Banks’ Self-Dealing Super-Charged Financial Crisis

August 28, 2010 · Filed Under Main Page, Money and Banks · 1 Comment 

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by Jake Bernstein and Jesse Eisinger ProPublica, Aug. 26, 10:09 p.m.

Over the last two years of the housing bubble, Wall Street bankers perpetrated one of the greatest episodes of self-dealing in financial history.

Faced with increasing difficulty in selling the mortgage-backed securities that had been among their most lucrative products, the banks hit on a solution that preserved their quarterly earnings and huge bonuses:

They created fake demand.

A ProPublica analysis shows for the first time the extent to which banks — primarily Merrill Lynch, but also Citigroup, UBS and others — bought their own products and cranked up an assembly line that otherwise should have flagged. Read more

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Banking Crisis: Why The Banks Went Broke Making Money From Mortgage Loans

October 27, 2009 · Filed Under Main Page, Money and Banks · Comment 


The banking crisis raises many questions.

Do you wonder how banks that claimed to hold billions of dollars in real estate mortgage assets could go broke?

And most importantly, how did a banking crisis involving mortgages turn into a global financial crisis that affects all of us? Read more

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