Obama turned Justice Department into his own extortion machine

[Darwin333]

How does it apply to a bank? Do firms have morals and ethics? No, they only have laws that they have to abide by. Everything else is fair game. What the president is doing here is just wrong. It's obvious that you feel differently but, then again, you probably cast yourself as a victim as well. I despise professional victims.

Yeah, well they committed fraud which is against the law and for which they should have been prosecuted for and thrown into jail. The fact that their companies/ex-companies are only paying fines instead of doing jail time is a huge gift.

 

[Dari]

Of course you are, you've been doing nothing but whining about how the banks were too naive and incompetent to be held responsible for their own actions. You reap what you sow.

Frankly as I said before if your description is correct then the banks should be disbanded simply to save the economy from future disasters caused by their incompetence. So which one is it?

I'm giving up on you. It must be terminal. If your infatuation with victimhood makes it so that you can't answer a simple question then there is no hope.

 

[Dari]

Repubs held both houses of Congress & the White House from Jan 2003 until Jan 2007. Mere fact.

It was the Bush Admin who induced the GSE's to buy those loans from the originators & as securities issued from underwriters as well. Executive compensation was based on meeting targets for so called affordable loans so the executives whipped the troops into shape to do it.

This thing didn't start in the 2000s. It started decades before.

Barclays & the rest all bought the riskier stuff to puff up projected earnings which pumps up both the stock price & executive bonuses. Their gaussian cupola models told them it was safer than it looked which was what they wanted to hear in the first place.

Yeah, well they committed fraud which is against the law and for which they should have been prosecuted for and thrown into jail. The fact that their companies/ex-companies are only paying fines instead of doing jail time is a huge gift.

So which one of the above quotes are correct? Both? Neither? Did they commit fraud while stupidly buying up what they knew were highly risky products? Does that make any sense?

 

[agent00f]

So..... fewer government regulators would have prevented the great recession? Are we talking like zero government regulators in the financial sector would lead to economic boom or half or what? Please share your wisdom on how regulators should properly regulate the financial industry!

BTW his post was concerning regulation not regulators, I was going to assume that you were just smart enough to realize that but then thought better of it.

I'd suggest reading that comment more carefully before proclaiming yourself da smart one.

The high finance industry is largely self-regulated in any case, which was rather the problem.

 

[fskimospy]

I'm giving up on you. It must be terminal. If your infatuation with victimhood makes it so that you can't answer a simple question then there is no hope.

Yes, surely the person who made a whole thread based on an editorial about how picked on he is isn't infatuated with victimhiod.

You are a professional victim. For once take responsibility for you and your industry's incompetence and fraud. It will feel good to be honest with yourself.

 

[Jhhnn]

This thing didn't start in the 2000s. It started decades before.

Mere assertion of the unsubstantiated kind.

So which one of the above quotes are correct? Both? Neither? Did they commit fraud while stupidly buying up what they knew were highly risky products? Does that make any sense?

The fact remains that they did buy those products as part of a larger strategy.

Read up-

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetar_Capital

 

[WHAMPOM]

Might as well quit arguing, the boys that made money will never have to pay.

 

[Darwin333]

So which one of the above quotes are correct? Both? Neither? Did they commit fraud while stupidly buying up what they knew were highly risky products? Does that make any sense?

They bought them in order to sell for big profits. Hell vendors that they hired to do due diligence on the securities even called them bullshit and absurdly risky yet they sold them as AAA rated investments on par with US treasury bonds. When you knowingly say that a product is one thing when in fact it is really something far inferior that is called fraud.

Look this is just plain common sense at this point, anytime something is guaranteed to be an investment as safe as US treasury bonds and then loses half or more of its value virtually overnight there was fraud involved. You can't even argue incompetence with losses like that and as mentioned in this thread, if that's what you want to argue then you must agree the banks are way too incompetent to be "too big to fail" and must be immediately broken up.

So which is it?

 

[werepossum]

Its clear you don't know what you are talking about. Glass steagall prevented commercial banks (you know, those that are FDIC insured) from investing in anything other than government bonds and low risk vehicles), investment banks were not prevented from investing in risky products, in fact that's one of their purposes, to increase their returns above the return rates of the low risk commercial banks offer.

The crisis was not a result of commercial banks merging with investment banks, which was what the repeal of glass steagall was supposed to bring because very few such mergers happened.

Investment banks, you know the ones that failed, weren't prevented from their bad investments before steagall was repealed, so I still fail to see how steagall would have prevented anything.

There are two key aspects of Glass-Steagall which would have greatly lessened the severity. The first is the merger of the two types of banks; the second is preventing commercial banks from buying and selling securities. These securities are why the crash was so severe.

Do you really feel it's mere coincidence that a decade after the repeal we have EXACTLY the kind of crash Glass-Steagall was written to prevent?

How does it apply to a bank? Do firms have morals and ethics? No, they only have laws that they have to abide by. Everything else is fair game. What the president is doing here is just wrong. It's obvious that you feel differently but, then again, you probably cast yourself as a victim as well. I despise professional victims.

Dude, that is just insane. You want banks to be free to make trillions by ignoring morals and ethics while blaming people who lost their homes for being foolable?

This is the equivalent of convicting Capone on tax evasion, except nobody is going to prison. Obama's just repatriating some of the money the banks made by inflating home values via tame appraisers, bad faith loans, and falsely labeled securities. The money trickled up to the biggest banks and brokerage houses, most of which profited from the crash. Now that money is going to trickle all the way up to the Feds. A bit of it anyway.

 

[BurnItDwn]

I vote for keelhauling them........ from an aircraft carrier.

10/10 Glorious option!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ta-Z_psXODw