Too Big To Jail? Executives Unscathed As Regulators Let Banks Report Criminal Fraud

The financial crisis has spawned hundreds of criminal prosecutions for alleged fraud. Yet so far, defendants have been mostly minor players such as real-estate agents, mortgage brokers, borrowers and a few low-level bank employees. No senior executives at large financial institutions face criminal charges.

That's in stark contrast to prosecutions during the savings and loan scandal two decades ago, when the government's strategy targeted and snagged some of banking's most powerful players. The approach back then succeeded in sending scores of S&L executives to prison, as well as junk-bond king Michael Milken and business tycoon Charles Keating Jr.

One explanation for the difference may be that key bank regulators -- who did the detective work during the S&L crisis and sent more than 1,000 criminal referrals to prosecutors -- have this time left reporting fraud up to the banks themselves.

Spokesmen for two chief regulators, the Comptroller of the Currency and the Office of Thrift Supervision, say that they have not sent prosecutors a single case for criminal prosecution. <snip>


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/03/too-big-to-jail-executive_n_561961.html

The article goes on to quote William Black, a former OTS official who worked coordinating criminal investigations during the S & L crisis, as being shocked that not one criminal case has been referred by bank regulators. He further stated this crisis was not bad luck, that it was something 'done to us,' and that the hope with convictions is to deter the bad behavior. The bank regulators, the article states, are not pursuing the institutions but are, rather, only going after those the banks themselves are reporting which include mortgage brokers, real estate professionals and borrowers.

:banghead:

:shrug:

Also, I haven't quite reached the point where I dive across the room to change the channel when Obama shows up on TV.

they'd gitterdun