The $6.4 Trillion Question: Why Not?? I’m sure Eric Holder accomplished lots of other things during his six-year tenure as (now-outgoing) U.S. Attorney General. Unfortunately, holding Wall Street accountable for its egregious — and frequently criminal — conduct at the heart of The 2008 Financial Crash most certainly wasn’t one of them. The really hard...Read More
Needed: Financial Nuremberg Trials “Citigroup and U.S. Reach $7 Billion Mortgage Settlement.” —headline; NYT (7/14/14). “BNP Paribas SA agreed to pay nearly $9 billion and plead guilty to crimes for violating U.S. sanctions, an unprecedented settlement that includes a year-long ban on the French bank’s ability to conduct certain U.S. dollar transactions. –“BNP Paribas Draws...Read More
Average Payment per Countrywide Victim: $1,595 “When you strike at a king, you must kill him.” –Ralph Waldo Emerson Surveying the latest paltry big bank settlement for predatory lending practices that helped pump up the housing market — before causing it to collapse — it seems obvious that Emerson’s famous line about killing kings has a...Read More
