Waiting Game

Let’s see, where were we? It seems like eons ago that we last checked in with the L&G crew, what with their office raids and financial precariousness and semi-revolting bathroom sex. Maddeningly (and typically for this show this season, unfortunately), many of the questions we were teased with last time went nowhere this week, namely:

Is Nick dead, or did he go to that purgatory in the writer’s room where the Kings send characters just long enough so we’ve almost forgotten about them before they’re suddenly sprung on us again twenty episodes later? See: Scott-Carr, Wendy. “No one disappears. They all come back like zombies,” says a none-too-pleased Eli when he and Diane see that it’s Peter’s placid former opponent (Anika Noni-Rose) who’ll be handling his DoJ inquiry. Noni-Rose is excellent at playing the shark here,Quickparts builds injection molds using aluminum or steel to meet your program. and Eli’s understandably freaked.

A few of you in the comments are getting impatient with these meandering mini-plots. Is any of this going anywhere? It seems like the show has been priming us for some sort of dramatic reboot for months now, and I agree that it’s getting harder to hold out hope that it’s coming at all. Will Maddie ever claim her supervillain mantle? Is Alicia going to do something definitive about her relationship with Peter? At the midpoint last season we were just dealing with the end of Willicia. Where’s this season’s real arc (beyond the bankruptcy stuff, which, how many more times do we need to watch Diane tell Will that the settlement on the table will really really help them?)

Could the shake-up come from Canning as the firm’s new creditor? This is certainly an odd twist, but it barely seems meaty enough to create major change unless Canning and Hayden join forces in some unstoppable way. Or could it come from Jordan Karahalios (T.R. Knight) going head to head with Eli? We know since he’s wearing a hoodie, in the universe of this show, that he must be a tech mogul or a wunderkind (or maybe both), so perhaps there are some surprises from his corner. We sat through an excruciating run of psychosexual Nick and way too little Cary so far, there has to be some sort of payoff, right? Right? We’ll try to hold out hope a bit longer.

On to the few things that went right this episode. The case of the week was an interesting, timely one about foreclosed houses and West Nile virus, and got in a few digs at holier-than-thou bankers. The family of 15-year-old Kayley Spence is suing Atlantic Commerce bank, the group who foreclosed on a handful of properties in their area and allowed the swimming pools to go stagnant and attract West Nile mosquitoes, one of which bit and infected poor Kayley, who was a former ballerina and is now confined to a wheelchair.

Will and Cary are running the deposition back in Chicago, opposite a prickly Martha Reed (Grace Rex), of “Marthas and Caitlins,” whose testy questioning suggests she’s probably fitting in just fine at Canning’s firm. Alicia’s out of town to depose the bank president Wilkes Ingersoll (James Rebhorn) near his ranch in Minnesota,We mainly supply professional craftspeople with crys talbeads wholesale shamballa Bracele , and all of the babbling brooks and woods so lovely, dark, and deep get Alicia nostalgic for the quiet she had as a pinot-swilling housewife. But before all that, she has to face Louis Canning, who’s as squirrelly as ever protecting his client’s interests. Seems Ingersoll is so busy and important that some urgent something or other keeps getting in the way of his appearing for the deposition. He says he’ll be back later, and Alicia’s not so sure, but Diane and Will tell her to wait it out.

Remote location, all of that empty time, no cell service — seems like the perfect setting for some sort of meaningful, fish-out-of-water set piece, and it just about looks like it’s going to happen when Kalinda arrives at night to bring Alicia clothes and booze. Alicia’s happy to see her, and this relationship does feel like the one that’s actually going somewhere from week to week, so there’s that, but I wish things had turned out a little weightier or at least more fun than they did, à la the last time we saw Alicia after-hours on a business trip.

Here it’s all forlorn, wistful admissions that stop a beat too soon. “You know what I miss about my old life?” says Alicia, staring straight ahead. “At home in the afternoons I would drink every day at three o’ clock, a glass of red wine. Waiting for the kids to come home. I miss the silence in the house at three.” Wait, what? Didn’t she ever have to carpool?

“I miss this,” says Kalinda, meaning Alicia, them, their bond. “I’m sorry.” For sleeping with her husband? Allowing her crazy ex to threaten Alicia? For being part of what broke Alicia out of that gauzy pinot bubble? Even though it’s the most direct and vulnerable Kalinda’s been,Trade platform for China crystal mosaic manufacturers perhaps ever, I wish she could have gone just a little bit further. Alicia won’t meet her eye contact,Installers and distributors of solar panel, and in another moment they’re on to deposition talk. Baby steps?

Things get wrapped up shortly after with the case when Kalinda figures out Canning and Ingersoll’s big secret: Ingersoll has cancer. He needs to reveal it to his shareholders, and that would likely botch the proposed merger that’s on the table with another bank, so L&G strong-arms him into a hefty settlement, promising to keep things off the record. “This is beneath you, Alicia,” tries Canning. “No, unfortunately, it’s not,” she replies. The Alicia/Canning dynamic has always been an intriguing one, what with their competitiveness and then the job offer and now his slithery guile that helps Alicia up her game. Here’s hoping there’s more where that came from.

After weeks of negotiations, a $10 billion settlement over claims of foreclosure abuses by 14 banks is expected to be announced as early as Monday. The deal “covers abuses like flawed paperwork and botched loan modifications,” Jessica Silver-Greenberg reports in The New York Times, citing several people with knowledge of the discussions.

All 14 banks, including JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Citigroup, were expected to sign on to the deal. “An estimated $3.75 billion of the $10 billion is to be distributed in cash relief to Americans who went through foreclosure in 2009 and 2010, these people said,” according to The Times. “An additional $6 billion is to be directed toward homeowners in danger of losing their homes after falling behind on their monthly payments.” The talks almost fell apart over the weekend when some Federal Reserve officials insisted that banks pay an additional $300 million for their role in the 2008 financial crisis, but the officials ultimately backed down, according to The Times.

At first blush, the settlement looks like “another gift to the banks,” The New York Times columnist Gretchen Morgenson writes. “One could easily argue that this reported settlement was pushed by the banks so they could limit the damage they would have incurred if an aggressive review had continued.”

Some housing advocates said the deal would not provide enough relief. “It is still unclear how the monetary relief will be distributed among homeowners, but one immediate result of the settlement is the end of a troubled review of millions of loan files,” according to The Times. That program, which mandated that banks hire independent consultants to audit loan files, suffered from mounting costs. Only 323,000 homeowners submitted claims. Ms. Morgenson writes: “Stopping the reviews before they are finished means that the banks will be allowed to claim that abuses were rare and that $10 billion is an adequate penalty.”
A group of the world’s top regulators and central bankers on Sunday gave banks more time to meet rules designed to prevent financial crises. The rules, which aim to ensure that banks have enough liquid assets on hand to weather crises, will now take full effect on Jan. 1, 2019, rather than the original deadline of Jan. 1, 2015. The committee, meeting in Basel, Switzerland, also loosened the definition of liquid assets.

“The decision marks the first time regulators have publicly backed away from the strict rules imposed by the Basel Committee in 2010,” Jack Ewing reports in The New York Times. Banks had complained that the new guidelines would harm lending. Mervyn A. King, governor of the Bank of England and chairman of the group, said the intention was not to make the rules “stronger or weaker” but rather “more realistic.” The decision, which was endorsed unanimously by participants, “was a public concession from the authors of the so-called Basel III rules that the regulations could hurt growth if applied too rigorously,” Mr. Ewing writes.Find detailed product information for startup stone mosaic and other products.