So the US Justice Department is suing Deutsche Bank, one of the world's biggest banks,for reckless lending practices and defrauding US taxpayers. Does that mean the Obama administration is getting serious about cracking down on banks? Think again. God forbid they should take an American bank to court.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Deutsche Bank is being sued for $1 billion with the US Justice Department claiming it had lied to a federal agency when securing taxpayer-backed insurance for thousands of dodgy mortgages. One in three of the mortgages it sold investors, all guaranteed by the US government, went belly up. It was a massive fraud.
Does the US government really believe that other American banks like Citigroup, JP Morgan and Wells Fargo, weren't doing the same thing? And why isn't the Obama administration going after American banks?
Housing and Urban Development Department general counsel, Helen Kanovsky has told Bloomberg that the Department of Justice is looking at other banks. That means the administration knows that these sorts of shenanigans were widespread.
But so far, the US government hasn't gone near American banks. That tells us this latest bit of litigation, a civil matter, not criminal, is just a bit of window dressing to try and fool the public into thinking the US government is serious about cracking down on greedy bankers. After all, banks in America are a protected species. That's why no American banker has been prosecuted.
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