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Comment by bandrami | Hacker News Reader

Literally dozens of CEOs went to jail, which is again why I think this may be the biggest ball-drop of the media this century (and there have been some pretty huge ones competing with it)

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> None of the highest up were sent to jail. CEOs perfectly fine taking responsibility for the profits, but what happened to taking responsibility for the fraud they enabled?

> > Literally dozens of CEOs went to jail, which is again why I think this may be the biggest ball-drop of the media this century

The GP's remark is centered around the *sentiment* that none of the C-suite / execs in the Big Banks (Merrill, Goldman, BoA, Citi) were jailed for their involvement / excessive speculation in the 2008 crisis.

The keywords there being "Big Banks": If it's a national household name, OR if their positions are coveted by finance employees, it's a Big Bank. Otherwise, it's not a Big Bank.

> > > Your Google skills may need some work because this is the first result for "bank CEO jailed by TARP":

1) This is a goalpost shift from "bank CEOs jailed for causing / excessively speculating up to the 2008 crisis".

2) TARP was established as a result of the crisis (i.e. AFTER it happened), and therefore cannot be used to mark execs that were jailed for their involvement / excessive speculation in the 2008 crisis.

3) "TARP defraudment" is a different matter, and not "Causing the 2008 crisis" or "excessive speculation"

> > > https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/atlanta/press-releases/201...

The case cited only tangentially involves TARP, when the bulk of the case was about the President of FirstCity Bank & his associates defrauding the bank with loans that *they themselves had involvement in*.

If you want to argue the wrong 200 bankers went to jail I think that would be a great discussion to have, but that's absolutely not where the public narrative is right now, which is that these convictions simply never happened

> but that's absolutely not where the public narrative is right now, which is that these convictions simply never happened

In terms of public sentiment, for the conviction to have happened, it has to happen to the Big Banks, and not anyone else. If it didn't happen to the Big Banks, then narrative-wise it didn't happen at all.

You're blaming the public for not caring about 200 irrelevant bankers going to jail for mostly other reasons (e.g. TARP fraud), when there's no reason for them to. There might as well have 0 bankers gone to jail. Getting pedantic about your definition of "bankers going to jail" being technically correct and the public's definition of "banker going to jail" being too specific, completely misses the point and serves nothing but to make you feel good. You well know what the public means, and that they're right about it.

This comment puts it well. [0]

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46898199

yet you have failed to provide even a single name as of yet. It's easily google-able that all of the major players got off scott-free.

There was an entire damn database put out by TARP of the hundreds of people they jailed before DOGE killed it. All you people who claim you care about this intently never even bothered to read it. Which is why I don't actually think people cared; they just want an excuse to be mad.

Where is this database? Say names. Literally even one. Who are the dozens of CEOs? Why would you make something like this up and spread misinformation? It's been 18 years, even if someone had big stake in the game I can't understand why they would lie about this so steadfastly. Look it up.

I literally said "DOGE took it down" FFS it's like talking to goldfish whenever this particular topic comes up

is it on the internet archive?

I didn't really expect people to lose the ability to Google this quickly:

https://www.housingwire.com/articles/38536-failed-bank-ceo-g... https://www.justice.gov/usao-md/pr/former-president-and-ceo-...

https://oig.federalreserve.gov/releases/news-bekkedam-senten...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2015/09/02/b...

Now if you want to argue that the wrong 250 bankers went to jail, I'm open to discussing that, but the simple fact is you thought the number was zero until five minutes ago and rather than being happy you were wrong, you're annoyed. It's the most puzzling part of this, to me.

I started by saying nobody that mattered and specified the largest companies who were involved. I think it's pretty easy to conclude I mean the C-suite in charge of the largest organizations that enabled and perpetuated the fraud. I don't care if a bunch of Bernie Madoff's lackeys went to jail if Bernie Madoff gets off Scott-free. I don't understand why you continue to misrepresent, but I think at this point it is malicious intent.

FYI: All but the first of those 404

Sorry, copy-paste error:

https://www.housingwire.com/articles/38536-failed-bank-ceo-g...

https://www.justice.gov/usao-md/pr/former-president-and-ceo-...

https://oig.federalreserve.gov/releases/news-bekkedam-senten...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2015/09/02/b...

Again, literally just the first half of the first page of Google results. People can do this on their own, too, if they want to learn more about it

Three instances of TARP fraud (which obviously happened after the crisis started since it was a response to the crisis) and one small time fraud case whose victim was a bank.

The fact remains that nobody who caused the crisis day saw a day in prison, and the banks who did were bailed out when it easily could have been the soon-to-be-homeless citizens instead.

This seems to corroborate the story: https://www.steptoe.com/en/news-publications/borrower-beware...

Though it sounds like they're mainly talking about bankers jailed for fraud related to the TARP loans themselves, as opposed to the mortgage fraud that precipitated the crisis.

There were examples of both. In most of the cases where they were jailed for fraud related to the TARP loans it was lying on the required audit about what their positions prior to the crash were.

looks like it's mostly lackeys

Grok disagrees, chatGPT disagrees, freaking google disagrees. Could you provide names please?

Your Google skills may need some work because this is the first result for "bank CEO jailed by TARP":

https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/atlanta/press-releases/201...

https://www.housingwire.com/articles/38536-failed-bank-ceo-g...

https://www.justice.gov/usao-md/pr/former-president-and-ceo-...

https://oig.federalreserve.gov/releases/news-bekkedam-senten...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2015/09/02/b...

I think you just perfectly demonstrated why everyone hates AI summaries.

What about Pershing Square? in 2008 Bill Ackman gave a presentation on how to crash the housing market and profit from it. Looks like he's still out there destroying peoples' lives.

Do you have evidence that he committed a specific crime?

Jailing people is for crimes committed, not for punishing people you dislike.

I see it differently: the crash was coming anyway (the market was being irrational). He can't crash the housing market, unless there's a good reason for the housing prices to crash. Turns out there was a reason.

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