” Never found anything illegal with the bankers in the 2008 crash.”
Probably because they didn’t do anything illegal. That’s what happens when you buy the laws that you want.
A bipartisan Congress passed Gramm–Leach–Bliley 1999 and the Commodity Futures Modernization Act 2000 during Clinton, both of which opened the door to what the lenders were doing during the bubble.
“Probably because they didn’t do anything illegal.”
The credit default swaps were pure fraud. Also, they represented crap loans as a clean product when bundled. They sold it as grade A knowing it was garbage and were betting against them in the market.
If an Iowa chicken farmer sold all his bad eggs as grade A by selling nothing but lesser eggs in a batch. And while running this fraud he ran out and heavily invested in salmonella treatments.... he’d be in federal prison for a few decades. And not one with a golf course either. Yes, they were crooks.
Europe had no such laws, overcommitting to risk (unworthy borrowers) and hiding it in derivatives was why