American Betrayal

To protect the confidentiality of the innocent parties and to avoid further litigation by the wrongdoers, all names used in the book are fictitious, as is the name of the government regulatory agency. This book is the account of John Doe, MBA, CPA, whistleblower, certified examiner at the Financial Regulatory Agency. Mr. Doe has risen through the ranks in a long established professional career at the Financial Regulatory Agency spanning nearly 25 years. He headed up the Large Insured Depository Institutions program for nearly a decade leading up to the banking crisis. Agency officials removed him from the role once he made repeated disclosures to the Chairman at the agency, Ombudsman, Inspector General, and others about the deficiencies discovered in the agencys bank monitoring system. Mr. Doe currently has two formal legal complaints pending with the Office of Special Counsel and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Mr. Doe reluctantly became a whistleblower at the agency once he realized the government was a partner in enabling patterns of defective loans which sparked the recession. Like other government whistleblowers, Mr. Doe was ignored and silenced at the agency until stripped of all relevant duties without explanation after warning repeatedly that a crisis of our own design would lead to the bank failures that subsequently occurred. For example, he blew the whistle on a secrecy loophole that created a knowledge gap for risks by non-bank affiliates of consolidated bank holding companies -- the only Financial Regulatory Agency oversight of overall risks at institutions like Citigroup, Bank of America, Wachovia and Washington Mutual. Had the government listened, billions of dollars could have been saved. Of course, the harm and disruptions the mortgage crisis caused homeowners may have been spared in part as well. This is the inside story.