Just Another Indictment Of Our Corrupt Political System?
Readers suggested a topic on the latest proposals out of Washington. “Typical Obama: All of a sudden… 4 years after the crash… he has the idea to go after the bankers for their criminal behavior… 4 YEARS!!!!… HE WAITED UNTIL A RE-ELECTION YEAR TO PANDER TO STUPID VOTERS…. & act like he’s ‘doing something.’ He put up every roadblock… until now… to thwart any investigation into his banker buddies.”
A reply, “There is never a better time to pander to stupid voters, whose memories are only slightly higher on the evolutionary scale than rodents. By contrast, what are the GOP candidates doing on the issue of restoring a Rule of Law in the banking sector?”
The Gannett News. “President Barack Obama announced during Tuesday’s State of the Union address that he asked U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to form what he described as ‘a special unit of federal prosecutors and leading state attorneys general.’ New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman joined Holder and other officials Friday at a news conference to discuss the formation of the Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities Working Group. Federal and state officials will target the creation, promotion and sale of the financial instruments that provided fuel for the overheated housing market and the run-up in prices.”
“‘Americans lost close to $7.5 trillion in home equity over the last five years,’ Schneiderman said. ‘That’s where the wealth of the working class and the wealth of the middle class was. And that’s why we have to make sure we hold people accountable.’”
“Schneiderman, New York’s top law enforcement official, wouldn’t predict when any the architects of the housing bubble might go to jail. ‘I can’t comment on the specifics of the investigation,’ he said.”
From KPCC. “In his address to the nation, Obama said ‘responsible homeowners shouldn’t have to sit and wait for the housing market to hit bottom to get some relief.’ Obama said that’s why he’s sending Congress a plan ‘that gives every responsible homeowner the chance to save about $3,000 a year on their mortgage, by refinancing at historically low interest rates. No more red tape. No more runaround from the banks.’”
‘Congresswoman Judy Chu of El Monte said, ‘It isn’t enough.’ She said mortgage lenders own 12,000 homes in her district. ‘In one ZIP code in a city in my district, Covina, the rate of foreclosure was 738 percent in just over two years.’”
The LA Times. “Some liberal groups have been pushing for a broader investigation into the financial crisis and praised the initiative. ‘By launching this investigation, President Obama will take a crucial step toward holding the 1% on Wall Street accountable for the big bank fraud that nearly torpedoed the economy,’ said Justin Ruben, executive director of MoveOn.org.”
“If the goal is to get criminal convictions — Obama called in his State of the Union address ‘to hold accountable those who broke the law’ — it will be difficult to accomplish, said Thomas Gorman, an attorney at Dorsey & Whitney in Washington. ‘Frankly, it’s coming to the table somewhat late,’ said Gorman, a former enforcement official at the Securities and Exchange Commission. ‘There’s a huge body of information out there about what happened, and there have been very few criminal charges brought.’”
The Guardian. “Is this, finally, the moment Obama gets tough with Wall Street? Among the populist pledges rolled out in the speech was tough talk against the too-big-to-fail banks that have funded his campaigns and for whom many of his key advisers have worked: ‘The rest of us are not bailing you out ever again,’ he promised.”
“Does the formation of the new task force signify a move to more progressive policies, as MoveOn suggests? Longtime consumer advocate and former presidential candidate Ralph Nader doesn’t hold much hope: ‘This financial crimes unit, that’s like putting another label on a few doors in the Justice Department without a real expansion in the budget.’”
“Delaware’s Beau Biden, the vice president’s son, expressed similar concerns about the task force, asking: ‘How many FBI agents are being put on it? How many investigators? How many prosecutors?’”
“This is the Occupy Wall Street conflict distilled. Will Eric Schneiderman’s new job lead to the indictment of fraudulent financiers, or to just another indictment of our corrupt political system?”
‘Congresswoman Judy Chu of El Monte said, ‘It isn’t enough.’ She said mortgage lenders own 12,000 homes in her district. ‘In one ZIP code in a city in my district, Covina, the rate of foreclosure was 738 percent in just over two years.’”
Wuzzaa? What? I know people in Congress are really stupid, but you can’t have more than 100% of anything, even if they tell us they are going to give us 110%. It’s just a figure of speech.
If what she says is true, then it would have to be from SERIAL DEFAULTS.
