What Happened on Wall St. Ahead of the Crisis? We May Yet Find Out
The eighth anniversary of the 2008 financial crisis is almost upon us, making this as good a moment as any to take stock of how little we know still about the bad behavior and deception that occurred inside the big Wall Street banks that helped to cause it — and how little we may ever know.
A wave of settlements between Wall Street and the Justice Department and regulators resulted in fines in excess of $200 billion flowing from the shareholders of these firms into the coffers of the various federal and state government entities. These payments still feel to me more like extortion than justice. After all, if the prosecutorial arm of the federal government that regulates you demands a 10- or 11-figure payment, it seems pointless to argue.
The settlements also had another extremely disturbing aspect to them: They allowed the big banks to obfuscate the extent of the wrongdoing. The so-called Statement of Facts documents that accompanied these financial settlements were anything but statements of facts about what occurred. Instead, they were mealy-mouthed cover-ups of activity in the years leading up to the crisis. Settlements being settlements, it is highly unlikely we’ll ever see the relevant evidence behind them.
But fortunately, thanks to two separate court maneuverings in recent weeks, we may yet discover more about what happened on Wall Street that caused, exacerbated or tried to cover up the unfolding crisis. As Andy Dufresne reminded us in “The Shawshank Redemption,” “Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.”
Rest here…
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I’m going to include my PRO SE legal defense work & what I call the MORGAN STANLEY GANG did to try & unlawfully steal my TITLES.
When I’m done writing my book & it’s going to be scathing, I’m going to write more because I have journals full of info I discovered myself by being forced to defend 2 FC’s myself, PRO SE for the past 5 years in the most corrupt place there is.
I don’t even consider it extortion at this point. More like their cut.
They were unlawfully selling people’s LEGAL RIGHTS.
If you read the jargon in their FRAUD ISSUANCES they say you have none because they don’t believe in U.S. SOVEREIGNTY.
Too bad for them they lied before they got unlawfully bailed out & that proves their intent was criminal from way back when REAGAN thought his crony capitalist minions could be dictators of their own FRAUD.
We see how that made the S&L CRISIS happen & that opened the door for ENRON to use the ACCOUNTING FIRM ARTHUR ANDERSON to RACKETEER their own MONEY LAUNDERING of FRAUDULENT INVESTMENT PRACTICES under FALSE PRETENSES.
They were pricing themselves out of the markets by securing nothing.
They could have been selling shares in other company FRAUDS because they’re intent was to charge it off before they had to open their books & prove something.