Free Republic

The House Committee on Oversight and Government reform has compiled a scathing report on the Department of Justice's “Operation Choke Point” program that critics believe is aimed at “targeting industries deemed objectionable” by the Obama administration. The report, released Thursday by panel chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., accuses the Justice Department of abusing its authority by going after the payday lending industry and other merchants and working to put them out of business. According to the report, the Justice Department “secretly” discouraged banks from conducting business with groups deemed to be “high risk,” for triggering a federal investigation. Sign Up for...

The general outline is the DOJ and bank regulators are putting the screws to banks and other third-party payment processors to refuse banking services to companies and industries that are deemed to pose a “reputation risk” to the bank. Most controversially, the list of dubious industries is populated by enterprises that are entirely, or at least generally, legal. The ability to destroy legal industries through secret actions to deprive them of banking services has obvious political consequences. For example, it was reported last week that firearms shops are alleging that Operation Choke Point is being used to pressure banks into...

I wrote Tuesday about the hypocrisy and perhaps vindictiveness of the Department of Justice’s lawsuit against ratings agency Standard & Poor’s for rating toxic mortgage-backed securities and their derivatives highly before the housing bubble popped. Apparently I wasn’t tough enough on … the DoJ. Bloomberg’s Jonathan Weil explains why the lawsuit isn’t just ill-considered, but downright silly: Oh, the poor suckers at Citigroup Inc. and Bank of America Corp., fooled about the stench of their own garbage by those sneaky credit raters at Standard & Poor’s.The U.S. Justice Department made some peculiar allegations in its lawsuit this week against S&P...

In charges filed late Monday in Los Angeles federal court, the Justice Department said S&P gave high marks to mortgage-backed securities that later went sour, even though it knew they were risky. The government said S&P misrepresented the risks because it wanted more business from the banks. The case is the government's first major action against one of the credit rating agencies that stamped their seals of approval on Wall Street's mortgage bundles. It marks a milestone for the Justice Department, which has been criticized for failing to make bigger cases against the companies involved in the crisis. "Put simply,...

"The Game Changer" This is no game, it is for keeps.