Lawyer Up, part deux

I'm a big fan of Planet Money, and their series on "Toxie the Toxic Asset" might be taking a George Romero turn: it could be back from the dead.

If you haven't heard the series, you're missing out. Take some time to listen to it.

My heart does a quick little jig every time I hear about the banks involved with the crash getting sued. I've held some pretty waffling outlooks on the whole crash. I do understand and agree with the rescue of the banks by the Fed (secret loans) and the Treasury (TARP). Things could have been a lot worse if the financial system was allowed to crash. But I also, deep down, wanted to see BoA, Goldman, Citi, Chase, and the whole lot of them face the music. They made bad investments. They should go down, just like Lehman. I balked at the bail-out of GM and Chrysler after all, and rightly viewed it as government rewarding poor performance from bad companies, and punishing good performance from others (no help for Tesla? really?). How are they different from the banks? Well the banks had the economy hostage. Liquidity freeze is a serious issue, and it can lead to worse outcomes than 9% unemployment.

But there seemed to be no punishment for banks behaving badly. In fact BoA and Citi have been getting away with fraud and attempting to foreclose on homes that didn't even have mortgages, until some good people hired lawyers and proceeded to sue the hell out of them. Its important to remember that these banks are FRAUDS. And our current "Hope and Change" president is trying to pressure a settlement with these banks which would bar future litigation. The president apparently wants to negotiate with the banks for a general settlement in return for letting them get away with rampant fraud. This has worked out so well for him in the past, because our Nobel Prize Winning law professor has no balls when it comes to negotiations. No back-bone, no huevos, no intestinal fortitude, NO COURAGE. The man can't even get through a trivial schedule change without looking like an imbecile.

We did not have the chance, when the economy was crashing to punish these banks. So why not take the another route and sue them. The government won't regulate or punish them in any meaningful way, because they are corrupt and cowardly. Time for us to love the lawyers. Time for us to love every manipulative, scheming, greedy stereotype lawyer that we can find, because when I open up the paper they seem to be the last people with any decency left.

And as a fun one, let's review the accomplishments of our president that are worthy of his Nobel Peace Prize, something he shares with other greats like Yassir Arafat and Henry Kissinger:
1) kept Guantanamo Bay open, despite promising to close it "within a year" of his election,
2) signed an extension of the Patriot Act, allowing for the continuance of violation of privacy of his own citizens under the guise of "security,"
3) signed into law a mandate that all Americans purchase insurance, without providing an affordable public alternative (imagine requiring everyone to go to school, but then not providing public schools and how that might affect one's budget),
4) delayed free trade agreements (how is that "strengthening international diplomacy"?)

and now (5), he is attempting to interfere with people's right to sue through our legal system large organizations who have defrauded and harassed them. We're past the crash, and we're into stagnation. A little (or even a lot ) of litigation isn't going to be the end of the world; in fact it might give some of the medium and small size banks, who have been competitively disadvantaged by the government's and Federal Reserve's favoritism to the large banks, get a leg up and compete with the big boys.

Love your lawyer, sue the banks.