7 of the Nastiest Scams, Rip-Offs and Tricks From Wall Street Crooks
29/12/2011 23:39
Last week several executives from the Federal National Mortgage Association and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, known as “Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac,”were sued by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for civil fraud. They were charged with misleading investors about the quality of the loans they were buying. But this is a civil suit, not a criminal prosecution, so they face no possibility of jail time. And the SEC is notoriously ready to settle these cases, accepting fines without admission of guilt. Meanwhile, last month Bloomberg News revealed that the Federal Reserve secretly loaned $1.2 trillion to banks on Dec. 5, 2008, their neediest day, even as some of their CEOs were assuring investors their banks were healthy. Are these CEOs facing prosecution or even civil fraud suits for doing the very same thing? Not so much.
These stories barely even reveal the tip of the iceberg of financial malfeasance. We have been hearing for years now about the scams, frauds, rackets, schemes, tricks and various other ways that people on Wall Street made gazillions while crashing the economy. The one thing we haven’t heard anything about is anyone at the top being held criminally accountable … for anything!
Given these recent developments, the end of a bad year seems like a good time to take a look back at just a few examples of what was, and in too many cases, still is going on. So here is a little holiday-season nudge to all the attorneys general who may be hesitant to take them on -- if not with jail time, then at least The banksters still have faced no accountability.
They got bailed out … will We, the People continue to get sold out?
