Too Big to Jail

Feb 22, 2012 Simon Johnson

Among the fundamental principles of any functioning judicial system is the following: Don’t lie to a judge or falsify documents submitted to a court, or you will go to jail. These are serious criminal offenses, but apparently not if you are the heart of America’s financial system.

WASHINGTON, DC – Among the fundamental principles of any functioning justice system is the following: Don’t lie to a judge or falsify documents submitted to a court, or you will go to jail. Breaking an oath to tell the truth is perjury, and lying in official documents is both perjury and fraud. These are serious criminal offenses, but apparently not if you are at the heart of America’s financial system. On the contrary, key individuals there appear to be well compensated for their crimes.

As Dennis Kelleher of Better Markets has argued, the recent so-called “robo-signing” settlement – in which five large banks “settled” their legal liability for carrying out fraudulent foreclosures on mortgages – is a complete sell-out to the financial industry.

First, there was no serious criminal prosecution – meaning that no one will be charged with a felony, and no one will go to jail. In terms of affecting executives’ incentives, this is the only thing that matters.

We hope you're enjoying Project Syndicate.

To continue reading, subscribe now.

Already have an account? Log in

Support High-Quality Commentary

For more than 25 years, Project Syndicate has been guided by a simple credo: All people deserve access to a broad range of views by the world's foremost leaders and thinkers on the issues, events, and forces shaping their lives. At a time of unprecedented uncertainty, that mission is more important than ever – and we remain committed to fulfilling it.

But there is no doubt that we, like so many other media organizations nowadays, are under growing strain. If you are in a position to support us, please subscribe now.

As a subscriber, you will enjoy unlimited access to our On Point suite of long reads, book reviews, and insider interviews; Big Picture topical collections; Say More contributor interviews; Opinion Has It podcast features; The Year Ahead magazine, the full PS archive, and much more. You will also directly support our mission of delivering the highest-quality commentary on the world's most pressing issues to as wide an audience as possible.

By helping us to build a truly open world of ideas, every PS subscriber makes a real difference. Thank you.

Subscribe Now

Simon Johnson

Writing for PS since 2007
136 Commentaries

Simon Johnson, a former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, is a professor at MIT's Sloan School of Management and a co-chair of the COVID-19 Policy Alliance. He is the co-author, with Jonathan Gruber, of Jump-Starting America: How Breakthrough Science Can Revive Economic Growth and the American Dream and the co-author, with James Kwak, of 13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and The Next Financial Meltdown.

new comment has been posted. new comments have been posted.

0 Comments on this paragraph, 12 Comments on this article

peter fairley May 27, 2012

I never read one good robo-signing article and feel it was a very left wing prejudiced issue. Some mistakes were made...but did it really affect millions of people in a criminal way? People don't pay their mortgages and get foreclosed on. That is a clerical issue. A lot of the foreclosures involved homeowners pulling so much cash out their house on re-fi's with alt-a ,subprime and even "normal" loans, they were in effect selling their house to the bank in advance, or even robbing the bank. If you look at the FBI website, you see that the FBI goes after gangsters for doing this same thing. It was a disservice for bank execs, the Fed, the FDIC and state govt overseers to have allowed this, but the homeowners did get the cash and the banks should at least get the keys and be able to take the loss. Mr Johnson has made a bad impression on me in Bloomberg interviews for catering to popular leftist prejudice and would make a better impression here if he detailed exactly how criminal these bankers were to millions of people regarding the robo-signing, otherwise he is just joining the vague left wing and calling names.
- peter fairley Jun 19, 2012
  
  Hi Andrew. Respectfully. The main effect of the robo-signing was to give attorneys a loophole to tie foreclosures up in court for a long time. Nonpaying homeowners got to live rent free for a very long time. Banks were further weakened. Govt purse & taxpayers supporting banks further strained. The markets did not clear, financial crisis prolonged. Have you ever lived in a state like Massachusetts? Lol, I have. Simon Johnson is a famous and somewhat excellent economist but he should not be encouraged to be corrupted by populism & crowd pleasing. That is big part of why we got into this mess.
  A new reply to this comment has been posted.
- John Aho Jun 15, 2012
  
  Enforcing the rule of law in a democracy is hardly 'left wing'. What are you saying? And since when is defending fraud a "right wing" stance? It certainly isn't a conservative principle. And yes, it really did affect millions of people in a criminal way. Systemic fraud is like that. With respect to prosecuting just the "lawyers", fair enough but they are hired, instructed and paid by their clients to make documentation as complicated as possible. This is what justice has become in America, yet another example of the harm caused by letting the TBTF banks have a free ride to commit fraud against America, that then becomes a defended and honored way of doing business. Meanwhile, the rest of the world is laughing at us. A "disservice". Really?
  A new reply to this comment has been posted.
- peter fairley May 30, 2012
  
  Put the lawyers in jail who advised the banks that it was ok to process the paperwork this way. The lawyers generate so much paperwork and complexity, no one can deal with it. How many homeowners were actually harmed by robo-signing? Not many!! This is the worst legal circus since the silicone breast implant lawsuit against Dow Chemical, no evidence of harm but millions paid in damages. The crime was being out of touch with real issues and dangers and this article is following that same out of touch path.
  A new reply to this comment has been posted.
A new reply to this comment has been posted.
John Brian Shannon Apr 24, 2012

I think Simon, that your chosen title may be more right than even you may realize!

