Bloomberg has a superb investigative reporting piece on the apparent rampant criminal behavior of investment banks and advisers in Guaranteed Investment Contracts in the municipal bond market – something which cost the public billions.
“The whole investment process was rigged across the board,” said Charlie Anderson, who retired in 2007 as head of field operations for the Internal Revenue Service’s tax-exempt bond division. “It was so commonplace that people talked about it on the phones of their employers and ignored the fact that they were being recorded.”
Anderson said he referred scores of cases to the Justice Department when he was with the IRS. He estimates that bid rigging cost taxpayers billions of dollars. Anderson said prosecutors are lining up conspirators to plead guilty and name names.
The banks involved include Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co., Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., and Wachovia Corp.
Dunno about you, but I’m beyond tired of the rampant criminality in what pretends to be investment banking. It’s time to take out the garbage on Wall Street. There are thousands of these slimebags who need long prison terms and forfeiture of assets, and then the investment banks need to be smashed into pieces.