The Perfect Crime? Of Oscars & Angelo

The film 'Inside Job' took home the Oscar Sunday night for best documentary. Director Charles Ferguson used his acceptance speech to deliver pointed criticism of Wall Street and the financial industry: "Forgive me, I must start by pointing out that three years after our horrific financial crisis caused by financial fraud, not a single financial executive has gone to jail, and that's wrong." In case you are not familiar with Inside Job, it was a movie about our nation's financial crisis. Why hasn't any 'major figure' gone to jail? Talk about your loaded questions. I could fill 20 pages answering that one, but it boils down to this: the financial machinations that occurred in the executive suites of Merrill Lynch, Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Countrywide, Ameriquest, New Century, and other key players in this crisis was probably (on technical basis) 'sort of' legal and falls into the category of all these executives getting drunk at the same housing cocktail party. They believed that housing values would rise forever and they rationalized their behavior with actions that enriched themselves and crashed the economy. All federal regulators were asleep at the wheel, starting with Alan Greenspan and the SEC. If Wall Street executives broke laws (and I'm certain a few did) it was such a 'high tech' crime that the FBI was flummoxed or prosecutors convinced themselves that a jury would "never get it." Indeed, true crimes were committed during the housing bubble. These entail what I call 'retail' housing flips where speculators, conmen, Realtors, mortgage brokers, retail loan offices and many others looked the other way when someone bought a house dirt cheap, inflated its value illegally, and found pigeons in the form of straw borrowers (using mortgage money). And there have been plenty of indictments and convictions in this regard. But major figures? No. As for the corporate boardrooms, like I said, I could go on forever... Bottom line: there's a gaping hole between civil fraud and criminal fraud. Lastly: Inside Job (which I have not seen) is in no way related to the 1989 book of the same name. That tome, which carried the subtitle 'The Looting of America's Savings and Loans' was penned by crusading journalists Stephen Pizzo, Mary Fricker, and a cub reporter from National Thrift News…