They STOLE our money to bail-out people who STOLE our money, and now this --

[Nuclear Unicorn]

They took taxpayer money without taxpayer consent to prop-up banks that perpetrated massive fraud for decades against those very same people.

After we bore such indignities would it be too much to ask for people to be held accountable?

Eric Holder Owes the American People an Apology

By Jonathan Weil Aug 11, 2013 7:14 PM MT
.
The Justice Department made a long-overdue disclosure late Friday: Last year when U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder boasted about the successes that a high-profile task force racked up pursuing mortgage fraud, the numbers he trumpeted were grossly overstated.

We're not talking small differences here. Originally the Justice Department said 530 people were charged criminally as part of a year-long initiative by the multi-agency Mortgage Fraud Working Group. It now says the actual figure was 107 -- or 80 percent less. Holder originally said the defendants had victimized more than 73,000 American homeowners. That number was revised to 17,185, while estimates of homeowner losses associated with the frauds dropped to $95 million from $1 billion.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-11/eric-holder-owes-the-american-people-an-apology.html

This is beyond outrageous. People need to be in jail and Holder needs to be unemployed if not outright disbarred or whatever professional sanction might follow him into the private sector. They stole, they owe and if we don't demand something be done it will happen again.

[hughee99]

1. It looks like there are still a lot of "Friends of Angelo" in government.

It's not encouraging to see the Justice Department out-and-out lie about the numbers, either, but I'm sure they had a good reason. The original announcement came out October 9th. Thankfully there were no big political happenings shortly after that, so we won't have to listen to repukes speculating about how the government "cooked the books" for political reasons.

[hfojvt]

2. or maybe the fact is that they did not "steal"

Most of the "stealing" in this country is "perfectly legal".

Take Payday Loans (please). They are an outrageous rip off, but still perfectly legal.

And "without taxpayer consent" my aunt Fannie (Mae).

This taxpayer was perfectly happy to "prop up" the financial system. Without some kind of rescue, we would still be picking up the pieces, if not living right now like "Mad Max".

[Nuclear Unicorn]

4. Feel free to prop them up with your money. I'd prefer to keep mine.

It's not the government's job to give my money the predators with the biggest campaign donations.

[hfojvt]

7. it may be hard to understand

but if the financial system falls, then NOBODY gets to keep their money. Money then just becomes useless pieces of paper, except for coins which have some value as metal.

Also, I might note that they were not propped up with MY money. They were propped up with taxpayer money. Well, the richest 20% happen to pay 72% of the income taxes.

I continue to be happy that we have a working financial system. My electricity still works and there is food on the grocery store shelves and my money in the credit union is still worth something. All of that depends on a financial system. A financial system which almost fell to pieces.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

8. Feel free to drop the "it may be hard ot understand" tripe.

What also devalues money is having it arbitrarily taken from you.

They were propped up with taxpayer money. Well, the richest 20% happen to pay 72% of the income taxes.

Meanwhile the richest 5% are the only ones to realize any gains in the 5 years of quasi-depression recession. The fed is selling them bonds at near zero-cost and then buying those bonds back at an inflated price with our money. Money that will not be available for roads, schools, health care, etc. etc. etc.

I continue to be happy that we have a working financial system. My electricity still works and their is food on the grocery store shelves and my money in the credit union is still worth something.

You seem ... well-kept.

A financial system which almost fell to pieces.

The only things that fall to pieces are things that are of shoddy construction and not functioning properly. You haven't propped-up anything, you've only delayed the inevitable and it will actually be worse because they are that much richer, we are that much poorer and nobody can/will do anything to stop it.

It is not the government's job to prop-up private failure with public debt.

[hfojvt]

10. oh boy, the "inevitable doomsday" "tripe"

shoddy construction or not, it maintains many of us in a decent standard of living. Chances are very good that you make more money than I do and work a higher status job. Unless you also spent five years working as a part-time fu$%ing janitor.

It is, however, the government's job to "promote the general welfare" and a functioning financial system does that much better than one which has fallen to pieces.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

13. Econmies only work if they're stable.

Something that is a manifest failure and has to be artificially supported free of any market consequence is not a functioning financial system, by definition. Neither can markets operate when the rules are arbitrary and designed to unfairly favor parties the market has rejected. You might as well be arguing in favor of subsidizing farriers and blacksmiths to the tune of a few hundred billion a year.

