The Mortgage Fraudsters and Their Get Out Of Jail Free Card

I don't have to tell you that when it comes to Big Money I know nothing. Beyond coming deliciously close to balancing my checkbook once in a while and/or putting a few pennies away in a sock or a next-to-no-interest savings account, finances are a complete mystery to me.  I know people who do know something about Big Money but when they talk about it, it's in a foreign language.  Pretty sure.  When they're talking about billions and trillions they might as well be talking about the enormity of the galaxies.  No comprendo, buddy.  Don't even waste your time.

So when I read a story in USA Today about Goldman Sachs finally getting around to agreeing on a settlement for bilking mortgage customers out of billions of dollars over many years, causing many thousands of them to have to default and move out of their homes, their fine seemed colossal enough where even I should have been screaming with joy.  Over $5 billion!  Dollars!

The glimpse of the New York-based banking and investment giant's internal review process came as Goldman Sachs acknowledged it marketed and sold tens of billions of dollars in residential mortgage-backed securities without weeding out questionable loans as investors had been promised.

“This resolution holds Goldman Sachs accountable for its serious misconduct in falsely assuring investors that securities it sold were backed by sound mortgages, when it knew that they were full of mortgages that were likely to fail,” Acting Associate Attorney General Stuart Delery said as the Department of Justice, state attorneys general and other officials announced the finalized agreement.

They weren't the only ones, of course.  In February, Wells Fargo agreed to pay $1.2 billion for their part in cheating on mortgages.

From USA Today:

NEW YORK -- San Francisco bank Wells Fargo Wednesday said it has agreed to fork over $1.2 billion to settle allegations that it fraudulently certified loans in connection with a government insurance program.

In a 2012 lawsuit, the U.S. government accused Wells Fargo of sticking it with "hundreds of millions of dollars" in Federal Housing Authority insurance claims as a result of years of "reckless" underwriting and fraudulent loan certification.
As a result, FHA had to pay out insurance claims on thousands of FHA-insured mortgages that defaulted, the government said.

Around that same time in February, Morgan Stanley agreed to pay $3.2 billion.

Also from USA Today:

“Morgan Stanley touted the quality of the lenders with which it did business and the due diligence process it used to screen out bad loans.  All the while, Morgan Stanley knew that in reality, many of the loans backing its securities were toxic," said acting U.S. Attorney Brian Stretch of California's northern federal district.

Morgan Stanley said its previous financial set-asides for the settlements would prevent the payments from affecting the bank's 2016 earnings. "We are pleased to have finalized these settlements involving legacy residential mortgage-backed securities matters," the bank said.

 Well, isn't that special?  Their bottom line won't be hurt at all by it. BIG sigh of relief.

Note that ugly word "fraudulent".  Note, too, that innocent phrase "agreed to pay"--as if paying, for them, is an option.  Note also too there is no mention of anyone going to jail.  Not a single soul from anywhere within those vast companies had to go to jail for their misdeeds. They couldn't even muster up a single scapegoat.  Nobody.  They paid fines large enough to sustain entire cities but it turns out it's no more than money in a sock to them.  So, big frickin' deal.  Let's move on.

Well, how about we don't this time?  I know for a fact if I did something "fraudulent" or even "toxic" that caused even one family to lose their home, I would be in big trouble.  HUGE trouble.  It would probably cost me everything I owned.  I would surely go to jail. I would be a bad, bad person.  I would even think so myself.  I know for a fact I would not have the option to "agree to pay" for my crime.  I would pay for it, or else.  And I know for a fact I wouldn't be "pleased with the outcome".  That's the point of punishment.  It should be the opposite of "pleased".

When huge institutions cause that much indisputable harm to hundreds of thousands of citizens, when billions of our taxpayer dollars end up having to pay for their crimes, we should expect more from them than a slap on the wrist.  We should expect that they lose everything, and every member of their group who knew anything about it and let it happen should have to spend many thousands of their remaining days in prison

They sure as hell shouldn't be able to "agree" to the amount of their fine, and it shouldn't be pennies on the dollar. They sure as hell shouldn't be pleased at the outcome. And they sure as hell shouldn't be allowed to go back to business as usual.

In August, 2013, Sen. Elizabeth Warren sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder expressing her dissatisfaction with the criminal-free mortgage settlements.  In it she wrote:

"I am concerned that this might be yet another example of the federal government’s timid enforcement strategy against the nation’s largest financial institutions. I believe that if DOJ and our banking regulatory agencies prove unwilling over time to take the big banks to trial or even require admission of guilt when they cheat consumers and break the law — either out of timidity or because of a lack of resources — then the agencies lose enormous leverage in settlement negotiations."

To which I can only add: You can say that again, sister.  We've been living in a system for far too long where the bigger the crook, the lighter they fall. I don't need to know a single thing about high finance to know it's time to end that insane double standard.