That’s right. Every house was foreclosed, on average, 7.38 times in just over 2 years. To me, that suggests rampant FRAUD, and serial loan writing on every house in the district. It may be that her area has seen that much FRAUD. If so, the jail should be filled up, too.
Is this California?
That is what stood out to me too. I think she must have meant that it increased 738%, so it went from 1 foreclosure per X houses in year A to 8.38 foreclosures per X houses in year A+2.
Just a guess.
“Eyes had all’s eyes can stands, and eyes can stands for no mores!” Popeye
Americans for Ju$tice National Campaign kick-off:
Everyone sends a can of spinach to the $EC Chairman’s office.
4 years is about the average length of time for the statute of limitations to expire on most crimes.
Of course, the fed regs differ, but most states run about 4 years.
( Give or take a few years.)
But hey, it’s all just semantics as I continue to see the groups of illegals in the home depot parkings lots every day.
“But hey, it’s all just semantics as I continue to see the groups of illegals in the home depot parkings lots every day.”
One more reason to shop at Lowe’s.
+1
4 years is about the average length of time for the statute of limitations to expire on most crimes.
So that gives the banksters committing the crimes the maximum time to cash in on them.
We should change the standard quote to this:
“Do the crime, the Congress will give you the time (to cash in on it).”
Statute of limits, on crimes? what?
well, you’re right…. 5 yrs in MT, ‘cept for murder, which has no limitation.
“President Barack Obama announced during Tuesday’s State of the Union address that he asked U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to form what he described as ‘a special unit of federal prosecutors and leading state attorneys general.’ New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman joined Holder and other officials Friday at a news conference to discuss the formation of the Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities Working Group. Federal and state officials will target the creation, promotion and sale of the financial instruments that provided fuel for the overheated housing market and the run-up in prices.”
Was there a bubble or not? If there was a bubble all blame should fall on the government (as well as the people that demanded the right to overpay) because it is the government’s job and not the banks’ to regulate overheated markets. The Obama administration however has been telling us for years that was no bubble and referred to what happened as a collapse and that stabilization needs to be achieved without further declines, which obviously makes no sense if you realize there was a bubble. Even more damning, Obama previously worked for ACORN which was the driving force behind a 1995 regulatory revision pushed through by the Clinton Administration that greatly expanded the CRA and laid the groundwork for the Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac borne financial crisis we now confront. Barack Obama was the attorney who represented ACORN in this effort. With this new authority, ACORN used its subsidiary, ACORN Housing, to promote subprime loans more aggressively. Anyone that defends Obama’s actions is doing a great deservice to the Country, and this is coming from a Democrat, especially anyone on this board that claims to know anything about the housing crisis.
deservce = disservice; and reference to the “housing crisis” in the last sentence refers to the intelligent use of the term (i.e., the run-up in prices as opposed to returning to equilibrium).
‘Americans lost close to $7.5 trillion in home equity over the last five years,’ Schneiderman said. ‘That’s where the wealth of the working class and the wealth of the middle class was’
If true, then they never had any wealth to begin with. Why don’t we investigate why that is?
‘Schneiderman wouldn’t predict when any the architects of the housing bubble might go to jail.’
Architects? Instead of some grand conspiracy theory, why not just go after those you have enough evidence to convict? Somewhere in these articles he says something about what “caused” the housing bubble. As we’ve seen on this blog, that exercise usually amounts to pinning the blame on this group and painting the other as victims. That’s just politics.
Again; the Federal Reserve played a role. Wall Street played a role. But what about the housing bubbles in the UK, Canada, China and Australia? Sure mortgage backed securities played a role, but how about the role of the GSEs in guaranteeing those securities? The rating agencies in giving them all a triple A? The failure of the govt/regulators in making sure that process was working as it should? This looks like more of the same to me.
Here’s one for the suits on the stage; what about affordable housing?
“…why not just go after those you have enough evidence to convict?”
Totally agreed! The way to restore a Rule of Law is to root out financial criminals is to prosecute them one-by-one. Looking for some imagined grand conspiracy would amount to nothing but more political Grand Kabuki.
This will only encourage cheaters to cover their tracks enough so that they are in the 95% that doesn’t get caught.
I am the 95%.
Affordable housing means low interest rates and bigger loans, as far as I can tell.
Yup.
Remember when a “starter home” cost 100 grand or less? And average salaries have just kept declining since then.
