| Balderdash. There were many examples of outright fraud in the years leading up to 2008, some of which are presently being discovered in civil suits.
The perpetuators of these frauds have never been brought to justice. (or even really investigated by the justice dept) The victims of these frauds are still seeking relief. Many people are frustrated as our supposed functionaries of justice in this country are too cozy by half with those entities they are supposed to be regulating. This is corruption writ large. Here is just one example of outright fraud: https://iapps.courts.state.ny.us/fbem/DocumentDisplayServlet... This is a quote from the document in question: 1003. Specifically, plaintiffs performed an investigation concerning the mortgage loans
purportedly transferred to the trust for the JPMorgan Defendants’ JPMAC 2006-WMC4 offering.
The closing date for this offering was on or about December 20, 2006. Plaintiffs reviewed the
transfer history for 274 loans that were supposed to be timely transferred to this trust. Sixty-six (66)
of the loans were not and have never been transferred to the trust. In addition, several other loans
that were supposed to be transferred to the trust were transferred to entities other than the trust, but
not to the trust. The remainder of the loans (approximately 140) were eventually transferred to the
trust, but all such transfers occurred between 2008 and the present, well beyond the three-month time
period required by the trust documents and far after the three-month period for the trust to maintain
its tax-free REMIC status. In other words, none of the reviewed mortgage loans were timely
transferred to the trust, a 100% failure rate. not a single one of the surveyed loans in this REMIC was actually deposited into the trust in a timely fashion and over half were never deposited at all The trust is void under the law. Everyone who paid the servicer of this trust was screwed as the trust didn't legally own the debt it claimed to. Every investor who sold 'certificates' backed by this trust was robbed. These trusts, which don't really legally own the debts they claim too are foreclosing on debt they don't own. This isn't just failing to cross some t's and dot some i's. Do you agree (if you assume the above to be true) that people should go to jail for this?
Do you think none of the senior execs at JP Morgan Chase knew about this?
Do you think it is acceptable that the neither the SEC, the OCC or the OTS have been looking into these problems? You seem to think being a member of a group committing a crime absolves the individual actors of culpability? By this measure, many members of organized criminal enterprises aren't doing anything wrong. Maybe we should actually investigate these crimes and at least try and assign responsibility and have trials? Isn't that what the court system is for? Shouldn't we be embarrassed by this complete breakdown of the rule of law? In Iceland at least, they've done something about it! http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-20/icelandic-anger-bri... Speaking of organized crime http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-12-12/hsbc-mexican-branch...
and more money laundering
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-18/deutsche-bank-among... The justice department 'probes' these matters and then issues civil penalties. These are criminal acts and deserve criminal investigations. I agree that singling out and only blaming CEOs is ridiculous. Far more than just the CEOs of these banks should be in cuffs. Many of these banks should lose their US banking charters and be dissolved as US banking entities. If you do not punish this behavior, harshly, it will continue. Civil suits are not enough. For this to stop, many people need to go to jail. The regulators aren't looking; they don't want to throw their friends and future employers in jail. How can we 'give it a rest' when we haven't even tried to fix the problem? |