Finally, Accountability Is On The Horizon For Goldman Sachs

For the last two years especially, and for a decade or two generally, how Goldman Sachs gets away with how they practice business has bewildered me. Now that isn't to say that I don't get how Washington elites abuse their power to enrich themselves and Wall Street at the expense of the people they are supposed to represent. What gets me is that it has taken this long for public outrage to hit a level where someone with an ounce of authority is willing to take these financial felons to task for their heinous crimes.

From The New York Times:

The Securities and Exchange Commission filed a civil fraud suit on Friday that essentially says that Goldman built the financial equivalent of a time bomb and then sold it to unwitting investors. Mr. Egol, 40, was not named in the S.E.C.’s suit.

Goldman has vowed to fight the S.E.C. But the allegations have left many on Wall Street wondering how far the investigation might spread inside Goldman and perhaps beyond.

Pressure on Goldman mounted on Sunday as two members of Congress and Gordon Brown, Britain’s prime minister, called for investigations into the bank’s role in the mortgage market. Germany also said it was considering legal action against the bank.

Nothing short of a worldwide effort to punish these crooks will do. The pockets of Goldman Sachs make the Mariana Trench look shallow and their ruthlessness would make Al Capone blush. This is serious business and the S.E.C., despite taking action now was fast asleep at their regulatory wheel when this crisis was building.

As the story of the mortgage market manipulation becomes more widely known and specific details are unearthed, a large pool of resources must be utilized so that no one who deserves blame escapes it. Not only must this be done for the guilty to receive justice, more importantly, an example must be set so that those that work in the financial industry realize that screwing hard working Americans over does not fly.

The Neverending Greed Of Countrywide Execs

In the last few months there have been myriad stories of greedy bankers and financial types that got rich by making risky ventures and putting the entire economy in peril. These people were all in it for making it rich today, without thinking about the consequences that would inevitably come tomorrow. Some have repented, but most are just looking to escape with their loot. Others though, are in a class of evil all to themselves.

From RawStory:

Stanford L. Kurland, the former president of Countrywide Financial the bank that has become most synonymous with the bad mortgage lending practices that eventually caused the housing market to burst, setting into motion the current financial crisis and colleagues from the defunct firm now run PennyMac.

The company, headquartered in the same Los Angeles suburb where Countrywide was managed before it was sold to Bank of America last summer, specializes in buying up bad home mortgages that the U.S. government took over from other failed banks, the New York Times reported Tuesday.

PennyMac has been buying up some of those mortgages for just a fraction of their value, and they keep a portion of whatever money they collect from the mortgage holder.

Basically they are scumbags of the lowest order. Making money on top of the money they made by destroying the lives of families across America. Without hesitation, these people are jumping from one market their greed destroyed to the next. If there is something to compare this to, it would be this in this quote from the article:

It is sort of like the arsonist who sets fire to the house and then buys up the charred remains and resells it, said Margot Saunders, a lawyer with the National Consumer Law Center. The organization has for years sought to limit the sort of abusive lending practices that were employed by Countrywide and other financial companies.

And instead of arresting the arsonist, we are rewarding him for the embers he has left behind. Of course, a real arsonist, once identified would be hunted down, caught and thrown in jail with compliments of the full weight of the legal system. However when it comes to financial destruction, the criminals get a chance to make even more money.