Is JP Morgan Getting Away with Another One?
An SEC enforcement action against JP Morgan's alleged fraudulent sale of mortgage bonds has been settled. JP Morgan won't have to admit to any wrongdoing. No individuals responsible for the alleged fraud will face prosecution. But, of course, JP Morgan will pay a "significant" fine.
Do these settlements strike you as, how to put it, odd? If JP Morgan admits no wrongdoing, why are they paying a big fine? What's the fine for? For doing nothing wrong?
Why does the SEC get to collect what will probably amount to at least tens of millions of dollars, if not more? Where does all that money go? To the SEC? What do they need all that money for? What do they do with it?
Doesn't it strike you that this is simply a way for JP Morgan to "buy off" the SEC?
There's more:
So this continues a pattern that has sustained itself from the beginning of the financial debacle of 2007 - 2008: no one is held personally responsible.
Of course, this suits a firm like JPM just fine, since the message is: if we ask you to do something fraudulent or unethical, just do it. You won't pay any price for it; in fact, you'll collect a fat bonus if you hit your sales goals.
Am I missing something here? Do you think this is an exaggeration of the truth?
Meanwhile, the federal government continues to push for more regulations. The recently re-elected Obama administration has been quite vocal about the need to "reign in" Wall Street via more regulation.
But here we have an example of a regulatory agency using the regulations it already has in place, and what happened? Do you think this decisions smacks of justice, or does it reek of cronyism? Help me out here: what sort of difference will more regulations make? Again, maybe I'm missing something. (Or could it be that more regulation provides increased opportunity for government regulatory bodies to fashion more of the lucrative "settlements"?)
And so we find ourselves left with a system that many believe is completely broken and thoroughly corrupt firmly in place, saved by the buck - in this case JP Morgan's buck. Pay a few of those bucks and get away with "whatever."
Do the American people, many of whom have been seriously, even severely hurt by our ongoing economic and financial crisis, really just go back to sleep now and ignore the reality staring them in the face? That reality being that the government massively bailed out large financial institutions with taxpayer money, which institutions will apparently continue to pursue the activities that triggered the collapse that caused the need for bail-out in the first place?
More and more now, I'm wondering whether only a collapse of the system will lead to any real reform, including our political system, and a re-start of our economy. The system includes government and big business (and not just Wall Street firms), along with their lobbyists, who continually feed each other at the expense of the rest of us.
Do these settlements strike you as, how to put it, odd? If JP Morgan admits no wrongdoing, why are they paying a big fine? What's the fine for? For doing nothing wrong?
Why does the SEC get to collect what will probably amount to at least tens of millions of dollars, if not more? Where does all that money go? To the SEC? What do they need all that money for? What do they do with it?
Doesn't it strike you that this is simply a way for JP Morgan to "buy off" the SEC?
There's more:
The J.P. Morgan deal is expected to be the first in a series of SEC enforcement actions related to Wall Street's manufacture and sale of mortgage-backed securities, said the people close to the investigation. But the landmark deal could revive a long-running argument about whether the authorities have let too many individuals go unpunished.(Read more by clicking HERE.)
So this continues a pattern that has sustained itself from the beginning of the financial debacle of 2007 - 2008: no one is held personally responsible.
Of course, this suits a firm like JPM just fine, since the message is: if we ask you to do something fraudulent or unethical, just do it. You won't pay any price for it; in fact, you'll collect a fat bonus if you hit your sales goals.
Am I missing something here? Do you think this is an exaggeration of the truth?
Meanwhile, the federal government continues to push for more regulations. The recently re-elected Obama administration has been quite vocal about the need to "reign in" Wall Street via more regulation.
But here we have an example of a regulatory agency using the regulations it already has in place, and what happened? Do you think this decisions smacks of justice, or does it reek of cronyism? Help me out here: what sort of difference will more regulations make? Again, maybe I'm missing something. (Or could it be that more regulation provides increased opportunity for government regulatory bodies to fashion more of the lucrative "settlements"?)
And so we find ourselves left with a system that many believe is completely broken and thoroughly corrupt firmly in place, saved by the buck - in this case JP Morgan's buck. Pay a few of those bucks and get away with "whatever."
Do the American people, many of whom have been seriously, even severely hurt by our ongoing economic and financial crisis, really just go back to sleep now and ignore the reality staring them in the face? That reality being that the government massively bailed out large financial institutions with taxpayer money, which institutions will apparently continue to pursue the activities that triggered the collapse that caused the need for bail-out in the first place?
More and more now, I'm wondering whether only a collapse of the system will lead to any real reform, including our political system, and a re-start of our economy. The system includes government and big business (and not just Wall Street firms), along with their lobbyists, who continually feed each other at the expense of the rest of us.
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