Bankster News
I got excited the other day when I read that finally some of those responsible for the financial crisis might be brought to justice.
Now that the election is over, surely we will we see the Pres and the AG come out strongly in support of such a crackdown in light of new findings that the bad banksters are back at it even after paying the largest fines in history!!!!! /snark.
Feds Threatening Criminal Charges Against Misbehaving Banks
Federal prosecutors are rethinking settlement deals with banks that aren’t “behaving” as promised following so-called deferred prosecution agreements.
Turns out some of the largest banks in trouble with the Feds failed to disclose the full extent of wrongdoing in the original settlements, and are still committing some of the same practices they got in trouble for. So prosecutors are threatening to revoke the settlements and either impose heavier fines or force the banks to plead guilty to criminal charges, reported The New York Times.
Prosecutors have reopened investigations into British bank Standard Chartered and the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ, both of which were accused of dealing with Iran and other countries blacklisted by the United States, and both of which are suspected to have downplayed their wrongdoings.
Prosecutors often rely on consulting firm — chosen and paid by the bank it’s investigating — for a report of a given bank’s wrongdoings. PricewaterhouseCoopers, which advised the Japanese bank, apparently watered down the report it sent to government investigators, and is now also under investigation.
So they are back at their old games, and that means more hurt for the 99%.
I saw this move toward prosecution as great news, and look forward to more.
Another Story RE: Bank Fraud
BREAKING !
'$9 Billion Dollar Witness' ALAYNE FLEISCHMANN. Credit: http://i.dailymail.co.uk/...
Democracy Now! has an awesome segment up. Suggest reading the entire transcript that brings to light new insider look at what went on and how.
Tabibi --Its not that hard to build a case for criminal prosecution.
William Black has been saying as much for years.
Friday, November 7
Matt Taibbi and Bank Whistleblower
on
How JPMorgan Chase Helped Wreck the Economy, Avoid Prosecution
(Would love for someone to explain to me how to convert Democracy Now! embed code so it will show up on dkos.)
A year ago this month the U.S. Department of Justice announced that the banking giant
JPMorgan Chase would avoid criminal charges by agreeing to pay $13 billion to settle claims that it had routinely overstated the quality of mortgages it was selling to investors. But how did the bank avoid prosecution for committing fraud that helped cause the 2008 financial crisis? Today we speak to JPMorgan Chase whistleblower Alayne Fleischmann in her first televised interview discussing how she witnessed "massive criminal securities fraud" in the bank’s mortgage operations. She is profiled in Matt Taibbi’s new Rolling Stone investigation, "The $9 Billion Witness: Meet the woman JPMorgan Chase paid one of the largest fines in American history to keep from talking."http://www.rollingstone.com/...
The whistleblower comes out in this segment. Its hot stuff.
Taibbi fills in the blanks along side her. Jamie Dimon's actions come up. Much more.
Here's another bit:
MATT TAIBBI: That’s exactly right. That’s exactly right. That was the verbiage, "liar’s loans." The FBI warned that there was going to be an epidemic of these liar’s loans way back in 2004. The industry ignored these warnings. The government ignored these warnings. And there was this huge influx of these stated income loans, where people could just say that they made an enormous amount of money, and nobody would check.
So the bank buys all these loans, and then what they were doing is essentially throwing them into big pools, making hamburger out of them, and then selling that hamburger to pension funds, insurance companies, hedge funds, all kinds of investors. Typically ordinary people were the people on the other end buying this stuff. They were investing in these securities, and often they didn’t even know it.
What Alayne was involved with was making sure that these loans were of good quality, so that pension funds, when they bought these securities, weren’t buying something that was going to blow up on them a year later. And what she found was that they were buying loans that were of very dubious quality, that were extremely risky, and that should not have been made into that hamburger.
AMY GOODMAN:We’re going to break, and when we come back, we want to find out what happened when you went to your colleagues, your superiors, and then went outside the company to the U.S. government, right on up to Eric Holder and the Obama administration.Today, a Democracy Now! broadcast exclusive, Alayne Fleischmann is with us, the JPMorgan Chase whistleblower, speaking for the first time about her experience as deal manager at JPMorgan, where she says she witnessed "massive criminal securities fraud" in the bank’s mortgage operations during the period leading up to the financial crisis. And Matt Taibbi is with us, award-winning journalist, now back with Rolling Stone magazine, his latest piece headlined "The $9 Billion Witness." Stay with us.
Will we see some perp walks before the end of the year?
Will prosecutors be left alone to do their jobs?
Stay tuned....
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Update: HT to BruinKid comment in OpenThread for Night Owls to Matt Taibbi later appeared on Ed Show which is embedded here: http://www.dailykos.com/...
Update 2 A NYTimes snippet re criminal case
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission may join those civil agreements,while the Justice Department in Washington is pursuing a different route with a potential criminal case against at least one bank by the end of the year.
Update 3 Seems many commenters are not thinking that prosecutions will come. Though I share that skepticism, Bloomberg did report this recently:
Holder Says Bankers May Yet Face Prosecution for 2008
By Del Quentin Wilber Oct 29, 2014 12:27 PM MT
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder speaks at the sixth annual "Washington Ideas Forum"... Read More
Bankers may yet face federal prosecution for their roles in the 2008 financial crisis, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said today.
“We have ongoing investigations that may perhaps produce individual prosecutions,” Holder said, defending the Justice Department’s handling of probes that have resulted in large financial settlements but few criminal prosecutions.