Why Isn't Wall Street in Jail?

Here's an informative video that I wanted you guys to see..

Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura - Wall Street

I watched this video a couple days ago and was pretty shocked.

-ChriS

Originally posted by BlasteR
Here's an informative video that I wanted you guys to see..

Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura - Wall Street

I watched this video a couple days ago and was pretty shocked.

-ChriS

Here is another good program by Frontline on PBS called The Warning

www.pbs.org...


Just a small clip from this frontline documentary above, and this occured in 1998

"I didn't know Brooksley Born," says former SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt, a member of President Clinton's powerful Working Group on Financial Markets. "I was told that she was irascible, difficult, stubborn, unreasonable." Levitt explains how the other principals of the Working Group -- former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan and former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin -- convinced him that Born's attempt to regulate the risky derivatives market could lead to financial turmoil, a conclusion he now believes was "clearly a mistake."

Born's battle behind closed doors was epic, Kirk finds. The members of the President's Working Group vehemently opposed regulation -- especially when proposed by a Washington outsider like Born.

"I walk into Brooksley's office one day; the blood has drained from her face," says Michael Greenberger, a former top official at the CFTC who worked closely with Born. "She's hanging up the telephone; she says to me: 'That was [former Assistant Treasury Secretary] Larry Summers. He says, "You're going to cause the worst financial crisis since the end of World War II."... [He says he has] 13 bankers in his office who informed him of this. Stop, right away. No more.'"

Read more: www.businessinsider.com...

Originally posted by Raist

Agreed . So let's arrest and convict the little guy signing papers on a loan he knew he could not pay. Let's arrest and convict the banker who allowed the loan to go through. Finally let us arrest and convict the politicians who set it all up from the start.

The little guy signing the papers on the loan probably DID think he could pay. I minored in business, it was originally my major so I have three years before switching to philosophy. My core was accounting and finance. I know how much trouble my fellow STUDENTS had with the math. Even after spending a whole semester doing it, many of them barely understood it. And you want to pretend that some high school graduate or even drop out working at the burger barn was supposed to understand how to figure out what he or she was getting into? Yeah, ok. Its deliberate on their part.

You are supposed to be able to trust the professionals loaning you money. It always was that way in the past, because in the past, the people loaning you money had a stake in you actually being able to pay it back. They werent just interested in getting that loan processed so they could sell it at a profit to some sucker somewhere.

And the little guy is paying the price for their "criminal" act. They have lost their homes, and any equity they had, their credit is a shambles, they are humiliated, and some of them even homeless. What more do you want to happen to them? Why should we not blame the people who manipulated the system over the course of many years responsible?

I am all for making sure everyone responsible pays for their part in it. The borrowers already are. Its time for the rest of them to get their share of the blame.

reply to post by Illusionsaregrander


It is not hard math when you look at an example.

Say I make $3k a month.
I have a house payment of $600 and two car payment equaling another $600 a month. I am now down $1,200 and still need to put gas in my cars, feed my family, and pay for electricity/gas, sewer and water, as well as garbage pickup.
Simple facts are if your house payment is taking half or more of your monthly income you should not be buying the house.

Either you have the money to spend or you do not. Most people who willingly bought into these home loans are just as guilty as the bankers and politicians. After all who knows more about their financial situation than the person signing the papers?

Now you say they lost their home. Yep, as well they should have and they should have to keep paying on it what they can as well. Same with a car loan. If you get it repossessed you have to pay the difference of what the bank sells it for.

Again everyone involved should be jailed and fined. I am sick of all those who are making things worse for everyone.

Raist

reply to post by Illusionsaregrander


So the gent who signed the mortgate documents is not to blame because he could not understand the terms? He thought he could afford it? Many of these folks were looking for or owned homes prior to this bubble. The were looking at or affording to live in a home and all of a sudden thought they could afford a home double the price? I'm sorry, but when someone is signing a document that obligates them to a several hundred thousand dollar debt who does not understand what he's signing is a fool. If they can't figure it out or find a friend who can help them with it, they should live in an apartment.

