Has it come to this? Is the corruption in this country so widespread that our last hope that there will ever be accountability for the massive crimes committed by Wall Street and financial institutions rests on the shoulders of one lonely Attorney General?
Why is the Obama administration pressuring New York's Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman to what is obviously a huge cover-up and whitewash of very serious financial crimes committed by Wall Street?
In a New York Times article titled "Attorney General of N.Y. Is Said to Face Pressure on Bank Foreclosure Deal," and published today, it is reported that:
Eric T. Schneiderman, the attorney general of New York, has come under increasing pressure from the Obama administration to drop his opposition to a wide-ranging state settlement with banks over dubious foreclosure practices, according to people briefed on discussions about the deal.
In recent weeks, Shaun Donovan, the secretary of Housing and Urban Development, and high-level Justice Department officials have been waging an intensifying campaign to try to persuade the attorney general to support the settlement, said the people briefed on the talks.
Mr. Schneiderman and top prosecutors in some other states have objected to the proposed settlement with major banks, saying it would restrict their ability to investigate and prosecute wrongdoing in a variety of areas, including the bundling of loans in mortgage securities.
This is of course happening after new revelations about the SEC clearly breaking the law by destroying records of up to 18,000 investigations of wrongdoing by Wall Street firms since the early 1990s, as reported by Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone Magazine, in the article titled "Is the SEC Covering Up Wall Street Crimes?"
For the past two decades, according to a whistle-blower at the SEC who recently came forward to Congress, the agency has been systematically destroying records of its preliminary investigations once they are closed. By whitewashing the files of some of the nation's worst financial criminals, the SEC has kept an entire generation of federal investigators in the dark about past inquiries into insider trading, fraud and market manipulation against companies like Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank and AIG. With a few strokes of the keyboard, the evidence gathered during thousands of investigations – "18,000 ... including Madoff," as one high-ranking SEC official put it during a panicked meeting about the destruction – has apparently disappeared forever into the wormhole of history.
The impetus for a wide-ranging settlement with the banks from the Obama Administration seems to be driven by the belief that doing so would somehow benefit borrowers and homeowner facing foreclosures.
This is the same tactic being used over and over again. Beat us down to accept shitty deals because the alternative is worst. Use fear to manipulate us.
Can't they just wait a little longer before we can be certified as an actual BANANA REPUBLIC. Is it time to send a posse to Wall Street?
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