Janet Tavakoli: Fraud As A Banking Business Model

Guest post submitted by Janet Tavakoli.
There were many factors that contributed to our recent financial bubble: deregulation, cheap money from the Fed, failure to enforce remaining regulations, crony capitalism, hubris, speculation, leverage, and fraud among other problems. While fraud wasn't the only issue, it was and is a significant contributor to the credit bubble. Restraining fraud is a necessary but not sufficient condition for a sound financial system. Congressional investigations in recent years have put ample evidence of fraud in the public domain.

To illustrate just one type of malicious mischief, Senator Carl Levin (D. Mich.), Chairman of a senate investigative panel, issued a memo stating that Goldman "magnified the impact of toxic mortgages." The Wall Street Journal reviewed data showing that a $38 million subprime-mortgage bond created in June 2006 was referenced in more than 30 debt pool causing around$280 million in losses to investors by 2008. In other words, Goldman kept repackaging, reselling or protecting (buying credit default protection on) losers. It took the wrong kind of nerve for Goldman's CEO to say he was doing "God's work."
Arianna Huffington pointed out that the financial system is rigged and that offenders get off lightly:

Until the Securities and Exchange Commission sued Goldman Sachs for fraud in April of 2010, it was easy to forget that we have a regulatory agency designed to protect the public from the pillaging of corporate America. Six months earlier, the SEC has arranged a settlement with JPMorgan that showed how rigged the system is. The banking giant agreed to pay a $25 million penalty and cancel $647 million in fees owed by Alabama's Jefferson County as the result of a complicated derivatives deal that blew up in the county's face. As part of the settlement, JPMorgan neither admitted nor denied wrongdoing--despite overwhelming evidence that it had engaged in plenty of wrongdoing.

On Friday, September 2, 2011, The U.S. Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), the regulator for taxpayer-subsidized mortgage lending guarantors Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, filed lawsuits against 17 of the world's largest banks over suspect mortgage loans which helped exacerbate the U.S. housing crisis. Both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were placed in conservatorship in September 2008 after they nearly collapsed. The FHFA claims banks misrepresented the value of the mortgage loans and mortgage securities they underwrote, arranged, and sold.
So far the banks being sued include Bank of America Corp along with its Countrywide Financial Corporation and Merrill Lynch & Company divisions, Goldman Sachs Group Inc., JP Morgan & Chase & Co, Citigroup Inc., Deutsche Bank AG, Barclays PLC, Nomura Holdings Inc., Morgan Stanley, Ally Financial Inc., Credit Suisse Group Inc., First Horizon National Corp, General Electric Co, the HSBC North America Holdings unit of HSBC Holdings, The Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC and Société Générale SA. The FHFA is just getting started.
Critics of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and their previous regulator, OFHEO, say that they were sophisticated investors, and they should have known better. William K. Black is a former bank regulator who played a role in hundreds of successful prosecutions after the Savings and Loan Crisis. He told the Wall Street Journal: "It's a great myth that you can't defraud sophisticated financial parties." Particularly when loans are fraudulent and material information was not disclosed.
The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission published evidence from the testimony of officials of Clayton Holdings(among others), a due diligence firm, that underwriters and rating agenciesignored evidence of suspect loans and did not disclose this information to investors.
The FHFA's complaint involves tens of billions of dollars in potential recoveries that will benefit taxpayers. Yet, as Arianna Huffington points out, banks continue to find ways to get Americans to subsidize problems that the banks themselves were chiefly responsible for creating. Consumers struggle to keep up with payments as the unemployment rate rises along with prices for food, energy and healthcare. Meanwhile, job creation hovers near zero.

When consumers fail to keep up, banks, trying to offset losses in other areas, turn around, hike interest rates, and impose all manner of fees and penalties--all of which makes it less likely consumers will be able to pay off mounting debts.

Money is being put in taxpayers' pockets in the form of "recoveries" while being extracted again in the form of subsidies and cheap funding to shaky banks that continue to award record pay and record bonuses as they gouge consumers. We can expect more of the same if we continue to let banks off with a slap on the wrist for malfeasance--along with a taxpayer subsidized fine--while banks neither admit nor deny wrongdoing.
Banks won't change until we follow the law and take "prompt corrective action." Banks that committed widespread fraud should be placed in receivership. Bank of America was cited by William Black and Randall Wray in their October 2010 post as the place to start, and I agree.
On December 8, 2010, I presented an analysis to the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) in Washington D.C. of key causes of our current financial crisis: "Repairing the Damage of Fraud as a Business Model." The phrase "fraud as a business model" comes from a comment referenced in the presentation made by Richard Cordray, then the Attorney General of Ohio and the current Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, when he discussed foreclosure fraud.
Repairing the Damage of “Fraud as a Business Model”

Originally appeared at the Huffington Post