Nyc banks sued over subprime ‘crime’

The Mayor of Cleveland is suing Wall Street banks over the subprime crisis…

Mayor Frank G. Jackson, a Democrat, filed suit against 21 banks in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court, accusing famous institutions such as Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch of creating a public nuisance.

The mayor  argues that the companies irresponsibly bought and sold high-interest home loans to people who had "no realistic means of keeping up with their loan payments," resulting in widespread defaults that depleted the city's tax base and left entire neighborhoods in ruins, the Cleveland Plain-Dealer reported.

City officials hope to recover hundreds of millions of dollars in damages, including lost taxes from devalued property and money spent tearing down or boarding up thousands of abandoned houses.

In an interview with the Plain Dealer, Jackson commented: "To me, this is no different than organized crime or drugs. It has the same effect as drug activity in neighborhoods. It's a form of organized crime that happens to be legal in many respects."