When some of us formed our ideas that government should butt out of business
enterprises, I doubt we had any idea how heinously unregulated or unwatched business
could and would act. The fact that many loans were made with inflated appraisals
and overstated income and the even more infamous no income no asset loans ("ninja"
loans), says some business is simply not capable of self-governance,
especially when rating agencies are in cahoots with that business. The fall-out of
bad acts unchecked can be and has been too severe. In fact, it can cripple a
country and even a globe and undermine pacts which took years and years to
implement.
That gang has had five years to get their acts together. Five years of being propped
up. The government's continued effort to prop them up and skew, change, and ignore the
rule of law is an affront to everyone not a part of the misdeeds, which is the
majority of this country's citizens. Underlying the failure to prosecute and
return to regulation is an oppressive threat / insinuation that this country will
lose its coveted world dominance, formerly known as leadership, most widely touted,
at least in some circles, as the bankers having our gov't in their pocket. I don't
believe what we've got to gain by ignoring bad acts holds a candle next to what we've
got to lose: who we are. It's a historical fact that immorality (never minding illegality) has led to the downfall of many empires. We need to say "This is Not Okay in the USA": bad actors, each and every one, need to be prosecuted and the ill-gotten gains returned to their rightful owners.Our government, I hasten to remind, may and does generally make off with ill-gotten goodies, like from drug, laundering, or other RICO enterprises. Many young people who will be the leaders of tomorrow don't understand what's been done here, because for them, there's always another tomorrow, a new horizon, and a new mountain. They haven't lost their homes of 20 years nor their retirement accounts earned over 30 to 40 years, nor the businesses they sacrificed greatly to create. They haven't felt the real bite of these illegal and immoral behaviors.
They don't know what was done here and will likely mistakenly see the "Great Recession" as just a series of unavoidable calamities, something as mistaken as night from day.
The government has been buying bonds, so-called toxic assets, at top speed,
apparently by printing money to do so. I have no economics degree, but even I can
see that dilution of a currency's value is a bad idea, and that's been demonstrated
so far by at least other countries' decisions to engage in international commerce
without reference to the almighty dollar. Perhaps that was to be expected and accepted
as a matter of the course taken, a rather steep economic ramification. But can there
be any doubt that "toxic assets" shouldn't exist or that they exist because those
charged with seeing they didn't exist abandoned their duties to the people, to
their offices?
TARP and whatever else alleged total economic collapse prevention measures happened.
Maybe it really is impossible to change certain courses. Or maybe it's that it's just
too unsure a proposition to take on repatriotization of the trillions lost. But we are
still left to lose our homes, our most precious assets, to the very parties who created
the toxic assets, starting with engaging in illegal predatory lending, who benefit from
the bond-buying and other alleged anit-economic collapse measures, such as TARP. In creating the toxic assets, as well as in the efforts to take our homes, many laws have been broken and
continue to be broken.
The Consent Orders are a slap in the face to every law-abiding citizen, which means
most of us. Executing a "robo-signed" instrument and then recording it is 1) wrong and 2) its continued existence in public record constitutes a continuing crime, one for which restitution and abatement are not found in the form of a monetary fine. Reform or the retraction of the fraudulent instruments is called for. I cannot even imagine why MERS hasn't been prosecuted for the robo-signing done in its name since it's black letter law that corporations are liable for the acts of their "officers".
The rule and application of law and legislation about these issues can't be left
to a generation which can't fully understand the devastating ramifications of "free
enterprise" gone amuck. This generation, this government, needs to handle this,
starting with the prosecution of those who have it coming. I'm of a mind if some
people were worth their salt, worth the salaries and perks they enjoy, this could
be done without total chaos. We need to collectively demand action, including
legitimate prosecution and oversight. In ten years when much of this has blown
over and or been swept under the rug, and the bodies, including ours, have been buried,
will the next generation know better than to enter into a 3 month teaser rate
loan with an inflated appraisal to boot? Will the future pension managers be any more
sophisticated about where they put hard-working Americans' funds? NOT without
prosecutions of today's criminals as part of our lessons. All that will have been
accomplished without prosecution, in addition to the unlawful taking of another's property, is the creation of a road map, a how-to-get-rich-quick manual on illegal and immoral short-cuts to wealth.