Bill Black: Financial Regulations In Paralysis

[mother earth]

As a federal litigator in the late 1980s, Black played a central role in prosecuting the corruption responsible for the savings and loan crisis of the late 1980s. Since then he’s become one of America's top experts on financial fraud, which he see as endemic to the modern financial system.

In this interview, Black expresses his lament that the U.S. has descended into a type of crony capitalism that makes continued fraud a virtual certainty while increasingly neutering the safeguards intended to prevent and punish such abuse. This was not the case when Black was a regulator. In the aftermath of the S&L crisis, the U.S. Office of Thrift Supervision brought 3,000 lawsuits against identified perpetrators. In a number of cases, the OTS was able to claw back the funds and profits that the convicted parties had fraudulently obtained.

Fast forward to the 2008 financial collapse, in which the losses related to the household sector alone were over 70 times greater than they were during heart of the S&L crisis. The fraud was rampant and fairly obvious. Yet how many criminal referrals did the OTS make?

Zero.

What happened? Why has the OTS and other regulators allowed the same managements that crashed the mortgage market and dragged down the global financial markets with them to remain unprosecuted and free to continue looting the system?

To be sure, some of the fraudulent activity has been exposed, and the top banks have paid numerous fines for bad behavior. There have been a lot of settlements and civil cases, indicating that fraud was rampant. But in finance, you can always make more money. Prosecutions, on the other hand, get everyone’s attention.

Yet, Washington has been paralyzed. The U.S. attorney general has not begun a single investigation of criminal behavior by top management at major multinational banks. Seemingly there’s no real punishment for major misbehavior in the financial markets anymore.

In this interview, Black names names and highlights the extent of the government's complicity in extending this disgraceful state of affairs.

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For more background on Bill Black:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_K._Black

William Kurt Black (born September 6, 1951) is an American lawyer, academic, author, and a former bank regulator.[1] Black's expertise is in white-collar crime, public finance, regulation, and other topics in law and economics. He developed the concept of "control fraud", in which a business or national executive uses the entity he or she controls as a "weapon" to commit fraud.

Black is the author of, among others, The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One: How Corporate Executives and Politicians Looted the S&L Industry

[mother earth]

1. Black's current (4-2-15) article re: HSBC is particularly scathing and can be found here:

http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2015/04/hsbc-violates-its-sweetheart-deal-and-lynch-praises-it.html#more-9303

[DeSwiss]

2. K&R

- There is an ancient Greek saying: [font color=white]>>>>>>[/font]
[font color=white]>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>[/font]''The fish stinks from the head.''

Barack Obama: ''Some of the worst and most unethical things that happened on Wall Street weren't illegal.'' {P.S. - You might want to look first before you let everyone off.}

And then there was this famous excuse:
"I am concerned that the size of some of these institutions becomes so large that it does become difficult for us to prosecute them when we are hit with indications that if you do prosecute, if you do bring a criminal charge, it will have a negative impact on the national economy, perhaps even the world economy. And I think that is a function of the fact that some of these institutions have become too large." Eric Holder, The Hill

If none of these indignities will provoke people to direct action, then we are simply describing the end, in detail......

[mother earth]

3. TY, DeSwiss, I share Cenk's disdain. This is criminality enabled by our

own gov't, who seem to get the enormity of it, and somehow instead of putting an end to it, they reward it by fining the bums, instead of jailing them & barring them from banking. Reward the pillagers & let it proceed with impunity.

It is no wonder there is complete disgust for corporate candidates sponsored by the oligarchy.

Like FDR??? Really? Nothing illegal?

[DeSwiss]

4. That's because it's not ''our own government'' anymore.

- They paid for it. They have the receipts to prove it too.

As Noam Chomsky so eloquently stated: ''You cannot have a Capitalist Democracy -- the concepts are diametrically opposed to one each other.''

[RiverLover]

5. Thank you!

Yet, Washington has been paralyzed. The U.S. attorney general has not begun a single investigation of criminal behavior by top management at major multinational banks. Seemingly there’s no real punishment for major misbehavior in the financial markets anymore.

That's because the financial industry has taken over Treasury & writes their own legislation in Congress.

But hey, its all good as long as our team wins elections. That's all that really matters.