Corporate Crime

Schneiderman on the Mortgage Industry Investigation

Rachel Maddow interviews New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman concerning the new investigative unit recently announced by President Obama and Eric Holder tasked with investigating the packaging of mortgage-backed securities and the consequences thereof.

Needless to say even with a great deal of resources this is going to take years and years, perhaps even decades, to completely sort.

A USAToday report from November concluded it could take as many as 8 years for foreclosure court-proceedings to conclude in some states and perhaps even 50 years in states like New York where, as Schneiderman points out, all the paperwork is stored. It would be unrealistic to even expect a conclusion before the end of a second presidential term.

In hindsight this could also end up leading nowhere because a lot of what Wall Street did was actually legal, however the scale of the travesty warrants a second look.