4 ms·

”The kid-gloves approach that the DOJ and the SEC take with Wall Street is as inexplicable as it is indefensible,” says Dennis Kelleher Well said. Here's hopi

by jobu 12y ago

”The kid-gloves approach that the DOJ and the SEC take with Wall Street is as inexplicable as it is indefensible,” says Dennis Kelleher Well said. Here's hoping this will result in some civil suits against individuals at Citi, if not actual jail time.

seiji 12y ago
Here's hoping this will result in some civil suits against individuals at Citi, if not actual jail time. That's the problem, right? Years of "we're getting to this soon!" "We're on your side!" "We're going to get those bad guys!" Then, you look back, and 5 years later you see nothing has happened. The "justice" system is lying, running out the clock, and just trying to hope everybody ignores bad people in powerful positions doing bad things without any meaningful, and personal, repercussions.
anonbanker 12y ago
The solution in most of these cases is "handcuff one of the bastards publicly; then the people put down their pitchforks and forget about all the accomplices". Don't believe me? Look up how many people went to jail for: * Tycho * Global Crossing * Enron * HealthSouth * Madoff * the S&L Scandals of the late 80's * Washington Mutual
- winstonsmith 12y ago
  The solution in this century's financial crisis has been "handcuff none of the bastards", but it wasn't always so. I'm surprised you cite the savings and loan scandal as a case of criminals not going to jail because in that crisis there were over 1000 felony convictions of high level people (usually the CEO and CFO). Since that crisis was 1/70th the size of the recent crisis, by strict proportionality (all things being equal, etc.) there would have been 70,000 felony convictions of high level people in this crisis. All thing are not equal of course, but there weren't 70,000 or 7,000 or 700 or 7 convictions of high level people in this crisis. There were none! Things really have change dramatically for the worse. William Black on Moyers and Company[1]: Sure. The savings and loan debacle was one-seventieth the size of the current crisis, both in terms of losses and the amount of fraud. In that crisis, the savings and loan regulators made over 30,000 criminal referrals, and this produced over 1,000 felony convictions in cases designated as “major” by the Department of Justice. But even that understates the degree of prioritization, because we, the regulators, worked very closely with the FBI and the Justice Department to create a list of the top 100 — the 100 worst fraud schemes. They involved roughly 300 savings and loans and 600 individuals, and virtually all of those people were prosecuted. We had a 90 percent conviction rate, which is the greatest success against elite white-collar crime (in terms of prosecution) in history. [1] http://billmoyers.com/2013/09/17/hundreds-of-wall-street-execs-went-to-prison-during-the-last-fraud-fueled-bank-crisis/ http://billmoyers.com/2013/09/17/hundreds-of-wall-street-exe...

by jobu 12y ago

seiji 12y ago

Here's hoping this will result in some civil suits against individuals at Citi, if not actual jail time. That's the problem, right? Years of "we're getting to this soon!" "We're on your side!" "We're going to get those bad guys!" Then, you look back, and 5 years later you see nothing has happened. The "justice" system is lying, running out the clock, and just trying to hope everybody ignores bad people in powerful positions doing bad things without any meaningful, and personal, repercussions.

anonbanker 12y ago

The solution in most of these cases is "handcuff one of the bastards publicly; then the people put down their pitchforks and forget about all the accomplices". Don't believe me? Look up how many people went to jail for: * Tycho * Global Crossing * Enron * HealthSouth * Madoff * the S&L Scandals of the late 80's * Washington Mutual

winstonsmith 12y ago
The solution in this century's financial crisis has been "handcuff none of the bastards", but it wasn't always so. I'm surprised you cite the savings and loan scandal as a case of criminals not going to jail because in that crisis there were over 1000 felony convictions of high level people (usually the CEO and CFO). Since that crisis was 1/70th the size of the recent crisis, by strict proportionality (all things being equal, etc.) there would have been 70,000 felony convictions of high level people in this crisis. All thing are not equal of course, but there weren't 70,000 or 7,000 or 700 or 7 convictions of high level people in this crisis. There were none! Things really have change dramatically for the worse. William Black on Moyers and Company[1]: Sure. The savings and loan debacle was one-seventieth the size of the current crisis, both in terms of losses and the amount of fraud. In that crisis, the savings and loan regulators made over 30,000 criminal referrals, and this produced over 1,000 felony convictions in cases designated as “major” by the Department of Justice. But even that understates the degree of prioritization, because we, the regulators, worked very closely with the FBI and the Justice Department to create a list of the top 100 — the 100 worst fraud schemes. They involved roughly 300 savings and loans and 600 individuals, and virtually all of those people were prosecuted. We had a 90 percent conviction rate, which is the greatest success against elite white-collar crime (in terms of prosecution) in history. [1] http://billmoyers.com/2013/09/17/hundreds-of-wall-street-execs-went-to-prison-during-the-last-fraud-fueled-bank-crisis/ http://billmoyers.com/2013/09/17/hundreds-of-wall-street-exe...