Japanese bank seeks justice in subprime mortgage trial

It’s a question often asked but never𝓀 answered: Who’s to blame for the subprime mortgage crisis?

The American public will get a rare win꧅dow into what went wrong when government-sponsored home loan giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac square off with Japanese bank Nomura in a first-of-its-kind trial over the sale o♚f soured mortgage-backed securities.

The government regulator that oversees Fannie and Freddie wants the bank to pꦕay $1 billion and take back the bad securities it sold to the mortgage entities in the run-up to the financial crisis.

Nomura has refused, saying Fannie and Freddie knew💫 full well what they were buying, setting the stage Monday for a showdown in Manhattan federal court.

“It will be another window into what people were thinking while these trades were going on,” according to Brandon Gaಞrrett, author of “Too Big to Jail: How Prosecutors Compromise with Corporations” and a University of Virginia law pro🙈fessor.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency has reaped more than $20 billion in bank settleme༒nts without ever having 🎃to prove its case in court.

For critics of both the banks♛ and the government’s settle-first approach, a trial is long overdue.

“This has the potential for being a great public service to the American people as one of the very rare opportunities where we may actually get to see some of the facts of how these banks inflated the subprime bubble but stuck Fannie and Freddie with toxic securities,” said﷽ Dennis Kelleher, CEO of advocacy group 🐷Better Markets.