I wanted to thank ericlewis0 for the great diary she did today (5/16/11): http://www.dailykos.com/...
This is a major turning point on this site and in our nation. And we can now move forward together in a new effort, to hold our government, our President and AG Holder feet to the fire, to know that the American people know, without a shadow of a doubt what is going on in our nation and in our key financial markets: Pure and simple it is FRAUD, that has been proven over and over again, and we must no longer reject that truth.
After this new report by the Federal Auditors, and of course the excellent work of a 2 year through investigation by Senator Carl Levin, and his panel on the FRAUD that he proved against Goldman Sachs and others of their ilk, there is no reasonable excuse to delay AG Holder and the Justice Department to move forward and prosecute those responsible for destroying our national economy.
From ericlewise0 diary today:
Bank of America: FRAUD
Citigroup: FRAUD
JPMorgan Chase: FRAUD
Wells Fargo: FRAUD
Ally Financial: FRAUD
It looks like they all violated the False Claims Act, which was a law passed during the Civil War to stop firms from swindling the Government.
From a Huffington Post exclusive:
WASHINGTON -- A set of confidential federal audits accuse the nation’s five largest mortgage companies of defrauding taxpayers in their handling of foreclosures on homes purchased with government-backed loans, four officials briefed on the findings told The Huffington Post.
full article here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/....
And of course from Senator Carl Levin (and his bi-partisan committee):
The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which I chair and of which Senator Tom Coburn is the ranking Republican, spent over two years investigating the factors and causes that have contributed to our financial crisis and recently released a 639-page bipartisan report (available at levin.senate.gov). In the course of four hearings and the review of countless documents and pieces of correspondence, we uncovered stunning evidence of rampant and blatant conflicts of interest. Time and again, we learned how financial professionals who were supposed to look out for their clients' interests violated those very interests and instead chose to enrich themselves.
Some of the structures we exposed were as impressive in their complexity as they were repulsive in their breach of the clients' trust. There are countless examples, such as investment vehicles set up to contain highly dubious assets sold with aggressive sales tactics to clients, while the financial institution that selected the poor assets made huge profits by secretly betting against these very assets with short positions. In one case, a $2 billion security called Hudson was marketed by Goldman Sachs to clients with promotional materials representing that the firm's interest was aligned with the security, when in fact Goldman had secretly held the short position, which resulted in Goldman enriching itself at its clients' expense when the security tanked.
When questioned about the obvious conflicts of interest, evidenced further by internal correspondence within the financial institutions describing the assets as worthless, financial industry representatives regularly claim that their clients are sophisticated investors and assume risks with open or semi-open eyes. This industry-wide retort to accusations of obviously bad and disloyal behavior is very troublesome. It seeks to establish that conflicts of interest are a necessary byproduct of complex financial transactions and that they can always be cured by means of disclosure to the client in the form of so-called risk factors or investment considerations, which most often tend to be grossly inadequate, vague, out of context and meaningless.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
And lest we forget, the great new young and courageous political and 'real deal journalist' in our nation: Matt Taibbi for his most amazing article yet: The People Against Goldman Sachs now in the new edition of Rolling Stones: Cheers to you Matt, one fucking decent real journalist in this country: Here is a great video:
Today I was reading about the alleged case of rape against Dominique Strauss-Kahn, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, who is now sitting in a cell on Riker's Island, bailed denied. In our country, a person is innocent until proven guilty (unless your Bradley Manning) but it would appear from the article that I read, that let's just say, things are not looking up for Mr. Strauss-Kahn. The woman who has accused him of rape, has supplied DNA proof and was thoroughly examined after the incident by the authorities. Indeed, a second woman has now come forward for a similar incident of rape against Mr. Strauss-Kahn.
Dominique Strauss-Kahn, a married father of four whose reputation with women earned him the nickname "the great seducer," faced arraignment Monday on charges of attempted rape and criminal sexual contact in the alleged attack on a maid who went into his penthouse suite at a hotel near Times Square to clean it.
Strauss-Kahn was taken into custody on Saturday and spent more than 24 hours inside a Harlem precinct, where police say the maid identified him from a lineup, then headed to a hospital for a "forensic examination" requested by prosecutors to obtain more evidence in the case, defense lawyer William Taylor said. He was taken to a Manhattan court early Monday.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
We will let the courts give Mr. Strauss-Kahn and the two victims that have come forward their opportunity for justice.
Ofter times, we think of rape in a sexual connotation, but in fact there are other ways in which the word rape applies. For instance:
An act of plunder, violent seizure, or abuse; despoliation; violation: the rape of the countryside. Archaic . the act of seizing and carrying off by force.
You may disagree with my analogy from the rape that Mr. Strauss-Kahn is now accused of and the way that the 5 Major Banks in our nation, including Goldman Sachs are all deeply guilty of 'Raping' their own nation, and violating and ruining the lives of millions of people, but I fail to see the difference. Home invasions by these Bankers without due process of law, has now become perfectly acceptable in our nation. That is a violation, if ever there was one.
