The Justice Department may have been stymied in its efforts to bring criminal prosecutions against the Wall Street executives who helped create the financial crisis, but on a single day in September a little-known federal regulatory agency launched civil suits against 17 banks, including Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Bank of America Corp. and JPMorgan Chase & Co., seeking what could be tens of billions in damages. Filing the suits was the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the regulator of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which accused the banks of misrepresenting the quality of home loans that backed securities they sold to the two mortgage guarantors.
Behind the massive litigation effort was Alfred Pollard, a former banking industry lobbyist and the FHFA’s general counsel. Part of Pollard’s goal has been to help taxpayers recover the $187 billion that the Treasury Department has injected into Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to prop them up.