Rule of Law ??
Selective rule of law maybe….
Clinton Administration that greatly expanded the CRA and laid the groundwork for the Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac borne financial crisis we now confront.
“laid the groundwork”? Maybe according to the myth but not according to the math and facts. Hopefully the math and facts are not “doing a great (disservice) to the country”.
Examining the big lie: How the facts of the economic crisis stack up
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/examining-the-big-lie-how-the-facts-of-the-economic-crisis-stack-up/2011/11/16/gIQA7G23cN_story.html
The big lie of the financial crisis, of course, is that troubling technique used to try to change the narrative history and shift blame from the bad ideas and terrible policies that created it.
…Consider the causes cited by those who’ve taken up the big lie. Take for example New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s statement that it was Congress that forced banks to make ill-advised loans to people who could not afford them and defaulted in large numbers. He and others claim that caused the crisis. Others have suggested these were to blame: the home mortgage interest deduction, the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, the 1994 Housing and Urban Development memo, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) and homeownership targets set by both the Clinton and Bush administrations.
…Here are key things we know based on data. Together, they present a series of tough hurdles for the big lie proponents.
1) The housing boom and bust was global Source: McKinsey Quarterly
2) Nonbank mortgage underwriting exploded from 2001 to 2007, along with the private label securitization market, which eclipsed Fannie and Freddie during the boom Source: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
3) Subprime Lenders were (Primarily) Private: Only one of the top 25 subprime lenders in 2006 was directly subject to the housing laws overseen by either Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac or the Community Reinvestment Act Source: McClatchy
4) Lenders made 12 million subprime mortgages with a value of nearly $2 trillion. Mortgage Companies and Thrifts NOT affiliated with CRA made 75% of Subprime Loans from 2004-07, Source: Orange County Register
5) Fannie and Freddie risky loan purchases was dwarfed by Private Label Securitization Source: UNC
6) CRA were less likely to default than Subprime Mortgages
Source: UNC
7) Suburbs and Exurbs were where the boom & bust occurred — not the CRA regions
There is more….
No comment from Miss Natalie, so in a dither with her CRA conspiracy theories? crickets…
“Delaware’s Beau Biden, the vice president’s son, expressed similar concerns about the task force, asking: ‘How many FBI agents are being put on it? How many investigators? How many prosecutors?’”
Radio this morning reported that it is 12 FBI agents and 30 attorneys. Someone might want to look for a written confirmation.
While they’re at it, why not look into how many FBI agents were pulled away from investigating mortgage fraud back when it could have made a difference?
And why were Fannie and Freddie not delisted when they couldn’t produce financials in 2005? Somebody, somewhere had to have made that call. Isn’t it interesting what happened to Eliot Spitzer?
The FBI was made artificially busy elsewhere, by looking for all those Arab terrorists that the Bush Administration insisted was threatening us here. Meanwhile, our home-grown banker terrorists were deploying their Weapons of Economic Destruction without challenge.
I tracked and reported to the FBI, many cases of mortgage fraud beginning in 2006. People were buying houses for $500,000 and putting $750,000 loans on them in my area.
I said to the FBI agent working with me: Get a couple of interns to call all the Used Home Sales People (realtors) and mortgage lenders, starting with the office broker. Think about that call: 2 minutes to say “Hi Mr. UHSP, I am Nick with the FBI. We are investigating sales and mortgage fraud and your office and agents have shown up on our list. Can you come down to our office this week for a discussion?” Mr. UHSP, office manager would have immediately called all his agents in for dressing down…..
The agent’s response was “We don’t get paid to babysit people” and of course he is right. But what he really meant was “I don’t get paid or promoted for preventing crime, I get promoted for catching criminals and convicting them.” So ingredient for getting the housing bubble cake baked…. he wanted people to commit crimes so he had plenty of work……
Imagine, if 300,000 UHSP in CA and all got just one call from the FBI, most would have the sh!t scared out of them. Some, perhaps many would have said “Let me tell you about the idiot I compete against who is creating fraud.”
I think 90% of all the fraud in my area would have immediately stopped, and the FBI would have solid leads on the other 10%. A stitch in time saves nine, but instead we spend 9 stitches today, trying to convict 1% of the criminal events, while 99% will go free.