Matt Stoller sent me two amazing articles this week that were just outrageous, and how these 'white collar criminals are now retaliating against those same people that are standing up against these 'new kinds of home invasions.'
Often when we think of that term, 'home invasions' we think of the movies and tv: some poor family being attacked viciously in their home by gangs of thieves who hold them hostage, and terroism them, but in fact in real life this takes on many different forms: in fact it can mean another new way of how these same 'white collar criminals' come into our homes, destroy our credit, destroy our entire lives, our names, our ability to live a decent life, because guess what? They are getting away with it.
This is from Matt's email to me:
This is pretty outrageous. Lynn Symoniak basically busted open the robo-signing scandal with meticulous research over many years. Deutsche Bank is now going after her son. That story is below.
This goes along with another story that broke today, in which Goldman Sachs issued a legal threat on behalf of their subsidiary Litton Loan Servicing against a whistleblower and paid expert witness for talking about the mortgage servicing industry, even though the whistleblower didn't even mention Litton.
(From Matt)
WASHINGTON -- Deutsche Bank appears to have retaliated against a high-profile foreclosure fraud expert, whose years-long battle against her own foreclosure helped reveal a wave of apparent malfeasance, by suing her son.
The expert, Lynn Szymoniak, an attorney who specializes in white-collar crime, is widely considered on Capitol Hill to be one of the nation's top experts on foreclosure law. When Deutsche Bank attempted to jack up the interest rate on the mortgage for her Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., home in May 2008, she contested the move, setting off an investigation which unveiled mountains of forged signatures and fraudulent bank paperwork associated with the foreclosure process.
Szymoniak alerted other attorneys, neighborhood advocates, lawmakers and the media about the apparent rampant fraud. She appeared on "60 Minutes" in April to discuss the broader foreclosure scandal [video appended below].
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
The other video and story on Chris Wyatt, another honest person from Litton Loans (owned by Goldman Sachs) is here:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/...
(I'm sorry I could not embed this video, neither is on line on Utube).
Regardless, my point remains the same:
Home invasions don't just happen on the TV movies, they happen every day in our nation, when honest Americans who are telling the truth are being destroyed by people like the Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs when AG Holder sits and other local authorities sit on thier hands and does nothing at all to stop this kind of destruction.
And these kinds of Home invasions are continuing: Finally, last year Nancy Jacobini's home was broken into by a JP Morgan rep because the bank thought she was in foreclosure (she wasn't). She called 911. Well, it happened AGAIN. Take a look at this video:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/...
Finally, I want to remind you all of a great, great American Harry Markopolos, who for 8 to 9 long years was ignored, by our government by the SEC, the NYSE, and by everyone in our nation. Harry deeply feared for his life and for those in his family:
How long did it take Harry Markopolos, to figure this out? 5 fucking minutes:
"I mean, you're like a math guy, right?" Kroft asked.
"I've taken all the calculus courses, from integral calculus through differential calculus, as well as linear algebra. And statistics, both normal and non-normal," Markopolos said. Asked how long it took him to figure out something was wrong, Markopolos said, "It took me five minutes to know that it was a fraud. It took me another almost four hours of mathematical modeling to prove that it was a fraud. "
It was the performance line that Markopolos said caught his attention. "As we know, markets go up and down, and his only went up. He had very few down months. Only four percent of the months were down months. And that would be equivalent to a baseball player in the major leagues batting .960 for a year. Clearly impossible. You would suspect cheating immediately." "Maybe he was just good," Kroft remarked.
http://www.cbsnews.com/...
For anyone who still has the audacity, stupidity, or nerve to protect Wall St./the Banks: put a cork in it. The party is over, the jig is up.
To continue to allow these white collar criminals, from the Banks to break into people's homes in this nation and get away with it, is no different than rape, and is just as devastating and violating on all levels.
WASHINGTON -- A set of confidential federal audits accuse the nation’s five largest mortgage companies of defrauding taxpayers in their handling of foreclosures on homes purchased with government-backed loans, four officials briefed on the findings told The Huffington Post.
The five separate investigations were conducted by the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s inspector general and examined Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citigroup and Ally Financial, the sources said.
The audits accuse the five major lenders of violating the False Claims Act, a Civil War-era law crafted as a weapon against firms that swindle the government. The audits were completed between February and March, the sources said. The internal watchdog office at HUD referred its findings to the Department of Justice, which must now decide whether to file charges.
Now the ball is fully in AG Holder's hands. And most of the evidence, and investigations have been done for him, and are sitting on his desk. No more excuses, foot dragging or playing politics on letting these crooks off the hook.
Finally, I just wanted to remind everyone that if Wall St./the Banks had not gotten away with this continued FRAUD, we would not be talking about stripping down our final safety nets and this new so called 'shared sacrifice,' and deficit frenzy. Wall St./the Banks got a way with raping our entire nation, and it's time for them to pay up for the crimes they have committed. It is past time to restore the laws in our nation.
Thanks as always.
Ms. B.