Banks Finally Pay for Their Sins, Five Years After the Crisis
Banks have agreed to almost $67 billion in fines and settlements, with more to come
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It’s the grievance that continues to boil the public’s blood: After the financial crisis, the big banks got bailed out, but they were never made to suffer for their role in creating the subprime housing bubble.
Five years on, that line of thinking may be due for an update. It remains the case that no high-ranking Wall Street executives have been criminally prosecuted or seen the inside of a courtroom since 2008. But with JPMorgan Chase on the cusp of multiple multibillion-dollar settlements with regulators for selling bad mortgage securities, and Bank of America’s Oct. 23 mortgage fraud trial loss likely to yield another headline sum, government efforts to bring banks to account are yielding serious money.