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Washington's soft-core approach to the epic financial fraud that caused the crash remains hard to understand. As Bill Black says: "When you don't prosecute, things don't get better."
They're not getting better or safer. Credit is tight — especially for consumers. The financial industry is expanding its use of new and exceedingly complex derivatives. The mortgage market, the source of the raw material for mayhem, remains unchecked. The FBI said this summer that mortgage fraud is "rampant" and growing. Suspicious-activity reports rose from 47,000 in fiscal 2007 to 63,000 in fiscal 2008, which ended last September at the height of the crisis and its publicity, and now such reports are on schedule to exceed 70,000 for fiscal 2009. A growing source of exploitation involves reverse mortgages marketed to the elderly.
People want justice. They've lost savings, homes (or the value of homes), jobs, and retirements. Foreclosures continue to rise. People can't believe that the megagrifters who pulled off mortgage, securitization, and derivative frauds walk the streets with lined pockets. And the venal "experts" who issued bogus ratings that deodorized subprime cesspools should be in the dock. But it almost seems as if Bernie Madoff's 150-year sentence for a scheme that had nothing to do with causing Wall Street's meltdown is supposed to cover all the crooks, and that we're supposed to be satisfied.
James Lieber is a lawyer whose books on business and politics include Friendly Takeover (Penguin) and Rats in the Grain (Basic Books). His previous story on the Wall Street meltdown, "What Cooked the World's Economy?," appeared in the Village Voice in January.
