Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Worse-than-Madoff weasels should go down, too
Posted by John Grooms on Tue, Jun 30, 2009 at 2:08 PM
Championship caliber chiseler Bernie Madoff was rightfully sentenced to 150 years, i.e., the rest of his life, in prison yesterday for gypping many people out of their savings through the the biggest Ponzi scheme in history. The way I see it, that’s one down -- one of several crooks-in-suits who should be headed to jail. My guess, though, is that few of the other weasels will ever be arrested. I’m not talking about the 10 other people who allegedly helped Madoff in his massive fraud, and who are set to be prosecuted next. The crooks I’m referring to are the heads of lending institutions who brought the American economy to its knees and ruined lives while gambling our collective future on ill-considered “ticking time-bomb loans” for way-overpriced houses — high-risk loans which were then bundled and used as collateral for even higher-risk investments. As bad as Bernie Madoff’s crimes were, they pale before the damage done by these shysters. It’s encouraging that Angelo Mozilo, head honcho of scandal-ridden Countrywide Mortgage (which was subsequently bought by Bank of America), has been arrested, but here’s my question: Why haven’t the rest of the leading lights of the mortgage scams and derivatives schemes been hauled off to jail? It’s good that Madoff was caught and prosecuted, but there are bigger criminals — who committed less personal crimes, perhaps, but, still, massive financial crimes against the nation itself — who, apparently, will remain free.
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