I would have relished being an intern in the FBI office “dialing for crimes”, but it is not the mentality of law inforcement. Criminal prevention is impossible to track and credit…..to any one person.
This is just another reason why the housing bubble got so puffed up….so many players all with differnt reasons and motivation to
All interesting. But the singular fact remains that Mr FBI Agent also wasn’t paid to catch bad guys. He’s paid to do whatever his manager tells him to do. And his manager above him. And the entire string was singularly uninterested in investigating clear mortgage frauds. I’d be surprised if their efforts are reaching 0.1%, if that. When your chance of being charged with fraud is less than 1 in 1000, then you’re going to commit that crime and will only be committing it in the future as soon as it becomes available again.
This was the largest theft in all of American history, and throughout and beyond it, the FBI just sat on its hands. Well, not sitting, exactly; like I said, it was spending a lot of time looking for invisible Arab terrorists and other boogeymen.
I’d really be worried about all of this, if the U.S. economy hadn’t been destroyed by this sort of thing. The Greatest Depression started in 2008 and we just keep getting deeper into it. It might take until 2015 before the media gets over its allergy about the truth and starts using the word “Depression” for real. By then, they will be looking for subscribers just to survive, and in their desperation they will try telling the truth. TTT will become a marketing angle.
…spending a lot of time looking for invisible Arab terrorists and other boogeymen.
They were spending their time that way because the boss told them to. FBI agents are trained to counter white collar crime. They are generally positively motivated and dedicated to their profession. In the early 2000’s, groups of FBI agents lobbied their superiors to marshall their resources to stop the obvious mortgage fraud enterprise. Management did not head their pleas. Instead, close to 3000 agents were transferred from the white collar crime beat to the GWOT beat. As a result, prosecution of such cases stalled, to the point where the clock ran out (to the cynical, the goal all along).
Reporters from the Seattle PI did some solid work on the matter a couple of years ago.
I hope for the kids sake he takes after his mother.
“12 FBI agents and 30 attorneys”
How does that stack up against any kind of realistic estimate of the number of banksters who committed mortgage fraud in recent years?
CIBT,
I know you want all the little guys to go to jail. There isn’t room for 1/100 th of them to spend even a few months there. There isn’t enough money for all of them to be given orange vests, gloves and garbage bags to pick up trash along the highway. And, even in the US, there aren’t enough lawyers to represent them all. You can’t send someone to jail in our country without at least giving them the chance to choose a jury trial and a lawyer (subsidized if they can’t afford their own). And you can’t convict someone of fraud unless the person who received the information actually relied on it to their detriment. Please see my example in yesterday’s bits bucket. Diogenes was down to wanting some imaginary civil charge of malfeasance. Well, you can’t go to jail for that.
“Diogenes was down to wanting some imaginary civil charge of malfeasance. Well, you can’t go to jail for that…”
No, but you can be publicly humiliated (and repeatedly so) to the extent that you are effectively removed from creating further damage. You can be humiliated to the extent that most people will want nothing to do with you.
You can be held up as a pariah.
All without mitigators.
It wouldn’t work to stop all of course (nowhere close), but it might stop those who become corrupt in their quest for fame and recognition rather than money.
Right now, everyone gets a free pass.
If that has not effect, then what the hell, you can always enforce existing regulations.
If you do it to 100,000 people or a few million, then it stops being a public humiliation. People used to be embarrassed when they went bankrupt or got foreclosed on too.
And you didn’t read what I wrote carefully enough. There aren’t enough people to do it. You would have to hire hundreds of judges, thousands of prosecutors, pay thousands of defense attorneys. It simply can’t be done. Not unless you think that we can come up with the money for all that.
I don’t think anyone is going to pay for it. Not when the only thing they can hope for is embarrassing people.
Actually, you didn’t read my post closely enough.
Public humiliation doesn’t require attorneys or mitigation - unless said attorneys on the receiving end of needed humiliation, which is plausible.
I think a cultural re-orientation toward societal shaming may do more good than any type of mitigation.
Few mitigators give a damn about ethics. It can;t be enforced, so who cares. Right?! Ethics is not even worth a passing glance once such matters pay relatively little in fees, if at all.
Forty years of the “if it feels good, do it” mantra is as much to blame for where we stand presently as is lack of obeyance and execution of the law.
So you just want to shame people with no process in place to prove that they did anything wrong and no ability for them to defend themselves?
