Erroneous robo-signing (eg, signing forclosure docs for a non-delinquent property) is wrong & should be dealt with severely – but that is a civil tort not a criminal offense… Anyone who does that should be sued & have to pay…

What many people missed in the e-loan-documents/robosigning ‘controversy’ is that during the Clinton era, when the .com boom made a paperless world seem alot closer than it was, laws were passed at the Federal level that make electronic documents and digital signatures legally binding.

Which should, if we are following Art 6 of the Constitution, override any state law requiring paper documents and pen/ink signatures.

The overwhelming majority of lawsuits challenging electronically-documented foreclosures were frivolous attempts by deadbeats to keep a house they were not paying for.

The banks *regarding the credit crisis* may be white knights, but regarding *real estate title fraud* … whole ‘nother story. Some perp walks there would be good for business.

Yes, two of the perps ought to be Frank and Dodd, but .. the men who hired robo-signers and others involved in violating clear title to thousands of properties are equally guilty, if somewhat lower visibility.

Mew

The entire crisis was created by TOO MUCH GOVERNMENT and TOO MUCH REGULATION.

The banks are the victims.

Put down the populist crack-pipe and step away….

And while it’s infuriating and idiotic that the politicians almost ruined our banking sector in order to ‘buy’ votes from people with no financial self control, it wasn’t illegal.

This fact makes your ‘Congress should control the money supply’ position absolutely INSANE. CONgress CAUSED 2008 – why give them MORE power over our money after they almost wrecked the entire economy!

Further, while we had fractional reserve in 1929, we also had the economic black-plague known as the Gold Standard, and the Federal Reserve’s policy back then was deflationary (2 deflationary items at once – not good). Not a valid comparison.

Iceland did what one would expect from a socialist society – they punished business, rewarded the idiotic homeowners, and they will repeat the cycle in the future..

P.S. If you want to prosecute people, go after homeowners who lied on their documents & stole money from the banks by fraud. The banks are the victims here, not the criminals…

The 2 ‘Strongest’ banks during the Crisis – JP Morgan Chase and Wells Fargo – BOTH had extensive proprietary trading and investment divisions that would violate Glass & Volkler.

The profits from those divisions were use to offset losses in the home and commercial real-estate lending arm…

By allowing banks to diversify into other areas of finance, we give them the ability to ride out a crisis in one area of the economy without government help (And it’s public record that Chase and Wells were FORCED to take TARP money – they didn’t need it)…

The worst part of Glass, is the implicit ‘deal’ that comes with it – in return for confining banks to commercial/retail banking, the government implicitly agrees to bail them out in the future if there’s a crisis in that sector…

Like the CRA mess, it’s a ‘govt crapped the bed, now govt has to clean the sheets – because no one else can’ scenario… The way to avoid this, is to keep govt away from the banks…

I still don’t like Glass-Steagall…

I cannot believe that there are enough republicans who peddle the BS that prosecuting banksters is an assault on capitalism. I admire successful people but banksters are NOT to be emulated or admired. They dont take any risks. They privatize gains and socialize losses. Even today, nobody buys bank stocks, including TBTF, without the explicit guarantee of the USG.

Why wouldnt I be successful if I can have my gains but can transfer my losses and the scum expect me to respect these leeches

First off, we had partial reserve lending in 1929 as well. Indeed, we have had it off and on through various portions of the life of the USA, and partial reserve lending existed prior to our emergence as an independent nation. There is nothing new or high tech about this method of controlling the money supply.

Secondly, of course there were other ways besides a bailout to control this. Iceland has done precisely that — they reneged on debts and prosecuted corrupt bankers. They forced banks to forgive loans to some home owners, or renegotiate the payments, and their economy is on the mend. It is specious to argue that the only way to deal with criminals is to reward their bad behavior.