Financial Fraud, fine, rinse and repeat.
So more or less the same activity that lead to the to settlement? What could possibly go wrong!
This characterization is so unfair!
A 2009 Rolling Stone article by Matt Taibbi likened investment bank Goldman Sachs to “a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.” Although the metaphor was faulty, since vampire squids do not suck blood or have a “blood funnel”, it was later used by other critics of Goldman Sachs, such as the Occupy Wall Street movement.
@renke Wait, no, what? Low-income housing development is not the same as financializing fraudulent subprime mortgagtes. Not at all, although there has been a disturbing push to blame the poor for the crisis.
One must not draw a parallel unless every single feature on both sides corresponds exactly.
Or so I’m often told.
Low income housing is the opposite of tricking low income families into taking out 95-100% mortgages that come with balloon payments they can’t afford in a year’s time. It’s creating housing they CAN afford, instead.
Sniff.
The vampire squid is a noble creature, I’ll have you know, who gets his unfortunate name due to his coloration and not to any behavior.
Black squid lives matter, you know.
no, this wasn’t my intention. I thought more along the line that Goldman Sachs will try to refinance the housing projects and it seems likely* that they will bundle it again in some funny financial casino novelity products.
*) but then I’m a cynic, so maybe not likely…
eta also @anon67050589
Quelle surprise!
And the prospects for meaningful, ethical, and intelligent reform remain in the wilderness.
It’s getting very hard to walk around the financial districts of New York, Boston, LA, SF, Chicago and others without glowering malevolently at the suited d-bags out for their lovely lunch breaks and lattes. It’s a broad brush, and many are probably fine people, but they collectively comprise a horrible societal cancer. Many attorneys have already realized as much about their “profession” and are turning their skills and efforts away from the law firm snakepits toward things that actually improve the world, And they can still make a living…imagine that.
What’s taking the conscientous people on Wall Street so long?
Yes, and it’s also steering government funded purchases of real estate securities to the goal of housing people instead of just profitable developer transactions.
Developers often are idle rich kids in the town who own stuff in the town. They don’t automatically represent people in towns who want housing.
I’ve always had a hard time squaring this. In a proper criminal endeavor, it’s guilt by association and you’re charged with whatever the worst crime the group committed.
But. you put on a suit and help rob the world - probably fine people? I call dingo.
Or did you mean “probably fine” in the same way Dahmer was “such a nice young man, a quiet neighbor - I can’t believe it” sort of way. I’m out west just waking up, pre-caffeine-n-all so that may have been sarcasm that slipped by.
I was just reading about how the NHS, on the other side of the pond, may be fsking over people they already fsk’d over - yet if these “fine people” were indeed “fine people” maybe there would be enough money in the coffers that this wouldn’t be necessary.
I say personal responsibility rules the day, if you do bad things or if you enable bad things to happen, or are an enabler of bad things for a living - you’re a bad person. Sorry.
back and forth between the banks and government officials
There’s your problem right there.
Maybe they’re just too hooked on those much more smooth, creamy, delicious lattes they can afford?
why can’t we have drone strikes on these people? No one would care if bankers get killed in drone strikes…
(Is there a term that describes the efforts by a seemingly goodwilled member of a community to discredit the community as a whole by openly advocating from within said community outrageously illegal actions? Just wondering.)
If they are employed to do so, they are agents provocateurs, I think, but I don’t know what you’d call the amateurs.
captured minds are controlled minds
“They appear to have grossly inflated the settlement amount for P.R. purposes to mislead the public"
No, how can that be…
[note sarcasm]
Nestbeschmutzer?
(though it’s less advocating illegal actions but more talking derogatory about the community. so more or less the German variant of whistleblower without positive connotations)
“the banks were given extra credit for activities that the government wanted to encourage, like funding development of low-income housing or providing relief to areas hit by natural disasters”
Is this the corporate equivalent of being made to clean up some trash on the highway after smashing up your car in a drunk-driving accident?
