Why is Preet Bharara, the 'scourge of Wall Street', taking a friendly tone towards mortgage bankers?

Preet Bharara, the prosecutor with a legendary record of convicting insider trading cases, says people should lay off Wall Street for the crisis

David Dayen
theguardian.com, Friday 10 October 2014 08.00 EDT

Here’s something you don’t expect to hear from a man who made his reputation by jailing bankers and becoming the “scourge of Wall Street”: ask him if fraud existed during the mortgage crisis and his answer is “the evidence is not there.”

The words come from Preet Bharara, the US attorney for the southern district of New York, who prosecuted more Wall Streeters for insider trading than anyone who came before him. Worth magazine this week named Bharara at the top of its “100 Most Powerful People in Finance”. Bharara seems to like his high profile, and appears to be gunning for an even bigger one: he suggested that the new US attorney general of the United States should share all of the priorities of Bharara’s own office.