No matter which administration would have been in power over the past two years, the result would have been the same. It's not a democrat thing, nor would it have been a republican thing had that party been holding executive power.

What citizens see as the one-time solution, is merely a down-payment - a dry-run for the next round of financial bailouts for financial institutions, which, according to your calculation is one-tenth, or even less, of what is actually needed to solve the numbers problem.

I fully expect to see bailout after bailout about every two years, or so, until the numbers return to a stable condition.

It's no secret that it is up to government to set legislation, regulation and oversight of the financial sector.

If the government have let standards slide to a certain state of affairs since the 1990's, to now prosecute the individual banks and bankers who merely function under the regulatory controls set and enforced by the government - would seem counter-productive.

Counter-productive, because those bankers would be only too happy to hold forth in a packed courtroom about the lax regulatory environment they found themselves operating in.

Rather than air all that in public, the government (any government in power, whether it would have been democrat or republican) just decided to make the problem disappear - using the government two-year installment plan.

As long as things are kept to a dull roar, the banks will get the money to balance their books, nobody needs to go to jail and the government doesn't need to be embarrassed in the media.

In the end, all that has really occurred is that the government has acted as the insurer of last resort to the financial institutions that the government were supposed to oversee, but for unknown reasons were unable.

The Obama administration is merely addressing a problem which evolved into a major event over a time-span of two or three decades.

If citizens feel they need someone or something to blame, they should at least be told what it is and was, a systemic failure.
- peter fairley Jun 28, 2012
  
  It would be more appropriate here to also give a link or some summary of the lawyers defending the banks. Lawyers get paid to give one side only. Professors should give both sides and additional detail. We need leaders devoted to OBJECTIVE truth and information that includes BOTH sides. Were New England academics banging the table during the Real Estate bubble about too easy credit, subprime & negative amortization loans? about the possibility of a DOWN RE market as well as an UP market? No. They were banging the table and signing formal letters from their colleges that Larry Summers, president of Harvard was sexist and should be censored, or worse.
  A new reply to this comment has been posted.
A new reply to this comment has been posted.
Sanjeev Chadha Mar 25, 2012

Isn't their a conflict of interest in possessing such views and yet being a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute.
A new reply to this comment has been posted.
Andrew Purdy Mar 17, 2012

Why should this surprise anyone? Obama has been amazingly good to the Financial Industry. They give only token support to his political opponents (minor hedging of their bets with Romney), and he only pretends to have the DOJ shake a stick at them. A mutually beneficial arrangement.
A new reply to this comment has been posted.
Paul A. Myers Feb 24, 2012

I'm a CPA with a small business practice. The answer to Simon Johnson's question is simple: there's one tax code for "us," and another tax code for "them." Mitt Romney pays taxes in accordance with "them." There are also two sets of "equal application of the law" in this country: one for "us," and another for "them." Banks are "them."

If you are a small business and taken to court for one the myriad reasons upon which you can be sued, you are forced to settle because you cannot afford to lose and you know that the entire game is rigged against you. The plaintiffs' attorneys' clients will commit perjury like rain coming down on a winter day. In California, the entire civil court system is a temple to perjury and fraud; a system designed to shake down insurance companies. That is why Johnson's opening sentence is naive: false documents and perjury are a commonplace in our system.

The US Congress has decided to let moral hazard go by the boards. Let the future shift for itself is the message. What we have is what Congress wants: a system of privilege that Congress can hold hostage to campaign contributions and cushy post-retirement jobs (People have been paying Rick Santorum, a truly failed ex-senator, almost a million a year to be a lobbyist. Imagine what someone with some intelligence must make!).

Once again Simon Johnson is to be commended for making clear the serious fundamental problems with our banking and finance system.
A new reply to this comment has been posted.
Procyon Mukherjee Feb 23, 2012

The article raises the question why big banks should be above law when it comes to punitive actions for crimes committed that led to bail outs with tax-payer funds that were stratospheric in nature. The question is perhaps not about how big the problem could be compounded to merit such a denouement, the moot point is how the process had been rigged right from the start when the bubble had been orchestrated by an ensemble of ‘banker-intermediary-rating agency - legislature-judiciary’ system that was based on the fundamental assumption that prices have only one way to go regardless of all other signs in the economy. But if the corrections have now been made with commensurate fall in net worth of all affected individuals it is noteworthy that big bankers could still stay completely unaffected going by the positive change in their net worth, that in some ways is a malaise for the common good.

Procyon Mukherjee
A new reply to this comment has been posted.
Jake Lopata Feb 22, 2012

You are being very critical here, U.S. law has taken shape over the course of our history. I don't think it's a stretch to assume that some of the biggest players in history have helped shape our Laws (for better or worse).

Where we are today is only our own fault, we have allowed the legal system to assume its present form.

If you want to stop bailing banks out, letting crooked bankers off the hook, and create justice for those who were victims; then you fix the system.

This is the largest and most daunting, yet necessary, task of all.
A new reply to this comment has been posted.

https://prosyn.org/pO7hqko

Cookies and Privacy

Too Big to Jail

To continue reading, subscribe now.

Support High-Quality Commentary

New Comment

Email this piece to a friend

Contact us

Log in/Register

Cookies and Privacy

Too Big to Jail

To continue reading, subscribe now.

Support High-Quality Commentary

Edit Newsletter Preferences

Set up Notification