CBS Uncovers Massive US Mortgage Fraud

Nobody has gone to jail, but billions have been stolen. This is not an "accident". This theft was coldly calculated by Wall Street banks and big banks across the US. And nobody has gone to jail for these massive crimes!

You will be thrown in the slammer if your steal $20 from the corner store, but steal a billion or two and the legal system has no interest in you. Instead you get legislators fawning over you, asking you just which new "legislation" you want passed to facilitate their "entrepreneurial impulses". You get to shake the President's hand and appointed to his blue ribbon commissions.

It is incredible...

This is the wet dream of Reagan with his "trickle down" economics. It has all come true. And you can watch the fruits of lobbying and money buying politicians over the last 30 years in this CBS Sixty Minutes report:




I love the careful language. Sheila Bair, Chairman of the FDIC, the guys who are supposed to make sure that the money the bank claims to have they really have. But when she talks about this massive mortgage fraud her language becomes "this became pervasive and it got sloppy" and "cutting corners" and "not having any quality controls". Funny language for a crime. That is like talking about a corner store bandit as "the fellow had a bad haircut and appears strangely nervous". I don't think that is the commentary most people have when they are talking about a thief. They use worlds like "crime", "theft", "stealing". But when you steal billions, the language becomes oh so much more "genteel"!

I think it is funny that Sheila Bair is talking about the fix being the setting up of a "cleanup fund". Why I bet Al Capone would have been delighted to hear Elliot Ness decide to stop busting still and arresting crooks and instead focus on "setting up a cleanup fund" to handle the problem of illegal and deadly home brewed alcohol. In fact, I'm pretty sure the entire prison population of the US would love to be treated by Wall Street execs and big bank execs and be treated to "cleanup funds" instead of hard time in the slammer.

I'm waiting for "perp walks" for the top layer of management for all of the Wall Street banks and all the big banks in America (plus a lot of the big international banks). Until that happens, this isn't justice. This is giving a "get out of jail free" to thiefs who specialize in stealing billions while throwing the book at the thief who steals $20. This isn't "justice". This is a system where the criminals run the "justice system" for their own benefit and have bought and paid for the "government" to get the laws they want.

Click here to read the full CBS Sixty Minutes report on this massive mortgage fraud. Lynn Szymoniak should be given some "citizen's award" for exposing this massive corruption. Why is Szymoniak mostly unknown while the big criminals are still CEOs on Wall Street and in the big banks? Where is the justice?

Update 2011apr06: From The BIg Picture blog, here is a bit about the size of the mortgage problem in the US:

From LPS’ First Look/Mortgage Monitor:

• Total U.S. loan delinquency rate: 8.8%
• Total U.S. foreclosure inventory rate: 4.15%
• Total U.S. non-current inventory: 6,856,000
• States with most non-current loans: Florida, Nevada, Mississippi, New Jersey, Georgia
• States with fewest non-current loans: Montana, Wyoming, Alaska, South Dakota, North Dakota

The LPS report also noted that “February’s data also showed a 23 percent increase in Option ARM foreclosures over the last six months, far more than any other product type. In terms of absolute numbers, Option ARM foreclosures stand at 18.8 percent, a higher level than Subprime foreclosures ever reached.”

Read that again. There are nearly 6.9 million houses that will be foreclosed in the near future.