New Economic Perspectives

By William K. Black

The Wall Street Journal is deeply upset that almost none of the banks and none of the banksters that became wealthy by leading the three epidemics of mortgage fraud that drove the financial crisis are being subjected even to prosecution-lite cases.  The WSJ wants us all to know that “almost none” and “prosecution-lite” are both excessive.  The WSJ rant demands that we bestow the thanks of a grateful nation to the banks and banksters that committed the frauds.  This financial crisis is the first Virgin Crisis – conceived without sin in the C-Suites.  This second column in my series on the WSJ rant responds to the WSJ’s claim that mortgage frauds that are “only” $9 billion in magnitude do not warrant even civil sanctions.

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By William K. Black

I wrote this column in Bogota, Colombia where I was presenting five talks at the Universidad Central’s economics conference, so I was struck by the title of a choleric rant by the Wall Street Journal entitled “Banking in a Time of Cholera.”

The WSJ’s title is a play on words on the title of a novel, “Love in the Time of Cholera,” by Colombia’s greatest writer, Gabriel García Márquez (“Gabo”).  The novel is set in a city that appears to be based on Cartagena, the city famous for being looted repeatedly by pirates.  In this first of several columns responding to the WSJ rant I discuss its failed literary allusions and tie these failures to some of the WSJ’s analytical and factual errors that render their rant risible.

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