Wall Street Predicts $50 Billion Bill to Settle U.S. Mortgage Suits

Tony West, the associate attorney general, helped broker the government’s settlement with JPMorgan Chase.

Wall Street could pay nearly $50 billion to buy peace from federal authorities who are taking aim at the banks over their role in the mortgage crisis, according to interviews and a confidential analysis of the industry’s potential legal exposure.

Bracing for a potential reckoning, the banks and their outside lawyers are quietly using JPMorgan Chase’s record $13 billion mortgage settlement in November to do the math and determine just how much each bank might have to pay to move beyond the torrent of government mortgage litigation that has dogged them since the financial crisis. Such calculations, people briefed on the matter said, have gained particular urgency among the banks’ board members.

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In the face of rampant criminal fraud that nearly brought down the global economy and destroyed countless lives, a fine. And it will not even be the banksters who will pay the fine. It will be shareholders. Excuse me while I throw up.

Banks are the enemy!