TV News LIES

Three regulators did indeed ring warning bells — at the right time, in the right places, and loud enough for other banking and financial system overseers. All three were women: Brooksley Born, Sheila Bair and Susan Bies. All three were ignored.

You may have heard before about the warnings issued by Born, the head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in the 1990s, and Bair, the chairwoman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. from 2006 to 2011.

International investors say capitalism is in crisis, with almost one in three backing radical changes to the system, according to a Bloomberg survey.

As the global financial and business elite gather in Davos for their annual forum, a majority in the Bloomberg Global Poll agree that income inequality hurts the economy and that governments need to do something to address it -- ideas at the heart of “Occupy” protests worldwide.

Wall Street Pit’s Ron Haruni points out that as the banking industry’s stocks plunged this year — with major megabanks like Bank of America facing uncertain fates — their executives have walked away with sky-high salaries.

Haruni cites the work of Rochdale Securities analyst Dick Bove and shows how banks have seen their value and stocks plunge by double-digits while executive compensation remains high:

Four years after the banking system nearly collapsed from reckless mortgage lending, federal prosecutors have stayed on the sidelines, even as judges around the country are pointing fingers at possible wrongdoing.

The government also hasn't brought any prosecutions for dubious foreclosure practices deployed since 2007 by big banks and other mortgage-servicing companies.

"Over the past generation, the patterns of income growth have been radically transformed," said Paul Pierson, professor of political science at UC Berkeley, adding that the argument "that rising inequality is simply an economic reality ... too easily lets policymakers off the hook."

Meanwhile, wages have grown by nearly 40 percent for the top 10 percent of earners over the past three decades, while wages for the bottom 50 percent of earners have remained stagnant or fallen, she said.

Wells Fargo & Co. and regulators announced Thursday a $148 million settlement to resolve accusations that Wachovia, which was purchased by Wells, participated in a bid-rigging scheme that hurt state and local governments.

It's the fourth major bank to settle with the consortium of federal agencies and state attorneys general. Bank of America Corp. settled for $137 million last December.