The Federal Government's latest demonstration of prosecutorial futility was captured in Friday's LA Times:

U.S. drops criminal probe of former Countrywide chief Angelo Mozilo

Mozilo's actions in the mortgage meltdown — which led to $67.5-million settlement against him — did not amount to criminal wrongdoing, federal prosecutors have determined.

By E. Scott Reckard, Los Angeles Times

4:11 PM PST, February 18, 2011

How is it possible that a crisis driven by fraudulent nonprime lenders, securitizers, and purchasers of nonprime paper has managed to lead to the conviction of not a single elite leader of a nonprime lender? A lender making liar's loans must lie – pervasively. How is it that other state and federal investigations and investigations by private parties have consistently found endemic fraud by Countrywide, something that is impossible without C-suite support? When we responded to the savings and loan debacle we prioritized the “Top 100” institutions (producing over 600 felony convictions of the elites that drove that crisis) plus roughly 400 convictions of the roughly 200 additional “control frauds” that did not make the Top 100 list.