Malfeasance

Wall Street Malfeasance: A Small Sampling from 2013

Another year, another long litany of bank crimes! While individuals making mistakes often leads to lifetime imprisonment, if you are a white-collar criminal institution, apparently you can still buy your way out of prison.

 

Here is just *one* crime or dirty dealing from each month of this year:

• January: Bank of America settles for $10.3 billion over questionable home loans it sold to Fannie Mae
• February: The OCC signs the Settlement for the Independent Foreclosure Review. This review was meant to reveal what went wrong during the foreclosure crisis. The review was exceedingly flawed, but instead of fixing the problems, the OCC just gave up and announced a settlement.
• March: The Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations releases a DAMNING report on JPMorgan’s outright lies to regulators during the London Whale fiasco
• April: The details of the Independent Foreclosure Review Settlement payments are unveiled. Wronged homeowners who never missed a payment were paid $5,000 (but didn’t get their home back). Those who had a loan modification approved, but the bank foreclosed anyway, got a paltry $300.
  I devoted a whole tumblr to “What You Can Buy for Having Your House Stolen.”    

• JPMorgan is banned from the electricity markets for six months by energy regulator FERC because of the "egregious nature of JP Morgan’s repeated submission of false and misleading statements" during an investigation over market manipulation.
• May: Citigroup, the bank that received the MOST government aid ($476 billion), has the audacity to write and lobby for a bill that would keep their costs artificially low, because of implicit government guarantees. Most of Congress is all “SURE WHY NOT, CO-SIGN”
• June: Former Bank of America employees alleged in sworn statements that the Bank had rewarded employees who pushed the most people into foreclosure.
• July: The FERC investigation revealed that JPMorgan was indeed manipulating electricity markets, and was ordered to pay $410 million in fines. AND!The Senate held a hearing about how Wall Street Commodities sepculation drives up prices for consumers on things like soda and beer.
• August: Two former JPMorgan traders are indicted for hiding the losses from federal regulators and falsifying records. Dennis Kelleher from Better Markets calls the charges “chasing minnows while letting the whales of Wall Street go free.”
• September: JPMorgan was Ordered To Pay $309 Million For Illegal Credit Card Practices
• October: Bank of America was found liable for mortgage fraud
• November: Merrill Lynch (now owned by Bank of America) settles for $160 million over charges by 700 black brokers that they were discriminated against by the firm because of their race.
• December: It was unveiled that JPMorgan knew Bernie Madoff was a scam artist, took their own money out, but didn’t tell any U.S. regulators about the problem. And they sold Madoff products to their clients despite suspecting something was very wrong with Madoff’s perfect record

http://becausefinanceisboring.com/post/71064014524/wall-street-malfeasance-a-small-sampling-from-2013