Do you believe the banks and Wall Street acted criminally ?

[kentuck]

When they bundled up bad mortgages and sold them as securities around the world? Did they know the mortgages were pieces of crap? If they did, is that not fraud? Why aren't they in jail?

Or do you believe they did not know what they were doing?

[Octafish]

1. Banks knew exactly what they were doing and BFEE let them go on doing it.

http://www.cnn.com/2004/LAW/09/17/mortgage.fraud/

[Festivito]

44. Indeed. 2004. Statute of limitations: 7 years. Okay. We can look at this now.

And, they know exactly what they continue to do.

They wait.

[Octafish]

46. And when they can't wait, they make their criminality retroactively legal.

F'r instance, illegal domestic spying.

I wonder what, exactly, the BFEE has on tape?

PS: Thank you for your excellent observation, Festivito. If there were justice in America, no way would the people who made off with the trillions walk free.

[Initech]

57. I remember that debate between RFK Jr. And Don Blankenship

Kennedy asked him " could you do your job every day without doing something illegal? And he replied "No." I bet the banks engage in that same sort of behavior.

[meow2u3]

2. Last time I checked, forgery was a crime

DOES BANKS' CONVENIENCE TRUMP RULE OF LAW?
PDF file

[LonePirate]

12. So is fraud involving securities or otherwise.

[aquart]

3. Criminals. And yes. THEY KNEW.

They knew robosigning was illegal. They knew not having the actual mortgages was illegal. THEY KNEW.

[Kennah]

4. Maybe I'm confused ...

... but "acted" implies they were played a role. I say they committed crimes.

Yes, I'm just picking at nits and having a little fun.

[kentuck]

6. As in criminal acts.

Just a figure of speech for breaking the law.

[tblue]

5. They knew.

Yes, I think it was criminal, though I am no lawyer. Problem is that there is no political will for a prosecution. I believe the one thing I'd change about OWS is to alter the focus, just a bit, to the corruption of our government. If we had well-regulated securities with good oversight, we wouldn't be in this boat. And why don't we? Because our pols are bought and paid for by the people who should be keeping them in line. Corruption in government, that is the problem.

[lame54]

7. ABSOLUTELY NOT!!!...

They re-wrote the laws so these heinous acts are no longer criminal

[RaleighNCDUer]

35. They didn't make these acts legal.

Just unprosecutable.

[lame54]

40. what's the difference?

[xchrom]

8. Yes. & close enough investigation of this would find others.

[randome]

9. Not every institution can be painted with such a broad stroke.

Some banks and institutions DID act criminally. As for the others, well first, define 'bad mortgages'. Define mortgages that were 'pieces of crap'.

The entire system rests on ambiguity. No common-sense regulations to define these things.

Our elected officals are guilty of negligence, first and foremost, for allowing the regulatory environment to wither on the vine.

[kentuck]

15. So your answer is no.

:shrug:

[randome]

30. My answer is, the phrase 'the banks' is too broad to be answered.

Do you think every corporation is by definition evil? I don't. They will get away with whatever they can get away with. That's a mutated version of human nature I call 'corporate nature'. It's in their papery genes.

Lax oversight gave them the go-ahead to see what they could get away with.

[ixion]

10. Why, yes, yes I do...

[TygrBright]

11. Lose-lose:

A. They knew. They're criminals who willfully did a LOT of damage. They should do hard time.

B. They didn't know. They're too stupid to be trusted with a blunt pair of scissors. They did a LOT of damage, and they should be institutionalized until they test as within harmless if subnormal intelligence range.

helpfully,
Bright

[Fire Walk With Me]

13. To paraphrase Matt Groening: "Oh my yes."

[JuniperLea]

14. Of course not...

They made sure the laws were changed before doing the dirty deeds.

No way was this illegal; they made sure of that beforehand.

Was it moral, oh hell no.

[girl gone mad]

21. The law is very clear on this.

The banks committed fraud and fraud is illegal.

[randome]

32. If it's so clear

...then where are the lawsuits? I maintain it isn't all clear and that's what they count on -ambiguity in the form of overly complex laws and open-ended regulations.

Again, it's our politicians who are fault -the very people who are supposed to protect us from this kind of crap.