Again, just another example where the bonehead is absolved of all responsibility. As far as the bankers, sure there are folks like Jamie Dimon who are still sitting pretty, but tens of thousands of these folks lost their jobs as well.

It cracks me up that the same folks on this site who pound the table demanding personal freedom and rights are in many cases the same people who are so quick to absolve folks from the ramifications of exercising those same freedoms.

reply to post by Illusionsaregrander


It doesn't take more than a fifth grade education to understand what an adjustable rate mortgage is.

It does take a fifth grade student in economics to sign a loan for a $350,000 house with a combined $70,000/year take home with 2 kids.

Everyone is to blame. But no one forced them to spend over their means either. I am sure it just wasn't the house that ultimately killed them in the end. In fact I am positive of this.

These "big bank" people were ruined as well. They were rich beforehand, and if they were not one of the officers of the company - they were crushed most likely as well. I am sure more than a handful that worked for AIG spent over their means as well, and likely crushed. Last time I checked their stock (split adjusted) is close to worthless.

reply to post by dolphinfan


Why should the borrower be held to a higher standard than the lender? Whose money is it? The lenders. Who has the trained employees? The lender. Who (should) have most to lose? The lender. If I lend my car to some obviously drunk idiot, whose fault is it when my car gets wrecked and I get sued?

Im all for EVERYONE involved getting punished. You arent going to lure me into some argument about the borrowers that detracts from the fact that the people making these loans need to be prosecuted. And I want the scale and scope of the crime to be reflected in the scale and scope of the punishment. We need to change the way white color crimes are handled. Contributing to the crash of a nations economy should land you more jail time than robbing the neighborhood grocery store.

You want the little guy to go to jail too? Im down. Lets lock the little guy up. As long as for once, the real criminals, the people who orchestrate this kind of fraud, get their butts put away too.

Originally posted by dolphinfan
reply to post by Illusionsaregrander

 

It cracks me up that the same folks on this site who pound the table demanding personal freedom and rights are in many cases the same people who are so quick to absolve folks from the ramifications of exercising those same freedoms.

Moral hazard went out the window. But in regard to this last paragraph, I am always thinking the same exact thing.

People want the .gov to keep out of their business. Interestingly enough, when cut by the sword they have been living with, all bets are off.

Few will go to jail, though many may ultimately be shot.
Folks, this is not going to end well. Our financial system is a fraud, it has been exposed but it is orchestrated from the very top. Who is going to jail the guys who pay the jailers? The free press?
You have to understand this is the most powerful mafia in the world that governs the west, and it simply will not go down peacefully. Every vice the world has ever known, every incarnation of evil you can imagine, they possess and embody.
These banksters empowered by the federal reserve do not loan you their money, they loan you YOUR future and the future of your children at interest that cannot be paid back. They have put nothing of any value up in this agreement, but gain everything including YOUR dignity.
They are lawless, immoral, and decadent. They possess no qualities that define humans as humane and compassionate.
People simply must start understanding more about what they are dealing with in our federal government, and those that control them.

Originally posted by Illusionsaregrander
You want the little guy to go to jail too? Im down. Lets lock the little guy up. As long as for once, the real criminals, the people who orchestrate this kind of fraud, get their butts put away too.

I am game let's get the ball rolling and jail everyone of them and fine all of them little guy included.

When we look at it many of the "little guys" were people trying to make a fast back and live in a higher standard than they could. Many wanted second houses to flip or rent and their risk bit them in the butt now all of us have to pay for all the crap.

Screw that fine and jail everyone involved. They get at least three squares a day and with good behavior can get out early.

Raist

One thing people are forgetting is that the government + Big Business + The Investment Banks are playing with a full deck of cards. They know the score and have all the data at their disposal just like a corporation by itself does that directs policies where they want it go in order to maximize the best for their pockets. They use marketing for psychological programming via Wall Street, (now is a good time to buy, a house is an investment, prices will keep going up etc, mortgage brokers pushing out liar loans, majority of economists don't see a recession coming etc))

In order to understand the problem, you can't look at it from one angle, but all angles. And the top elite have a view all of us are not privy to, hence the full deck of cards. You have the best and brightest and top talent in Washington and Wall Street.

