David Dayen continues to document the atrocities:
The absolute least Americans can hope for from a major government settlement with a large industry over well-documented crimes is that the industry wouldn’t, after signing the settlement, just continue to commit the same crimes day after day. After all, following the tobacco industry settlement, cigarette makers did manage to stop advertising to teenagers that their product had no medical side effects.
But new evidence reveals the nation’s largest banks have apparently continued to fabricate documents, rip off customers and illegally kick people out of their homes, even after inking a series of settlements over the same abuses. And the worst part of it all is that the main settlement over foreclosure fraud was so weakly written that it actually allows such criminal conduct to occur, at least up to a certain threshold. Potentially hundreds of thousands of homes could be effectively stolen by the big banks without any sanctions.
When you know that you either won’t be prosecuted or if you are the fine will be 10% of the profit you’ve made, what’s the incentive not to be a thief? Ain’t Capitalism grand!
What a wonderful banking principle. Since we can’t be expected to be 100% accurate, we are allowed to misapply every twentieth deposit. And don’t go whining to your Attorney General, because if they sue we will get it dismissed under the settlement agreement. The State Attorneys General who signed off on this need to be voted out.