Go ahead. Set up a website. Have a blast.
But don’t expect anyone to pay much attention.
Of course an attorney would say something like this.
THe U.S.A.
Thousands of new laws created by the intellectuals has led us to the point. How grand! How legal eagle!
Congratulations, polly. Your profession has done good. You’ve
Well, attorneys certainly won’t pay attention.
Public shaming doesn’t jibe with their heavily lucrative obsession with kicking the can down the road.
Thousands of laws passed every year has led us to this point. That those thousands of new laws passed every year cannot be attended to is by design. (Of course all these laws cannot be enforced - that’s the idea!)
It’s why Obamacare is a 2,000+ page document.
Congratulations, polly. You and yours have done a bang-up job screwing up the country. Go ahead. Laugh your way to the bank.
Politicians make laws. A lot of them are lawyers, but not all of them and I’m not a politician.
Prosecutors aren’t hired to shame people. If you want to shame people you are still going to have to either do it yourself or convince your government to do it. That means paying for it.
I wish you all the best.
“I wish you all the best.”
Said by one of the best!
“I know you want all the little guys to go to jail.”
Actually I care not for the little guys, even Bernie Madoff.
I am more interested in seeing subprime mortgage lending kingpins brought to justice.
Then you are going to have to figure out a law that they broke. Here’s a hint - unless you can find the “smoking memo” that indicates they told their underlings to set up a system in which none of the mortgages had correct numbers on them, then you will never convict them of anything.
You can’t just “know” they did something wrong. You have to be able to prove it.
I worked on one litigation in my legal career. I actually found the “smoking memo.” It was amazing. The partner was stunned. He called me into his office and pretty much danced around saying, “Do you know what this means? Do you know what this means?” It wasn’t a good look for him, but never mind about that. Unfortunately for us, we had the memo because some other client gotten non-public papers from an employee and gave them to us. Not a valid way to get the document. Couldn’t get the memo through proper channels even though we knew exactly what to ask for in the FOIA request. So even though there was a state document saying we were right and the other side was wrong, the judge didn’t consider it in making her decision. We lost. The decision was correct.
And that is the way it works.
William K. Black in a 30 minute interview on Bill Moyers where he talks about “How did they get away with it?”
Moyers: “You’re describing what Bernie Madoff did to a limited number of people. What you’re describing is systemic, a systemic ponzi scheme.”
Black: “Bernie was a piker. He doesn’t even get into the front ranks.”
Couldn’t get the memo through proper channels even though we knew exactly what to ask for in the FOIA request.
polly, why was the document unobtainable through FOIA request with an appropriately-specific request?
Aren’t there penalties for failing to produce?
Not all docs are subject to FOIA. This was an internal memo talking about what would happen as a result of publishing some regulations. I don’t remember the New York State FOIA rules, but this was probably excluded because it was a draft or source material for writing release notes for regulations. I used the information to point me to other places I could find evidence that we had the right interpretation, and I found them. We still lost at that level.
They could release all the stoners to make room.
‘Americans lost close to $7.5 trillion in home equity over the last five years,’
TTT is offering how many billion dollars in HAMP and other mortgage relief to compensate $7,500 billion in lost home equity?
P.S. $7,500 billion is a lot of money. Does anyone have a clue where this figure came from, and whether it is in the ballpark, unlike other figures the Fed occasionally tosses out, such as the supposed-$200 billion to which subprime was going to be contained?
P.P.S. Estimating the number of U.S. homeowner households at a round figure of 75 million, $7.5 trillion in lost equity, which by the way equals $7,500,000 million, amounts to $7,500,000/75 = $100,000 per U.S. homeowner household.
Of course, this is the national average; one would need to scale this figure up from the value of the average U.S. home to get anywhere near an accurate magnitude of loss for homes in more expensive areas, such as Coastal California.
It’s also quite interesting to note that, according to the Census Bureau, the number of U.S. owner-occupied housing units peaked in 2006 at 75,380, and had only declined to 74,791 by 2010, a drop of only 75,380 - 74,791 = 380 + 209 = 589 thousand, despite recurring media reports of many millions of U.S. mortgages in default (e.g. “One out of every eight mortgages (12%) are currently delinquent.“). Despite the perennial assurances of the serial bottom caller brigade, we are only in the third inning at best. I guess there is no telling how long elephants can remain hidden under the living room rug.
