I think there are a few reasons that no one from senior management of a major bank went to jail related to RMBS. One reason is that the Justice department lost

I think there are a few reasons that no one from senior management of a major bank went to jail related to RMBS. One reason is that the Justice department lost its first big case which was brought against two hedge fund managers from Bear Sterns [1]. Typically prosecutors only bring cases they think they can win and this may have shown that prosecuting a lot of these cases was going to be hard. The second reason is a bit of informed speculation on my part. Our banks have a very symbiotic relationship with Washington, especially when it comes to RMBS. The role of the GSEs is especially important here since they in large part determine lending standards. And once you are there eventually there will be politicians involved. While I would have love to seen Barney Frank being called to testify at a trial it was never going to happen. Trying to cleanly slice off the prosecution of a few bank CEOs was always going to be impossible because of where it would lead. RenTec is hardly the first people to have a dispute with the IRS. Berkshire Hathaway won a $500M dispute with them last year [2]. In general I agree with your last paragraph, I wish fraud was treated as an actual crime more often and people went to jail. HSBC should not be a going concern in the US after they knowingly laundered money for drug cartels. But alas that is not the world we live in. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/11/business/11bear.html https://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/11/business/11bear.html [2] http://fortune.com/2015/01/27/berkshires-netjets-defeats-500-million-irs-tax-claim/ http://fortune.com/2015/01/27/berkshires-netjets-defeats-500...