The biggest fish in the sub prime market was Countrywide Financial Services. They were *unbelievable*.
Their founder and CEO was Angelo Mozilo, and he was fined 67.5Million by the SEC, but because of an indemnity clause in his contract, BankofAmerica (which bought Countrywide), will have to pay some part of that amount.
By agreeing to that, he avoided a trial, and they never went after him for fraud (which carries up to a long 30 year sentence in Federal law for business fraud), and a fine.
A guy in Florida went to prison (he caused the nations sixth largest bank to collapse). A few others as well are listed here:
http://www.google.com/#hl=en&sclient...w=1280&bih=653
You are correct on the Fedral welfare percentage IF you don't include Social Security - which is both money that people have earned, and also money that they are receiving unearned. (or welfare ). So the percentage varies between 11% at the lowest, to about 30% at the highest, depending on what you call "Welfare".
Another thought came to me as I was looking that up: "What about the Farming subsidies?". if a farmer is paid NOT to grow a crop. Is that welfare? Technically no, but realistically, yes.
In any case, looking even at the lower figures, it's easy to see from this graph, that our percentage of welfare spending is increasing at an alarming rate. Obama care will increase that dramatically - but again, only part of it will be welfare, the rest will be paid for.
Good discussion Sam, but we need to keep our posts shorter. I had to edit out quite a bit, just to fit the last big post of mine, in under the forum limit.