U.S. Rep. Major R. Owens: Crime Does Pay -- For Government-Chartered Banks

[marmar]

from HuffPost:




Rep. Major R. Owens
Crime Does Pay -- For Government-Chartered Banks
Posted December 7, 2007 | 05:25 PM (EST)



Taxpayers beware! A bi-partisan plot to bail out the mortgage greedy banks is in the legal racketeering incubator. Remember the rescue of the Savings and Loans Bank swindles that has already cost the U.S. Treasury more than a trillion dollars. (Try to get an exact figure and you'll be strangled by a set of logarithms made on Mars.)

Headlines about the late Henry Hyde have stirred old memories. He was a grand old fellow known for his integrity on matters related to the protection of the fetuses from their mothers and for his obsession to impeach anyone who engaged in oral sex near the oval office. Few remember that because of his steadfast morality Congressman Hyde did a flip-flop on a position he took refusing to pay a hefty fine levied on him and all of the other board members who had oversight powers over a large failing Savings and Loans Bank in Illinois. As a result of annoying national publicity, Hyde reluctantly acquiesced and paid his fine of several hundred thousand dollars.

Few remember now that during that crisis paying fines to atone for fiscal crimes was the standard deal offered by the George H.W. Bush Justice Department. The formula required that taxpayers must rescue the banks "too big to fail" but the public should realize that the perpetrators were too powerful to go to jail. Many of the rich and prominent received similar nuisance fines or stains on their reputations: Senators Cranston; Domenici; Speaker Jim Wright; son of the president at that time and brother of the present president, Neil Bush. No one, however, was forced to make restitution or do community service.

But in the end the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) used the taxpayer dollars to reimburse every depositor up to the guarantee of 100,000 dollars. In the coming mortgage pyramid scheme bailout will the ordinary Americans on the bottom be reimbursed? Or will only the predators high up on the food chain have their fortunes rescued?

The mortgage customers on the bottom are not thieves or swindlers. The borrowers are the victims who were not licensed by the state or federal government. But clearly the professionals in the greed chain who took the fees, commissions, point payments, etc. are to some degree regulated by the government and they have violated regulations and laws. These sharks from the bottom to the top of the feeding chain have enriched themselves but we hear no proposals that this new set of racketeers be mandated to pay restitution to the families they have caused to be evicted.

Taxpayers beware! Socialism for banks must be ended. Billions of your public dollars are being packaged now for shipments to relieve the hedge fund geniuses. Princes and sheiks from the Middle East are now arriving to monitor the coming bi-partisan bail out operation. Into whose pockets will our public dollars now flow? Whose profits are we about to stabilize? Will our government order a freeze on foreclosures to save victimized poor families from evictions?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rep-major-r-owens/crime-does-pay-for-gov_b_75871.html