You wouldn’t think that anyone could look at the calamity of the foreclosure crisis, where fraudulent mortgage origination, fraudulent securitizations, fraudulent loan servicing and fraudulent evictions combined to dispossess 6 million Americans from their homes, and see it as a money-making opportunity. Well, nobody except for perhaps Donald Trump. But a news investigation into the aftermath of the crisis shows that the U.S. government did turn a profit on after-the-fact enforcement of these interlocking frauds, without distributing those profits to the homeowner victims. We can add a clause to the famed Occupy Wall Street chant: Banks got bailed out, we got sold out and the government made a killing.
The facts come from a Wall Street Journal analysis of $110 billion in proceeds from over 30 mortgage-related settlements secured by the Justice Department, federal agencies and state Attorneys General. Christina Rexrode and Emily Glazer produced a chart showing the results:
– The Fiscal Times