Tuesday, April 14, 2009

The Bank Scandals


Photo is property of Staxonsteel

I am more than troubled by bank failures of 2008; and my discomfort isn’t about the money lost, but about the reasons for these failures. Were they criminal?
by Charlie Leck

And what are those causes?
Well, frankly, we don’t fully know. In his NY Times column on Sunday, Frank Rich asks, “What have we learned, if anything, from this decade’s man-made economic disaster?”

To fully understand this disaster and to, perhaps, actually benefit from it by protecting against future incidents like this, we must completely and precisely understand its causes.

That was the point William K. Black was making on the Bill Moyer’s Journal to which I urged you to go in my last blog. Something Black said on that video struck me really hard. He painted this picture. What would we be doing if it was a major airline crash? We would investigate and come to understand every available detail to explain why that plane came down. We would understand it as if we had been witness to every moment of the disaster. That, he said, is why the airline industry in America can boast a safety record second to none.

Wouldn’t you just think, is the point Black was making, that we would do the very same thing with this economic disaster that struck us? We need investigators pouring over every single, solitary transaction that each one of these institutions made so we can follow the trail to a clear explanation of what happened.

Black was clearly implying – no, stating – that we would find a pattern of greed, deceit and criminal activity that would blow away the American public.

Here's the facts, Jack!
Heads must roll! We are leaving these failed institutions under the control of the very executives who caused these problems. Think about this. At this very moment evidence is likely being destroyed. Facts are being obscured by high-priced accountants. Figures are being altered by mathematical wizards. With each passing day, the complexity of figuring all this out is increasing.
President Obama has failed us in this regard. He is letting these no-good, greedy bastards off the hook.

Only the American public, by rising up with loud and angry voices, can get the investigation going. We must demand that we want to know the reasons – the causes – the ugly, ugly truth about the corruption that took place in America’s banking industry. Black claims these banks were making loans that totaled into the billions of dollars with the full knowledge that they would not be repaid; however, they were skimming off personal profits and bonuses of hundreds of millions of dollars in the meantime. These were dollars that got fully protected by these criminal and greedy bankers who were only interested in the own future, staggering wealth.

Are there voices demanding such an investigation? If so, bring them to my attention and I’ll sign whatever petitions it takes to get to the bottom of this scandal.

In the meantime, I can only write to my Senator (a single one, unfortunately) and my Congressman, appealing to them to propose the most sweeping investigation of any incident in the nation’s history. Now.

This nation needs to know even if the truth is ugly and dark. How did it all happen?

1 comment:

  1. A North Dakota reader has emailed me and told me his Senator, Dan Dorgan, is calling for investigations and he suggested we supported Dorgan's call. I have written a letter to my Senator, Amy Klobuchar, supporting Dorgan and insisting thorough investigations are necessary.
    Chas

    ReplyDelete