Should the bankers and wall street crooks who caused 2008 crisis be punished?

What fraud was committed?

What regulations were broken?

 

defaulting loans caused only small losses to the bank portfolios.
The banks collapsed because they were highly over leveraged on the mountain of crap securities created from those products including swaps which no counter party or insurance could ever hope to pay out, and to which the regulators turned a blind eye. That is fraud on a massive scale, and on multiple levels.

For all of your pretending to be smarter than the liberals, you do seem to lack basic knowledge of the topic.

 

hundreds of billions worth of liar loans based on absent underwriting and appraisal standards, turned into tens of trillions of derivatized securities products, and you have difficulty figuring out where the fraud was ?

 

Yet you claim it was the cassino bets that brought the crisis. The cassino bets, as large as they were, were not the primary cause of the crisis. The government made the assets toxic to start, as you claim above.

It is clear that wallstreet ran amuk, yet it did so with the blessings of the government.

 

Suicide watch? Your hyperbole makes it difficult to take you seriously. Once again, as with personal taxes, the tiresome parroted call for more taxes as a solution to economic problems seems just rock-headed. If you provided some sort of proof of what you claim, as I have done, it would be easier to take your view seriously (though it still would not be easy). Only Japan has a higher adjusted corporate tax rate than the US.
http://www.taxfoundation.org/news/show/22917.html

 

its is a crime when you sell them to overseas clients and label them as triple "A"

 

yes, but the collapse came when the banks began to take small losses on highly over leveraged portfolios. When you are leveraged 50:1, a 2% loss wipes out your "liquidity". The over leveraging was the primary cause, and the banks were over leveraged on the derivatives products. The defaulting mortgages themselves only amounted to small percentage losses.

Brooksley Born Warned of this danger back in 98 as head of the CFTC.
Ironically See was ridden out of town by Rubin(treasury sec), Greenspan, Levitt( SEC) and Clinton.

 

Since when was more taxes an excuse for tax avoidance?

 

That does sound wise and reasonable.

 

??? What? One could rationally argue that more taxes creates tax avoidance.
Corporations, like people (http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2011/04/democratic-tax-cheats.html), will do what they can to avoid paying taxes. You know it. I know it. We all know it. Even Jeffery Immelt and G.E. knows it.

There are these things called loopholes through which rich people slip so as to exempt some of their taxable earnings. I dare say they even have exemptions in the rest of the western industrialized world (though I'm no international tax expert). You don't expect corporations NOT to use these tools, do you?
Tax me please billionaires don't spend more on taxes then they have to, despite the pleading for more taxes.

If anyone in government was serious about raising more revenue through taxation they would gut all the special provisions...yet they go on.
Although some republicans have called for scrapping the entire tax code democrats disingenuously fight it and always demonize the notion with the same predictable results...we keep our byzantine tax code and all the exemptions that corporations slip through (and liberals will not remove, or even attempt to remove). http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304510704575562230737760778.html

 

Yes she did, and this is just one of the reasons I blame the government as apposed to just wallstreet.

The derivitive dominos would not have collapsed without the toxic mortgages going first. Wallstreet knew that the governments agenda was improper and decided to bet against it.

The crooks have been in Washington all along.

 

Its sad to still see Wall Street apologists these days.

 

I have no sympathy for wallstreet, there are just as many crooks among them. Yet, it was still initiated by government policy.

 

the beauty of government granted privilege, the heart of corporatism. I blame both, but most of all the ones that grant the privilege.

 

wall street is only as powerful as the privilege it is granted by its whores in government. It is a two way street.

 

I guess I do not get it. By what you posted above, it seems that you are not really against theft... as long as those that are taking have less than a certain amount.

So it is horrible (which I agree) when a bank screws people out of their money due to bad practices, yet it is completely OK to TAKE all of the banks assets and give them away to people just because the people have less money?

In my world.... robin hood is still a crook. Just the way I see it....

 

bankrupt companies don't get to keep assets.
They are liquidated.

 

I have said this before.... and I still believe it just as strongly. Fear is the natural and neccessary enemy of greed. All companies want to make the most profits possible. Overextending their resources, doing something illegal (fear of the law), or dealing with risky assets, usually keeps the greed in check, and keep it "fair".

When the govt is willing to step in to "bailout" the banks, and I believe the banks certainly knew this before hand, then that natural fear is removed by govt money. In much the same way a teenager living at home will do foolish things with their money, the banks went crazy knowing that the govt would step in if the "party" got out of control.

While the banks certainly did things that were increadibly foolish, they did so under the protection of the govt. If the banks KNEW and the govt made it fairly CLEAR that no such bailout would ever be forthcomming, then I really do believe none of the financial meltdown would have occurred. In that environment no amount of govt "pressure" would overcome the threat of the banks loosing everything.

 

If you go bankrupt, you are liquidated. Private entities now own your assets.
If the government feels it necessary to bail you out with tax payer money, the tax payers should own your assets.

Of course the political whores bailed out the banks. Would you have expected any different ? The government is equally complicit in the fraud. Why do you think there have been no indictments ?

 

Did your taxes rise to bail out the banks?

 

So all the talk that if we didn't bail out the major financial institutions and a world wide economic collapse would ensue if we didn't.. that was a lie?

 

Good points.... I am still waiting for my check from the money that I "lent" to GM for it's bailout.... will never see it I am sure...

 

Did your taxes increase for the bailout?

 

That is BS......They gave those loans because they knew people could not keep up on the payments...The plan was to milk each loan as much as possible, foreclose on them when they couldnt pay anymore and give a loan to the next person and do the same thing over again. And the sad thing is that is it was legal under Bush, so they can't be pushed.

 

Hey, nice meme. A pack of lies but that's not relevant. It's what liberals do.

The liberals decided it would be really nice if everyone owned a home. They pressured mortgage companies, including banks, with the plethora of federal regulations to give mortgages to people who had neither the ability nor the intention of paying them. Now, how can you make money doing that? Well, the crooked liberal politicians gave government guarantees for the loans so p3eople would buy them.

On the bright side, some of the liberal politicians did get some really great deals on mortgages. And, when all was said and done, it worked out exactly as the liberal politicians planned.

Chris Dodd and Barney Frank should be bunk mates in a federal prison.

On a related note, back in that time my bank notified me that they were going out of the credit card business. I called my banker and was told that they were in trouble with the feds for not granting enough bad mortgages, low CRA score, and for not giving credit cards to people who would never pay them. Heartless bankers.