The big banks are still mugging America. They do so because they can, and they can because they pour tens of millions of dollars into our Presidential and Congressional elections.
Their political contributions politically exempt them from our criminal laws and serious regulatory oversight. As William Grieder notes in The Nation, they are "too big to prosecute." Since the financial crisis began more than three years ago, not a single financial executive has gone to jail, despite massive evidence of criminal fraud.
When the evidence of criminal activity is so overwhelming that the Justice Department must act, the Administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama have chosen to defer prosecutions and impose civil fines that are rarely more than wrist slaps. The Bush Administration settled 108 such corporate cases through deferment and the Obama Administration did 53 in its first two years.
Grieder points out that the refusal of the Bush and Obama Administration's to hold corporate executives accountable, with no prospect of serious jail time or heavy personal fines merely continues the status quo... "so the corporate crooks will do it again."
In fact, the crooks never stopped "doing it."
Scott Pelley reported in a recent a 60 Minutes episode (4/1/2011) on how the same banks that got most of the TARP bailout monies were forging mortgage recall documents.
When the big banks engineered the devastating mortgaged back securities that created the Great Recession several years ago, they sped the processing by eliminating most of the paperwork. When the economy collapsed and millions of jobless workers were unable to pay their mortgages, the banks began unraveling these securities and quickly discovered they could not prove their ownership.
What did the banks do? They hired companies, such as one named Docx, that hired low-level unemployed workers off the street, paid them $10 per hour, sat them at a table, and handed them a pen which the workers used to sign phony mortgage documents as fast as they could. To speed up the signing, one of these processing mills used the short and easy to sign name of a worker named Linda Green. All the signers wrote her name again and again on these phony mortgage documents at a personal pace of 4,000 signatures per day. Among the papers they signed was the vital assignment of mortgage, which transferred the home ownership to the bank.
The phony documents identified these robo-signers as vice presidents and executives of various banks. Low wage notaries then validated the signatures. The owners of many homes seized with these fake documents were not in default. Some owners owed nothing. Yet, their homes were seized and they were thrown into the street.
The Attorney Generals in 50 states are investigating these big banks, with the prospect of major criminal and civil lawsuits forthcoming.
Once again, however, the banks are getting the Obama Administration and Congress to let them off the hook. The U.S. Treasury is negotiating a deal with the banks in which they neither admit nor deny guilt, agree to better train their workers and henceforth to obey the law. The banks' obvious goal is to preempt any state indictments. Federal indictments are not a worry to them.
There is more. Congressional friends of the banks have tucked another bailout into the American Invents Act (the patent bill) that zipped through the Senate in March with a 95-5 vote and now awaits action in the House. Billions of dollars are at stake.
Many of the major banks have been using patented business methods without permission of the patent owners or payment to them. The financial industry has persuaded the Obama Administration and the Senate and House Judiciary leaders to retroactively change Patent Office rules in a way that makes it impossible for these patent owners to enforce their Constitutional rights against the banks' infringement. In effect, the Congress is voiding issued patents on behalf of the big banks.
As all this suggests, America's big banks are still out of control.
In today's corrupt political environment, the only way for We the People to stop this predation is to vote out of office those in the banks' pay, whether it be a president, a senator or a representative. A slow and difficult process, for sure, but ultimately an effective one.
What's interesting is that the banks designed it from the get go, to go thru these intermediaries (The FRB, Viewpointe and SVPco). The courts have ruled that Viewpointe was created to avoid paying the patent royalities (according to recient court decisions), and they and their owners acted as one. Shocking, but Judge Folsum can cut thru the carp. But, these battles are still going on and look like they will continue for years.
The Rule of Law must be resurrected. There must be prison time for laundering drug money, and other financial crimes, not just fines.
They control washington, wall street and the destruction of main street. They control it all and care nothing about the destruction of our country.
http://noir.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=asU.b_fCjHTE
Wachovia's Drug Habit - Bloomberg.com
"...The bank didn’t react quickly enough to the prosecutors’ requests and failed to hire enough investigators, the U.S. Treasury Department said in March. After a 22-month investigation, the Justice Department on March 12 charged Wachovia with violating the Bank Secrecy Act by failing to run an effective anti-money-laundering program.
Five days later, Wells Fargo promised in a Miami federal courtroom to revamp its detection systems. Wachovia’s new owner paid $160 million in fines and penalties, less than 2 percent of its $12.3 billion profit in 2009.
[snip]
‘No Capacity to Regulate’
Large banks are protected from indictments by a variant of the too-big-to-fail theory.
Indicting a big bank could trigger a mad dash by investors to dump shares and cause panic in financial markets, says Jack Blum, a U.S. Senate investigator for 14 years and a consultant to international banks and brokerage firms on money laundering.
The theory is like a get-out-of-jail-free card for big banks, Blum says.
“There’s no capacity to regulate or punish them because they’re too big to be threatened with failure,” Blum says. “They seem to be willing to do anything that improves their bottom line, until they’re caught...”
Over 20,000 deaths and just fines.
http://noir.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=asU.b_fCjHTE
Wachovia's Drug Habit - Bloomberg.com
"...The 1970 Bank Secrecy Act requires banks to report all cash transactions above $10,000 to regulators and to tell the government about other suspected money-laundering activity. Big banks employ hundreds of investigators and spend millions of dollars on software programs to scour accounts.
No big U.S. bank -- Wells Fargo included -- has ever been indicted for violating the Bank Secrecy Act or any other federal law. Instead, the Justice Department settles criminal charges by using deferred-prosecution agreements, in which a bank pays a fine and promises not to break the law again..."
Even if he uses a note, doesn't have a weapon, and gets little money out of the robbery he will still probably go to jail.
Yet the Banksters "steal" millions....and they get bailouts and are allowed to stay in business.
I have coined a new phrase (though I may not be the first): economic treason.
With no penalties for the High Flyers. Yet.
If a progressive who is not on the bank tit wants to jump into the 2012 race I'd have to take a look at him/her.
Also, if you follow foreclosure news, read this, from the famous Re Wilson case out of Louisiana:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/52867919/In-Re-Wilson-Memorandum-Opinion-07-Apr-2011
It gets especially good ‘round about page 19.
Why the hell no one has gone to jail yet is beyond me. Steal a banana in Wal-Mart, go to the pokey. Steal a billion or two, the government lets you steal more.