More than six years after the trading of mortgage backed securities (MBS) contributed to a global financial meltdown, there are new signs that the firms involved will be held accountable for their role in the crisis. Investment bank and MBS trader JPMorgan Chase and Co’s most recent SEC quarterly filing discloses that they are currently under investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice for criminal violations of federal laws which govern securities trading. The report also states that the Justice Department has arrived at a preliminary conclusion that civil violations were committed by JPMorgan in securities transactions which took place between 2005 and 2007. Bank of America, another major trader of MBS before the financial crisis, has also been the subject of federal investigations led by the Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force. Based on that investigation, the Department of Justice and the Security and Exchange Commission filed a lawsuit against the bank in early August for failing to report the full risks of the bank’s MBS investment products. U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has also stated that other investigations of firms involved in the MBS industry during the financial crisis are underway. Many civic, business, and government leaders have been widely critical of the federal investigation of the financial crisis, as it has not yet resulted in any criminal charges against any investment banks or individual bank executives.

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