7 of the Nastiest Scams, Rip-Offs and Tricks From Wall Street Crooks

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/occupywallst/153530/7_of_the_nastiest_scams%2C_rip-offs_and_tricks_from_wall_street_crooks/

How many high-level Wall Street players have been put in jail for the crimes that led to the financial crisis? Not. Even. One.

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!

[Minarchist]

1. 7 of the Nastiest Scams, Rip-Offs and Tricks From The SEC

How many high-level SEC players have been put in jail for the crimes that led to the financial crisis? Not. Even. One.

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2. SEC players and wall street players are pretty much one and the same.

revolving door, the only ones who can understand complex businesses like derivatives and all that.

[Minarchist]

3. But, but, the SEC is a government agency--they exist to "help" the people.

[Jim Lane]

4. Actually, the worst scandal is that so much of what they did was NOT illegal.

Dodd-Frank, even in the weakened version that passed, plugged some of the loopholes, but we need to go much further.