U.S. to Sue Banks for $20B

The government's looking for a little pocket change from the likes of JPMorgan Chase and Deutsche Bank for, y'know, screwing up the world.

It looks like the U.S. government grew a pair and will sue a slew of major banks for selling home loan securities under false pretenses.The Federal Housing Finance Agency will sue the likes of JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs and a bunch of others to the tune of $20 billion, which might sound like a lot but is probably just a drop in the pond for a collection of the biggest financial institutions in the world. The suit is likely to allege that the banks knowingly misrepresented the incomes of the people whose mortages were bundled as securities to investors just as the housing bubble was about to burst. Should FHFA be successful in suing the banks and recoup the $20 billion, that would still leave taxpayers short by about $10 billion, as some $30 billion was lost by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac when things went really, really south back in 2008.