So now we come to the elephant in the room: This is a big election year. My candidate, Hillary Clinton, has taken big bucks in speaking fees from Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street giants. She says they haven't bought her influence, and so far I haven't seen any signs that they have, but if she is the Democratic party nominee we're going to need to know how close she is to agreeing with Elizabeth Warren.  It had better be pretty damned close.  (Let's not get sidetracked by my admission that I'm supporting Hillary.  We've been through this.  Here's why.)

My party, the Democratic Party, has lost its guts, and it's people like Elizabeth Warren and, yes, Bernie Sanders, who are willing to take up the pitchforks in order to bring some sanity, some fairness, to a system that has fallen all over itself to keep from governing as a full-fledged democracy. 

My party is the party of the people.  It should be obvious to our party leaders that it's their job to make sure we live up to our name.  We've been too long pretending that any move in the direction toward the people makes us better than the Republicans. Not good enough. Anybody is better than the Republicans. 

Big money is the bane of our existence.  When we speak of billions the way we used to talk about millions, we've lost touch with the common needs of the people.  We read the articles about billion dollar fines and tend to forget how many lives were adversely altered or outright destroyed, thanks to the fraudsters working out in the open with no fear of punishment or retaliation.  They didn't get to that place on their own.

Money talked louder than we did and money won.  Now we're in the midst of a crazy election season, and what we're seeing is the equivalent of an angry mob scene.  Somebody's to blame and somebody has to pay. 

Let's hope it's not us again.


(Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars)

Hate And The "Patriots": Like Watching One Long Horror Movie, Wondering Who Dies Next.

In an insightful article about the upsurge in anti-government hate groups and the murderous rampages they spawn, John Avlon calls them "Hatriots"--those people claiming that true constitutional patriotism requires them to disavow, disown, and destroy the United States government--and anyone who gets in their way.

Yes, they're crazies, they're loons, they're nasty-wasties.  (They're not sewing circles, they're hate groups)  But they're out there, they have an endless, unregulated supply of firearms, they have the support of dozens of lawmakers commending them for making good use of the First, Second and 10th Amendments, and, with their new-found "legitimacy", their hatred is escalating.

They're an increasingly violent mob, spurred on by the NRA, by Right Wing radio and television, by Right Wing books and magazines, and worse, by Right Wing politicians who go into politics with the express purpose of taking down the very government currently paying them extraordinarily well for their efforts.

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, there are 939 known hate groups active in the United States. (PDF file list of groups and chapters, state by state)  Adding group chapters to the list brings the numbers up to nearly 2000.  Think about it:  Two thousand chapters made up of multiple thousands of people who have made a conscious effort to validate hate and spread it around.   They see the current government (the liberal Democrat part; the Barack Obama part) as a fascistic, socialistic, communistic, treacherous force to be reckoned with.

Because the Supreme Court of the United states (apparently "the good guys" now) validated their right to bear arms, because they have been led to believe it's only a matter of time before their religious rights, their free-speech rights, their rights to privacy, their very lives, will be taken away; because they have been led to believe that the current president, Barack Hussein Obama, is the most evil president ever--they believe it's only a matter of time before they'll be forced to start the long overdue, wholly justifiable but messy process leading to revolution and renewal.

I hate horror movies--I don't find being scared out of my mind entertaining at all--but if I could be convinced this is the plot of a horror movie and not reality, I would embrace it for the sick entertainment it is. I know better, of course, which means I'm far more terrified than I could ever be sitting in a darkened movie house telling myself through chattering teeth that it's not real, it's all pretend, it'll be over soon.

Yesterday I spent about an hour reading Jerad Miller's Facebook posts.  (Jerad Miller, with his wife, Amanda, walked into a pizzeria on Sunday, June 8 and shot two police officers dead.  They ran across the street to a Walmart, where they shot a customer dead before dying themselves.)  His posts, for the most part, were the stuff of a huffy-puffy man/boy full of high-minded "patriotism", interspersed with internet word games, theories about secret chemicals invading our bodies, and quiet calls to rise up and revolt against an out-of-control government.  I've read far worse in dozens of political comment sections.

A snippet:

"I know you are fearful, as am I. We certainly stand before a great and powerful enemy. I, however would rather die fighting for freedom, than live on my knees as a slave. Let it be known to our children’s children that free men stood fast before a tyrants wrath and were found victorious because we stood together. That we all cast aside our petty differences and united under the banner of Liberty and Truth.
May future generations look back upon this time in history with awe and gratitude, for our courage to face tyranny, so that they could live happy and free"

I’m way beyond just background checks and licensing guns now. I want laws with teeth.  Carrying military-style assault weapons into public places is not normal behavior.  I want Congress and the President and the Supreme Court to put on their brave hats, their battle helmets if need be, and get to work.  Domestic terrorists are operating openly in our midst.  They're strapping on their big guns, strutting among us, forcing us to accept that living out their own bad boy fantasies supersedes our fears. 

