Fraud Caused the 1930s Depression and the Current Financial Crisis

[DearAbby]

Robert Shiller - one of the top housing experts in the United States - says that the mortgage fraud is a lot like the fraud which occurred during the Great Depression. As Fortune notes:

Shiller said the danger of foreclosuregate -- the scandal in which it has come to light that the biggest banks have routinely mishandled homeownership documents, putting the legality of foreclosures and related sales in doubt -- is a replay of the 1930s, when Americans lost faith that institutions such as business and government were dealing fairly.

The former chief accountant of the S.E.C., Lynn Turner, told the New York Times that fraud helped cause the Great Depression:

The amount of gimmickry and outright fraud dwarfs any period since the early 1970's, when major accounting scams like Equity Funding surfaced, and the 1920's, when rampant fraud helped cause the crash of 1929 and led to the creation of the S.E.C.

More:
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/fraud-caused-1930s-depression-and-current-financial-crisis?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+zerohedge%2Ffeed+%28zero+hedge+-+on+a+long+enough+timeline%2C+the+survival+rate+for+everyone+drops+to+zero%29

[Hannah Bell]

1. and florida real estate...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_land_boom_of_the_1920s

[Lasher]

2. And the S&L crisis.

But rich people are in control and they don't care, just as long as they personally come out on top.

[lonestarnot]

3. Waiting for dinner, richie patte', shit on a shingle.

[KharmaTrain]

4. All Economic "Crisis" Are Pepetrated By Fraud

So surprise on this one. It didn't take a Milton Friedman scholar to know that the real estate bubble was that...built on a lot of made-up credit to hook in more poor suckers and when the bottom fell out the big guys walked away with the money. We've had bubbles before and will again...the temptation of the fast, big money is too much for some to resist. Regulation can put the brakes on some of the speculation, but there will be ways to work around the rules and those intent on gaming the system won't care.