Dim Prospects for Financial Crisis Prosecutions
As has been noted many times, the lack of criminal prosecutions arising out of the financial crisis has been painfully obvious. And two items in the news last week underscores that the prospect for a signature case is growing even more distant.
First, Reuters reported on Thursday that Securities and Exchange Commission staff members wrote in a memo that fraud charges “will likely not be recommended” against Lehman Brothers executives.
Then, the New York attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, said that the federal-state mortgage fraud working group announced in President Obama’s State of the Union address in January needed more resources — an indication that the group was still trying to digest evidence from transactions made more than four years ago.
The collapse of Lehman seemed to be the most likely source of criminal prosecutions, or at least civil enforcement actions. The firm’s examiner, Anton R. Valukas, issued a report in 2010 castigating senior management for shifting up to $50 billion off the balance sheet through the so-called Repo 105 transactions.
Rest here…
~
The FEDS will cease at NOTHING to Generate REVENUE$ to fuel the LUST for Insatiable [avaricious, cupidic,] MORE of OTHER Peoples and CorpoRAT’s money$, and This will SETTLE with Large PAYOLA / PAY OFF to Keep the SECRET settlement SILENT!
The Chicago MOB style!
Who benefits from criminal prosecutions? No motivation to fight giant companies with deep pockets to prosecute who? Loan originators, brokers, CEOs, account executives? Civil suits gain money for those who ‘own’ the suits. Always heard war was a profitable things for everyone except those on the front line and those paying their expenses, or taxpayers. Same in the current housing crisis. More interest in suit for gain, ess for criminal prosecution for the sake of what is right. Thing of the -past in a Capitalistic Plutocracy. Few symbolic casualties, Enron, etc. but too big to fail or prosecute is the mantra of the day. Make them pay, hit the pocketbook as banks dig deep to shut down suits. Collateral damage for all the profit they pocketed at the peak.