If the law says they're free to take their guns to town, if guns on the streets become as common as cell phones, okay then.  Let's allow them in every city, county, state and federal building in the land--in every chamber, including that of the Supreme Court. Why not?  What is there to fear?

It won't happen.  Nor will it come to pass--until it's too late--that our leaders will take these threats against our government seriously.  But if our own lawmakers aren't willing to take on the anarchists, there are plenty of  good citizens who will. 

Lt. Col. Robert Bateman, an infantryman and military historian, is one of them.  After the Las Vegas shooting last week, he wrote a startling piece for Esquire called, "That's It.  I'm Coming Home". (Printed in its entirety with his permission.)

This is too much. We have Tea Party political activists shooting cops from behind, in the head, then covering their dead bodies with the Tea Party “Gadsden” flag and shouting, “The Revolution begins now!”

No. I am coming home. I need to be there and be part of the solution. Moms Demand Action is getting some traction, but they can use the lean-in of a few U.S. Army Airborne Infantry Rangers. I am only sorry that I did not stand up to this threat to our nation before. I am sorry. I was busy.

I have been overseas in Afghanistan and in NATO nations for half a decade while the insanity of the National Rifle Association expanded and exploded, and the NRA became, essentially, the tool of death in the United States. They made mass killings normal.

Well done, NRA. But this shit is too much.

Constant cop-killing, by people who echo the NRA talking points and the conspiracy theories of the Internet wackos.

So I will come home, and perhaps some of those 3,000 nutjobs who sent me hatemail might want to meet up, because I am more than fricking willing, you whining, little boy-toys who need guns. So many of you have threatened me that I am literally booked, but any of you who feel you have been left out, go ahead. Book a date. You bring your gun to try and convince me that you are not a complete and total idiot, and if you bring a gun, let us see which tool works best.

Wimps need guns. Come and get me.

Bateman, pictured, is an infantryman and a Military Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

Oh, and if you try to go lethal, to convince me that your rhetoric is more intellectually compelling than my own written words, I am going to be giggling at the Las Vegas odds on you, with your guns, and me.

So there is that. Bring it on, little boys.

The opinions here are only those of somebody that thinks a “Patriot Movement”—one which executes police officers—is not working in the service of the nation. They are only the opinions of someone who believes that “Tea Party members" who shoot policemen in the head— executing them at point blank range and then declaring that the “revolution” is starting before placing a Don't Tread on Me flag atop the dead bodies of the police officers you just killed in cold blood—are not good.

You may believe otherwise. If you do, screw you.

Last December Bateman received death threats from some folks in the "Free Speech, Give Us Liberty, Don't Tread on Us" movement after his column about the Supreme Court's ruling on the definition of the Second Amendment appeared in the Esquire Digital Edition.  It hasn't stopped him from fighting against the lunacy that is the current gun culture. 

Members of the gun reform group, Moms Demand Action, have been subjected to spitting stalking and rape threats by bullies who can't for the life of them seem to be able to argue persuasively any other way. It hasn't stopped them, either.

Everyone from Gabby Giffords to the families of the Sandy Hook victims have been attacked for their simple pleas for a common-sense approach to gun usage.  It hasn't stopped any of them.

The "They're coming to take our guns" crowd are cowardly bullies.  Their only argument for open carry is "Cuz we wanna!" Their only weapon is a convenient interpretation of the Second Amendment.  They make a public stand by taking their guns to Target, where they pose for pictures in the aisles with bags of Oreos or in the infant department with an assortment of teethers as a backdrop.  To show, I guess, that they're just like us.  Only they're not.  Some of them are play-acting and some of them are dead serious.  The problem lies in not knowing who is who.

  And when one of their own doesn't realize they're only just funnin' and takes their vast conspiratorial fantasies seriously, shooting to kill, they take no responsibility and accept no blame. They pretend to be patriots but look and act like "homegrown terrorists".   And when they've scared enough people into finally demanding that the government take some action, they hiss and pout and get their feelings hurt.

They're the real patriots and anyone who doesn't agree is a fascist and a commie and a stinkin' liberal traitor.   Read any of the comment sections to the links I've provided and see if you can come away from them still thinking we have nothing to fear, that we're not at gun nut crisis mode.  I admit their crazy notions terrify me--but what terrifies me more is the thought that they kept on, they got worse, more innocent people died, and nobody tried to stop them.

(Cross-posted at Dagblog and Alan Colmes' Liberaland, Featured on Mike's Blog Round-up at Crooks and Liars)