Goldman's Sacs won't face criminal charges

[JenaS62]

Hum.....I wonder why?


http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-0...nt-didn-t.html


"The Justice Department won’t be pursuing criminal charges against Goldman Sachs or its employees over its “big short” on the housing market several years ago. Fortunately, the details of Goldman's appalling behavior and role in the financial crisis will live on forever in the public record.

The department’s investigation began last year after Senators Carl Levin of Michigan and Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, a Democrat and a Republican, released the findings of a two-year inquiry by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations into Goldman’s sales and trading practices.

At a press conference last year, Levin said he wanted prosecutors to examine whether Goldman violated the law by putting customers into disastrous mortgage bonds that it was shorting -- without telling the customers about its short positions. Levin also said prosecutors should review whether Goldman officials who testified before the panel committed perjury, including Goldman’s chief executive, Lloyd Blankfein.

In a statement yesterday, the Justice Department said prosecutors “determined that, based on the law and evidence as they exist at this time, there is not a viable basis to bring a criminal prosecution with respect to Goldman Sachs or its employees in regard to the allegations set forth in the report.” And that’s fine."

[MaximumPain]

Hum.....I wonder why?

Obviously you still hold the delusion that they would be charged were the Republicans in power.

Its all a shame but just goes to show who really runs the government.... they just put a fresh coat of paint on it every 4-8 years to make you think you are for or against someone that actually cares... good luck with that.

I also want to know why BP got off so easy and why Halliburton got off fleecing the US in that debacle we like to call Gulf War 2!!!!! Welcome to fascism would you like to vote a new face on it this time around?

[JenaS62]

Obviously you still hold the delusion that they would be charged were the Republicans in power.

No, actually I don't believe that for a minute. You're the one that voted for hope and change.

[Ningishiddza]

Hum.....I wonder why?

This is why....

White House Press Briefing, Office of the Press Secretary (Dec. 8, 1993)

MR. RUBIN: Hi. I'm Bob Rubin, the Assistant to the President for Economic Policy, and I'm going to introduce today's topic.
An important component of that strategy is to deal with the problems of the inner city and distressed rural communities -- pursuant to his belief that we must make real progress in those areas if this country is going to be successful in the future for all of us. The reform of the Community Reinvestment Act is an essential building block in the efforts I've just mentioned. In July the President asked the four banking regulators to reform CRA, to reduce paperwork in process and reward performance, and to get that done by January 1, 1994

SECRETARY BENTSEN: In a nutshell, what we're proposing to do is to make it easier for lenders to show how they're complying with the Community Reinvestment Act. For those who aren't familiar with the area of banking law, the changes we're proposing are important because banks now have a very clear, quantitative standard by which their compliance can be judged.

MR. LUDWIG: Ken, you know that it's hard to give a hard and fast rule, particularly on a system where we want to be flexible, we don't want to have credit allocation or quotas. At the same time, the CRA, for all its flaws, since 1977 it is generally agreed has increased lending in low and moderate income areas by tens of billions of dollars. We're all convinced that this is a material step forward. So it's very safe to say billions of dollars. The entire CRA reform is very much built on rebuttable presumptions, so that you don't have odd anomalous cases which we found around the country, where a bank had done a good job but somehow got rated poorly, or vice versa.

Q Will you be gathering information just on loans, or on applications, as well, for small business?

MR. LUDWIG: We will be gathering data as proposed on the basis of applications, denials and actual loans.

Q Does this mean that if I am a banker with branches in the inner city, I no longer have to have an employee keeping pins on the map of town to show where the loans are, that it's now going to be judged on dollars and cents and how much money goes where?

MR. LUDWIG: Dollars and cents, and we'll keep the pins. The data will be publicly available and the banker will not have to have a crazy map with pins all over it, which has just characterized this whole process, and spending huge amounts of time documenting every time it meets with a community group and being judged on how many documents it has. It will be judged on where the loans are.

[Emphasis Mine -- and that's just one part of one press conference -- I can play this game all the live long day.]


There you go. The Story so far.....

1] Government sticks a loaded gun to the head of banks and forces them to make bad loans that the banks would never willingly make, or be the subject of DOJ investigations, EEOC lawsuits and be libeled and slandered in the Media as "racist."

2] Why should the banks and the shareholders suffer because government is stupid? The banks come up with two ideas: Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDOs) and Structured Investment Vehicles (SIVs) which are really euphemisms for "very bad loans."

3] The CDOs and SIVs allow banks to spread the risk on those bad loans around, so that everyone shares the pain of those losses equally.

You know the rest of the story. What I find interesting is how did all those CDOs and SIVs get concentrated into an handful of banks? That was actually a good thing, because it minimized the damage, but it still doesn't explain how it happened. I have to wonder if someone late in the Clinton Administration or early on in the Bush Administration didn't see that coming and sort of helped corral all those bad loans into the hands of a few banks -- which government would then protect.

Anyway, this is a great example of what happens when you violate the Laws of Economics --- you get penalized.

The government caused this problem by violating Economic Laws when it forced banks to give mortgages to people that Jesus Christ wouldn't even loan money to.....so does it make sense to penalize the banks for something that government did?

[JenaS62]

Absolutely correct Ning. The banks were forced to give mortgages to people who could not afford them so that everyone could live the American Dream and then the left was aghast when the housing bubble burst and wanted to pin it on Bush. Goldman's Sacs was soooo offensive that Obama stacked his administration with ex-Goldman's sacs employees.

[DontBeAfraid]

Come on ning... that was cut and pasted... In this case, not citing your source is actually a crime...

[JenaS62]

Here is the source.

PRESS BRIEFING
BY
SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY, LLOYD BENTSEN,
ROBERT RUBIN, ASSISTANT TO THE PRESIDENT FOR ECONOMIC POLICY
AND
EUGENE LUDWIG, COMPTROLLER OF THE CURRENCY

The Briefing Room


http://clinton6.nara.gov/1993/12/199...ubin.text.html

[DontBeAfraid]

Here is the source.

So, you're nings bitch?

[JenaS62]

No, I just know how to use Google.

[DontBeAfraid]

No, I just know how to use Google.

So do I, but I dont do nings bitch work... And when he just straight copies and pastes what someone else has created he is infringing on copyrights... which is still illegal... Its the kind of thing that will get your kids kicked out of college... You really shouldnt encourage it.

And for the sake of honest discussion/debate, you really should encourage ning to post his sources for all of the shit he makes up.

[Ningishiddza]

No, I just know how to use Google.

Maybe you can talk MM into using some of his donations to hire a tutor and teach Ass-Clown how to google.

[DontBeAfraid]

Maybe you can talk MM into using some of his donations to hire a tutor and teach Ass-Clown how to google.

You would think that with a bachelor in arts you might have been taught the importance of citing your sources and not stealing other peoples works... Nah Im kidding... Go get a real degree.

[Reef Badlaw]

Odrama was gonna

fight Wall Street
clean-up Wall Street
reform Wall Street...

Looks like it was the-other-way-around.

[JenaS62]

Odrama was gonna

fight Wall Street
clean-up Wall Street
reform Wall Street...

Looks like it was the-other-way-around.

HAHA - that's right. He cleaned up Wall Street by moving Goldman Sacs people into his administration. Now it's his administration that is stinking up the place.

[Reef Badlaw]

HAHA - that's right. He cleaned up Wall Street by moving Goldman Sacs people into his administration. Now it's his administration that is stinking up the place.

Lol, yep. Between Goldman-Sachs alumni, Harvard faculty, and elitists from academia, The President has the enemy surrounded... us.