Ed Pinto

There are a lot of crackpots like Ed Pinto, though few have attained his platform and level of respect.  Like many of his cohorts, Pinto scavenges the public record from some kind of factoid, which is then presented out of context as "proof" of an otherwise indefensible theory.
This type of cherry picking pervades his "study" about, "50 years of failure at the FHA." Over the past few months, his findings have been touted CNBC,  on Fox Business News and Bloomberg Radio. The American Enterprise Institute scholar has been afforded platforms inThe Los Angeles Times, American Banker, The Atlantic, and The New York Times.



How did Pinto unearth this half century of "failure," given that the Federal Housing Administration belongs to a very elite group of mortgage lenders, those that received zero bailout funds during the financial crisis and remain standing today?  (The FHA has been self-supporting since its founding 78 years ago.) Pinto simply refuses to discuss FHA's financial track record.


 http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/02/18/1179340/-Mortgages-Ed-Pinto-And-A-Vast-Conspiracy-Of-Silence

Again, the Bush Administration gutted the White Collar Crime Division after 911.

The bureau slashed its criminal investigative work force to expand its national security role after the Sept. 11 attacks, shifting more than 1,800 agents, or nearly one-third of all agents in criminal programs, to terrorism and intelligence duties. Prosecutions of frauds against financial institutions dropped 48 percent from 2000 to 2007, insurance fraud cases plummeted 75 percent, and securities fraud cases dropped 17 percent.

This is what less government can look like.  So, mention this to your Ron Paul supporter friends, k?  Without the help of FBI Whitecollar Investigators, the fraudsters are free to rampage.  




More from the NYtimes:

During these years, the bureau asked for an increase of $800 million, but received only $50 million more. In the 2007 budget cycle, the F.B.I. obtained money for a total of one new agent for criminal investigations.
In 2004, one senior F.B.I. official, Chris Swecker, warned publicly that a flood of fraudulent mortgage deals had the potential to become “an epidemic.”
Yet the next year, as public warnings about fraud in the subprime lending markets began to approach their height, the F.B.I. had the equivalent of only 15 full-time agents devoted to mortgage fraud out of a total of some 13,000 agents in the bureau.
That number has grown to 177 agents, who have opened 1,522 cases. But the staffing level is still hundreds of agents below the levels seen in the 1980s during the savings and loan crisis.

Shockingly, the FBI clearly makes the case for the need to combat mortgage fraud in 2005, the height of the housing crisis:


Financial Crimes Report to the Public 2005
The Bush Rubber Stamp Congress ignored the obvious and extremely detailed and well reported crime spree by the FBI.



This helps explain why many of the FBI and DOJ cases now being addressed are for crimes committed WHEN THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION and CONGRESS stripped the White Collar Crime divisions of money and manpower.



NOW THE PROSECUTIONS ARE BEGINNING TO ROLL OUT!  Slowly.  And the CEOs of the TBTFs appear to be teflon, but we can still hope.

 http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/06/22/1102296/-President-Obama-s-Financial-Fraud-Enforcement-Task-Force-STRIKES-AGAIN-200-Million-Fraud