Heart of Darkness

huffingtonpost.com — The completely mind-blowing story "A Mortgage Tornado Warning, Unheeded," by Gretchen Morgenson in the Feb. 4 New York Times, along with a ProPublica story a couple of weeks back on how Freddie Mac had placed multi-billion dollar bets for years that paid off if homeowners stayed trapped in bad mortgages, are major reminders of the need to conduct full-scale investigations of the fraud perpetrated by big financial institutions. It's a Jupiter-sized reminder of the need to staff up the new financial fraud task force, take the road blocks to effective investigations down, and be wary of a soft settlement on robo-signing. Beyond those more immediate issues, though, is a far more fundamental reminder about the nature of power. When a company, and an industry, become too powerful (either in the marketplace, in the political world, or both), corruption is inevitable.

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