Wall Street wins again? Not so fast.

[ProSense]

Wall Street wins again? Not so fast.

Posted by Katrina vanden Heuvel

This week’s State of the Union marked a year since President Obama announced the formation of the Residential Mortgage Backed Securities working group, a task force created to investigate and prosecute fraud and criminal activity by Wall Street that led to the housing crisis.

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In Salon this week, Dave Dayen, echoing others on the left who have criticized the task force from the start, took a victory lap, writing that the task force never really existed and placing blame largely on the progressive organizations and Wall Street accountability advocates who supported the effort to begin with.

In this telling, the task force was a setup from the start, with the Obama administration cleverly distracting Wall Street accountability advocates. Dayen blames groups like the Campaign for a Fair Settlement, the New Bottom Line, Move On and the Campaign for America’s Future (disclosure: I’m on its board) for buying in to the plot. In reality, though, these organizations have been pressuring the Obama administration for months to clean house at Justice, devote real resources to the task force and make it a top priority inside the White House.

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First, the Justice Department has been a roadblock to progress. As “Frontline” showed, Lanny Breuer, the head of the department’s Criminal Enforcement Division, was more concerned with bankers than homeowners. He’s gone, but if others are obstructing the RMBS task force, they need to be removed, now. And if it appears as though Justice is obstructing progress, we need an investigation. Anyone who knows what it’s like to try and work with the Justice Department in this administration is naïve to think that it would be easy to bring cases against Wall Street. This was going to be a fight, and we all knew it...we can either fight to see that this investigation is real or we can take our ball and go home. Progressives and Wall Street accountability advocates need the RMBS Task Force to work. Schneiderman, who has been creative in bringing cases under New York’s Martin Act where the Justice Department would not step in, needs the resources and support to do his job –- and hold the president to his promises.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2013/02/15/wall-street-wins-again-not-so-fast/

Put Elizabeth Warren on the case.

[hobbit709]

1. Until I see banksters doing the perp walk, we're still losing.