Posted on 10/04/2015 2:44:39 PM PDT by VinL
Former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke says some Wall Street executives should have gone to jail for their roles in the financial crisis that gripped the country in 2008 and triggered the Great Recession.
Billions of dollars in fines have been levied against major banks and brokerage firms in the wake of the economic meltdown that was in large part triggered by reckless lending and shady securities dealings that blew up a housing bubble.
But in an interview with USA Today published Sunday, Bernanke said he thinks that in addition to the corporations, individuals should have been held more accountable.
"It would have been my preference to have more investigations of individual actions because obviously everything that went wrong or was illegal was done by some individual, not by an abstract firm," Bernanke said.
Asked if someone should have gone to jail, the former Fed chairman replied, "Yeah, I think so." He did not, however, name any individual he thought should have been prosecuted and noted that the Federal Reserve is not a law-enforcement agency.
Bernanke is promoting his new 600-page memoir, "The Courage to Act: A Memoir of a Crisis and Its Aftermath," which is scheduled to be published Monday.
...
The Associated Press obtained an early copy of the book last week. He writes that the taxpayer-provided bailouts of banks and Wall Street firms were hugely unpopular, but says they were necessary to avoid an economic catastrophe.
"I certainly was not eager to bail out Wall Street and I had no reason to want to bailout Wall Street itself," he told USA Today. "But we did it because we knew that if the financial system collapsed, the economy would immediately follow."
(Excerpt) Read more at kansascity.com ...
So should have some politicians like Dodd and Frank and the rest in the Wall Street pockets.
Bernanke should be in the same jail for the theft of older folks measly interest on savings transferred to the same bankers through ZIRP.
Extortion: After 16 banks caved in to White House demands to refund billions in losses to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, one outlier remains unrepentant. Nomura Holdings refuses to succumb to the political shakedown.
The Japanese bank's U.S. unit won't give in to extortionist regulators protecting Fannie/Freddie who claim it hoodwinked the toxic twins into buying pools of subprime mortgages, like it claimed Bank of America, JPMorgan and other U.S. banks did in the run-up to the mortgage crisis.
The government demands $1 billion in damages. Nomura says it won't give a dime toward the $18 billion ransom the feds already have shaken out of other banks who settled with the Federal Housing Finance Agency. Instead, it will make government prove it in court.
In opening arguments this week, the defendants argued Fannie and Freddie bought the mortgages knowing they were subprime and did so to meet "affordable housing" quotas of their political masters at HUD.
Unfortunately for Nomura, the game is rigged. The federal judge hearing the case — Clinton appointee Denise Cote — is a ringer for the administration. In recent filings, Cote has shown extreme prejudice in her decisions — virtually all rendered against Nomura.
Even though she concedes that, in buying subprime securities from Nomura, "Freddie Mac considered the extent to which underlying mortgage loans satisfied these housing goals," Cote claims such evidence is "immaterial" to the case. She argues the regulatory mandates, purchasing quotas and other political pressures heaped on Fannie and Freddie were merely "idiosyncratic" and therefore irrelevant.
Please. The HUD goals are highly relevant to this case. Internal documents from both HUD and Fannie and Freddie show the goals were driving them deeper into the subprime securities market and both complained about a growing risk of losses. So clearly, they understood the risks. (Excerpt) Read more at news.investors.com ...
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Obama and Congressional Democrats----with a huge assist from Eric Holder----have given NeighborWorks America (formerly ACORN) and La Raza a huge funding source of tax dollars to achieve Obama's dream of a permanent Democrat majority.
Obama/Holder/Dems are forcing taxpayers via DOJ litigation WRT bank settlements----into paying off these nefarious organizations.
DOJ went after CitiCorp and ordered them to pay $50 million to La Raza and NeighborWorks America as part of the settlement.
Another clause in the agreement makes it possible for La Raza and NeighborWorks America to rake in even larger amounts of money.
Of the remaining money the banks needed to pay in settlements, the banks were able to contribute additional money to La Raza and NeighborWorks America. For every dollar they contribute, it reduces their debt to the government by 2 dollars. That’s some mighty powerful incentive to give generously.
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House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) and House Financial Services Chairman Jeb Hensarling have questioned why this money was sent to the ACORN clone and the blood-thirsty LaRaza----rather than to the alleged victims of the bank’s crime. The administration of course declined to answer.
Here's part of the Congressmen's letter to Holder: “It seems that the alleged victims are not the primary beneficiaries of these multi-billion dollar settlements. Instead, the terms in the Justice Department’s two latest settlements look less like consumer relief and more like a scheme to funnel money to politically favored special interest groups.”
“This makes donations to activist groups far more attractive to banks than providing direct relief to injured consumers. As a result, the settlements appear to serve as a vehicle for funding activist groups rather than as a means of securing relief for consumers actually harmed.”
So now, with Social Security cards, manpower and tons of money to go along with the two years before the next presidential election, the largest and most successful voter fraud campaign may alter the course of the elections not to mention the future of the United States.
If the Wall Street execs need to go to jail, then how about the government bureaucrat execs like Fannie Mae or the Congress execs like Barney Frank?
And has the CRA been abolished?
and if not are the bad loans still being made
and why should be expect a different result..tick tick tick
“Asked if someone should have gone to jail, the former Fed chairman replied, “Yeah, I think so.” He did not, however, name any individual he thought should have been prosecuted and noted that the Federal Reserve is not a law-enforcement agency.”
Hey Ben, I’ll be glad to send you a list, and you’re at the top of it along with Paulson, Geithner and all the top folks at Goldman Sachs. Oh, and I almost forgot, the jerk that was elected Governor of New Joisey before Crispy.
Nobody’s going to jail for the big crash - half the ‘rat party, which spent forty years trying to give away free housing to the poor paid for with taxpayer money in return for votes, starting especially with Billy Clinton, would be behind bars if that ever happened....
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