A friend of mine notes the wave of fraudulent foreclosures, foreclosures where firms simply faked the paperwork needed to prove they have standing to foreclose (that they actually own the mortgage.) There have been some moves to stem the fraud, not the least of which is by Florida’s Attorney General Bill McCollum, but those who appear to be the worst offenders are firing back, going after him and other judges who have thrown out cases.
This is a logical consequence of refusing to go after banksters for fraud. The fraud was so systemic (the majority of CDOs based on housing) that virtually every major executive was involved. The DOJ and others chose not to prosecute criminally, and as a result the message was sent that the executive class, as a group, will not be prosecuted for fraud.
So, of course, they doubled down.
This is illness creep from the refusal to go after Bush era crimes. Political elites made themselves immune from prosecution for any crime that a lot of them are involved in, then corporate elites.
America isn’t a nation of laws, it is a nation of men. Has been since at least 2007, when Nancy made her choice not to go after wrongdoers. Obama confirmed this in 2009, when he refused to use the DOJ to go after either Bush era crimes or really go after mortgage and security fraud.
I hope it can be firebreaked here. Maybe it can. But when you exempt entire classes of important people from the law, every other group of important people sees no reason why they should be subject to it either.
If it is to be firebreaked here it must be done with criminal prosecution. Corporate elites won’t be deterred by fines, they consider them only a cost of doing business.
(Oh, and the next step if it isn’t firebreaked? Deficiency judgements: going after people for the amount that’s underwater.)
Tom Hickey
This is just the surface of it. The US is a rogue nation and police state. Constitutional lawyer Obama only seems fine with this, but it extending it broadly.
nick
not articulate enough right now to craft a segue but have you noticed the de facto return of debtor’s prison? Franken is the only one who cares it seems.
http://www.startribune.com/politics/103834553.html
Curmudgeon
Illness creep, I think, set in long before Cheney was allowed to escape prosecution. The rot started after Nixon was pardoned and became entrenched when the Democrats refused to impeach Reagan for Iran-Contra. From that day forward, the message was clear that Republican elites are above the law.
CEOs are merely a branch of the Republican party.
As an aside, once the GOP impeached Clinton, the message was also clear that Democratic elites are beneath the law….
anon2525
Nice connecting of the dots. Thank you for mentioning Nancy’s role.
I was about to say that I would have taken it back to the decision by the Democrats not to impeach Reagan for violating clear law in Iran/Contra, but curmudgeon took it back to Nixon being pardoned. I wouldn’t go back that far because it was a republican pardoning a republican. A Democrat would not have pardoned Nixon, I expect. The collusion began with Iran/Contra. If Reagan had been impeached Scalia and Thomas wouldn’t be sitting on the court today. Bush I would never have happened, and possibly no one would ever have heard of constantly-failing-except-for-his-father’s-help Bush II. Also, it is worth mentioning Enron. After those executives were given prison terms (or escaped by dying), cheney&co vowed “never again.”
anon2525
I hope it can be firebreaked here. Maybe it can. But when you exempt entire classes of important people from the law, every other group of important people sees no reason why they should be subject to it either.
Also worth noting is the — to me, at least — amazing fact that it hasn’t all collapsed (“it” being the mortgage “securitization” house of cards — yes, they sure did make everything more “secure” with their turning mortages into “securities.” I feel much reassured.) It’s really becoming quite a mess and I’m amazed that they’re still holding it all together. But then, they did it for years leading up to September 2008.
“There’s a lot of ruin in a nation.” — Adam Smith
lambert strether
The name for this process is “accounting control fraud.” See Bill Black on Bill Moyers for a definitive read that lays out the whole process. Our financial elite is a sack of pus waiting to burst.
me
Pitchforks. Tar and feathers.
Romance.
me
Do I even need to READ? What is the process?
anon2525
(Oh, and the next step if it isn’t firebreaked? Deficiency judgements: going after people for the amount that’s underwater.)
I’m hoping that Ian Welsh will follow this up (about a year in advance of when it happens) with the steps after this that lead to a complete breakdown of the housing market and whatever else needs to happen to get to the pitchforks and torches.
anon2525
Republic of Men Rather Than Laws
Yves Smith concurs:
Alan Grayson’s office provided a particularly troubling example, that of a counterfeited court summons. It’s bad enough that servicers and foreclosure mills are making up securitization-related paperwork out of whole cloth, but now court documents to seize someone’s home? This is lawlessness.
