Another day, another settlement with a megabank in which the government gets the lion's share, in this case some $10 billion in cold cash, while all the people who lost their homes in these dubious deals (some estimates put them in the millions) are to get only $7 billion in relief altogether. And even collecting that much may take years of uncertainty and red tape.
But the Bank of America's big guns will escape prosecution by buying off the feds (hey, it's only the shareholders' money), the Hon. Eric Holder can go on television and claim another great victory for his "Justice" Department, and everybody's happy. Except of course the poor suckers who were left homeless after being manipulated into loans they couldn't afford.
Much the same fishy settlements were worked out earlier with other banking monoliths--Citigroup ($7 billion) and JPMorgan Chase & Co. ($13 billion). And this is supposed to be justice. Instead, it's business--big business--as usual.
The result? Corrupt bankers aren't likely to be deterred by these sweetheart settlements, and nobody who can spot the real news behind the news releases is going to be fooled. It's called a settlement, but it's more of a sellout. Of the public interest.
Willie Sutton said the reason he robbed banks was simple--"because that's where the money is." That's where it still is, and Willie Sutton was a piker compared to the bureaucrats and bankers and their lawheads who work out these multi-billion-dollar deals at the expense of We the (gullible) People.
Editorial on 08/23/2014