Perhaps this is splitting hairs, but those charges are either the result of settlements from complaints brought by their customers, or are the fallout from the

Perhaps this is splitting hairs, but those charges are either the result of settlements from complaints brought by their customers, or are the fallout from the market crash and general marketwide mortgage mis-selling. In other words, no-one needed to seek out hidden wrongdoing by these banks, their own customers were complaining about their behaviour, or there was conspicuous obvious malfeasance. (I'm not trying to downplay the banks' bad play and criminality in these events though). It would have been difficult not to act on these things (at least, I'd like to think so!) The spate of huge fines against the non-US banks has been direct investigations that haven't been broadly obvious from the outside, i.e. someone had to go digging.