IMHO.

[girl gone mad]

34. There are dozens and dozens of lawsuits winding their way through courts right now.

Have you been paying any attention at all?

[Nye Bevan]

16. Very probably. Big problem, however, is the "beyond a reasonable doubt" thing. (nt)

[msongs]

17. normal practices under rules rigged by their political prostitutes in DC nt

[girl gone mad]

18. Believe is the wrong word.

Many bank executives and employees are on the record as having said in e-mail and memos that the securities they were selling investors as AAA were in fact pieces of shit. They were telling each other this at the same time they were advising their clients that these were good investments. That is clearly illegal.

[Lars39]

19. ahem...this sign explains a lot. :^)

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x2135043

[leveymg]

20. It's only fraud if the buyer was misled. It's gambling. Both sides of the bet assume risks, or so

they say in their own defense. In some cases, and in a larger sense, the public was defrauded by false promises of safety in their bank's and funds investments. That part of the bundled securities game was fraudulent, but intent to defraud is hard to prove.

[LonePirate]

22. The AAA ratings given to those CDOs is pretty indicative of fraud to me.

[girl gone mad]

25. Correct, and they were bribing the ratings agencies for those fake ratings.

Also illegal.

[leveymg]

27. There is no doubt that the accounting firms should be prosecuted.

I think a good case can be made against their counterparties in the banks and securities underwriters which issued the corrupted stock, as well. They need to go after the hedge fund managers, as well, for their shell games and pyramids.

But, the point I'm making is that highly-leveraged risky investments are not criminal provided that they're transparent. But, these instruments don't belong in the portfolios of commercial banks - they need to bring back the Glass-Steigal "Chinese Wall" that onece separated banking from securities investments. The real crime was deregulation, and we have both parties to blame for that.

[SomethingFishy]

50. Ahh but they bought insurance against those CDO's..

So both sides weren't assuming the risk. And that proves the intent...

At least this is what I understood from the movie Inside Job...

[Selatius]

23. They knew they were peddling fraudulent securities when they bundled mortgages.

The problem is finding enough evidence to convict them. They had plenty of time to destroy or hide evidence.

If they can't be captured there, then they can more probably be prosecuted over document fraud arising over the issue of robo-signing. There seems to be more evidence here, which is why bankers want all the attorney generals to accept the settlement proposal that Obama wants.

[Common Sense Party]

54. A bundled CDO is not, de facto, fraudulent.

And even when they started bumping up the tranches of risky mortgages--liar loans, ninjas, etc.--it was NOT fraud. They were disclosing that the CDOs had some risk in the lower tranches; but supposedly the higher-rated tranches were going to balance that out.

Bundling securities is nothing new, nor is it illegal.

The ratings agencies screwed the pooch when they declared these things AAA and basically riskless, without really studying what was inside them.

[moondust]

24. "You come after us and you won't raise enough money to be re-elected!"

[gratuitous]

26. In talking with each other

They knew they were peddling crap to one another. I believe the adjective they used when talking to one another was "shitty." When they were talking to the public, though, they were buying and selling creative, exciting new investment vehicles that would minimize losses while maximizing gains in a sure-fire, can't-miss scheme.

Oh, and did they mention the commissions they raked off for themselves coming and going? 'Cause they made a couple of extra bucks doing that, too.

But all that's just water under the bridge. The mortgage market has tanked, and nobody really knows why, unless it's because of the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, which didn't do anything to the market for nearly 30 years, but suddently and coincidentally blew up at the same time CDOs suddenly started going south. Poking into the whole mess of what Eschaton fondly referred to as Big Shitpile is just going to cause a bunch of unnecessary unpleasantness, so it's better not to do too much of that.

[JVS]

28. Yes.

[FarCenter]

29. Investment banks, mortgage wholesalers, mortgage brokers, salesmen, & applicants were criminals

From the guys lying about living in a house that they were just flipping, to the mortgage salemen filling false incomes for their clients on the applications, to the brokers who were telling the salesmen to put people into higher fee mortgages, to the wholesalers who pooled the trash, to the invesment bankers who sliced and diced the bundles, to the ratings agencies who misrepresented the quality of the securities...

