I sure hope that Wall Street gets just what they deserve. When do we (Main Street)get to TAR & FEATHER them? They deserve that too!

Look what happened to Elliot Spitzer, not that he didn't ask for it in a way. But they sure did target him. I'm worried. The stakes are even higher in this case, and if they can't ruin Schneiderman with legal shenanigans would they stop with that?

I think we can expect some Federal intervention on this issue. IMHO, there is no possibility that Obama and the corporate Congress will allow AG Schneiderman to take down the big bankers. This thing will get "fixed" behind closed doors. James Baker will likely be highly compensated for brokering the deal.

I wonder if it's too early to start speculating on who we want to play the roles for these guys when the whole thing is made into a movie! Suggestions welcome.

OOHH! Its so scarey! I just want it all pretty again!

Regards, Obama

ps. I've been paid!

Love to listen to Elizabeth Warren, Elliott Spitzer and Ellen Brown discuss this whole rotten barrel with Keith Olbermann on his upcoming June innauguration

If this doesn't happen, if it isn't pursued to the fullest extent the law permits in NY State, this country will never be right again. Not to put too dramatic a point on it, but it's as if a father serially raped his daughters, while the mother stood by passively and did nothing to stop him, out of crippling fear, mixed with self-protection and an irrational, evil jealousy. The whole thing kills the soul.

The soul of this country is at risk, and I'm saying that not as a religious person, not at all, but as a human being who believes in the existence of an ineffable soul in individuals, which joined together represent the soul of America as a nation of laws, justice and due process. If Nixon can be forced to resign the presidency by due process of law--despite the pardon he received that he did not deserve--Wall Street can be held accountable for the catastrophe it has visited on this country and the world.

Thanks Matt for incredible reporting.. what remains to be done with the fall out that is devastating our housing industry, constructions industry... people losing everything they had- homes, savings, livelihood, credit ratings etc. The devastation throughout the country is enormous. ALL PRINICPAL BALANCES MUST BE REDUCED TO THE FAIR MARKET VALUE NOW to stabilize the housing industry and thereby stopping the freefall of prices caused by foreclosures that these very same banks are fraudulently continuing to perform. The pace is increasing and the ultimate result on our society: homeless people, homeless children-people in a hole so big they can never recover. Seriously, making the banks reduce the principal balance on the homes either purchased or refinanced in the bubble is a great solution. none of the HAFA or loan mod crap is going to work until principal balances return to fair market value... MARK TO MARKET!!
Those principal balances were based on the bubble prices and they are gone... we need to face the facts of that. I think everyone under water should stop making payments now. they will never recover those $$ and every dollar one puts into the property might has well be burned in the fireplace... it was a bubble the likes of which this country has never seen ... all caused by the banksters.....

People have pointed out that Spitzer would have done something like this, but he suddenly got taken down by a scandal. Obama has done NOTHING about anything for his entire term, and now we have the lone AG standing up against the corporate giants?
Matt Taibi has done a brilliant job of explaining this complicated mess to the people of this country, and I hope to hear more.
Another guy who has been very helpful in explaining these frauds is Max Keiser. As Keiser has repeatedly pointed out: in the S&L swindle, hundreds of people went to prison. This time we have Bernie Madoff, and I think that was just because TPTB thought zero was too few. Madoff is too old to even serve one third of his sentence.
The whole world has been swindled by these banks, and I'm concerned that most of them are going to walk away and hide behind secure walls protected by homeland security. Meanwhile, the masses will wait for the money to show up on our food stamp accounts, and then we will go to WalMart and get strip searched. O Brave New World...

My soul wants Wall Street taken to the woodshed, but my pocketbook wants to keep Wall Street fat and happy. Few people have "pensions" anymore -- we depend on investments to support ourselves during retirement. The system has been rigged so that we all have a huge stake in the success of Wall Street, so the prospect of "crippling" punishments scares me. Remember a few years ago when your 401(k) tanked? I hate to see these banksters get away with it, but as a retired person, I don't have time to wait for the system to right itself.

Matt has, as usual, hit the bulls-eye on this article. The reason for the economic crash is that Wall Street got caught trying to pull the biggest financial swindle in history, and together with the US Government, looted the American people to cover the losses. But, while I respect Matt for his courage and accuracy, he is incredibly naive if he thinks this government will do anything more than pretend to have an investigation followed by an official declaration that the failure is spread among too many parties, and that therefore prosecutions of individuals will serve no real purpose. We will the be encouraged to "share the burden" to make things right with the investors stupid enough to trust Wall Street, and in true fascist economic fashion, the profits will be kept private and the losses socialized across all of America.

Losses so far $27 trillion (Per Dylan Ratigan), which means the average (non-rich) American has lost 23% of their net worth due to this looting. And, of course, said looting will continue as long as the American people sit still for the shearers.

This is a JOKE. This was not something that just happened because of LACK OF OVERSITE, or SIMPLE INCOMPOTENCE. Anyone that holds credit in AMERICA for any purpose is issued what some call THE MARK OF SATAN, known as A FICO SCORE, THAT IS CONTROLLED BY THE lenders. so can someone answer me why, for approximately 57 years the lenders used this program known as a FICO SCORE to seperate all loans sold on the MARKET through WALL STREET. And all of a sudden one day they wake up and decide to MIX ALL FICO'S TOGETHER, so every investor that purchased these financial instruments, did so with adulterated bundles? Were the investors aware of the homogenizations of these insruments and fico's or were they left in the dark?
There are two places for the investigators to check thoroughly. Only then will this most horrendus ROBBERY be figured out and divulged to the
public.
1 AIG.
HAS ANYONE given any thought as to why an Insurance company(NOT EVEN A LENDER)was the biggest beneficiary to the almost ONE TRILLION TAXPAYER DOLLARS that were dolled out. It wouldn't have anything to do with LAWSUITES FROM FORIEGN INVESTORS WOULD IT?
2 FICO SCORES.
Doesn't anyone want to know whom it was that decided to allow adulterated bundles of loans onto the market?
Go there and WE THE PEOPLE will find out the truth.

The question I have about all of this is, what will it do for all of the people who have lost their homes? Will _they_ get anything out of it?

Mr. Schneiderman was elected by millions of citizens (or 'shareholders', in the millennialist parlance), and thus has more legitimacy than all the banks and all Their fiat-credit-bli ps put together. No matter how many zero$ They tack on to the number, its the number of real people and real citizens behind the NY AG that matters.

Talking Fraud? Fractional Reserve Banking (FRB) is systemic fraud which allows the 'special people' to literally create money out of nothing, whilst not being busted for counterfeiting and conspiracy larceny (i.e. consolidation of ordinary citizens' property & property rights thereof).

This (in case anyone hasn't noticed) is the human rights issue of our day- like slavery to the early 19th century, or sexism to the early 20th.

Don't let them (the money gang) fool you; just because they've got all the money (an imaginary concept) in the world. It doesn't matter. They cannot fool all of the people all of the time.

While bankers deserve punishment, that won’t solve the systemic problem. The basic problem is society, rather than share the rents for land (mistakenly called “housing” values), allows this money stream to become the low hanging fruit for speculators. Why ever do we send this value -- spending for land -- to Wall Street in the first place? As long as society keeps feeding Wall Street so much free money, then Wall Street will remain corrupt.