At the core, this was no different from what Bernie Madoff did, but Bernie did it to a comparatively limited number of people. In this much larger and systemic Ponzi scheme, the crime was carried out by literally hundreds of people working, in collusion, at a fairly large number of different companies. By comparison, Bernie was a piker. ...
Eventually, the larger part of our entire financial system became engulfed in this Ponzi-like scheme. Everybody was buying a pig in the poke with a pretty pink ribbon, and the pink ribbon said, "Triple-A."
So why hasn't anyone been brought to justice over this?
The authorities didn't even begin to investigate the major lenders until the market had actually collapsed, which is completely contrary to how we handled things in the Savings and Loan crisis. Even while the S&L institutions were still reporting that they were the most profitable savings and loan in America, we knew they were frauds, and were already moving to shut them down.
In this more recent caper, the Justice Department was warned, in 2004, by the FBI, that there was an epidemic of mortgage fraud in process! Specifically the FBI told the Bush Justice Department that if this epidemic was allowed to continue it would produce a crisis at least as large as the Savings and Loan debacle.
So why was it allowed to continue? After the 9/11 attacks, the Justice Department had to transfer 500 white-collar specialists in the FBI to national terrorism. But for some reason the Bush administration refused to replace the missing 500 agents who had been investigating and tracking mortgage fraud, thereby setting the stage for the financial catastrophe that was to follow. Even today, there are only one-fifth as many FBI agents looking at this problem as worked on the Savings and Loan crisis.
Think back to that famous photograph of some Bush administration regulators in 2003, who came to a press conference with a chainsaw suggesting that they're going to cut banking loose from regulation as it had never been cut loose before. Well, they succeeded. In that photograph, by the way, three other guys had pruning shears -- they were the trade representatives and lobbyists for the bankers. And everybody's grinning. Why? Because the government's working together with the banking industry to destroy regulation, and that means huge amounts of money are going to be made -- by the banks, the rating agencies, and any other financial institution fraudsters willing to get in on the scam. Which led to the biggest financial calamity in 80 years.
How could any government be so stupid?
Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
3
3
2
