Author Archives: Devin Smith

The FBI’s 2010 Mortgage Fraud Report Reveals Why the Banksters Love Holder

By William K. Black

The Obama administration’s continuation of the Bush administration’s refusal to prosecute the elite banksters (or even the vastly lower status CEOs of the fraudulent mortgage bank) that drove the crisis has made it clear that the rule of law no longer applies to wide ranges of life and that crony capitalism will continue to reign.

One of the difficulties we have is that because the last two administrations have fanatical devotees of the cult of the Virgin Crisis – the myth that the ongoing crisis was the first in modern times conceived without sin (control fraud) – that it is exceptionally difficult to know what their creed is.  DOJ has refused to prosecute any elite banker for mortgage loan origination fraud.  The rare prosecutions it has brought against senior officials of fraudulent loan originator (a large, but obscure regional mortgage bank: Taylor Bean) did not prosecute the officials for their fraudulent origination (or sale) of loans.  The Taylor Bean officials were only prosecuted for their fraud against the TARP program – and only because Neil Barofsky (SIGTARP) made the criminal referral about that fraud and pushed relentlessly to force the Department of Justice to prosecute.  With zero prosecutions of the massively fraudulent home lenders that drove the crisis to we are left with no information on why committing hundreds of thousands of frauds via the twin epidemics of loan origination fraud (inflating appraisals and making endemically fraudulent “liar’s” loans) is no longer a crime that the FBI investigates and DOJ prosecutes.  No senior DOJ or FBI official, of course, is stupid enough to state openly why we no longer prosecute even the CEOs of long-bankrupt mortgage banks that led these accounting control frauds.  The U.S. Attorney for Sacramento, one of the epicenters of accounting control fraud, was foolish enough to attempt to explain why he did not investigate or prosecute the banksters:

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Rajan Calls Krugman “Paranoid” for Criticizing Reinhart and Rogoff’s Research

By William K. Black

This article discusses a simmering feud among five of the most prominent economists in the world (two of them Nobel Laureates).  It was prompted by the August 8, 2013 article by Raghuram Rajan, who has just been selected to run India’s Central Bank, entitled: “The Paranoid Style in Economics.”  (Note: I have deliberately “buried the lead” in my last section.)

The personalities involved have a great deal to do with the feud, but as Paul Krugman wrote on May 23, 2013, “It’s Not About You.”

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Why are Appraisers Furious at Fraud by their Peers while Corporate Lawyers are Complacent?

By William K. Black
(Cross posted at Benzinga.com)

 

I have done a series of articles about the efforts of honest appraisers (which began in 2000) and loan brokers to alert the lenders, the markets, and the government to the twin fraud epidemics (appraisals and “liar’s” loans) committed by lenders’ controlling officers that drove the financial crisis.

Honest appraisers could have profited greatly by becoming dishonest appraisers who would be given the lucrative assignments by fraudulent lenders’ controlling officers and their agents.  Instead, honest appraisers suffered serious losses of income because they refused to succumb to the extortion efforts of the fraudulent lenders and their agents.  A national survey of appraisers in early 2004 found that 75% of them reported that they were the subject of attempted coercion designed to inflate the appraisal during the past 12 months.  A follow-up study in 2007 found that percentage rose to 90% and that 67% of appraisers reported losing a client and 45% did not get paid their fee because they refused to inflate the appraisal during the past 12 months.  Many honest appraisers were driven out of the profession by the blacklists the fraudulent lenders’ controlling officers and their loan brokers used to deny business to honest appraisers.

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Teaching White-Collar Crime

By William K. Black

Despite an enviable predictive track record and the success of our policies when they are (rarely) put into practice, white-collar criminologists re overwhelmingly ignored in our core area of expertise by decision-makers whose policies are so criminogenic that they cause the epidemics of “accounting control fraud” that drive our recurrent, intensifying financial crises.

Control fraud” occurs when the persons controlling a seemingly legitimate entity use it as a “weapon” of fraud.  In finance, accounting fraud is the “weapon of choice.”

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Is B of A the Most Embarrassing Department of Justice Suit Ever?

By William K. Black

The Department of Justice’s (DOJ) latest civil suit against Bank of America (B of A) is an embarrassment of tragic proportions on multiple dimensions.  In this version I explore “only” seven of its epic fails.

The two most obvious fails (except to the most of the media, which failed to mention either) are that the DOJ has once again refused to prosecute either the elite bankers or bank that committed what the DOJ describes as massive frauds and that the DOJ has refused to bring even a civil suit against the senior officers of the banks despite filing a complaint that alleges facts showing that those officers committed multiple felonies that made them wealthy by causing massive harm to others.  Those two fails should have been the lead in every article about the civil suit.

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Doctrine of Mathematical Impossibilities

By J.D. Alt

There’s a joke about a farmer and his pig. The pig is covered with a patchwork of large and small Band-Aids. A puzzled visitor asks the farmer: “Why is your pig covered all over with Band-Aids?” “Well,” says the farmer, “obviously, I can’t butcher him all at once: if I cut out too much he might die—and then I’d soon have nothing to eat.”

Most people who hear this joke chuckle to themselves (in a sickly way) because they intuitively realize the absurdity of the farmer’s misunderstanding the true nature of his resources. It is exceedingly odd, therefore, that most of these same people find it difficult to understand that our political and economic leaders—and the mainstream media that covers them—view the U.S. economy with exactly the same logic as the farmer views his pig. 

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Is it Legal Malpractice to Fail to Get Holder to Promise not to Torture your Client?

By William K. Black

One of the things I never expected to read was a promise by any United States official that a potential defendant in a criminal prosecution by our federal courts “will not be tortured.”

The idea that the Attorney General of the United States of America would send such a letter to the representative of a foreign government, particularly Russia under the leadership of a former KGB official, was so preposterous that I thought the first news report I read about Attorney General Holder’s letter concerning Edward Snowden was satire.  The joke, however, was on me.  The Obama and Bush administrations have so disgraced the reputation of the United States’ criminal justice system that we are forced to promise KGB alums that we will not torture our own citizens if Russia extradites them for prosecution.

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An MMT vs Austrian Debate Post-Mortem Part V of V: Coda

By Rohan Grey

[Part I] [Part II] [Part III] [Part IV] [Part V]

So there you have it. As far as I can tell, Murphy effectively conceded that the Austrian School’s economic analysis is inapplicable to contemporary policy discussions that assume as a pre-condition the basic features of our existing monetary and political system.

Instead, the substantive contribution of the Austrian school to contemporary economic debates lies in its normative critique of representative government and public law, and its attempt to provide a practical blueprint for a post-revolutionary economic system based around an absolute respect for private property rights above all other values.

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An MMT vs Austrian Debate Post-Mortem Part IV of V: The (Legal) Extension of the MMT Case

By Rohan Grey

[Part I] [Part II] [Part III] [Part IV] [Part V]

Don’t be confused by surfaces; in the depths everything becomes law.”
– Rainer Maria Rilke

As noted at the end of the previous section, I found the debate engaging but ultimately frustrating, as Murphy’s critique of the coercive nature of our modern monetary system, while morally seductive, begged the question: “Ok, but what is your alternative?”

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Warren Mosler’s interview on INETeconomics

Marshall Auerback interviews Warren Mosler for the Institute for New Economic Thinking.