I have no doubt that you have no doubt, but your “no doubt” is not a valid debate point. There are countless things posters here have had “no doubt” about over the years that were proven to be wrong.
Big banks have staffs of lawyers (binders full of lawyers, if you will) for the exact reason of making sure they cannot be prosecuted. Maybe they slip up from time to time, but I would not bet against them on any given instance.
Well I suppose that’s why it’s a debate. Personally I think common sense has to play a role in these things. At the point you throw that out the window, it ceases to be interesting in my opinion.
Appeal to “common sense” is a logical fallacy. And there is no excuse when the internet provides all the resources you need to find a cite to back up your claim.
It’s not a logical fallacy when you’re talking about things that all people should recognize. You do realize that even courts take judicial notice of certain basic facts.
As already noted, you don’t even get inside the courtroom without specifying the statute involved. I’ve definitely learned over the years to never trust “common sense” when it comes to understanding the law. If all we needed was “common sense”, we wouldn’t need laws.
And as I’ve already said, I’m not interested in wasting my time combing through the USC and administrative code to find applicable statutes and rules when any idiot knows what fraud is and knows that’s it’s a crime.
The question is who specifically stole what or misrepresented what and from whom.
Now some will argue that even if the banks are innocent of actual theft, they should have done their due dilligence on those CDOs. Except failing to do due dilligence isn’t “fraud” or “theft”. It’s some different crime.
As John Mace pointed out, “no doubt”, “gut feeling” and “public opinion” do not a crime make.
Also, the investment banks have made a convenient scapegoat for all the economic ills in this country over the past several years. Regardless of what their actual responsibility may have been, the common-people narrative is that investment bankers get paid a shitload of money while most Americans eek out a living on $50k a year. Banks were somehow involved in the financial crisis therefore it is all their fault.
And they could go after the banks if they wanted to. When Elliot Spitzer was attorney general of NY, he specifically went after corporations for fraud and othe white collar crimes where the SEC and other regulatory bodies failed.
No doubt, but due diligence IIRC only applies to things that the seller is unaware of. I don’t know about in a commercial context but in the context of residential real estate, you have an affirmative obligation to disclose deficiencies of which you are aware.
So, you are saying you are not convinced?
The sh!tload of documents, books, emails, actions, signatures, decisions made etc etc… all that… not enough for you?
You know what… my take is that many people – including your general assessment that adds nothing to the debate - are wilfully ignorant and wouldn’t know the proof even if it kicked them in the butt.
Since the topic of the thread was whether we could convict the executives of crimes, then Bricker’s approach is the only one that matters here. I’ve seen other threads where Bricker’s sticking to the law seems too narrow for that topic, but that’s specifically what this thread is about.
And if you don’t disclose those problems, it’s not a crime. It’s a good basis for a civil suit, but that’s a different matter.
Oh? So using the Internet alone I can personally find evidence that would convict the big banks of crimes? Wow! I can be a persecutor!
The problem is not just that the big banks own the lawyers to keep themselves out of trouble, it’s also that they own the lawmakers to make sure that whatever they do does not constitute “trouble” and they own the regulators to see that they don’t see any little mistakes they may make.
Come on! HSBC LAUNDERED DRUG MONEY FOR MEXICAN DRUG CARTELS and LAUNDERED MONEY FROM AL-QAEDA! What the hell does it TAKE? I am surprised they have not had their legislators declare it legal for them to rob their customers at gunpoint.
Bricker’s approach is bullshit. This thread may have started with the intention of asking what evidence there is to convict various people involved in the crisis on the basis on which laws and regulations but the fact of the matter is this thread passed that exit sever time zones ago.
Many people, myself included have pointed to the rampant fraud that was involved. Bricker himself linked to an article that stated that fraud on the part of buyers of CDS’s were the cause of AIG’s downfall. If he wants to make some idiotic argument that fraud is not a crime, I’m happy to reply to that sort of absurdity on it face since as I’ve already stated, fraud is theft by deception and theft by any definition is a crime.
