Way to go Elizabeth Warren. Give 'em hell! The financial regulators can blame, at least in part, Wall Street lobbyists (along with outgoing Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and Senate Republicans) for their embarrassing turn at the hearing. Warren would have been on the panel herself representing the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, instead of a sitting senator, if her nomination to head the agency hadn't been thwarted in 2011
The Democratic senator from Massachusetts had a straightforward question for them: When was the last time you took a Wall Street bank to trial? It was a harder question than it seemed.
"We do not have to bring people to trial," Thomas Curry, head of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, assured Warren, declaring that his agency had secured a large number of "consent orders," or settlements.
"I appreciate that you say you don't have to bring them to trial. My question is, when did you bring them to trial?" she responded.
"We have not had to do it as a practical matter to achieve our supervisory goals," Curry offered.
Warren turned to Elisse Walter, chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission, who said that the agency weighs how much it can extract from a bank without taking it to court against the cost of going to trial.
"I appreciate that. That's what everybody does," said Warren, a former Harvard law professor. "Can you identify the last time when you took the Wall Street banks to trial?"
"I will have to get back to you with specific information," Walter said as the audience tittered.
"There are district attorneys and United States attorneys out there every day squeezing ordinary citizens on sometimes very thin grounds and taking them to trial in order to make an example, as they put it. I'm really concerned that 'too big to fail' has become 'too big for trial,'" Warren said.
A Warren constituent, open-Internet activist Aaron Swartz, recently committed suicide after being hounded by federal prosecutors who reportedly said they wanted to "make an example" of him. Warren had met and said she admired Swartz and, after he died, expressed her concern by attending his memorial in Washington.
I'm betting on never.
.......would like to see Obama's ex treasury head Tim Geithner, all the Top Bank CEO's and all the Ratings Agency CEO's put on trial.
Now to rebut your insanity, I can not nominate GOP candidates.
His policies ACA and gun control. Are going to be problems for his own party.
Obama's goal is to make sure nothing gets done.
nothing meaningful is coming out!
alot of pro-Wall Street/banking policies, with a few superficial leftist appointments thrown in for good measure. 
Like I said, let's see what the next four years bring.
What's Inside American Banks
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/01/whats-inside-americas-banks/309196/
What we really need more like her in both houses instead of the nit wits with pea size brains.
And how many individuals are investigated by state and federal prosecutors each year?
Um… thousands.
Now are you really surprised that we have a lot more trials of individuals than big banks?
But we should set an example anyway, right? Have you talked to Arthur Anderson, the Big Five accounting firm, lately? They were found guilty and it led to the demise of the firm. Oh, and Arthur Anderson’s conviction was vacated. In otehr words, AA was not guilty at all as far as the law is concerned.
Gee, really sorry shareholders, employees, and customers of this firm. Indicting a public corporation and indicting an individual are two completely different undertakings with fundamentally different consequences.
Civil actions are designed to obtain compensation for past misdeeds and deter similar future behavior. Settlement do that.
"There are district attorneys and United States attorneys out there every day squeezing ordinary citizens on sometimes very thin grounds and taking them to trial in order to make an example, as they put it. I'm really concerned that 'too big to fail' has become 'too big for trial,'" Warren said."
What a ridiculous comparison by a so-called Harvard Law Professor.
-- Modified on 2/15/2013 6:14:20 AM
It's a fucking hostage situation.
Elizabeth Warren has the Banksters and Bank regulators on notice now.
What's that, you can't actually name one? Didn't think so.
By the way, the court has to approve the settlements and Judge Rakoff, in whose court many of these civil lawsuits have ended up, on several occasions has told the regulators the settlement IS inadequate and sent them back to get more. And, of course, the banks rarely admit liability so we still don't know if they have actually committed any "misdeeds" or are just settling to avoid the cost of litigation.
You have now been officially ZINGED.
"the banks rarely admit liability"
The effects are more than obvious. Dumbass.
What do you think caused the housing bubble and the crash that followed? Gremlins?
Upton Sinclar once said, "It's difficult to get a man to understand something if his salary depends upon his not understanding it."
So how's your stocks been lately?
Ya, like what we could afford for a legal team could match that of a big bank. Don't think so. The TV show Suits has had a good couple of episodes in the last two weeks that shows the consequences of money, even between two law firms, competing in court. Guess what, the deeper the pockets the increased probability of winning. Hey, we knew that didn't we?
to be sold to Fannie Mae. Nor is excessve risk taking a crime or selling derivatives that the seller does not really understand
With respect to God Bless Bank of America, most of the abusive mortgage practices –most notably the Hustle where most loan quality checks were removed so mortgages could be processed in record time - were done by Countrywide, a separate firm that BOA acquired. To the extent that Countrywide continued this practice after the acquisition, that is poor management by BOA , not criminal behavior.
The Manhattan US atty has in fact sued BOA and other banks for this behavior but these are civil violations, not criminal ones. He has done the investigation and has all the facts but found no criminal behavior. Are you suggesting this guy is on the take?
Similarly, the foreclosure abuses which led to a freeze on foreclosures were all civil violations – and a check of almost file found that the bank had the right to foreclose anyway.
To the extent that any individual was shafted by the bank, Mattrade correctly points out the individual has a civil remedy. If any BOA traders were part of the Libor rigging scandal that will be criminal but so far I've sen no evidence BOA was involved, but even there it will be the lower level traders, not BOA’s management who did that.
William D. Cohan House of Cards
William D. Cohan Money and Power How Goldman Sachs Came to Rule the World
Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera All the Devils are Here: The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis
Gretchen Morgenson: Reckless Endangerment
and come back after reading them and tell me that what the banks discussed in these books did wasn't a crime. Next you'll be telling me Mary Shapiro and her toothless balless attorneys were effective against these criminal banks.
learned P & R Board to actually identify a single crime LOL.
Let me guess - you guys "know it when you see it" - you just can't describe it LOL>
Meanwhile, the big banks are constantly under investigation by six or seven
different regulators and the DOJ but so far no grand jury has been convened. You guys really need to learn the difference between bad judgment (plenty), civil violations (many) and criminal violations by the bank itself as opposed to low level employees (zero so far).
But I am looking forward to reading Bethany's book - she did a great job on Enron.
Countrywide and Angelo Mozilo were definitely the poster child of what not to do, but at the end of the day the blame can be shared from Greenspan to the U.S. Govt, to exotic mortgages (sub-prime) to banks, to loan originators, to really stupid borrowers who had no business buying a house. We need to get back to the days where its mandatory to put 20% down, so you have skin in the game.
At the end of the day, liberal groups need a pinata to hit, and that pinata is Wall Street. They have the deep pockets where the Atty Generals can sue their little hearts out.
Elizabeth "Cherokee Nation" Warren is getting her 15 minutes of fame by interrogating other government officials from FDIC, OTS, OCC, and other acronyms. Who cares right? I mean, if you are looking for a rumble, try out the Icahn vs Ackman rumble, if you can call it that. Now that's CNBC TV. It's been called "Jews gone wild", "The Rumble in Queens", or "The School Yard Bully against the Crying Little Jewish Boy". Ackman being the crying one.
I was thinking of calling Bob Arum or Oscar De La Hoya about promoting an Icahn vs Ackman fight, but then they probably outsource it to real fighters.
Nevertheless, please tell me you didn't buy Herbalife. Don't touch it. We'll see you in the round of 16. I can't even say that with a straight face.
she hasn't been corrupted. I love her.