75,380 thousand (or 75.38 million)…
Poof.
There has never been a better time to not own a home.
in 2005 and 2006. It makes pretty good sense to buy a home today, at the bottom.
Assuming we are at the bottom. I’ll be waiting for interst rates to rise, and see what happens to prices then.
I’m waiting for several million homes currently locked up in various stages of shadow inventory to hit the market, as I like to shop when there is greater selection and more affordable prices.
‘Americans lost close to $7.5 trillion in home equity over the last five years,’
fake money not backed up by salaries it was a bubble
they need to get over it and get a real economy
With regard to the criminality that went on let’s call it what it was: a White Collar Riot.
In a more typical riot, when “everyone” is looting those who wouldn’t have done so otherwise start looting too. And that’s what happened in the 2000s, only it wasn’t confined to street crime.
Of the approximately 100 million households in this country, if we could put everyone in jail for fraud who deserves to be in jail for fraud — how many would it be?
Start with the borrowers lying on their mortgage applications, many in the lower class. And then to many brokers intentionally deceiving borrowers, mortgage buyers or both, the middle class. And work your way right up to the one percent. Guilty, guilty, guilty.
No shortage of blame, that is for sure.
Cash back buyers and sellers, appraisers that inflated prices, Realtors that encouraged people to buy more than they could afford, mortgage originators that generated toxic loans knowing they could pass them to Wall Street, Wall Street brokerages that packaged up the toxic debt into MBS, ratings agencies that labeled the toxic garbage as AAA, government officials that looked the other way while taking campaign contributions from all of the adove.
There is a lot of blame to go around, but the people most at fault are the greedy home buyers who agreed to buy properties they couldn’t afford. What ever happened to personal responsibilities in our society? It’s always someone else’s fault!
Jim Wagoner,
Are you a Lying Realtor?
Redundant!
Start with the borrowers lying on their mortgage applications
Apply the law equally. It’s really not too much to ask. I know someone who was charged with bank fraud for lying on a mortgage app. This was back in the 1990’s.
Just because a shiny suited mortgage salesman gave a wink doesn’t seem to be an excuse. Borrowers signed every page of the app.
I’m sure Polly will comment once again.
Explain to me how a community functions if 10% of the adults have to spend even a few months in jail. Do you send them all at once? Do you have a lottery as to who goes now and who goes later? Do you make sure to split people up so you don’t lose all the 3rd grade school teacher at once? What about the kids? Do you set up group homes for them? Force everyone in town who isn’t now a convict to take in a few foster kids? How does that community function?
Now explain to me how it works if the number is 20%. More.
Polly - What is irking so many these days is that the criminals are getting away with it, only to continue their loathesome ways. It needs to be stopped. And pronto. The perception of a hundred million is that the Federal government is doing nothing about it. The perception is that those anywhere near the Beltway are as culpable as the banksters.
NO ONE entrusted by the public is doing a damn thing to actually solve the problems. A Band-Aid here and a spanking there accomplishes nothing.
I truly don’t think you’re aware of the extent of the anger that exists outside the Beltway and NYC. I don’t think you really understand. Intellectually, sure. At the gut level? No. Not a chance. You’re surrounded by people day-in and day-out that understand little except government.
Your gut-level awareness may change as taxes for Obamacare and income rise, as the 55% estate tax is reinstituted, and as deductions fall. You think The People are miffed now? Just wait. You’ll soon feel pressure unlike anything you’ve ever experienced.
If I were in Washington, a grand, sweeping infrastructure project I might undertake is to rip out the Beltway and build an electrified moat.
I only wish there was a base of anger looking to enact real change. But there isn’t. People are still deliriously in love with big government. They never see big government as being part of the problem. They will never hold the govt to account for what it did, what it’s not doing now, and what it won’t do in the future.
People are losing everything they have, and yet they continue to vote for the big borrowers, big taxers, and all the big spenders. It’s insane. It will only get worse. Anger will only be misdirected, at themselves, at family members, at employers, but never at officials and professionals. NEVER. Well, maybe they will start to see it once they have lost totally everything. But by then they will be utterly powerless, and anyone still with a job and home and car will hold all THOSE people in total contempt. The nation acts like a big hazing crew; you shit on the classes below you, and when you fall, you get shit on yourself. Karma. The nation should be re-named Amerikarma.
