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The Boston Globe

Opinion

Paul McMorrow

SEC shows how weak it is

The Securities and Exchange Commission said last week it won’t sue Goldman Sachs over an awful subprime deal from 2006. The SEC now looks like it’s writing off any hope of scoring meaningful reprisals against the banks that brought down the American economy. In saying it won’t prosecute, the SEC is revealing the staggering weakness of the laws that are supposed to protect the economy, and the agency that’s supposed to be enforcing them.

Subprime mortgage bonds were rainmakers for Wall Street banks. Wall Street collected fees for supplying the cash that backed subprime loans, for packaging those loans into bonds, and for selling the bonds off to investors. So long as one wasn’t a homeowner stuck holding an exploding mortgage, or a bank with a balance sheet full of them, the subprime game was as lucrative as anything Wall Street had ever dreamed up. Which is why, as the wheels started to come off the subprime bus, big banks hit the gas.

Comments

Do you wonder why Paul, was the federal government behind this, did they push for a conviction, NO, why, their all in bed together. How many goldman employees are now in the federal government, one name comes to mind, Tim Geitner.

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Overture, cut the lights This is it, the night of nights No more rehearsing or nursing a part We know every part by heart! Overture, night of nights This is it, we'll hit the heights And oh what heights we'll hit On with the show this is it!

great column today and absolutely right. the One percent take care of their own. The Fed and Govt take care of their own, and protect thier trading and stocks and wealth. No help to us no help to our ecomony were most of us line it. Thats why we have high umemployment and no growth and many more years of this ecomonic recessesion. But wall street doesnt miss a bonus or a beat, not one person in jail...

Except everyone selectively forgets that the mortgage crisis occurred under George W. Bush's watch......