The Untouchables (2013) | PBS Frontline Documentary

investigates why Wall Street’s leaders have escaped prosecution for any fraud related to the sale of bad mortgages.

Are the CEOs of mega-banks too big to jail? Though fraudulent practices at banks contributed to America’s financial meltdown, to date no Wall Street titan has been convicted of a crime connected to the crisis. Frontline investigates the lack of prosecutions of Wall Street executives in the wake of the mortgage-backed securities fueled financial crisis.

Commenting on clips from the episode showing former home loan underwriters explaining how they would laugh as they pushed through mortgages that were too expensive for the borrowers, Smith said this type of behavior was “very frequent and common.” “There are lawsuits that name 35 – easily 36, 37 – of these kind of testimonies, and these guys are joking about it at this point, but of course it’s not really funny in the end because it all resulted in the collapse of 2008, a million people losing their houses, many people out of work and businesses seeing demand sink.”