No brain; no avarice?
I know folks who do 'creative accounting' with a Dome Monthly Planner and a high-2 digit-IQ. Institutionalized bank fraud, such as cleaning up by betting against your customers' ability to pay back 'interest-only' structured home loans (that you supposedly ran through 'due diligence' first), selling off the intended-to-be-worthless-soon paper by talking it up to naive investors (Deutche Bank et al, who are now suing BoA, Wells Fargo, et al), so as to artificially devalue the market, then cry poormouth (knowing that taxpayer 'bailout $' was going to be insta-printed), then repo-ing the houses en masse to recover the initial outlay, takes more than 'a brain'. You need an industry that includes kindred spirits in key positions, a paid-for government, apathetic (or easily-led) customers, and an understanding of 'capitalism' that somehow includes the concept of "Too Big To Fail" (and a blueprint for becoming just that: the biggest 'failure'). Conspiring to manipulate the housing (and derivatives) market(s) takes planning, a specialized crew working in a variety of capacities both govt and business, and the desire to suck away the middle-class's illusion of 'equity'. To many of us, 'institutionally collude, lie, cheat, and manipulate' sloshes over the top of ANYthing you could carry 'creative accounting' in.
How about this? "It's called conspiring to defraud a populace, and you need a 'seared conscience' to do that."
I read an excellent blow-by-blow account of the last prior 'banking conspiracy' (the Boesky/Milken 'junk-bond financing' one) by the WSJ's James B. Stewart, called 'Den of Thieves'. Perhaps it would interest you to see the personalities that worked the scam......
