First Criminal Charges Related To Credit Crisis Brought Against Bear Stearns Execs

Reuters:

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. prosecutors are preparing to file criminal charges against managers of two Bear Stearns hedge funds whose collapse helped kick off the credit crisis last year, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.

The U.S. Attorney's office in Brooklyn, New York will conclude interviews this week and has indicated to lawyers that indictments may follow, the newspaper said, citing people familiar with the case.

Read the whole story: Reuters

Comments

[MetalCanuck]

How about filing some charges against the FED.

[rwe2late]

RIGHT ON!

What’s The Difference Between Lehman Brothers & Bear Stearns?
answer: Lehman’s CEO Sits On the Board Of The NY Fed


JPMorgan's CEO James Dimon, and Lehman’s CEO Richard Fuld
sit on the Board of the New York Federal Reserve.

Both are substantial stockholders in their respective corporations.

There is “a statute defining this sort of self-dealing as a criminal offense. 18 U.S.C. Chapter 11, Section 208, makes it a felony punishable by up to 5 five years in prison for members of the Board of Directors of a Federal Reserve Bank to make decisions that benefit their own financial interests.­”


http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9343

[MetalCanuck]

Interesting stuff, thanks.

[timothe]

Oh shoot. I'm in the wrong place.

I'm looking for the article about the sweetheart Countrywide loans given to the Democrat Six. (Dodd, Johnson,etc)

Can someone point me to that article please?

[dadw5boys]

Johnson paid extra (points) to get a lower interest rate!

Apparently you never bought a home and wll believe anything.

[totaldisbelief]

How about getting indictments a little close to home by letting the lawsuits begin against mortgage brokers and their agents for knowingly putting honest (and inexperienced ) people in bad loans that the brokers got huge commissions on instead of straight forward normal old mortgages.

[Chris]

What is the fraud that they may or may not be charged with? All the articles say is securites fraud but what specifically did they do?

[KOisGod]

yeah, so in three years these guys will go to trial, and in two more years its decided, and they'll get no sentence because of all the "pain and suffering" they've gone through.

[booker52]

How about the yahoo's who decided to bail them out????

[MFWolff]

Small late actions against a few should not distract us from the bigger picture of what is going on in the economy.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/max-fraad-wolff/caco-phony-and-clarity_b_106990.html

[xman16trs]

Now what,

This doesn't mean a thing. They all golf together.
Charging them won't solve anything.
There needs to be controls in place so this will not happen again, the crime started 300 plus years ago. The systems are still in place, overhaul the system and that will make a difference.
People whom have lost everything, this will not help them now....
Besides rich bankers are taken care of one way or another.

Lets just sit down and fix the system so all of this will not happen again, prosecute the system first by fixing it so fail safe methods are in place.

[owiseone]

Why are we always a day late and a dollar short AFTER the damage has been done (and the US Treasury has shelled out yet again--rather Borrowed even MORE money)?

We have been in a state of emergency since Bush was elected the first time, yet Congress continues to allow him and his cronies complete, unregulated freedom to rip off the country. All investigations are done after the fact.

[Toonadude]

Because the criminals are in charge....­.of everything.

[TXfemmom]

Why would Bear Sterns escape charges? These guys were operating with the full knowledge of the firm.

[Diana]

Wouldn't it be something if the Brooklyn DA was suddenly found with a prostitute, just like Spitzer was a few weeks after he wrote published this in the Washington Post:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/13/AR2008021302783.html

[elbzee]

Geeeeee, what a coinky-dink!

[larry278]

This could lead to a President Obama pressing a Democratic majority in the Congress to pass an Obama revised version of New Deal like legislation to replace Republican legislation which eviscerated & repealed New Deal reforms of banking & stock jobbing. The market is much more complex now than it was in the 1930's.

[elbzee]

I think there's no choice but to do so. Essentially all of Bush's legislation needs to be examined with a flee collar and galileo telescope. The closer he is to losing his throne, the bolder and more flippant he is in his decider-ing. Chilling that he can still do so much damage.

[Chris]

Larry it is funny you blame the republicans when the Commodities Futurization ACt was signed into law by a democrat.

from Wiki

The Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 or CFMA (Public Law 106–554, §1(a)(5) [H.R. 5660], December 21, 2000, 114 Stat. 2763, 2763A–365, 7 U.S.C. § 1), was passed by the United States Congress and signed by President Bill Clinton in December 2000 in large part to allow for the creation of U.S. exchanges for the listing of a new sort of derivative security, the single-stock future.

Truth be told the entire government failed us.

[Rule Of Law]

And as a Democrat, when you add the repeal of the Glass Steagall act that led directly to the formation of mega banks like Citi and Goldman Sachs that gave us this credit/mortgage scam crisis, and welfare reform which forced million of poor kids to lose their lunch benefits in school, I think that Clinton looks more and more like a good Republican.

[chappelforpres]

Because it, along with the wholesale deregulation of the banking industry, was Phil Graham's (R - TX) baby. Clinton played along to get other things accomplished. No excuse for Clinton's ignorance, but he was always up against a hostile Congress.

" But Gramm's most cunning coup on behalf of his friends in the financial services industry—friends who gave him millions over his 24-year congressional career—came on December 15, 2000. It was an especially tense time in Washington. Only two days earlier, the Supreme Court had issued its decision on Bush v. Gore. President Bill Clinton and the Republican­-controlle­d Congress were locked in a budget showdown. It was the perfect moment for a wily senator to game the system. As Congress and the White House were hurriedly hammering out a $384-billion omnibus spending bill, Gramm slipped in a 262-page measure called the Commodity Futures Modernization Act. Written with the help of financial industry lobbyists and cosponsored by Senator Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), the chairman of the agriculture committee, the measure had been considered dead—even by Gramm. Few lawmakers had either the opportunity or inclination to read the version of the bill Gramm inserted. "Nobody in either chamber had any knowledge of what was going on or what was in it," says a congressional aide familiar with the bill's history. " Mother Jones - May 28, 2008

[larry278]

Chris, read the 2 posts below. Get your paymaster to give you a copy of the TROLL'S LIST OF LOADED QUESTIONS, PEJORATIVE TERMS & STYLESHEET; they are as scarce as hen's teeth.
Thanks for calling me funny.
BTW, try to Google Wikipedea & look at the criticisms of how Wikipedia is monotored & edited. Some critics say that Wikipedia is as bad as the Encyclopedia Britannica for errors & failure to update, revise & purge errors.
Cheers,
larry lynch

[Roose]

Legislation that was put in place after the great depression to prevent these sorts of issues, was either repealed or weakened and now we are reaping what was sown.

[vippy]

How is that possible when congress is at fault here and who created the Commodities Future's Modernization Act, where 11,000 pages were added by Richard Lugar, Tom Delay and Phil Gramm.
This act is directly responsible for the housing and banking collapse along with the high energy
prices. Congress was briefed on 14 Dec 07 by Prof. Michael Greenberger about the results and
they decided to do nothing. So how can we hold other individuals responsible?

[WIpatriot]

How about 'guilt by association' and we fry 'em all?

[Stretchumall]

That would cost too much.
Stretchumall