Moyers Journal: Madoff Was A Piker -- America's Big Banks Are a Far Larger Fraudulent Ponzi Scheme

By Bill Moyers, Bill Moyers Journal. Posted April 6, 2009.

Moyers: What do you mean?

Black: Well, Geithner has, was one of our nation's top regulators, during the entire subprime scandal, that I just described. He took absolutely no effective action. He gave no warning. He did nothing in response to the FBI warning that there was an epidemic of fraud. All this pig in the poke stuff happened under him. So, in his phrase about legacy assets. Well he's a failed legacy regulator.

Moyers: But he denies that he was a regulator. Let me show you some of his testimony before Congress. Take a look at this. TIMOTHY GEITHNER:I've never been a regulator, for better or worse. And I think you're right to say that we have to be very skeptical that regulation can solve all of these problems. We have parts of our system that are overwhelmed by regulation. Overwhelmed by regulation! It wasn't the absence of regulation that was the problem, it was despite the presence of regulation you've got huge risks that build up.

Black: Well, he may be right that he never regulated, but his job was to regulate. That was his mission statement.

Moyers: As?

Black: As president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which is responsible for regulating most of the largest bank holding companies in America. And he's completely wrong that we had too much regulation in some of these areas. I mean, he gives no details, obviously. But that's just plain wrong.

Moyers: How is this happening? I mean why is it happening?

Black: Until you get the facts, it's harder to blow all this up. And, of course, the entire strategy is to keep people from getting the facts.

Moyers: What facts?

Black: The facts about how bad the condition of the banks is. So, as long as I keep the old CEO who caused the problems, is he going to go vigorously around finding the problems? Finding the frauds?

Moyers: You--

Black: Taking away people's bonuses?

Moyers: To hear you say this is unusual because you supported Barack Obama, during the campaign. But you're seeming disillusioned now.

Black: Well, certainly in the financial sphere, I am. I think, first, the policies are substantively bad. Second, I think they completely lack integrity. Third, they violate the rule of law. This is being done just like Secretary Paulson did it. In violation of the law. We adopted a law after the Savings and Loan crisis, called the Prompt Corrective Action Law. And it requires them to close these institutions. And they're refusing to obey the law.

Moyers: In other words, they could have closed these banks without nationalizing them?

Black: Well, you do a receivership. No one -- Ronald Reagan did receiverships. Nobody called it nationalization.

Moyers: And that's a law?

Black: That's the law.

Moyers: So, Paulson could have done this? Geithner could do this?

Black: Not could. Was mandated--

Moyers: By the law.

Black: By the law.

Moyers: This law, you're talking about.

Black: Yes.

Moyers: What the reason they give for not doing it?

Black: They ignore it. And nobody calls them on it.

Moyers: Well, where's Congress? Where's the press? Where--

Black: Well, where's the Pecora investigation?

Moyers: The what?

Black: The Pecora investigation. The Great Depression, we said, "Hey, we have to learn the facts. What caused this disaster, so that we can take steps, like pass the Glass-Steagall law, that will prevent future disasters?" Where's our investigation? What would happen if after a plane crashes, we said, "Oh, we don't want to look in the past. We want to be forward looking. Many people might have been, you know, we don't want to pass blame. No. We have a nonpartisan, skilled inquiry. We spend lots of money on, get really bright people. And we find out, to the best of our ability, what caused every single major plane crash in America. And because of that, aviation has an extraordinarily good safety record. We ought to follow the same policies in the financial sphere. We have to find out what caused the disasters, or we will keep reliving them. And here, we've got a double tragedy. It isn't just that we are failing to learn from the mistakes of the past. We're failing to learn from the successes of the past.

Moyers: What do you mean?

Black: In the Savings and Loan debacle, we developed excellent ways for dealing with the frauds, and for dealing with the failed institutions. And for 15 years after the Savings and Loan crisis, didn't matter which party was in power, the U.S. Treasury Secretary would fly over to Tokyo and tell the Japanese, "You ought to do things the way we did in the Savings and Loan crisis, because it worked really well. Instead you're covering up the bank losses, because you know, you say you need confidence. And so, we have to lie to the people to create confidence. And it doesn't work. You will cause your recession to continue and continue." And the Japanese call it the lost decade. That was the result. So, now we get in trouble, and what do we do? We adopt the Japanese approach of lying about the assets. And you know what? It's working just as well as it did in Japan.

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Bill Moyers is president of the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy.

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