Dean Baker on The Promotion of Waste & Inequality By US Finance

By Dean Baker

In the crazy years of the housing boom the financial sector was a gigantic cesspool of excess and corruption. There was big money in pushing and packaging fraudulent mortgages. The country paid a huge price for the financial sector's sleaze. Unfortunately, because of the Obama administration's soft on crime approach to the bankers who became rich in the process; the industry is still a cesspool of excess and greed. Just to be clear, knowingly issuing and packaging a fraudulent mortgage is a crime, the sort of thing for which people go to jail. But thanks to the political power of the Wall Street, none of them went to jail, and in fact they got to keep the money.

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For more on the long-run macroeconomic causes, implications, and effects of US financialization, see recent articles here, here (subscription required) , here, here, here (subscription required), and here (subscription required); for a pertinent sociological analysis, see here