"The financial meltdown wasn't a mistake – it was a con"

[WhiskeyGirl]

The global financial crisis, it is now clear, was caused not just by the bankers' colossal mismanagement. No, it was due also to the new financial complexity offering up the opportunity for widespread, systemic fraud. Friday's announcement that the world's most famous investment bank, Goldman Sachs, is to face civil charges for fraud brought by the American regulator is but the latest of a series of investigations that have been launched, arrests made and charges made against financial institutions around the world. Big Finance in the 21st century turns out to have been Big Fraud. Yet Britain, centre of the world financial system, has not yet levelled charges against any bank; all that we've seen is the allegation of a high-level insider dealing ring which, embarrassingly, involves a banker advising the government. We have to live with the fiction that our banks and bankers are whiter than white, and any attempt to investigate them and their institutions will lead to a mass exodus to the mountains of Switzerland. The politicians of the Labour and Tory party alike are Bambis amid the wolves.

Beneath the complexity, the charges are all rooted in the same phenomenon – deception. Somebody, somewhere, was knowingly fooled by banks and bankers – sometimes governments over tax, sometimes regulators and investors over the probity of balance sheets and profits and sometimes, as the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) says in Goldman's case, by creating a scheme to enrich one favoured investor at the expense of others – including, via RBS, the British taxpayer. Along the way there is a long list of so-called "entrepreneurs" and "innovators" who were offered loans that should never have been made...

...The banks were gaming the regulators and investors alike – and they knew full well what they were doing. Simon Johnson's 13 Bankers shows how the major American banks deployed vast political lobbying power and money to create the relaxed regulatory environment in which all this could take place. In Britain no money changed hands. Gordon Brown offered light-touch regulation for free – egged on by the Tories, who wanted to go further....

more here - http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/apr/18/goldman-sachs-regulators-civil-charges

Where are the prison terms?

Why create a big slush fund?

Why isn't Obama doing what's right for Americans on Main Street?  The proposed reforms seem to offer little to prevent another financial disaster.

How long before GinnieMae goes critical?

Why isn't Obama returning to the days before deregulation?  The days when banks actually worked for Main Street, and not politicians, the job rotation, and Wall Street?

[Edward]

Yet Britain, centre of the world financial system, has not yet levelled charges against any bank


I think they are a little off center and out of balance..

Actually the situation is not that simple and is mired down by greed and corruption world wide and getting worse each and every day. The amount of people taking far more then they deserve is amazing yet a very small group is aloud to take anything they want without repercussions.
The banking system in America is going through many changes at the moment and me and you stand to lose, it is all part of the plan. 
jmho