Federal and state officials announce the foreclosure settlement, Feb. 9, 2012. AP Photo/Cliff Owen

Federal and state officials announced Thursday the largest agreement yet to address the effects of the housing crisis, in which five of the nation's largest banks will pay $26 billion to help current and former homeowners. The deal aims to hold banks accountable for abusive foreclosure practices and to give a boost to the still-struggling housing sector.

The deal, President Obama said, will make it possible to "begin to turn the page on an era of recklessness that has left so much damage in its wake."

But the wider response to the agreement has been mixed, with some housing experts saying it doesn't do enough to get the housing market--whose ongoing woes continue to exert a major drag on the broader economy--back on track. "It doesn't seem like it'll have a huge impact," said Ted Gayer, a housing expert at the Brookings Institution.

The plan, described by President Obama as "the largest joint federal-state settlement in our nation's history," is the product of a partnership between the U.S. Justice Department and a coalition of state attorneys general. It came out of a probe launched after evidence emerged in 2010 that major mortgage lenders relied on a host of improper practices-- including the use of "robo-signers" who signed foreclosure documents without reading them--to speed struggling borrowers from their homes.

The settlement's centerpiece is a $17 billion payout to reduce the principal payments owed by existing homeowners who are "underwater" on their mortgage, meaning they owe more on their mortgage than their home is worth. (The total value of the package could end up as high as $34 billion, based on how its applied.) Federal officials have said up to 1 million underwater homeowners will get an average of around $20,000 in relief in the form of reduced debt on their home.

Under the deal, $4.5 billion will go to allow other underwater homeowners to refinance their loans at lower rates, and to cover the reduced interest payments that the banks will receive thanks to those lower rates. And an additional $1.5 billion will provide checks of around $2,000 each to about 750,000 people who have already lost their homes over the last three years. The banks--Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citigroup and Ally Financial--will also make payments to state and federal regulatory authorities.

And they're not off the hook yet. The final deal cheered homeowner advocates by offering only very limited legal liability to banks. This was a key sticking point in negotiations, and potentially paves the way for additional civil or criminal investigations into the banks' role in the mortgage crisis.

An auto worker at the Chrysler Plant in Belvidere, Ill., Feb. 2012. AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast

Last summer, with the economy still on life support, we asked Yahoo! readers to share their stories of being out of work. In response, we got thousands of fascinating, affecting real-life tales, which reflected the grim mood of a country in the midst of a desperate jobs crisis. In the same vein, we followed that up by asking how jobless readers were coping with the holidays.

These days, things are looking up a bit. Yes, we're a long way from recovering all the jobs lost during the Great Recession, but after the economy added a healthy 243,000 jobs last month, the overall unemployment rate is lower than it's been in nearly three years. And other key stats -- first-time unemployment claims, job openings. etc. -- are also moving in the right direction.

That means that across the country, Americans are going back to work. We want to hear from Yahoo! readers who are part of that cohort. If you've been hired since the start of the year, after being jobless for a lengthy period before that, send your good news story to economycrowdsourcing@yahoo.com. We want to know things like:

Prop 8 paintiffs Jeff Zarrillo, left, and Paul Katami, middle, with their lawyer Ted Olson in Los Angeles, Feb. …

A panel of federal judges has ruled California's ban on gay marriage unconstitutional. But that's hardly the end of the story.

Supporters of the marriage ban -- passed by voters as Proposition 8 in 2008 -- will almost certainly appeal the ruling, which was made by a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. That means Prop. 8's fate -- and perhaps the fate of other efforts to ban gay marriage -- could ultimately be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.

But first, the nation's top court would have to decide to take the case, known as Perry v. Brown. How likely is it that it'll do so?

Several legal experts say they'd be surprised if the Supreme Court chose to intervene. Here's why: Though it struck down Prop. 8, the 9th Circuit panel stopped short of addressing the larger question of whether gay marriage bans could ever be constitutional. Instead, it ruled more narrowly that because California had earlier allowed gays to marry, Prop. 8 violated the constitution's Equal Protection clause, by removing rights that had previously existed. As precedent, Judge Stephen Reinhardt pointed to a 1996 decision, Romer v. Evans, striking down an effort by Colorado to prevent the government from passing anti-discrimination laws to protect gays.

That specific set of facts -- the removal of previously existing rights -- doesn't apply to most states. As a result, some experts say, the narrowness of the panel's ruling may dissuade the Supreme Court from taking the case, since the justices usually prefer to get involved in cases where their rulings will have broader applications for the country as a whole.