And to the crooks in Washington who were letting them get away with it and even actively encouraging them to give mortgages to people who couldn't pay them off.

[kentuck]

31. Yep.

I agree.

[JNinWB]

53. Agree.

There may have been only one actual "crook" in an entire mortgage transaction chain.

Identifying the actual miscreant(s) is part of the problem. What about the buyers, who eagerly supplied fraudulent financial info so they could purchase their "dream home"?

Many of the individuals working in this industry lost their jobs almost immediately when this house of cards collapsed. One day they were affluent: the next day they were unemployed.

[Donnachaidh]

33. does a bear shit in the woods? n/t

[valerief]

36. When they bought Congress to make it legal, yeah. Repealing Glass-Steagall and the

Modernization Act of 2000. Two crimes of many legislated by a criminal Congress and Executive Office. Yeah, yeah, I know it was Clinton.

[RaleighNCDUer]

37. here

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/08/business/in-shift-federal-prosecutors-are-lenient-as-companies-break-the-law.html?_r=3&pagewanted=1&ref=business

[marmar]

38. There's no doubt.....Just watch 'Inside Job'.

nt

[Name removed]

39. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[2pooped2pop]

41. It was a planned effort of GREED GREED Greed

Once Bushco dropped regulations and created a climate of "take what you want, they can't stop us now" it was easy for them to pull off. I somethime think Cheney and his ilk have planned this takeover of the AMerican wealth and democracy since the 70's.

[WinkyDink]

42. "Didn't know"? Bwaahahahahahahaha!!!!! Best laugh all day.

[dtexdem]

43. Well, duh. I think they knew it was against the law.

And it was despicable, even had it not been against the law.

[snot]

45. Here's what I know I know and know I don't know

I know that Goldman and the key players at other big firms knew dam' well what they were doing.

(Bear in mind, the BIG problem was NOT that the mortgages were cr*p. It's that there was no rule prohibiting Goldman et al. from speculating on them via bets placed with cos. like AIG.)

What I don't know is whether people at AIG knew they were selling policies they were likely to have to pay out on.

What I also know is that at a lot of these companies, there were people who should have known even if they didn't, but they had absolutely no incentive to care.

On the contrary, they had positive incentives not to think too hard about it, 'cuz it was making them rich.

(Another impt. point to bear in mind is that some of these people also don't care if their company tanks. The evil really ISN'T corporations, per se; it's the law that lets their sr. execs use them as looting vehicles and walk away scott-free.)

Finally, I'm pretty sure a lot of the people who bought into the Ponzi did NOT know, 'cuz a lot of them aren't that bright.

But the guys at Goldman et al. are smart as they come, and there's not a doubt in my mind that they knew exactly what they were doing.

[tama]

47. If they didn't

why is Obama and Congress giving them now law of impunity?

[lonestarnot]

48. Criminal intent could be easily demonstrated IMO.

[inna]

49. acted criminally, beyond any shade of doubt

[tavalon]

51. Criminals

Unlikely to be charged but Remember, Remember the fifth of November.

[phantom power]

52. I think at some point they crossed over into deliberate fraud...

and we're obviously talking about fraud to the tune of many hundreds of billions of dollars, added up over all the banks that participated.

By that I mean the deliberate mis-evaluation of the bundled mortage ratings. Then there is also the fraud surrounding the loss (deliberate or otherwise) of the actual mortage document paperwork chain. Robo-signing, false foreclosures, etc.

There are many other things that should be illegal, but which they made legal by deregulations. But I think any claims that "they did nothing illegal" are bullshit.

[Zorra]

55. For a conservative, there is only one crime:

Getting caught while not having enough money to pay their way out of being punished.

[Scuba]

56. My President said they did not break any laws....

... He also said Bradley Manning broke the law.



Some Constitutional lawyer.

[hifiguy]

58. Yes. It was fraud of every conceivable kind

especially the creation of the mortgage-backed securities. How could it not be fraud when the banksters bribed the rating agencies to rate them all AAA investments?

[War Horse]

59. They *knew* it was a bubble, that much is certain

And they knew it would burst at some point.

There was a strike while the iron is hot attitude. I'm SURE some lines were crossed. Even in such a deregulated environment.