Wall Street bankers could have averted the global financial crisis, so why didn't they?

[midnight]

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/279-82/11553-heist-of-the-century-wall-streets-role-in-the-financial-crisis


"But cluelessness was most definitely not an issue with the senior management of Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley. As we saw, Morgan Stanley started betting against the bubble as early as 2004. Conversely, JPMorgan Chase mostly just remained prudently above the junk mortgage fray. Goldman Sachs, though, was in a class by itself. It made billions of dollars by betting against the very same stuff that it had been making billions selling only a year or two before.

Almost all the prospectuses and sales material on mortgage-backed bonds sold from 2005 until 2007 were a compound of falsehoods. And as the bubble peaked and started to collapse, executives repeatedly lied about their companies' financial condition. In some cases, they also concealed other material information, such as the extent to which executives were selling or hedging their own stock holdings because they knew their firms were about to collapse.

In some cases, we have evidence of senior executive knowledge of and involvement in misrepresentations. For example, quarterly presentations to investors are nearly always made by the CEO or chief financial officer of the firm; if lies were told in these presentations, or if material facts were omitted, the responsibility lies with senior management. In other cases, such as Bear Stearns, we have evidence from civil lawsuits that senior executives were directly involved in selling securities whose prospectuses allegedly contained lies and omissions.

The Rico Act provides for severe criminal (and civil) penalties for operating a criminal organisation. It specifically enables prosecution of the leaders of a criminal organisation for having ordered or assisted others to commit crimes. It also provides that racketeers must forfeit all ill-gotten gains obtained through a pattern of criminal activity, and allows government prosecutors to obtain pre-trial restraining orders to seize defendants' assets. Finally, it provides for criminal prosecution of corporations that employ Rico offenders."

[Trillo]

1. Money warps their minds. NT

[cin63]

2. If they had stopped it,

they couldn't have lined their pockets with the loot! Just stating a fact.

[2pooped2pop]

3. It was a planned redistribution of wealth all along

from the poor and middle class back up to the 1%

[midnight]

5. All the evidence is certainly pointing that way.... However, they continue to go on with the latest

news saying the 2 billion lost by the banks is another conservative number, and that the lose is much bigger.....

[bemildred]

4. Moral hazard?

Last edited Thu May 24, 2012, 10:26 AM - Edit history (1)

Playing with other people's money let's you play for free.

[grasswire]

6. chaos capitalism

In chaos, lies the opportunity for profit.

The secret society of the elites, Skull and Bones, even teaches its members to orchestrate chaos for that reason.

Monetization.