Even better evidence that civil liability was at issue.
But of course, not remotely meaningful with respect to criminal liability.
You have just proved my point. You don’t even understand the concept so you are not worth my time.
This is where I find these threads always break down, and I’m highly doubtful any resolution will be forthcoming. One group of people, outraged at behavior they deem to be “bad” assert all kinds of bad behavior and talk of crimes and a weak prosecutorial arm of the government that has failed to prosecute them.
When pushed for evidence none is ever forthcoming, or it is evidence tangential to the original point. I would never have probably even opened this thread if someone had titled it, “Could we say that the major banks and Wall Street figures behaved stupidly prior to the Great Recession?” or “Do you think some of the major banks and Wall Street figures could be sued over behavior prior to the Great Recession?” I specifically came into this thread because of the word convict. Everything else that doesn’t discuss criminal law is tangential.
I should state right now, I’m sure of a few things:
-
Some crimes were committed. I know this because some people were actually prosecuted and convicted/pled out.
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Some crimes were committed that were not prosecuted because of insufficient evidence or even because no one ever realized the crime happened.
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No one has shown me a clear case where evidence is available to the general public that a person involved in this mess committed a crime, and a prosecutor chose not to prosecute.
BWAHAHAHA!
The “dignified retreat,” eh?
This is from the guy who made the claim a model is what determines whether or not underlying loans default.
Yawn.
Yes, exactly. And I’m often pilloried for demanding specifics about crimes, only to be told that the posters in question were using the word more abstractly (“Isn’t it a crime that we’re going to lose Saturday mail delivery?”)
Here, there was no ambiguity: “convict” is unquestionably a comment on criminal law.
Hilarious that you can be bothered to keep typing, but can’t make any substantive replies.
Probably tired from all those appellate briefs.
Actually, you have. It was just dismissed as irrelevant because… well, read it.
Now, I’m not an attorney nor do I play one on TV, but it seems to me that to “lie on their loan (application)” is fraud, regardless whether you were encouraged to do so or whether the person being defrauded cares or not that they’re being lied to.
If so many people hadn’t lied (either to themselves or to their mortgage broker), then the system would probably not have collapsed. But it’s rather easier to sell the idea that the “little guy” was duped by “greedy executives” than to accept the idea that the “greedy executives” were duped by millions of “little guy” liars who moved into quarter-million dollar houses on $40k/year salaries.
No, that was a few decades ago. I just think that your insistence on a sharp delineation between criminal and civil violations is amusing. If you had any familiarity with what happened AT ALL - which you so obviously don’t - you would realize that it’s not as bright a line as you would like to believe.
I fully agree. I am solidly in the “no actual crimes were committed” camp.
Contract law is a different matter.
What I said was, the model is only as good as the information that goes into it. Garbage in, garbage out.
JohnT I do think many of the crimes committed were by borrowers who lied on their mortgage application (something it clearly says in black and white is a criminal act by the way, so there is no excuse for it.) By and large I do think people should be prosecuted to dissuade that kind of thing, but I think a lot of times it’s hard to differentiate between “I lied because I really wanted the home and knew if I didn’t my mortgage application would be rejected” and “I was confused because my eyes glaze over at the sight of paperwork and accidentally noted that a $10,000 gift from my parents was income and didn’t note that it was a gift from an external source” and things like that.
It’s hard from a PR perspective to prosecute “ordinary Americans” when those are both distinct and real possibilities.
But it is fair to say those are irrelevant, since the thread wanted to discuss “major bank and Wall Street figures” which means specifically not middle class borrowers who filled out mortgage applications for homes in middle class neighborhoods.
Lehman Brothers.
First you had - http://www.thenational.ae/business/banking/lehman-executives-may-face-criminal-charges. Everything laid out perfectly smooth in Anton Valukas initial report and then suddenly - SEC Dropping Lehman Case: Where’s the Outrage?
Yeah, I know, they really could not prove it.
But, then again, perhaps US Treasury and SEC are both corrupted? Just maybe, one in a trillion chance that people running these are… simply CORRUPT? No? Infallible, huh?
But this is now really tiring - it is lawyers saying “show me evidence”.
You show it, they “read” and then declare: We’re not convinced!
Okay… whatever, dude.
Extremely valid point.
Let’s show deltasigma how it’s done:
The “little guy” who claims an income he doesn’t have, or gets a loan from a family member which he represents as his own assets in order to qualify for a mortgage has broken the law.
What law?
Why, 18 USC § 1014, of course. It provides, in pari materia:
Sure enough, that’s a crime.
Bravo!
From your own link:
Why is that so difficult to accept?
Nothing at all, especially, I imagine, to someone with Supreme Court briefs on his resume.
BWAHAHAHAHA.
Hey, I just heard that a prosecutor in Ohio is indicting Punxsutawney Phil for fraud in predicting an early spring.
That’s not your day job, is it?
Those were a bit more complex than just citing a statute but then I was a bit more motivated. 
I understand you may have some lawyer background but this, how is risk of any kind (credit, market, liquidity, operational etc.) determined for any financial arrangement, he is, in fact, correct.
For example, under Basel II Risk Weighted Asset calculation, there’s a parameter called Probability of Default that is based on a predictive model over a horizon of one year if counterparty would default.
However, for MBS, the credit risk model is based individual mortgage holder credit score (and other parameters such as Prepayment factor) that is still subjected to predictive model (predictive as in future behaviour based on historical data).