(OR: Can’t you just smell rotten, when it’s really bad?)
In the news, April 12, 2016, Goldman Sachs Group bank agreed to pay 5 billion ($5,000,000,000.00) for failure to adequately tell its buyers of the health of the mortgages & other loans sold to them.
The rotten smell should be hitting your nostrils like a whirl wind. Since 2011 the federal government has made American Banks pay way over 106.55 billion in fines. Add the above and the figure available is way over 111 billion. This is just what is easily found. Rooster says banks, but you must remember these banks are owned by shareholders, who do not get the benefit of the money paid in fines or in the defense costs to get there. Really, a few of our citizens are paying the price. The bank officers do not. ( WARNING) Rooster does not have all the fines imposed by the Federal government on Banks. Cannot find them in one place. Best estimate it is over 300 billion since 2011.
Where the money goes is another very bad smell. When asked the departments will tell you, that after they take theirs (Warning) the rest goes into the U.S. Treasury. There is no accounting.
Let your nose follow the smell. You will recall the real estate collapse of 2008. It started its slide in 2007 peaked on Dec. 30, 2008 and carried through 2009. Obama took office twenty days after the peak.. The last bunch of years of the Bush administration the Senate and House were well under Democrat control. The Democrats had demanded (Bush objected) that Fannie Mae and Freddie mac accept loans banks would not otherwise have approved. This was the Democrats desire to let everyone (The poor, because the non-poor could already buy a house.) buy a house. This message was loud and clear and went through the lending world like wild fire through kindling. Rooster remembers selling a condo in early 2009. He received three offers and not one of them should have qualified under the old bank rules. To the Rooster it was obvious they could not pay. Rooster asked the lender how come he would approve them, and he said because that was the word from D..C. Get the poor into houses. Rooster almost pulled out, because he could see not only the future of such loans, but he could see the pain and suffering to the millions of people who would be foreclosed on when they failed to make payments. He did not. At that time he had to sell that property. The point is the whole thing was caused by Liberal Democrats like Senator Dodds and Barney Frank. They just wanted to give to the poor and let the rest pay for it. Well the rest is all the share holders of the big banks today. But the smell in 2009 was God Awful. Because of the loss of so many mortgages, do you recall what Obama did to the small banks? He and his went out and raised the bar of bank qualification and then closed a gazillion of smaller banks across the country. All their books of business were then pushed on to the larger banks. Remember? I’ll bet many of you changed banks because of what Obama did. Rooster certainly did. Recall Santa Barbara Bank and Trust. No more. Gone, but the smell lingers on.
Well let’s come to 2011 until today. The big banks were then held to blame for participating in the rotten loans the Federal Government had demanded. It started in 2011 when Bank of America ponied up 8.5 billion in fines. Yes for taking the loans the Federal Government set up. Then in 2012 Wells Fargo, J.P. Morgan, Chase Bank of Am. And Ally all paid 25 billion. You say Bank of American again? Don’t ask. Then HSBC was hit for 2 billion, and UBS for 1.5 Billion. Rooster won’t detail them, but the partial total in 2013 was 34 billion, 2014, 35.75 billion and Rooster does not have the total for 2015. Just in what Rooster can find the total is well over the annual budgets of most states and is almost the same as one of Brown’s budgets in liberal California.
So who has paid for the liberals mistakes? All the shareholders of all the little banks that were destroyed (Do not forget the thousands and thousands who lost their jobs.) and all of the shareholders of all the big banks . Who does not lose? Barney Franks and Dodds and their cohorts who started it, and all the Bank officers who would not fight the fight and let the people see where the real smell is coming from. If Rooster was the new president he would appoint Winston to conduct an investigation as to where all these fines went, and pull up all the cover-up mess, until the real cause is exposed. There is no doubt it would fall right into the lap of the liberal Senators and Representatives then in command. Why would he do that? Because it would be such a wonderful education for those around today.
PROTEST: Fly the Betsy Ross flag. It is the one flag where all the States supported the Constitution.
Wc: 838 Rooster Bradford gives up all rights to this article and seeks no compensation for its use. 2016