The Market Ticker contemplates a murder in Atlanta:
Americans were put into supposedly-safe “auction rate securities” and lost millions of dollars when they could not sell them. Americans were sold various MBS that were allegedly “AAA”, lost money, and have no recourse. Americans were sold homes based on inflated appraisals and knowingly-bogus loans given to them where the banksters involved knew they couldn’t pay, and lost everything.
None of the people responsible for the collapse in 2007-2009 have been indicted.
NOT ONE INDICTMENT.
This, despite the fact that Citibank’s former Chief Underwriter has testified under oath that the Bank knew it was writing crap paper in 2006 and 2007. 60% of the loans were bogus in 2006, and 80% in 2007. Yet they kept doing it, and nobody, including Rubin, who received a memo on the matter, has been indicted and the bank was bailed out rather than being shut down.
Likewise there are myriad complaints about foreclosure fraud – the filing of false affidavits which are in fact crimes – over 170,000 of them in aggregate that have been admitted to.
Again: Not one indictment has issued and not one firm has been shut down.
Gunfire is prevalent among gang members because they do not have any other means of settling disputes. That is, having had their right to recourse under the law removed due to the nature of the activity in question, these gang members instead turn to violence to settle complaints with one another.
Are we seeing the beginning of the same thing in the financial realm?
Denninger is correct and I suspect that the banksters have not thought through the probable ramifications of their actions in attempting to shield themselves from being held legally accountable for their criminal behavior. As with the illegal drug economy, in which disputes are settled with violence because legal recourse is simply not an option, banksters who utilize their political influence to insulate themselves from the victims of their financial rapine are likely to become targets of those whose only hope of justice is to take it into their own hands.
Not every foreign investor or American who has lost their home is going to seek justice; the majority of the latter won’t even show up to court. But some will do so, which is why it is utterly foolish for banksters to attempt to place themselves above the law, because above the law is, by definition, also outside the law.
This is why it is so important that the insolvent banks are shut down rather than bailed out and why the criminal banksters must be arrested and prosecuted rather than granted ex post facto legal immunity. If government abdicates its lawful role, others will eventually fill the void.
Correction: this appears to be number two. I note that two years into the Great Depression 2.0, more banksters have been murdered than indicted.