GE’s slogan couldn’t have been much truer than this.
The D & O Diary-
In a January 12, 2012 opinion that quotes from (and relies upon) former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s credit crisis memoirs, Southern District of New York Judge Richard Holwell granted in part and denied in part the motion to dismiss in the subprime and credit crisis related securities class action lawsuit that investors had filed against General Electric, certain of its directors and officers, and its offering underwriters. A copy of Judge Holwell’s opinion can be found here.
Background
As discussed in greater detail here, the plaintiffs first filed their action in March 2009, alleging that the company had failed to disclose information regarding the company’s health and the health of its financial subsidiary, GE Capital, at the height of the financial crisis. As Judge Holwell summarized it, the plaintiffs allege that “during a time when the financial markets were crumbling and companies across the United States were scrambling to disclose their holdings in subprime loans, GE withheld information regarding its substantial holdings in subprime and non-investment grade loans and touted GE as safe in comparison to its competitors, despite the fact that GE was also feeling the impact of the financial crisis.”
Michael Hudson, continues his great series into the subprime fraud mess, this time GE’s turn!
iWATCH-
For General Electric Co., hawking subprime mortgages was a long way from making light bulbs and jet engines.
That didn’t stop the industrial giant from jumping into the subprime business in 2004, lending blue-chip respectability to the market for risky home loans by paying roughly half a billion dollars to buy California-based WMC Mortgage Corp.
What GE got in the bargain, former WMC employees say, was a place where erstwhile shoe salesmen, ex-strippers and even a former porn actress could sign on as sales reps and make big money pushing home loans. WMC’s top salespeople earned a million dollars a year or more and lived fast, swigging $1,000 bottles of Cristal and wheeling around in $100,000 Ferraris and Bentleys.
No financial executives have gone to jail, despite an overwhelming body of evidence indicating that a group of organized “banker gangs” conducted a widespread Wall Street crime wave that made them rich and while throwing millions into poverty. The Justice Department’s failure to act against these bankers is matched only by its declining credibility — a problem it only makes worse whenever it tries to defend itself.
An interview with an outgoing Justice official in today’s Wall Street Journal is merely the latest in a sad parade of weak excuses and implausible arguments, and it comes on the heels of Justice Department official Lanny Breuer’s poor 60 Minutes showing this week on the same topic.
Stop. Just stop. If nobody at Justice can get the job done, it’s time for the Administration to bring in a whole new team and start again. Did everybody in the banking business break the law? No. Very few did. But some of the ones that did appear to be very well-placed, and if they’re not punished they’ll do it again and again.
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