It is, however, the government's job to "promote the general welfare"

That is a bastardization of the clause that could lead to all sorts of ruinous nonsense if not outright maliciousness. All it takes is for those with the power to decree, "It's for your own good!"

[hfojvt]

16. you might as well be arguing

that I would be better off it my house fell down.

Since it is not a perfect house.

Our economy still functions pretty well for most people. Your view that the magical market has rejected the entire financial system is absurd. Might as well argue against a blood transfusion for a patient because "their body has rejected their blood." GM was artificially propped up, and millions of Americans are thankful for their jobs in that industry. A financial system collapse would be far more catastrophic than the destruction of just one house.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

17. If your house is so dilapidated it could collapse, then yes, you should move.

It wouldn't be the first house to be condemned as unfit for human habitation.

Our economy still functions pretty well for most people.

It works for those scamming the system and selling us our own debt at inflated, market-free rates.

[Fumesucker]

20. You are the one who played the "doomsday" card first

Either we were on the brink of financial doomsday or we weren't, if you claim we were on that brink then such a brink could happen again.

Any system so unstable that it can only be kept working through dire emergency procedures is eventually doomed to fail.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

21. Correct. It begs the question: when will they be able to support themselves?

If they cannot then they cannot be trusted to ever be a functioning aspect of the economy.

The economy won't end, people will find other sources of credit and those sources of credit will actually be based upon hard currency from produced goods and services, not currency manipulation. That alone should curb predatory lending practices because the creditors want to recover the loans plus interest more than they want a house or business no one else will buy.

It's a sick, rotted, thieving system and it needs to end but no one who support it can say how that would happen. It's an addiction to other people's money.

[hfojvt]

22. in the long run we are all dead

but the inevitable death of the individual is not a reason to NOT perform emergency surgery today on a critically injured young person.

It isn't the doomsday card that makes me roll my eyes. It is the "it's inevitable" card.

People have been predicting economic doomsday since the 1970s, at least, unless you count Malthus too. The Club of Rome, EF Schumacher (who wrote about our "threefold crisis" in 1973), Paul Ehrlich. Forty years down the road and that old western civilization is still tottering along.

But just like Hal Lindsay (with his book from the 1970s "The Late, great planet earth" predicting the imminent return of Jesus) there is apparently no amount of being wrong which will ever convince an inevitabler.

Well, until the inevitable doom, I'd like to see us do what we can to keep the electricity on. Our economic system is NOT perfectly stable, nor perfectly functioning, but the absolute chaos that would result if it collapsed and the ridiculous difficulty in trying to rebuild it, to me, makes for a very strong argument to try to keep it from collapsing. At least for another twenty years please. I'd like to enjoy a few years of retirement, even if that means some people will have to postpone their joyous dancing on the grave of western civilization and that old bugaboo capitalism.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

23. So when will this mythological system you support be able to sustain itself?

How much money is enough money or do we have to keep bailing them out in perpetuity?

[hfojvt]

24. you sound like you hope the government shuts down

That's what Paul Ryan and Eric Cantor say about the government. When will it sustain itself, or do we have to keep raising the debt limit in perpetuity?

Are we still bailing somebody out now? Who?

[Nuclear Unicorn]

25. What are you talking about?

You have maintained throughout this thread that the system you want bailed out is good and worth preserving. I maintain that it is too sick to prop-up.

It should be a simple question that you should be happy to provide without deflection if the picture is as optimistic as you claim. If bank bailouts are the cure when does the system cease being sick and able to support itself?

you sound like you hope the government shuts down...That's what Paul Ryan and Eric Cantor say about the government.

When private corporations and government become indistinguishable entities you have the actual definition of fascism. Perhaps you should quit while you're behind in this argument.

[hfojvt]

30. except that the government

is also part of the system that sustains western civilization.

Something you are seemingly hoping will collapse and bring about the apocalypse.

What I maintain is not a defense of the system itself, except for the simple fact that the collapse of the system would be a disaster of unimaginable proportion, and THAT was a consummation devoutly to be avoided.

For all the faults of the system, I do not want to see it collapse. You might wish to go out into the wilderness and bang on rocks for a living, but for myself, I would rather not.

