Michael Hudson - Whistleblowers ignored, punished by lenders, dozens of former employees say

http://www.iwatchnews.org/2011/11/22/7461/whistleblowers-ignored-punished-lenders-dozens-former-employees-say

The Great Mortgage Cover-Up

Darcy Parmer ran into trouble soon after she started her job as a fraud analyst at Wells Fargo Bank. Her bosses, she later claimed, were upset that she was, well, finding fraud.

Company officials, she alleged in a lawsuit, berated her for reporting that sales staffers were pushing through mortgage deals based on made-up borrower incomes and other distortions, telling her that she didn’t “see the big picture” and that “it is not your job to fix Wells Fargo.” Management, she claimed, ordered her to stop contacting the company’s ethics hotline.

In the end, she said, Wells Fargo forced her out of her job.

Parmer isn’t alone in claiming she was punished for objecting to fraud in the midst of the nation’s home-loan boom. iWatch News has identified 63 former employees at 20 financial institutions who say they were fired or demoted for reporting fraud or refusing to commit fraud. Their stories were disclosed in whistleblower claims with the U.S. Department of Labor, court documents or interviews with iWatch News.

“We did our jobs. We had integrity,” said Ed Parker, former fraud investigations manager at now-defunct Ameriquest Mortgage Co., a leading subprime lender. “But we were not welcome because we affected the bottom line.”

These ex-employees’ accounts provide evidence that the muzzling of whistleblowers played an important role in allowing corruption to flourish as mortgage lenders and their patrons on Wall Street pumped up loan volume and profits. Codes of silence at many lenders, former employees claim, helped discourage media, regulators and policymakers from taking a hard look at illegal practices that ultimately harmed borrowers, investors and the economy.

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David Swanson - The Last Whistleblowers

Counterpunch.org  November 22, 2011

by DAVID SWANSON

http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/11/22/the-last-whistleblowers/print

Whistleblowing in our federal government may soon be a thing of the past, not because whistleblowers face more vicious retribution than ever before — although that is true; and not because important acts of whistleblowing now result in fewer reforms and less accountability than they used to — although that is also true and is getting closer; but fundamentally because the actions against which we need whistles blown are publicly acknowledged.

 How would one expose war or indefinite imprisonment or assassinations or drone attacks or wiretapping or profiteering or bribery or massive money transfers to Wall Street?  I understand how, even a few years ago, such things could be exposed by courageous whistleblowers.  I understand how retired officials who missed their chance at being timely whistleblowers can now expose the steps through which these crimes have been normalized.  But I have a hard time understanding how one would leak to the media or reveal on one’s blog what has been openly acknowledged, legalized, formalized, and normalized.

Starting from the model of whistleblowers, one is tempted to suggest that we begin supporting those individuals who will resist immoral orders and assignments: resisters instead of whistleblowers.  But we have one whistleblower for every 100,000 or so government employees informed of the abuses exposed.  We are likely to have infinitely fewer inside resisters.  Clearly we need a different model.  We need to all be whistleblowers, since we all know about the crimes.  We need to insist on viewing policies differently, rather than viewing different policies.  We need to expose what happens where the bombs land and the defunding of human needs hit home.  And we need to organize massive resistance from outside the government, with the potential for creating massive resistance within the government as well.

I expressed my concerns and raised these questions to some of our most praiseworthy whistleblowers at an event Monday evening in Washington, D.C.

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