Financial Finger-Pointing Turns to Regulators

[groovedaddy]

In the whodunit of the financial crisis, Wall Street executives have pointed the blame at all kinds of parties — consumers who lied on their mortgage applications, investors who demanded access to risky mortgage bonds, and policy makers who kept interest rates low and failed to predict a housing market collapse.

But a new defense has been mounted by a bank executive: my regulator told me to do it.

This unusual rationale is presented by the bank executive in one of the few fraud suits brought against a mortgage banking official in the aftermath of the financial crisis — the one filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission against Michael W. Perry, former chief executive of IndyMac Bancorp, which failed spectacularly in mid-2008.

After being accused of fraud and misleading investors about his company’s financial health just before it collapsed, Mr. Perry set up a Web site this fall to defend himself.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/23/business/economy/financial-finger-pointing-turns-to-regulators.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha2

[PoliticAverse]

1. Interesting artcle. n/t

[Citizen Worker]

2. I wondered how long it would take before one of the banksters would proclaim, "the devil made me do

it."

[JDPriestly]

3. The banksters blame regulators for not enforcing the regulations strongly enough

and then, these same banksters argue for deregulation.

Makes no sense. In the end, a company's accounting practices are the responsibility of that company, not of some regulator.

[meow2u3]

4. That sounds like the Mafia blaming the FBI for running an extortion racket

What temerity! How low can the banksters sink?