Real fraud

http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2012/03/22/18709885.php

Real fraud
by Ted Rudow III, MA
Thursday Mar 22nd, 2012


"Bank of America: Too Crooked to Fail," Rolling Stone reporter Matt Taibbi chronicles the remarkable history of the rise of Bank of America, an institution he says has defrauded "everyone from investors and insurers to homeowners and the unemployed."
In 2008, Bank of America received a $45 billion taxpayer bailout, but the bank has also received billions more in what could be described as shadow bailouts. The bailouts have helped Bank of America’s market share grow. It now controls more than 12 percent of the nation’s deposits, as well as 17 percent of all home mortgages.
But new questions have arisen over how Bank of America may actually benefit from the deal because the settlement includes a legal waiver to allow banks to escape billions of dollars in lawsuits. There are much, much bigger problems in the areas of creating loans and securitizing the loans. That’s where the real fraud occurred. The real fraud was when Bank of America or some company went to a union, say, and they said, "Here’s a whole bunch of mortgages we want you to buy. They’re AAA-rated. They’re all good." And they left out derogatory information about how bad the loans really were. That was the real fraud.
Ted Rudow III, MA