Was It A Crime--Or Should It be?
This may become the Tea Party view. A deeper question is: is this civil suit a substitute for or a maneuver to avoid bringing criminal charges? There are even progressive writers like James Kwak of Baseline Scenario.com who doesn't believe crimes have been committed.
"One of the things I say now and then that most annoys people is that the financial crisis was not caused by criminal behavior. (Note: The "Prayer for the Relief" at the end of the complaint only asks for civil penalties, but I suppose this does not preclude a criminal action -- someone who's a real lawyer could answer that.) My general line is that I'm sure there was some bad behavior that rose to the level of criminal liability -- like lying in disclosure documents -- but that it wasn't necessary for the crisis, and we could have had the crisis without any criminal activity at all."
The problem with this thinking is that it defines financial crime very narrowly, and in terms of securities laws that exist only to protect investors. It forgets that the most harshly abused victims of the crisis occurred on the consumer side of the equation in the rip off of citizens as workers and homeowners.
In my film Plunder The Crime Of Our Time I report on a finding in Massachusetts that Goldman deliberately designed thousands of mortgages to fail. They settled, paying the state $60 million without admitting guilt.
Those who argue these abuses were legal rarely admit that the financial institutions spent nearly a billion dollars to erode regulations and change rules. They used their ill-gotten gains to buy up "politricians' who passed one-sided and unjust laws to allow them to get away with whatever benefited their bottom lines no matter who was hurt.
This well-documented history of political manipulation qualifies them as avaricious manipulators, not law biding companies. Their legal and moral defense is bogus. The Congress and the Courts have been "captured" by Wall Street for years.
Unjust Laws?
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
