MOTU ECONOMICS == FRAUD

(h/t Atrios)

Dan Froomkin at Nieman Watch has a nice article that lays out the 9 real problems our economy has, including bankster fraud:

1. The astonishing amount of mortgage fraud (literally, millions of cases annually) and how it hyperinflated the bubble and led to the Great Recession.

What's even worse is the fact that the conservatives' approach to economics allows this happen:

Commodity Futures Trading Commission judge says colleague biased against complainants
By David S. Hilzenrath
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, October 19, 2010; 11:09 PM

As George H. Painter was preparing to retire recently as one of two administrative law judges presiding over investor complaints at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission...

In a notice recently released by the CFTC, Painter said Judge Bruce Levine, his longtime colleague, had a secret agreement with a former Republican chairwoman of the agency to stand in the way of investors filing complaints with the agency.

"On Judge Levine's first week on the job, nearly twenty years ago, he came into my office and stated that he had promised Wendy Gramm, then Chairwoman of the Commission, that we would never rule in a complainant's favor," Painter wrote. "A review of his rulings will confirm that he fulfilled his vow," Painter wrote.

Painter continued: "Judge Levine, in the cynical guise of enforcing the rules, forces pro se complainants to run a hostile procedural gauntlet until they lose hope, and either withdraw their complaint or settle for a pittance, regardless of the merits of the case."

The CFTC oversees trading of the nation's most important commodities, including oil, gold and cotton. The agency's administrative law judges handle cases in which investors allege that trading professionals or financial firms violated the rules.

Wendy Gramm is the wife of Phil "nation of whiners" Gramm.