14-Jan-10 News - Senior bankers may be headed for prison

Discussion of Web Log and Analysis topics from the Generational Dynamics web site.

SP

Re: 14-Jan-10 News - Senior bankers may be headed for prison

Post by SP »

I don't even think they'll make it to prison.

I also don't see how we can start talking about Senior bankers going to prison, when I find difficulty in seeing which law has technically been broken. Please don't misunderstand: What I'm saying is that considering the fact that most people (myself included) have still not even began to understand what went wrong despite the fact that we KNOW and can feel that something wrong was done, it is hard to envisage on what basis we can legitimately claim a crime and therefore how a trial can be had. Even more so when we consider the nature of these people (banksters).

John
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Re: 14-Jan-10 News - Senior bankers may be headed for prison

Post by John »

SP wrote: > I don't even think they'll make it to prison.

> I also don't see how we can start talking about Senior bankers
> going to prison, when I find difficulty in seeing which law has
> technically been broken. Please don't misunderstand: What I'm
> saying is that considering the fact that most people (myself
> included) have still not even began to understand what went wrong
> despite the fact that we KNOW and can feel that something wrong
> was done, it is hard to envisage on what basis we can legitimately
> claim a crime and therefore how a trial can be had. Even more so
> when we consider the nature of these people (banksters).
It's like on the tv program CSI. They find a dead body, so they know
that a crime has been committed, and then they start collecting
evidence, until they find out who's the murderer.

I've frequently discussed the circumstantial evidence -- that it was
clear by 2006 that their models were failing, but instead of warning
investors, they redoubled their efforts to sell the faulty securities
that are now called "toxic assets."

William Black's statement goes into much more detail. He explains
exactly how these bankers sold these toxic assets to investors. If
they'd done the underwriting / due diligence that they were supposed
to do, then they would have discovered that the underlying mortgages
were overwhelmingly fraudulent, and that therefore the CDOs they were
creating were toxic.

As Black explains, by selling these toxic CDOs, they were
committing fraud. Their only defense is that they were incompetent
boobs: "I'm sorry, Your Honor, I couldn't possibly have committed
this crime, because I'm way too stupid to have done so."

Right now, the evidence is still circumstantial. But as prosecutors
are forced by public outrage to demand forensic evidence -- e-mail
messages, phone logs, transaction histories, etc. -- crimes will be
exposed, and bankers will go to jail.

John

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