The biggest crime

Janet Tavakoli on what Wall Street owes you:

Wall Street’s “financial meth labs,” including Goldman’s, massively pumped out bad bonds and credit derivatives that have melted down savings accounts, pension funds, the municipal bond market and the American economy.

Risky assets, leverage and fraud led to acute distress in the global financial markets.

The biggest crime on the American economy may go unpunished with no consequences to the perpetrators.

The biggest crime was not predatory lending, but predatory securitizations, packages of loans that did not deserve the ratings or prices at the time they were sold. They ballooned what should have been a relatively small problem into a global crisis.

Wall Street owes the American public for its key role in bringing the global economy — and in particular, the U.S. economy — to its knees.