If you look at a graph showing the median house prices in the country from 1970 to 2010, and compare it with the median household wages from 1970 to 2010, what you'll see is that the graphs follow the 3x rule when buying a house from 1970 to 2002, when the DOT.COM Bubble burst. From 2002 onward is when housing prices were skyrocketing out of control and the 3x rule was dropped since people were told its an investment by snake sales man on wall street.

They had to create a new bubble or the we would have been in the same position then as we are now. Except, this was a way for a lot of wealth to be transferred to the top and it shows thats where we are at now.

Marketing and Psychological Conditioning does work, and thats why advertisers spend billions of dollars a year, because it does work.

From refinancing your home, your credit cards etc, taking out loans for college, medical bills etc, its all intended to funnel wealth to the top.

In order to be really free and make your own choices, people need to throw out the radio and tv that make you pay for their marketing propaganda. Perhaps for the sake of the countries interest, we should ban marketing. But that would never happen, because they want to be able to have the ability to sucker people in their schemes.

At least, trust for the government and mega corps and investment banks is dropping, and where trust drops, many will no longer listen to their lies and look into alternative news sources. Which is one reason why conspiracy forums have an all time high membership rate. Even ordinary forms are full of people sick of the BS from the gov, banksters and wall street

Originally posted by Dance4life



People want the .gov to keep out of their business. Interestingly enough, when cut by the sword they have been living with, all bets are off.

Oh you mean the free market advocates begging for handouts and bailouts when their piss poor decision making runs their companies into the ground? The people who fought and lobbied endlessly for deregulation, for less government intervention, but then when their own greed and idiocy causes them to make errors that SHOULD have wiped them off the playing field, they survive to play another day because they were "too big to fail?"

You are right, I agree. They should have had to eat every bit of the consequences of their own choices. NO one should have been bailed out. Not individuals, not banks, not investors, no one. And the government should not have been propping up home prices with tax credits either, so cushion the losses.

The invisible hand should have been able to do its work.

Originally posted by dolphinfan
Why isn't the bleeding heart government official who mandated that banks give loans to folks who could not afford them in jail?

I would really like to see the document where the government MANDATES that banks loan money to insolvent people. I'm all ears.

reply to post by jacobe001


So advertising is to blame now?

People have no way to say no I cannot afford that? Where is the personal responsibility anymore?

The banks and all that know the score that they can produce yes. However, the consumer knows better than any their financial status. Most were either too lazy to figure it out, or just did not care.

Sadly yes there are some who got caught in the middle for other reasons, they should be given help. Those though that obviously played the system (someone making $40k a year trying to buy a $300k home) should have to pay the price, as well as those who enabled them to sign the papers to begin with.

In the end they can advertise until their face turns blue, if I know I cannot afford it I am not buying it.


Raist

reply to post by Illusionsaregrander


I don't disagree with you and totally agree that the gents who run these firms did not receive sufficient punishment nor that they are in a boys club and will be taken care of regardless.

In any event, Richard Fuld who ran Lehman Brothers into the ground has a networth of over $50M. Mr. Fuld will be just fine. Jimmy Cayne, who blew up Bear Stearns had a stake in the company of $1.6bn and sold out for $61M. Now thats losing $1bn of personal wealth over night, but Mr. Cayne will be OK.

Lets take it a step below that though. The traders who make $millions/year were not creating these securities, they were trading instruments (products) that their firms created. They had no reason not to assume that their Harvard trained lawyers and finance dudes had not evaluated the quality of these products. Their job is to understand trends in any market and to buy low and sell high. These gents did nothing wrong and many of them lost their jobs. You might argue that they are/were over paid (I would disagree), but that is another argument. the vast amount of folks in the industry are ethical professional who endeavor to make money for themselves and their clients the old fashion way and that is by understanding the markets and their clients and managing quality portfolios at a level of risk appropriate for and understood by the client.