Quit while I am behind? Shoot. On my scorecard, I won this fight by TKO about four posts ago, yet you continue to flail at me like the black knight.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

31. When will the system be able to sustain itself?

[99th_Monkey]

6. I have a "perfectly legal" bridge to sell you then. nt

[yurbud]

11. we should have proposed their heads up on stakes and nationalized the banks

That would have gone infinitely farther to fix things

[Nuclear Unicorn]

14. I would have put them in receivership, sold them off and prosecuted the former officers

where appropriate, left them civilly liable as well. Maybe then the new owners would be motivated to do their jobs. If they made a profit, good on 'em but they have to do it honestly and they have to own their own failures.

[yurbud]

18. that's good enough too

[yurbud]

12. they are pushing us to the Mad Max world anyway

[cui bono]

27. Well we don't know that that would have been the outcome.

A lot of people said it would have been, but there were other ways to try and fix things besides giving all the money to the banks.

Not to mention, no one seemed to care what they actually did with their money afterwards. They continued to give themselves OUTRAGEOUS salaries/bonuses/golden parachutes to the ones who caused the failings. They had huge profits (I believe they boosted their profits). They refused to lend the money out. Little to no regulation was attached to the bail out, and little to no regulations were changed after it. The failure to use that moment in time to reign in the banks and restore Glass-Steagall is negligence at best, criminal at worst. But for the working families of this country they both end up being worst. The bail out would have served the public much better if it had been given to the people to pay off their mortgages, imo.

The banksters could have saved themselves with their own damn money. The people don't have any to speak of.

Oh, and as others posted which I forgot to mention, the banks could have been nationalized.

[hfojvt]

28. the banks could have been nationalized under Bush?

Or Obama could have campaigned in the last few months on nationalizing the banks?

I guess a National Bank would be far more trustworthy than say a National Security Agency. Nobody on the left would ever suspect that the Government was working against "we the people"

Also when you say "they refused to lend the money out".

I have heard that it was bank regulators who clamped down on lending, not the banks idea (although as Galbraith wrote about the Great Depression, banks tend to pull in and get cautious during a recession anyway.)

As for giving money to people to pay off their mortgages, I am not sure that all the people who are not defaulting on their own mortgages would like to see their tax dollars going to give SOME people free houses.

[cui bono]

29. At the very least banks should have been broken up.

Too big to fail means too big to exist. Either president could have initiated this, Obama still can.

You really think those who are against unconstitutional spying are against all government agencies? Come on, really. I thought we were having a reasonable discussion.

Feds paid banks to not lend money, thinking they should have capital.
http://www.businessinsider.com/meanwhile-the-feds-still-paying-banks-not-to-lend-2012-3

http://truth-out.org/news/item/2152

Hey, I'd rather see my tax money go to Main Street people who actually need it and work hard for it and would lose their home than have it go to a bankster and I'm sure most people feel the same way. Wouldn't you? Our tax dollars already went to SOME people. Banksters. They have plenty of their own money, they could have bailed themselves out.

[bvar22]

3. Paulson with Co-Conspirators:

[font size=4]Now THIS is Bi-Partisanship!
Hahahahahahahahaha![/font]

[bullwinkle428]

9. "Did you all have a nice weekend? HA-HA-HA!!!"

[99th_Monkey]

5. Exactly! It's like getting mugged, and then when cops show up they arrest YOU,

(for some bogus charge like disturbing the peace) instead of going after the real crooks.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

15. The important issue is if Democrats are good for Wall Street.

[bluedeathray]

19. Accountability, Transparency, Morality...

Sadly lacking in the leadership class in America.

Only the Plebian class is held to a legal standard bearing any resemblance to the law. Greed rules all.

The wealthy and powerful never gave up anything without a fight.

As our police state ruled by the Plutocrats tightens, remember these days.

[2banon]

26. Tammany Hall Revisited

It never really ended, and the extent of the corruption is so deeply rooted, origins tracing back immediately following the American Revolution.

I agree, it's beyond outrageous.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/4193kxcxxFL._SX258_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

[KoKo]

32. Holder was the perfect fit after years of complaints about "aggressive DOJ's"

we finally got one that is so passive he can even lie and get away with it because he's owed so many favors by Wall Street Crooks and others in Power who are untouchable.

But, to be caught in his own lies is like thumbing nose at media for reporting because he knows nothing will likely come of the revelations. Who's going to prosecute the US Attorney General of a beloved President? Even the Rabid Crazy Repugs aren't going to bother with that one...because it could hurt their beloved Banksters.