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Here is a discussion of the credit crisis and the point that there are just not many people hired to prosecute white collar crime. How important do you think white collar crime is? How many people should be employed to prosecute it?
"Well, I say the both of them were driven by fraud. The Savings & Loan crisis was a tragedy in two parts. First part was not fraud, it was interest rate risk. But the second phase, which was vastly more expensive, was to defraud and the National Commission that looked into the causes of the crisis said that the typical large failure fraud was invariably present. And there were real regulators then. Our agency filed well over 10,000 criminal referrals that resulted in over 1,000 felony convictions and cases designated as nature. And even that understates the grade in which we went after the elite. Because we worked very closely with the FBI and the Justice Department, to prioritize cases—creating the top 100 list of the 100 worst institutions which translated into about 600 or 700 executives—and so the bulk of those thousand felony convictions were the worst fraud, the most elite frauds.
In the current crisis, of course they appointed anti-regulators. And this crisis goes back well before 2007 and of course it is continuing, it does not end at 2009. So the FBI warned in open testimony in the House of Representatives, in September 2004—we are now talking seven years ago—that there was an epidemic of mortgage fraud, their words, and they predicted that it would cause a financial crisis, crisis being their word, if it were not contained. Well no one thinks that it was contained.
All right so you have massive fraud driving this crisis, hyperinflating the bubble, an FBI warning and how many criminal referrals did the same agency do, in this crisis. Remember it did well over 10,000 in the prior crisis. Well the answer is zero. They completely shut down making criminal referrals and whichever administration you hate the most, you can hate because while most of this certainly occurred in the Bush Administration, the Obama Administration has obviously not changed it. Obviously did not see it as a priority to prosecute these elite criminals who caused this devastating injury."
Is this a serious failure by the government? How should this be corrected? How can it be corrected?
"Now that's an extraordinary number, especially when you look at the studies. And here I am going to quote from the Mortgage Bankers Association. That is the trade association of the perps and this is their Anti-Fraud Specialist Unit, and they reported this to every member of the Mortgage Bankers Association in 2006. So nobody can claim they did not know. They found three critical things, first they said this kind of loan where you do not do underwriting is, and I am quoting again, “an open invitation to fraudsters.” Second, they said “the best study of this found a 90% fraud incident.” In other words, if you look at 100 liars loans, 90 of them are fraudulent. And third they said, therefore these loans where the euphemism is stated income are Alt-A loans, actually deserve the title that the industry calls the Behind Closed Doors, and that is liars loans. The other thing we know from other studies and investigations, is that it was overwhelmingly lenders and their agents that put the ‘lie’ in liars loans. Now that is obvious when you look at the lies about appraisals, because homeowners cannot inflate appraisals. But lenders can and how they did it was shown in an investigation by then New York Attorney General Cuomo, now Governor, who found that Washington Mutual, which is called WAMU, and is the largest bank failure in the history of the United States, and indeed the history of the world, had a black list of appraisers. But you got on the black list if you were an honest appraiser, and refused to inflate the appraisal."
"Yeah, we have known for centuries, that if you don’t underwrite loans, or if you don’t underwrite insurance, you’ll get something called "adverse selection". And that means you get the worse possible borrowers or people being insured and the expected value of lending to somebody, in conditions of serious adverse selection, is negative. Or to put that in English, that means if you lend this way, you lose money. And we have known this for centuries. This is like betting against the house in Las Vegas. You could win some individual bets, but you stay at the table for three years, and you are going to lose everything. And as we say, you will lose the house, to the house. And, that is exactly what is going to happen here. So yeah, the CEO’s knew all about this. Why did they do it? And the answer is, here is the recipe, it’s got four ingredients for creating what the Nobel Prize Winner in Economics, George Akerlof and his colleague Paul Romer said in 1993 was "a sure thing". And that sure thing is what in criminology we call accounting control fraud."
I think that americans must vote against the established politicians, and that fines should be levied against the institutions which took part (and maybe they should be 'weakened' so they can't take part in the future).
