William K. Black
February 12, 2016 Bloomington, MN
The Bank Whistleblowers United announce the inaugural Financial Fraud Lemons of the Week award. There can be no more fitting recipient than the ironically named Department of Justice (DOJ). The “lemon” is used in the economics and criminology literature to refer to a car of surpassingly terrible quality. The quality is so bad that the car can only be sold through fraud. We will award it each week to an example of dishonesty or cowardice about financial fraud that is worthy of public ridicule. We want to leave room in our scale for truly spectacular examples, so this first award will only receive Four Lemons. The first award is for what has become a routine example of dishonesty and cowardice by DOJ. Its conduct should be a scandal of national proportions, but by now everyone expects DOJ to embarrass our Nation when it deals with elite bankers.
