In the example you gave, the people most closely committing fraud are regular Americans. Not the banksters.
A) A loan officer hinting to people to lie on their applications does not absolve the loan applicant from fraud.
B) A few loan officers here and there does not an economic failure make. It took failure all the way up and down the system.
But to the point - it's not the CEO's and Wall Streeters committing fraud in that circumstance. Sure, they bear responsibility for not locking down their front-line staff better ... but those examples don't indicate they committed anything near a crime.
Lying to other banks about the quality of assets they were selling to them - if we could prove it - might actually be 'Wall Street fraud'.
Wait, don't they huge fines paid by Chase, Goldman, and others, indicate that there was some criminal activity involved in how the banks assembled and sold the CDOs?
Why would the boards approve the settlements if there wasn't some kind of legally culpable behavior?
I'm not one to advocate for prosecuting people for political reasons.
But given how people from lesser socio-economic classes are incarcerated far too often for property crimes involving much smaller amount, it's hard not to perceive a hypocritical double standard at work here.
But:
In the example you gave, the people most closely committing fraud are regular Americans. Not the banksters.
A) A loan officer hinting to people to lie on their applications does not absolve the loan applicant from fraud.
B) A few loan officers here and there does not an economic failure make. It took failure all the way up and down the system.
But to the point - it's not the CEO's and Wall Streeters committing fraud in that circumstance. Sure, they bear responsibility for not locking down their front-line staff better ... but those examples don't indicate they committed anything near a crime.
Lying to other banks about the quality of assets they were selling to them - if we could prove it - might actually be 'Wall Street fraud'.