The mere fact that no one has been indicted and tried is irrelevant as is the fact that no one is identifying any of the hundreds if not thousands of federal, state and local statutes, regulations and ordinances that either make fraud itself a crime or for which fraud is an element of a criminal offense. To insist on that sort of minutiae in the context of this type of debate is simply to try to make an insignificant and petty point at the cost of grasping the broader significance of what happened. If that’s what people here want, then fine, knock yourselves out.
Fraudulent Interstate Transactions
Employment of Manipulative and Deceptive Devices
Personally, I don’t think the inability by a non-lawyer to point to an exact code section for a possible criminal violation negates the entirety of the points they make. Seems to me requiring an exact code section and the equivalent to a legal complaint before engaging a general point is just more legalistic nitpicking than an actual rebuttal. YMMV.
Thank you sir, but I am in fact a licensed attorney, I just left the practice decades ago and I refuse to indulge Bricker in whatever “great lesson” the master seems to wish to teach us.
Mea Culpa.
You now have to draft a 50+ page criminal complaint for each and every individual or corporation listed in those prior cites, with attached affidavits, depositions, or prior sworn testimony, or else we can completely disregard everything you say.
SDMB can’t afford me even at my 1989 rates. 
Someone tell my why Lehman Bros, Bear Stearns, and Merrill Lynch defrauded themselves out of business?
They assembled the MBS that took their own firms down.
They believed that even though the borrowers would default, it wouldn’t matter since property prices would continue to rise - or worst case scenario, NOT fall.
Therefore, when half the mortgages defaulted, they would be repo’ed and resold, most likely for a tidy profit - win - win (as long as we don’t include the borrower). Obviously there was a problem with this approach . . . .
So the first response to that then is, well, it wasn’t fraud then right? No, it was because the quality of a debt instrument, even one that is a meta-intrument like an MBS that is composed of many other debt instruments, is supposed to be judged on the probability of default. That means the probability that the promised payment stream will not be forthcoming.
OK, so to counter that you might say, ‘well, if they had been right, the payment stream WOULD have been forthcoming.’ But here is the tricky part. THAT DOESN"T MATTER. Why, because it was based on an assumption and not any reliable data. In fact, all of the reliable data was telling people that we were in a housing bubble. So not only was an assumption, it was a bogus one.
However personally, I would go even further than that. Even if they did have good data that predicted a probability of xx% of the housing market increasing or remaining static, I would still call it fraud because unless that probability was a guaranteed 100%, there was still significant . . . and this is the critical point . . . UNDISCLOSED risk that was being absorbed by the buyers of these securities.
How do you imagine that the question “Could we convict…” be answered without referring to an exact code section?
Sure – if I agree we could convict, then I can simply say, “Yes, we could convict.” But if someone challenges me on the point, can I simply rest on that general claim? Really?
At some point, if there is debate on the basic question, it seems beyond cavil to me that someone has to pony up some kind of substantiating detail, or acknowledge that they cannot support the debated point.
Now, you have at least offered up a code section that might apply.
The problem in my opinion with your offering is that it would be very difficult to prove. That is, while you have identified a crime, we now have a problem of proof. Even in the civil realm, " Fed.R.Civ.P. 9(b) provides, “In all averments of fraud or mistake, the circumstances constituting fraud or mistake shall be stated with particularity.” To prevail on a civil claim, a plaintiff must plead:
[ul]
[li]a specific false representation of material fact[/li][li]knowledge of its falsity by the person who made it[/li][li]ignorance of the falsity by the person to whom it was made[/li][li]the maker’s intention that it should be acted upon[/li][li]detrimental reliance on it[/li][/ul]
This is even more of a hurdle in criminal cases – the presence of disclaimers on these offerings is going to be a near-impossible factual hurdle to clear.