‘a base of anger looking to enact real change’
IMO there is. It is in the Tea Party, the Occupy movement, the riots in Europe. You can read a bit of it here on this blog every day. One thing to consider; what the PTB will call unthinkable, disastrous events, are probably the best think that could happen for the people.
And don’t confuse me with the law and order chain’em to the ground nuts.
My point is, and Polly serves as a an example, that we’ve gradually gotten to the point where anything in the name of “business” or “the economy” is acceptable. Including lying on a credit app. Sure many we’re winked at when they paused and began to think twice about proffering stretched truth. It happens in the workplace everyday.
polly never said that it was RIGHT; she merely pointed out the impracticality of prosecuting, much less incarcerating, a significant fraction of the population who applied for and were granted liar loans. It’s a simple question of what is practical and achievable.
Polly,
Your response is a strawman. You really think incarceration is the answer?
No, I don’t because I can see that it isn’t practical.
That which can’t happen won’t happen.
What else are you talking about when you talk about prosecuting crimes. What do you want prosecutors to do?
Prosecute as a means of deterrence. We’ve slipped to the point of “anything in the name of the economy” for far too long.
How is it deterrence once people know that there isn’t any punishment at the end of the road? And you still have to hire all the judges and prosecutors and pay for defense lawyers for most of the people accused. State AGs won’t do it. They just don’t have the money. Federal is the only avenue left and they won’t waste their time on something small. It will be years (more) before anything big can be put together and even then it will be hard. The big guys learned all about plausible deniability back in the 80’s from Oliver North. They have it down to a science.
Again… incarceration is the only option? You’re being obtuse.
And you still haven’t told me what you see as an alternative. Go ahead.
Fines, probation, community service?
Much as I would like to see it, even simply _trying_ them all (e.g. you know, their constitutional right to their day in court) would be impractical.
That would end unemployment, for one thing. A communty functions better when th criminals are removed.
As noted long ago by Adam Smith, economies function better when subject to a Rule of Law.
” Comment by Jim Wagoner
2012-01-28 16:17:47
There is a lot of blame to go around, but the people most at fault are the greedy home buyers who agreed to buy properties they couldn’t afford. What ever happened to personal responsibilities in our society? It’s always someone else’s fault!”
Let’s say someone deposits $50K into margined trading account, and uses that to buy $250K in oil futures.
Can the person afford $250K in oil futures? No. But it is irrelivant. He’s going to seel the futures long before they expire, using the money from the sale to repay the margin.
People were playing the housing market the same way. Could they “afford” the house with their income? Irrelivant because they never intended to actually pay for it from their current wages. They were just going to own it for a few years, let the price go up a lot, then either refi to a loan they could pay with (assumed) higher income or they were going to sell and bank a big profit.
Yes, there was fraud in things like inflated incomes for no doc loans. However, implying that everyone that bought a home they could not afford are “most” at fault is, in my opinion, a very big stretch.
Which property market is more communistic — China’s or America’s?
China’s property market
Marriages and mergers
China’s housing downturn will benefit state-owned developers
Jan 14th 2012 | HONG KONG | from the print edition
COULD the arrival of the year of the dragon rescue the country’s beleaguered property developers? As Chinese new year approaches later this month, tens of thousands of couples are preparing to marry under what is considered an auspicious sign. To win over a bride in a country undersupplied with women, it helps a lot if the aspiring groom first proves his worth by buying a home.
China’s developers need all the help they can get. Keen to cool overheating residential-property markets, the central government has restricted purchases of multiple homes, demanded larger down-payments and curtailed opportunities for speculators to “flip”, or quickly sell on, properties. It has curbed developers’ access to bank lending and cut off credit from new trust companies. It is also encouraging the use of property taxes like those introduced in Shanghai and Chongqing last year. The government remains committed to policies of this ilk.
Taken together, these measures have splashed cold water on the market. Price growth has been slowing since early 2010 (see chart). Analysis by Soufun Holdings, the country’s largest property website, suggests that prices fell during December 2011 in 60 of the 100 cities it monitors. Land prices are falling fast, too. A recent survey of leading developers by Standard Chartered indicates that land prices are a third off their peaks of late 2010. There are also reports of land auctions run by local governments—a prime source of assets for developers and of funding for local exchequers—failing across the country. All of which presages an overdue consolidation of the industry.
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