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Dylan Ratigan offered one of the best explanations we’ve seen of the Repo 105 practice on yesterday’s show. He concludes by noting that the report “stops just short of suggesting [the financial crisis and transfer of wealth from the bailouts was] by no means an accident but instead one of the greatest crimes ever perpetrated by a group of people and enabled by the US governent.”
Basically, as they explain, what Lehman did was like saying, I’ll swap my trash can for your $50 billion so I can show that money on my books at quarter’s end – then immediately pay you back. Except they booked it as a sale, not a swap, that’s fraud.
Eliot Spitzer is Ratigan’s guest for the segment. He says that prosecutors will look “very very hard” at this. Civil cases will certainly be brought as a result of the report’s revelations and criminal cases may be brought if the quality of the evidence is good enough.
Maybe after a few banksters go to prison and are stripped of assets then perhaps the rest of them might decide honesty and ethics beats going to prison. Could happen.