For the year, earnings hit $119.5 billion — the most since 2006.

Banks with assets exceeding $10 billion accounted for almost all of the earnings growth in the fourth quarter. While they make up just 1.4 percent of U.S. banks, they accounted for more than 81 percent of the earnings.

Those banks include Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Wells Fargo & Co. Most of them have recovered with help from federal bailout money and record-low borrowing rates.

Many of these same banks complained last year that new regulations mandated by Congress have hurt their ability to make money and moved to charge new fees to make up the difference.

Clearly, the FDIC’s findings stand contrary to the GOP’s claims that the law “hinder[s] American markets, competitiveness and job creation” and is “killing the banking industry now.” In fact, the number of banks on the FDIC’s “problem list” declined 11 percent, from 844 to 813, while total loans and leases increased by $130.1 billion, as did insured deposit accounts, which increased by $249.7 billion during the quarter.

– Fatima Najiy

Back in November, we noted how Bank of America was raking in millions of dollars in fees by contracting with states to put unemployment benefits on BofA debit cards. By using those cards, people can get hit with all manner of charges — including ATM fees — when they attempt to access their benefits. One woman estimated that she had paid $350 just to withdraw her own unemployment benefits.

And it’s not only unemployment benefits that are now being loaded onto pre-paid debit cards, giving BofA the chance to reap a profit on a public service. As Logan Smith at the Palmetto Public Record noted, BofA could also be cashing in on tax returns that have been loaded onto debit cards in South Carolina:

The state Department of Revenue announced the program back in December, but conveniently left off the long list of fees which customers without BofA accounts will be subject to.

For every withdrawal from a non-Bank of America ATM, BofA will take $2.50 off the top — in addition to any fees the ATM owner might charge. Want to get your money directly from the bank? The first time’s free, but every withdrawal after that comes with a $10 fee. Leaving the country? Bank of America takes 2% of every single transaction you make outside the United States. [...]

Bank of America didn’t have to bid for the program, according to a Department of Revenue spokesperson who told Palmetto Public Record the state chose BofA over South Carolina-based banks because “they were the best fit.”

As Smith also pointed out, BofA doesn’t even bother charging South Carolina to provide this particular service, figuring it can make its entire profit off of fees and interest. Additionally, the program is opt-out, meaning unwitting South Carolinians are automatically signed up to fork over some of their tax return to the nation’s second largest bank.

BofA already had to quickly backtrack when it proposed a monthly debit card fee, and fees are currently the number one reason that millions of Americans are moving their money out of the nation’s biggest banks.

Bernita Jones (Washington Post)

Bertina Jones, of Prince George’s county, a suburb of DC, was “a perfect example of a woman who was making her payments, and they still foreclosed on her,” said Maryland Legal Aid Bureau’s Vicki King Taitano, who is helping Jones. Jones, a grandmother and accountant, got a mortgage modification in 2009 from Bank of America, “but the bank repeatedly lost the accompanying documents” and Freddie Mac bought the house at 2010 in a foreclosure auction.

Jones has yet to be evicted, however, and Occupy DC rallied to support her after hearing about her case from Taitano. The Washington Post’s Annie Gowen reports:

Jones, who can’t afford a private attorney, said she has been working on her own for months — heading to the law library, making repeated calls and sending e-mails — to try and resolve the situation. It has taken a toll, she said. [...]

After working on her own for so long, she said it was “great” to rally with supporters outside the Freddie Mac government relations offices Monday. The 50 or so Occupier protesters marched in a circle around her, chanting “housing is a right” as she clutched a sign that said “Stop Foreclosures and Evictions Now.”

Occupy protesters across the country have been trying to find a purpose after being evicted from encampments in public parks, and a growing number are finding success with targeted actions like this. Occupy Nashville helped saved the home of civil rights activist Helen Bailey, while activists in Detroit have helped saved at least five homes, and protesters in California camped outside a former Marine’s home to help him fight foreclosure.

Jones’ case also shows how difficult it can be for people to fight mortgage providers — Jones is an accountant who seemed to work hard and do everything right, but still faced eviction. “I’m glad I stood up and fought,” Jones said. “I hope more homeowners will join us. I’m not an icon, I’m just a homeowner trying to save her home.”

The stock market has been flirting with 13,000 for days, a level at which it has not closed since 2008. As ThinkProgress’ Scott Keyes reported, Republicans have been at pains to explain why President Obama deserves no credit for the Dow’s rebound (even though the GOP was quite willing to blame Obama when the Dow tanked in 2008 and 2009).

But as it turns out, Obama is not the only Democratic President under whom the stock market has done well for investors. A Bloomberg Government report shows that since the 1960′s, stocks have done significantly better under Democratic administrations than under Republican ones:

The BGOV Barometer shows that, over the five decades since John F. Kennedy was inaugurated, $1,000 invested in a hypothetical fund that tracks the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index (SPX) only when Democrats are in the White House would have been worth $10,920 at the close of trading yesterday.

That’s more than nine times the dollar return an investor would have realized from following a similar strategy during Republican administrations. A $1,000 stake invested in a fund that followed the S&P 500 under Republican presidents, starting with Richard Nixon, would have grown to $2,087 on the day George W. Bush left office.

Even eliminating the best stock performance under a Democrat, which occurred under President Clinton, and the worst under a Republican, which was under President George W. Bush, the Democrats still come out ahead. “I dare say that most people on Wall Street are Republicans,” said Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist at S&P Equity Research. “But it appears the bread is buttered on the Democratic side.”

Of course, the stock market is a terrible proxy for actual economic health, giving little to no indication of how the economy is working for the average American, but these numbers should put the lie to the constant GOP claim that Democrats and the policies they pursue are anti-business and anti-investor.