Forum Post: this is good

copied and pasted here

"I believe in free markets and the rule of law, not fraud markets and crony capitalism, in which profits are privatized and losses socialized.

That's what happened in the 2008 global economic crash, where the worst damage wasn't caused by the subprime scandal itself, but by the global credit freeze it led to because banks no longer trusted each other's assets.

That not one senior Wall St. executive has been charged, let alone imprisoned, as a result of their companies' misrepresenting the true nature of the subprime mortgage securities they peddled to institutional investors globally is a disgrace.

The fact they bet against their own investors without telling them -- and indeed, privately mocked them -- is a disgrace.

The fact credit rating agencies in the pay of Wall St. graded junk subprime mortgage securities as Triple A safe investments, is a disgrace.

The fact most Republican and Democratic politicians don't want any criminal trials arising out of this scandal is a disgrace.

The reason they don't want them is that would shine a light on the billions of dollars they accepted in campaign contributions and other favours from the financial services sector, in return for gutting the regulatory safeguards on that industry which led to the '08 crash.

The fact these banks were bailed out of the financial destruction they caused with hundreds of billions of taxpayers' dollars is a disgrace.

The fact they are being allowed to walk away from what they did by paying insignificant corporate fines (compared to profits), negotiated by an emasculated U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, with no one being held personally responsible for what happened, or even having to admit wrongdoing -- is a disgrace.

Worst of all, because the Wall St. banks that survived '08 are now bigger than ever -- so big the government decreed they were "too big to fail" via the bailout -- there is every reason to believe they will do what they did again.

Not only have they escaped any "moral hazard" for their actions, they had their huge bonuses paid for by taxpayers.

The fact Democrats and Republicans are blaming each other -- Democrats by accusing Republicans of caving into Wall St., Republicans by accusing Democrats of forcing banks to extend mortgages to people who couldn't pay them back -- is another disgrace.

The reality is both parties and their presidential candidates, happily allowed themselves to be bought by the U.S. financial services sector in the years leading up to the crash.

The reality is Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- the two U.S. government-sponsored mortgage underwriting agencies -- walked away with paying minor fines (relative to their assets) for massive accounting manipulation.

And the fact is fraud is fraud, whether it's done by a welfare queen or a bank. But when it's done by a bank, it does a lot more damage."