Now obviously he is wanting to sell his book. And I might not understand anything, so if you vehemently disagree you can call me a **** or you can point out why he is wrong.
JM
"Well, I say the both of them were driven by fraud. The Savings & Loan crisis was a tragedy in two parts. First part was not fraud, it was interest rate risk. But the second phase, which was vastly more expensive, was to defraud and the National Commission that looked into the causes of the crisis said that the typical large failure fraud was invariably present. And there were real regulators then. Our agency filed well over 10,000 criminal referrals that resulted in over 1,000 felony convictions and cases designated as nature. And even that understates the grade in which we went after the elite. Because we worked very closely with the FBI and the Justice Department, to prioritize cases—creating the top 100 list of the 100 worst institutions which translated into about 600 or 700 executives—and so the bulk of those thousand felony convictions were the worst fraud, the most elite frauds.
In the current crisis, of course they appointed anti-regulators. And this crisis goes back well before 2007 and of course it is continuing, it does not end at 2009. So the FBI warned in open testimony in the House of Representatives, in September 2004—we are now talking seven years ago—that there was an epidemic of mortgage fraud, their words, and they predicted that it would cause a financial crisis, crisis being their word, if it were not contained. Well no one thinks that it was contained.
All right so you have massive fraud driving this crisis, hyperinflating the bubble, an FBI warning and how many criminal referrals did the same agency do, in this crisis. Remember it did well over 10,000 in the prior crisis. Well the answer is zero. They completely shut down making criminal referrals and whichever administration you hate the most, you can hate because while most of this certainly occurred in the Bush Administration, the Obama Administration has obviously not changed it. Obviously did not see it as a priority to prosecute these elite criminals who caused this devastating injury."
Is this a serious failure by the government? How should this be corrected? How can it be corrected?
"Now that's an extraordinary number, especially when you look at the studies. And here I am going to quote from the Mortgage Bankers Association. That is the trade association of the perps and this is their Anti-Fraud Specialist Unit, and they reported this to every member of the Mortgage Bankers Association in 2006. So nobody can claim they did not know. They found three critical things, first they said this kind of loan where you do not do underwriting is, and I am quoting again, “an open invitation to fraudsters.” Second, they said “the best study of this found a 90% fraud incident.” In other words, if you look at 100 liars loans, 90 of them are fraudulent. And third they said, therefore these loans where the euphemism is stated income are Alt-A loans, actually deserve the title that the industry calls the Behind Closed Doors, and that is liars loans. The other thing we know from other studies and investigations, is that it was overwhelmingly lenders and their agents that put the ‘lie’ in liars loans. Now that is obvious when you look at the lies about appraisals, because homeowners cannot inflate appraisals. But lenders can and how they did it was shown in an investigation by then New York Attorney General Cuomo, now Governor, who found that Washington Mutual, which is called WAMU, and is the largest bank failure in the history of the United States, and indeed the history of the world, had a black list of appraisers. But you got on the black list if you were an honest appraiser, and refused to inflate the appraisal."
"Yeah, we have known for centuries, that if you don’t underwrite loans, or if you don’t underwrite insurance, you’ll get something called "adverse selection". And that means you get the worse possible borrowers or people being insured and the expected value of lending to somebody, in conditions of serious adverse selection, is negative. Or to put that in English, that means if you lend this way, you lose money. And we have known this for centuries. This is like betting against the house in Las Vegas. You could win some individual bets, but you stay at the table for three years, and you are going to lose everything. And as we say, you will lose the house, to the house. And, that is exactly what is going to happen here. So yeah, the CEO’s knew all about this. Why did they do it? And the answer is, here is the recipe, it’s got four ingredients for creating what the Nobel Prize Winner in Economics, George Akerlof and his colleague Paul Romer said in 1993 was "a sure thing". And that sure thing is what in criminology we call accounting control fraud."
I think that americans must vote against the established politicians, and that fines should be levied against the institutions which took part (and maybe they should be 'weakened' so they can't take part in the future).
Now obviously he is wanting to sell his book. And I might not understand anything, so if you vehemently disagree you can call me a **** or you can point out why he is wrong.
JM
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