The 2007-2008 financial crash caused the worldwide loss of untold trillions of assets, massive unemployment, millions of homeowners foreclosed upon and their credit demolished, the bankruptcies or failures of whole nations such as Iceland, the mass extinction of many banks and financial firms small and large such as Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, and general economic misery throughout the planet. The cause of the crash was, fundamentally, widespread fraud. The fraud started at the lowest level with false loan applications known as “liar loans”, percolated upwards in the fraudulent bundling of loans into mortgage-backed securities, received the stamp-of-approval by fraudulent ratings given by the ratings agencies, and ultimately resulted in the greatest investment fraud in world history when this toxic junk was sold to investors as “safe” AAA-rated products, including collateralized debt obligations (CDOs).
The one guy prosecuted for the 2007-2008 financial crash, Kareem Serageldin. (Photo credit ANDREW … [+]
The fraud was widespread, the fraud was extreme, the losses from the fraud were in the trillions, and the fraud caused many tens of millions worldwide to suffer severely. More importantly, the fraud was criminal. Yet, in the end, really only one guy, Kareem Serageldin, went to jail for any of this ― and for conduct that was, at its worst, nowhere near the scale of criminal activity that had been engaged in by the…
