Tag Archives: William K. Black

NEP’s Bill Black and Roosevelt Institute Fellow Mike Konczal take on the policies of the two contenders for the Democratic nomination in this appearance of The Real News. Getting the message out about Bank Whistleblowers United! You can view here (includes transcript). [Translate]

The Quest for Better Bankers, Better Banks Requires Better Economists Review by William K. Black [This review originally appeared in Concurring Opinions] In Better Bankers, Better Banks, Claire Hill and Richard Painter of the University of Minnesota Law School signal their approach in the subtitle:  “Promoting Good Business through Contractual Commitment.”  This review explains why their thesis is so timely in terms of the most important theoretical debates boiling in economics and banking...

William K. Black February 3, 2016      Bloomington, MN This is the third column in my series about the Wall Street Journal report that “big money managers” want to bring back “liar’s loans.”  Here are the article’s first two sentences. Wall Street wants to bring back the “low-doc” loan. These mortgages, which are given to borrowers that can’t fully document their income, helped fuel a tidal wave of defaults during the housing crisis and subsequently fell out of favor. The second sentence...

William K. Black February 3, 2016     Bloomington, MN This is the second article in my series prompted by the Wall Street Journal report that “big money managers” want to bring back “liar’s loans.”  Given that the best study of liar’s loans during the crisis found a fraud incidence of 90% — this is a startling proof of how openly addicted to fraud the “big money managers” remain.  It demonstrates some of the terrible costs of the Department of Justice’s refusal to prosecute the fraudulent...

William K. Black February 2, 2016     Bloomington, MN It is time to break out one of our two family rules again – it is impossible to compete with unintentional self-parody.  How fraudulent is finance even now?  The Wall Street Journal reports that “big money managers” want to bring back “liar’s loans.”  I am trying to write much shorter columns, so there will be many columns in this series because the WSJ article so beautifully exemplifies the lies that the industry and the media told...

At this time (January 29, 2016), we consist of four founding members: Gary Aguirre William Black Richard Bowen Michael Winston Our bios are listed at the end of this post.  We share a number of common experiences.  They explain why we came together to try to implement real reform.  We are whistleblowers We proved correct in our warnings when we blew the whistle Our warnings were not heeded We persevered when our warnings were ignored, knowing that retaliation was likely The failure to heed...

In order to restore the rule of law, we ask every candidate for the nomination of their party for the presidency to pledge that they will not take contributions from any financial firm (or contributions above $250 from their officers) that the United States or its agencies have, after investigation, charged with committing the legal elements of fraud.  That list includes virtually all of the largest banks in the U.S. and Europe and Freddie and Fannie.  Indeed, most of these financial giants...

On Day One, the President directs each relevant federal financial agency to restore a superb criminal referral process, the criminal referral mandate, and criminal referral coordinators, at every federal financial agency. Local and state police forces rarely investigate sophisticated financial frauds.  That work is done overwhelmingly by roughly 2,000 FBI agents in the white-collar section.  That means that we have roughly two FBI agents per industry.  Those numbers mean that FBI agents...

William K. Black January 30, 2016    Bloomington, Minneapolis Well, this is slightly embarrassing.  Gary Aguirre, Bill Black, Richard Bowen, and Michael Winston came together to form a pro bono effort by bank whistleblowers to restore the rule of law on Wall Street.  As a placeholder in the drafting process, I called us the “Bank Whistleblowers’ Group” and that name survived the drafting process and was announced yesterday by me on New Economic Perspectives (NEP).  Michael Winston deserves...

William K. Black January 29, 2016     Bloomington, Minnesota Revised January 30, 2016 I am writing to announce the formation of a new pro bono group and a policy initiative that we hope many of our readers will support and help publicize.  Gary Aguirre, Bill Black, Richard Bowen, and Michael Winston are the founding members of the Bank Whistleblowers United.  We are all from the general field of finance and we are all whistleblowers who are unemployable in finance and financial regulation...