well, the crooks certainly won that round... big time 4/13/2016 0 Comments   by E.L. Christianson Jr. Imagine it this way.  Someone cheats lots of people out of lots of money over a long period of time before the fraud and trickery is discovered.  The overall effect of the deception ripples throughout the entire nation resulting in monumental losses for huge sections of the whole population.  The cheaters, those crooks who used fraudulent schemes to steal people's money are put on trial and admit to their crimes.  The judge tells the criminals that they can keep the billions upon billions of dollars that they stole from their victims and they will not have to serve any jail time, but... and this is the 'good part'... but, they will have to pay a tiny fine.  Wait a minute... wait just a second... the judge also tells the crooks that they will not have to pay the entire fine, 'the court will give you a discount'. The bottom line, speaking in 'financial terms' wherein they like to refer to the 'bottom line'... the 'bottom line' is that the fraudulent justice system is endorsing the fraudulent financial system and damn the public. “They appear to have grossly inflated the settlement amount for P.R. purposes to mislead the public, while in the fine print, enabling Goldman Sachs to pay 50 to 75 percent less,” said Dennis Kelleher, the founder of the advocacy organization Better Markets, referring to the government announcement. “The problem all along, with all of these settlements — and this one highlights it even more — is that they are carefully crafted more to conceal than reveal to the American public what really happened here — and what the so-called penalty is.” In April 2006, Goldman Sachs provided investors with a bullish report on Countrywide’s high-quality mortgage loans — loans the bank had helpfully packaged into AAA-rated mortgage-backed securities, thereby offering those lucky clients a low-risk way of profiting from America’s housing boom. When the bank’s head of “due diligence” saw the report, he typed a short email to his colleagues: “If only they knew…” Now we know.  U.S. Attorney Benjamin Wagner describes the $5 billion fine  Vampire Squid Goldman Sachs Gets Away with $5 Billion 'Non-Punishment'  The penalty was swiftly denounced as a 'non-punishment, non-accountability ritual that will do nothing to stop the Wall Street crime spree.' And, this next part will bring tears to the eyes of 'justice'...​ Goldman will quite literally pay that fine with someone else’s money; in fact, the money comes from the very investors Goldman victimized, by selling them toxic securities under false pretenses. ​In fact, you can make a credible case that Goldman won’t pay a fine at all. They will merely send a cut of profits from long-ago fraudulent activity to a shakedown artist, also known as U.S. law enforcement. The upshot: Goldman Sachs and the Justice Department get to divvy up the profits of a fraud scheme perpetrated on the public.  “If you are a kid caught with marijuana in Michigan, you get a police record. If you are an executive on Wall Street that destroys the American economy, you pay a $5 billion fine, no police record.”