U.S. Troops Just More Patsies for Wall Street

“Imagine that you’re serving at a forward operating base in Afghanistan,” David Dayen wrote.

“You’ve been in country nine months, coping with hazardous and punishing conditions, trying to survive and return to your family. Then you get a call from your spouse that they’re about to be evicted from the family home. The sense of anxiety is acute, and so is the feeling of helplessness – you’re thousands of miles away, focused on your mission, and you’re wracked with regret and guilt, unable to protect your family from the tragedy and shame of foreclosure.

“This has happened at least 700 times to servicemembers on missions overseas since the beginning of the foreclosure crisis in 2008. And it’s actually illegal; it violates the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, a statute that carries criminal penalties. The nation’s biggest banks have admitted to the conduct before Congress and in regulatory filings, and they only recently acknowledged that they illegally foreclosed on ten times as many servicemembers as they previously claimed. Any serious effort to hold banks accountable for routine abuse of homeowners should include prosecutions of this execrable behavior. But the government rolled out settlements years before the true depth of these violations ever began to come to light.”

So why haven’t these banksters been arrested? This would be what we in journalism used to call "a very good question."

Of course, we wouldn't to hurt the feelings of Wall Street bankers by actually asking it, however. That would be mean.