60 Minutes

[dagwud]

Tonight' 60 Minutes hit hard on the bank fraud carried out by Wall Street Banks and in particular Citi Bank,  Country Wide and their later owner Bank of America.   They interviewed senior bank officials that warned back in 2006 of wide spread fraud within  the banks by exaggerating and lying about the value of toxic loans and how they were misrepresenting then to their customers who purchased them after they were bundled and resold.   Those who kept warning about the wide spread fraud crisis were either fired or simply asked not to come to work and were no longer responsible for any oversight.  Records show the percentage of toxic loans at Country Wide went up from 60% to 80% after the 2006 warnings.  These early warnings were ignored by Citigroup CEO, Robert Rubin who had been the Sec. of Treasure under Clinton and part of the long standing revolving door used by both parties of choosing Wall Street bankers for Sec of Treasure.

When questioned about the lack of a single prosecution of Wall Street bankers, Lenny Breuer, the current assistant attorney general told 60 Minutes that this Dept. of Justice had been as aggressive as any.   60 Minutes reported that a recent study by Syacuse University found that cases brought by the DOJ against financial institutions for fraud was at a 20 year low.  

Breuer who represented Sandy Berger when he got caught stealing classified documents from the National Archives was selected by Obama on January 22, 2009 to head the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice.   Breuer served in that position during the prosecution of Thomas Drake the whistle blower from the NSA who was indicted in 2010 under the Espionage Act of 1917. 

A professor who is an expert on bank fraud told 60 Minutes that bank fraud like what took place at Country Wide could be prosecuted by both the DOJ or by the Securities and Exchange Commission but that the SEC unlike the DOJ can not impose prison sentences.   The professor did not understand why Country Wide's CEO was prosecuted by the SEC and not the DOJ.  Instead of a lengthy jail sentence the CEO was ordered to pay a $22 million dollar fine which was a small fraction of his compensation from Country Wide.

While watching 60 Minutes one wonders if they will mention that on the list of Obama's largest campaign contributors are 4 of the largest Wall street banks.  The more on learns about this the more it becomes obvious Obama needs to clean house at the DOJ if for no other reason then to help him try to win re-election. 

[Nebrfarmr]

I've said it before, and I'll say it again.  Holder doesn't seem to be very effective at the job he is supposed to be doing.

Only in white collar big bank and Wall Street crime (as well as a few others), can you swindle $100 million for yourself, be found guilty, pay a $10 million fine, and keep the rest, with no other real repurcussions.

[Samnospam]

The fact 60 minutes is talking about what was discussed here 3 years ago means the statute of limitations has probably about run out.

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[schnurrbart]

Yes, it is terrible.  Too bad that they were de-regulated and now certain people fight tooth and toe nail to keep them from being regulated again.

[bruce MN]

Sam, as I remember it back in the early fall of 2008 60 minutes presented an exhaustive expose of how unregulated derivatives activities played into the crisis that had just surfaced and had created tyhr radical steps the government had just taken. Was discussed here of course but as remains, the Amen caucus knew better. It was caused by ni####s and s##cs and losers and inferior types in general having tricked unsuspecting and righteous bankers into giving them big loans that they never had any intention of paying back. All of that banker and numbers talk stuff they were talking about in the segment wasn't about what the real man on the strrt knew and all of the real anecdotal evidence we'd all accumulated in our little corners of America.

[bruce MN]

PS Sam. In spite of whether it was on 60 M or not back then, this level of reporting very well might mean exactly what you say. The cheese is most likely to be starting to bind in all sorts of newly revealed places

[BA Deere]

You mean when Bill Clinton signed the repeal of Glass-Steagall Act?  http://mises.org/daily/3244  or the 1994 reforms that allowed banks to "sweep" money from demand deposits that had reserve requirements to money market funds that did NOT have reserve requirements?  If anyone wonders why Clinton had boom years ..the party was just getting started in the 90`s, today we are stuck having to pay the band.

[bruce MN]

The ultimate derivative position BA just might be to get someone to buy on what you know and sell on what you think you know. What 94 did was ship in more booze and coke and to pay off the cops to get them to stop ringing the doorbell. A bad thing to have had done, but absolutely nothing to do with the party getting started. The heroin started to flow with the supply side miracle a decade and a half earlier. 94 would have been one of thoae key opportunity points along the way when matters were on the table and the Reaganomics train wreck could have been stopped, but there was a bubble mentality in the air and nobody much cared about liquidity. Which, of course, supply side policies destroys like a raging cancer. Anybody who was considered to be anybody in the field of money or economics was the equivalent of a 5 pack a day smoker.

[kraft-t]

You folks don't like it when dems or Obama blames Bush for the lousy economy he left. Now you want to skip Bush and blame it on Clinton.

You do know that Glass-Steagall repeal was an iniative promoted by republicans most notably Phil Gramm and James Leach?

[johnaa]

  I suppose you are not familiar with how legislation is produced.  The President does not make laws,the congress does that, the President only signs or vetoes.

 ---- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass%E2%80%93Steagall_Act

snip== The Banking Act of 1933, Pub.L. 73-66, 48 Stat. 162, enacted June 16, 1933, was a law that established the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) in the United States and introduced banking reforms, some of which were designed to control speculation.[1] It is most commonly known as the Glass–Steagall Act, after its legislative sponsors, Senator Carter Glass (D–Va.) and Representative Henry B. Steagall (D–Ala.-3). Some provisions of the Act, such as Regulation Q, which allowed the Federal Reserve to regulate interest rates in savings accounts, were repealed by the Depository Institutions Deregulation and Monetary Control Act of 1980. Provisions that prohibit a bank holding company from owning other financial companies were repealed on November 12, 1999, by the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act, named after its co-sponsors Phil Gramm (R, Texas), Rep. Jim Leach (R, Iowa), and Rep. Thomas J. Bliley, Jr. (R, Virginia).[2][3]