BL1Y
Curmudgeon: It has nothing to do with the Republican party and everything to do with the fact that voters on both sides of the aisle would rather cheat to win than to lose with a little dignity.
Plenty of people who criticize CEOs of for-profit companies for being greedy (which sort of is their job) never criticize university deans for their massive paychecks, despite the schools being “non-profit” and taking an official position to pursue the public interest (how many more math tutors could be hired if a dean only took home $300k instead of $500k?).
People who blame only one party are themselves part of the problem, because they refuse to police their own guys, and instead just keep electing them. We hate cheaters, unless it’s our cheaters.
jared folkins
“We hate cheaters, unless it’s our cheaters.”
So pathetic and so true.
anon2525
Plenty of people who criticize CEOs of for-profit companies for being greedy (which sort of is their job)…
Of course, that is not their job (to be greedy), but as long as people are willing to turn off their brains and accept this sort of con-men’s reasoning, they will continue to get away with their thefts.
Bernard
the pardon of Nixon is what started the Republican scamming of America. Reagan was the real force that ruined the country. the end of freedom and rise of fascism. since fascism is such a profitable way to go, eventually the Democrats wanted in/Clinton got his due for being a traitor to working people.
and with the Republican lite Obama, we have the perfect Manchurian candidate obeying his Business/Corporate thieves/masters. lol.
amazing to watch all the zombies. such a perfect cover for the destruction of America.
i do wish i could leave America. the descent into hell that Reagan started is unstoppable. the Greed is Good theme has led to this corruption. Thanks to Obama we have seen this escalate.
ah. America. land of the rich and those simpering idiots who have helped the Republicans and now Democrats destroy what once was a prosperous country and completely undermine the Constitution.
the Betrayal of the American Republic in a mere 30 years or so. Greed is Good…. at quickly destroying the Promise of America. St. Ronnie.. your deeds will live in infamy. like Pearl Harbor.
Khrushchev was right about Business selling America out, causing America’s own hanging. except Business sold the rope to the Chinese, not the Russians. The irony is bittersweet.
anon2525
I hope it can be firebreaked here. Maybe it can….If it is to be firebreaked here it must be done with criminal prosecution.
Abu Ghraib/Rumsfeld — “a few bad apples”, “doesn’t go all the way to the top”, “what they (the low-level employees) were doing is reprehensible and must be punished”, “we can’t be expected to know what all of our employees are doing”…
lambert strether
BL1Y:
+1000 on the friggin Deans. We’ve got a chancellor’s office and a thing called the “system” that together suck up 1/3 of the the university budget for the entire state, and nobody can figure out what any of it does. Meanwhile the adjuncts do all the teaching for the love of the game, because if they wanted to make real money, they’d be working behind a fryolater.
The looting and thievery is pervasive. Right out in broad daylight.
anon2525
The name for this process is “accounting control fraud.” See Bill Black on Bill Moyers for a definitive read that lays out the whole process. Our financial elite is a sack of pus waiting to burst.
As I learn more about this, the more it occurs to me how sensible is the Prompt Corrective Action law that was passed in the aftermath of the S&L crimes. Had the FBI been allowed to follow up its public report in 2004 of an “epidemic” of mortgage fraud and had prompt corrective action been taking against the businesses that were committing the fraud, then the vast web of fraud that exists now would never have been allowed to be created.
It’s also worth noting that even if there had not been decades of unaccountability for high-level crimes, this crime in and of itself was predictable starting in 2008. Simply: If you don’t stop criminals who are robbing banks (but instead fill the vaults with more money!), then those criminals will continue committing crimes.
Finally: Is this time different? That is, will criminals in the rent-seeking class be stopped, or will the rules be re-written yet again (“CalvinBall?”) to protect some members of their class? Possibly this time will be different because in past cases, it was the rent-seeking class versus the general population. In the latest crime, the battle appears to be shaping up as one segment of the rent-seeking class (the banksters) versus another segment (investors in RMBS), with the support of individual rent seekers (homeowners).