My problem with this whole mess is that there is a rush to judge "Wall Street" when the folks who caused this mess number in the hundreds, not the tens of thousands of hard working folks who are in the asset management business.

This entire business could easily have been avoided with effective government regulation. The SEC failed miserably and no structural changes to the regulatory regime have been put into place. A few steps could be taken (should have been taken immediately by Obama) that could have measurably fixed these problems. There are a number of things, mostly related to transparency that anyone who understands the workings of the industry could put on a napkin that would go a long way to if not solving the problem would certainly make it much less likely to happen again.

I'm sorry, but I don't buy the "predatory lending" business, whether it is a bank, morgage company or payday loan shop. Nobody forced these folks to sign the documents and give the little guy a bit of credit. He knew exactly what he was doing and that was try to make some money.

Rather than continue to rail on who is to blame on what happened, how about we focus on who is failing to take steps to see to it that it does not happen again and that burden is squarely on the government. Now are you going to see an ex chairman of Goldman Sachs who sits in the Treasury or SEC do something to his pals, fishing buddies and the gents who he is likely to go work for for several million a year after he's done his stint in the government? No you're not and until you have someone in the White House who has the stones to put someone in that job who is not up Wall Street's keister in the Sec Treasury job it won't happen.

reply to post by buddhasystem

They did it by "easing" the qualifications. Barney Frank actually threatened the big banks, that they would be forced to by law.
Of course, this was all part of the bigger scam(s). Him getting reelected, the banks getting assurances against losses, huge profits for all while the bubble inflates, and they are all subsequently disappear with their profits.
Where is Dodd? Where is Fwank? Where are the guys that got Glass-Stegall repealed?
Well, Boehner is still around.

Originally posted by Illusionsaregrander

Originally posted by Dance4life



People want the .gov to keep out of their business. Interestingly enough, when cut by the sword they have been living with, all bets are off.

Oh you mean the free market advocates begging for handouts and bailouts when their piss poor decision making runs their companies into the ground? The people who fought and lobbied endlessly for deregulation, for less government intervention, but then when their own greed and idiocy causes them to make errors that SHOULD have wiped them off the playing field, they survive to play another day because they were "too big to fail?"

You are right, I agree. They should have had to eat every bit of the consequences of their own choices. NO one should have been bailed out. Not individuals, not banks, not investors, no one. And the government should not have been propping up home prices with tax credits either, so cushion the losses.

The invisible hand should have been able to do its work.

edit on 16-2-2011 by Illusionsaregrander because: to fix a quote

Maybe, maybe not. I am not a real fan of living in the past. Hindsight is always 20/20.

IMO, no one should be "jailed". The people that got burnt were most likely the ones at fault. It goes for everyone.

The bailouts had nothing to do with keeping Lloyd Blankfein smiling, but all about providing worldwide economic stability at a time of real crisis. These are much different things.

What difference does it make anyway? Talk, talk, talk, and talk is cheap.
No body is going to jail, because as usual we won't do anything. We sit and take whatever is crammed down our throats, and that is that.

We are helpless little sitting ducks, sitting in front of our computers complaining. We don't even know how to orchestrate change anymore. We don't know how, and I'm not sure we have the testicular fortitude to act on it, even if we did.

We deserve what we get. We're raped and robbed, and apparently we don't mind. Pathetic.

reply to post by dolphinfan


seems if you can afford to pay your loan and do, you're scum.

and can afford to and don't, you're scum.

and if you can't afford to pay your loan but do by cutting almost everything off to do so, you're scum.

and if you can't afford to pay your loan and don't, you're scum.

so it seems, according to the people in this thread, everbody's scum

...because they have not been convicted...because they have not been indicted...because their ranks fill the investigating agencies (SEC, FTC, DoJ, etc.) and then come back to the private sector in a revolving door...because they pay off the politicans with campaign loot..which they got from the TARP and QED (1 and 2) money...because they control the f'ing world, including the giant corporations who run the private prisons they'd otherwise be sent to.