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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsU.S. Says One Thing, Does Another on Mortgage Fraud, Watchdog Says
Four years after President Obama promised to crack down on mortgage fraud, his administration has quietly made the crime its lowest priority and has closed hundreds of cases after little or no investigation, the Justice Departments internal watchdog said on Thursday.
The report by the departments inspector general undercuts the presidents contentions that the government is holding people responsible for the collapse of the financial and housing markets. The administration has been criticized, in particular, for not pursuing large banks and their executives.
In cities across the country, mortgage fraud crimes have reached crisis proportions, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said at a mortgage fraud summit in Phoenix in 2010. But we are fighting back.
The inspector generals report, however, shows that the F.B.I. considered mortgage fraud to be its lowest-ranked national criminal priority. In several large cities, including financial hubs like New York and Los Angeles, F.B.I. agents either ranked mortgage fraud as a low priority or did not rank it at all.
Meanwhile, the Justice Department repeatedly exaggerated its accomplishments using inaccurate data, the report found.
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http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/03/13/u-s-overstates-efforts-to-prosecute-mortgage-fraud-watchdog-says/?_php=true&_type=blogs&ref=business&_r=0
Scuba
(53,475 posts)jsr
(7,712 posts)merrily
(45,251 posts)Government giving crimes by banksters a low priority?
Government hypocrisy?
Never!
cali
(114,904 posts)mindwalker_i
(4,407 posts)Obama decided to avoid looking into how we got into the Iraq war, or torture, saying he wanted to "move forward." I'm guessing he wanted to try to "heal" thr country, get the political parties working together, etc. Similarly, with the financial fraud, he probably just wanted to get stuff working again and put things back to normal.
Unfortunately, this just lead to more abuse as the people, kind of in both cases but mostly with the financial issues, determined that they could just get away with more. So Republicans sweep the whole Iraw war under the rug and pretend it didn't happen, then bitch and whine about money being spend on other than corporations while ignoring how much was wasted and lost in Iraq. The financial people keep stealing more, getting away with more, in a positive feedback cycle.
Prosecuting for torture or financial fraud would take a lot of energy, possibly it would have prevented health care from getting done, now now, nothing's getting done anyway. Having these things hanging over us and teaching criminals to keep doing more of what they had been doing is having a pretty severe effect on the country - it seems like the whole government is dysfunctional (as has been pointed out), an d this is a major reason why.
Response to mindwalker_i (Reply #5)
jsr This message was self-deleted by its author.
hughee99
(16,113 posts)Just ask Bernie Madoff or Allen Stanford.