SMRs and AMRs

Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Financial Finger-Pointing Turns to Regulators

By LOUISE STORY and GRETCHEN MORGENSON
NYT

In the whodunit of the financial crisis, Wall Street executives have pointed the blame at all kinds of parties — consumers who lied on their mortgage applications, investors who demanded access to risky mortgage bonds, and policy makers who kept interest rates low and failed to predict a housing market collapse.

But a new defense has been mounted by a bank executive: my regulator told me to do it.

This unusual rationale is presented by the bank executive in one of the few fraud suits brought against a mortgage banking official in the aftermath of the financial crisis — the one filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission against Michael W. Perry, former chief executive of IndyMac Bancorp, which failed spectacularly in mid-2008.

After being accused of fraud and misleading investors about his company’s financial health just before it collapsed, Mr. Perry set up a Web site this fall to defend himself.

(More here.)

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