Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein Could Face Criminal Prosecution For Role In Financial Crisis: Sen. Carl Levin
"They clearly misled their clients and they misled the Congress," Levin added, announcing that he will recommend that his panel refer all of the Goldman executives who testified before the committee for criminal prosecution by the Justice Department and for sanctions by the SEC for violations of securities laws.
This is a fairly detailed and lengthy piece by Shahien Nasiripour. It is worth reading in full at its source. The only thing missing from Levin's report is a perjury recommendation for Henry Paulson who lied before Congress repeatedly during various testimony given in 2007 and 2008 - see the right column of this website to watch his lies for yourself.
WASHINGTON -- Goldman Sachs executives deceived clients in order to profit off the brewing financial crisis and then misled Congress when asked to explain their actions, concluded a top lawmaker who led a two-year investigation into Wall Street's role in the meltdown.
Carl Levin, chair of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, will recommend that Goldman executives who testified before his panel, including chairman and chief executive Lloyd Blankfein, be referred to the Justice Department for possible criminal prosecution, the Michigan Democrat announced Wednesday. Members of the subcommittee will now deliberate Levin's proposal.
A Goldman spokesman said its executives were truthful in their testimony, adding that the firm disagreed with many of the panel's conclusions.
Two and a half years after a historic crisis that has yielded not a single criminal conviction of anyone who played a leading role in causing it, the prosecution of such a high-profile Wall Street executive may satisfy the public's desire to see culprits brought to justice. Last year, the Securities and Exchange Commission settled a lawsuit it had brought against Goldman.
But the firm was just one target of a sweeping, 639-page report by the Senate panel into the causes of the crisis. Hardly a fluke occurrence, the meltdown was the product of a deeply corrupt financial system, one fueled by profit-hungry banks that deceived their clients, and overseen by lax regulators who were complicit in the firms' chronic abuse of the most fundamental rules of the game, the report concludes.
The investigation found a "financial snake pit rife with greed, conflicts of interest, and wrongdoing," Levin said.
More than any other government report produced in the wake of the crisis, this account names names, blaming specific people and institutions: Goldman Sachs, Washington Mutual, Moody's Investors Service, Standard & Poor's, the Office of Thrift Supervision and others. It targets four types of institutions, all of which it says played key roles in causing the crisis: mortgage lenders that offered prospective homeowners booby-trapped loans; regulators that were paid by the institutions they were regulating and cooperated in widespread deception; rating agencies that gave seals of approval to products they knew to be especially risky, all in the pursuit of market share; and Wall Street banks that duped investors into buying securities that only the insiders knew were destined to go bad.
"They clearly misled their clients and they misled the Congress," he added, announcing that he will recommend that his panel refer all of the Goldman executives who testified before the committee for possible criminal prosecution by the Justice Department and for sanctions by the SEC for violations of securities laws.
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Bloomberg on the Levin report...
Apr 17, 2011 at 8:28 AM
Reader Comments (14)
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory?id=13386036&utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
Congress Holds Investigative Hearing into Bottled Water Industry
http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2009/08/07-4
The Diploma Mill Profiteers
By MIKE WHITNEY
http://www.counterpunch.org/whitney04152011.html
[snip]
So, how was all this working? Graduation rates for private colleges are about 65 percent, for state schools about 55 percent, and for the for-profit colleges? Twenty-two percent.
Houston, we have a problem." ("Congress Should Put a Stop to For-Profit College Rip Offs", Peter Fenn, US News)
Huh? So, for-profit colleges are netting $24 billion from the government and only graduating 22% of their students? It's mindbogglingly. Fenn continues:
"The top executives for the top 15 for-profit colleges pulled in $2 billion last year. Two billion dollars, practically all taxpayer money.
And that student loan money?—the default rate at these for-profits is 43 percent!
So, only 22 percent graduate and 43 percent default on the loans, leaving us holding the bag because students have been sold a bill of goods by slick marketers." ("Congress Should Put a Stop to For-Profit College Rip Offs", Peter Fenn, US News)
DB...I am worried about Gomp. Was he the 114 year old man from Montana?
DB...what do you think...it's growing legs...now Trump is throwing in that Obama's name may be Barry Soetoro
But don't worry, I have vowed to haunt you for the rest of your life you old serial stalker you...
You do believe in ghosts don't you?
I, for one am tired of the rich and famous "getting" such good deals when it comes to criminal activity!
What are the odds of Lloyd doing time?
I sense an awful lot of campaign contributions coming to the political arena of both parties for the 2012 political season from Goldman Sucks.
Slim to none.
Thus, if there exists a law which sanctions slavery or monopoly, oppression or robbery, in any form whatever, it must not even be mentioned. For how can it be mentioned without damaging the respect which it inspires? Still further, morality and political economy must be taught from the point of view of this law; from the supposition that it must be a just law merely because it is a law. Another effect of this tragic perversion of the law is that it gives an exaggerated importance to political passions and conflicts, and to politics in general.
Frederic Bastiat
It is impossible to introduce into society a greater change and a greater evil than this: the conversion of the law into an instrument of plunder.
Frederic Bastiat