This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2011, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

Americans are frightened, angry and depressed about high unemployment and the feeble economy. One reason for their anger is that the sharks in the finance industry who created the subprime mortgage disaster, while reaping obscene profits for themselves, have escaped accountability.

Until now.

It was heartening to read that the federal government has filed suit against 17 of the usual suspects, including Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs. The suit claims that the banks misled Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-chartered secondary mortgage firms, about the risks of $200 billion worth of mortgage-backed securities they sold to Fannie and Freddie. Many of those securities became nearly worthless as subprime borrowers defaulted. Subprime mortgage loans formed the foundation of the securities.

The implosion of the subprime market bubble almost collapsed the entire financial system. Yet many of the banks who created the mess were bailed out by the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program financed by the federal government. Although the banks have repaid much of the money from President George Bush's TARP, the bailout of Fannie and Freddie has cost the government $153 billion so far, and it could cost twice that by the time all the sludge has moved through the financial system's sewage treatment plant.

The federal lawsuit seeks to recover Fannie and Freddie's losses on the roughly $200 billion in securities they bought from the defendants.

In their defense, the banks are arguing that the government-sponsored agencies are sophisticated investors who should have realized the risks inherent in the complex mortgage securities they bought.

But even more outrageous is the plaint that the federal government should not go after the banks for compensation because that will hurt the economy. Some analysts are saying that banks already are reluctant to lend, and this will make them even less likely to do so, especially since they will face new costs to defend themselves.

If that is so, if bankers are allowed to escape the consequences of a securitization scheme that richly rewarded them while bankrupting millions of victims, what is to prevent them from doing something similar again?

To our knowledge, no banker from any of the firms that cooked up this toxic financial froth has yet to face the bar of justice. It's time for an accounting, if only to claw back taxpayer money from bailouts caused by the crisis.