America's crooked banks

Back in February, America's banks settled a case over dubious mortgages and improper foreclosures, promising to pay $5 billion in cash and forgive $17 billion in loans. What does it mean in practice? Banks "forgiving" debts that no longer exist - and in the process creating enormous tax headaches for their former customers - all in the name of meeting arbitrary settlement targets. Because obviously, they wouldn't want to forgive debt they were still screwing payments out of people for - that might hurt profitability or something.

Just another example of the everyday fraud committed by America's banks.