Saturday, November 15, 2014

The real bank robbers got away...

In January 2011, a 10-member US Congressional commission chaired by former California State Treasurer Philip L. Angelides delivered a damning 662 page report that concluded, among other things, that the 2008 global financial meltdown was avoidable, the result of human action and inaction.

The report noted, in bold-faced type, that there was widespread failure in financial regulation and supervision and dramatic failures of corporate governance and risk management at important financial institutions, that a combination of excessive borrowing, risky investment and lack of transparency put the financial system on a course for crisis.

The government, the report found, was ill prepared for the crisis and there was a systemic breakdown in accountability and ethics, collapsing mortgage-lending standards and the mortgage securitization pipeline; over-the-counter derivatives contributed significantly to the crisis and credit rating agencies failed to do their jobs.

That was three and a half years ago. The report, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Report issued by the US Senate Homeland Security Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, might well have been put onto a little boat and sailed off the end of the earth despite the anguished cries of the bankers. It is extremely well-written, containing phrases like this: “The captains of finance and the public stewards of our financial system ignored warnings and failed to question, understand, and manage evolving risks within a system essential to the well-being of the American public. Theirs was a big miss, not a stumble. While the business cycle cannot be repealed, a crisis of this magnitude need not have occurred. To paraphrase Shakespeare, the fault lies not in the stars, but in us.” Full story...

Related posts:
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  2. Iran hangs billionaire over $2.6billion bank fraud...
  3. Vietnam sentences state firm executives to death for embezzlement...
  4. Corrupt bank officials get death sentence in Vietnam...
  5. LIBOR scandal is the crime of the century, but where's the outrage?
  6. Iceland jails former bank bosses...
  7. How Iceland goes after the bankers that brought down its economy...

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