Alternet: How Wall Street Thieves, Led by Goldman Sachs, Took Down the Global Economy

[Hissyspit]

http://www.alternet.org/story/150741/how_wall_street_thieves%2C_led_by_goldman_sachs%2C_took_down_the_global_economy_--_their_outsized_influence_must_be_stopped?akid=6891.24869._P0PjR&rd=1&t=2

AlterNet / By Les Leopold 10 COMMENTS

How Wall Street Thieves, Led by Goldman Sachs, Took Down the Global Economy -- Their Outsized Influence Must be Stopped

If we don't bust up Big Finance, there soon will be another financial crisis that will destroy what's left of our middle-class way of life.

April 25, 2011 |

For all the damning evidence you’ll ever need about Wall Street corruption, take a look at the recent report from the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, “Wall Street and the Financial Crisis: An Anatomy of a Financial Collapse” (PDF). The 650-page indictment reveals the myriad of ways Wall Street lies, cheats, steals and defrauds on a routine basis. Arguably the report is as revealing as the Nixon tapes or the Pentagon Papers. Unfortunately, it’s too technical to get widely read. So here are the Cliff Notes.

This study, broken into four case studies, forms a biblical tale of how toxic mortgages were born, nurtured and spread like the plague throughout the land, making money for the financial philistines every step of the way.

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The report also details outright fraud committed by brokers – forging documents, making phony loans, stealing money – who then got rewarded again and again by the bank for their high sales records, even after they were caught! Nobody cared because the loans quickly were sold to Wall Street – the riskier the loan, the higher the interest rates and the more Wall Street would pay.

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The third case study which focuses on the two largest rating agencies (Moody’s and Standard and Poor’s) is a story of prostitution. Here we learn how the rating agencies turned trick after trick for the big Wall Street banks, doling out favors (AAA ratings) to thousands of “innovative” securities based on the junk mortgages that WaMu and others originated and packaged. Then when it became obvious to everyone that the crap was still crap, the whores went virtuous by drastically downgrading thousands of toxic assets overnight. This forced pension funds and insurance companies, who by law could only hold investment grade securities, to dump their downgraded assets all at once. The result was a rapid and deep collapse of all financial markets. (You read this section of the report and you have to wonder how anyone in their right mind could take seriously S&P’s recent “negative outlook” rating on the U.S. Who are they shilling for now?)

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[aquart]

1. Please hang them. All in a row.

And confiscate every dime. Leave their children in rags.

[Mimosa]

2. K&R Best OP in a long time. n/t

[Hissyspit]

3. Kick nt

[crickets]

4. Kick