Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy Life, liberty, and property. These were in theory the founding principles of the republic. But as President Obama meets today with the the Big Banksters to plot his latest attacks on Social Security and Medicare, it seems property rights still only exist for [...]

(Video satire based on the Frontline Special) What can you say about former Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division Lanny Breuer that has not been said about any mob lawyer? Breuer is without a doubt a ruthless self-dealer who would do anything for money. But unlike Bruce Cutler, Breuer prostituted himself at the expense [...]

In the same hearing where he publicly endorsed the Aaron Swartz prosecution, Attorney General Eric Holder admitted that the reason he has not done his job the last five or so years is because he can’t. Here’s an unexpected addition to the long list of people who say large banks may be too large to [...]

Gary Gensler, the head of the Commodities Future Trading Commission (CFTC), has made a pretty depressing admission to the BBC. During an interview on one of the greater financial scandals in modern times, the rigging of the London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR), Chairman Gensler submitted that the global benchmark for interest rates is still “not [...]

Well that didn’t take long. Less than 24 hours after PBS aired Frontline’s The Untouchables, a program focused on the failures of the Department of Justice to make cases against Wall Street bankers despite ample evidence of fraud, the head of DOJ’s criminal division resigns. It’s hard to dismiss as a coincidence given that Lanny [...]

Watch Alarm Bells In The Housing Market on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE. Last night Frontline aired a program on the Department of Justice’s failure to prosecute Wall Street executives over fraud in the mortgage market that caused the 2008 financial crisis. The program included compelling testimony from the “due diligence underwriters” those responsible for [...]

I was just on KPFK in Los Angeles with RJ Eskow, and we have fairly similar ideas about the foreclosure fraud settlement, even though they may sound different. He thinks that we need to use the pressure available to ensure that the settlement is a beginning and not an ending. I’m just trying to be [...]

A statement sent my way from Phil Angelides, the chairman of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, plays into this debate over the RMBS working group in some interesting ways. The crux of the matter is that Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a Republican commissioner on the FCIC who did not sign onto the final report, made some statement [...]

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy Eric Schneiderman, co-chair of the newly titled “RMBS working group” investigating financial fraud, appeared on the Rachel Maddow Show last night (the interview starts around the 5:00 mark), and there were a few interesting moments. First you have his assessment of the the [...]

I have some additional reporting on the financial fraud unit that will be co-chaired by Eric Schneiderman, and how he will approach it. But before I get to that, I want to pick up on something that came up when I appeared on Sam Seder’s Majority Report radio program today. The thing is, and this [...]

I’ll pepper in my thoughts on the State of the Union Address throughout the day, but I would be remiss if I didn’t start with the announcement of a Unit on Mortgage Origination and Securitization Abuses (UMOSA) to investigate bank practices during the financial crisis. The unit will be co-chaired by Eric Schneiderman, the New [...]