The Banksters KNEW what they were doing

[kpete]

OP-ED COLUMNIST
A Banker Speaks, With Regret
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: November 30, 2011

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“You’ve got somebody making $20,000 buying a $500,000 home, thinking that she’d flip it,” he said. “That was crazy, but the banks put programs together to make those kinds of loans.”

Especially when mortgages were securitized and sold off to investors, he said, senior bankers turned a blind eye to shortcuts.

“The bigwigs of the corporations knew this, but they figured we’re going to make billions out of it, so who cares? The government is going to bail us out. And the problem loans will be out of here, maybe even overseas.”

One memory particularly troubles Theckston. He says that some account executives earned a commission seven times higher from subprime loans, rather than prime mortgages. So they looked for less savvy borrowers — those with less education, without previous mortgage experience, or without fluent English — and nudged them toward subprime loans.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/01/opinion/kristof-a-banker-speaks-with-regret.html?_r=2&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha212
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/12/01/1041595/-The-Banksters-KNEW-what-they-were-doing?via=siderec

[WildNovember]

1. Yes they did.

http://www.signallake.com/innovation/Looting1993.pdf

Looting: The Economic Underworld of Bankruptcy for Profit
Author(s): George A. Akerlof, Paul M. Romer, Robert E. Hall, N. Gregory Mankiw
Source: Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Vol. 1993, No. 2 (1993), pp. 1-73
Published by: The Brookings Institution
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2534564

[FreakinDJ]

2. ZERO Banksters in Jail for Looting the American Tax Coffers

Try stealing a candy bar from the local 7-11 and see what happens

[no_hypocrisy]

3. And it's still legal. The opportunities to continue to to do this just aren't there.

Reform. Reform. Reform.

Hope Elizabeth Warren takes this up as soon as she's sworn in.

BTW I personally witnessed flipping in my law office. My boss represented both a buyer and a seller who were the same person at the same time. The client would be buying a building in East Orange and simultaneously selling it for more than $50,000 than he was prospectively buying it for. I asked (naively) how could the client legally sell property that he didn't own and my boss assured me that it was all right because the selling closing date was after the date the client would buy it, albeit within one week of the buying closing date.