Banks – Hell to Pay ($100B)
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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 (JPM) on the cusp of multiple multibillion-dollar settlements with regulators for selling bad mortgage securities, and Bank of America’s (BAC) Oct. 23 mortgage fraud trial loss likely to yield another headline sum, government efforts to bring banks to account are yielding serious money.
Since the end of 2010, the six major Wall Street banks—JPMorgan, BofA, Citigroup (C), Wells Fargo (WFC), Goldman Sachs (GS), and Morgan Stanley (MS)—have agreed to pay $67 billion in settlements and penalties related to the financial crisis, according to research firm SNL Financial. Three more deals expected soon—including JPMorgan’s proposed $13 billion omnibus settlement, a pact between the bank and investors seeking $5.75 billion, and a BofA payout of as much as $8 billion to a housing regulator—would swell the total to $93 billion to be paid to the government, homeowners, and investors. More civil cases, criminal investigations, and lawsuits are on the way.
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