Matt Taibbi's Latest: " Why Isn't Wall Street In Jail?"

From Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone:

Why Isn't Wall Street in Jail?

Financial crooks brought down the world's economy — but the feds are doing more to protect them than to prosecute them

Over drinks at a bar on a
dreary, snowy night in Washington this past month, a former Senate
investigator laughed as he polished off his beer.

"Everything's fucked up, and nobody goes to jail," he said. "That's
your whole story right there. Hell, you don't even have to write the
rest of it. Just write that."

I put down my notebook. "Just that?"

"That's right," he said, signaling to the waitress for the check.
"Everything's fucked up, and nobody goes to jail. You can end the piece
right there."

Nobody goes to jail. This is the mantra of the
financial-crisis era, one that saw virtually every major bank and
financial company on Wall Street embroiled in obscene criminal scandals
that impoverished millions and collectively destroyed hundreds of
billions, in fact, trillions of dollars of the world's wealth — and
nobody went to jail. Nobody, that is, except Bernie Madoff, a flamboyant
and pathological celebrity con artist, whose victims happened to be
other rich and famous people.

The rest of them, all of them, got off. Not a single executive who ran
the companies that cooked up and cashed in on the phony financial boom —
an industrywide scam that involved the mass sale of mismarked,
fraudulent mortgage-backed securities — has ever been convicted. Their
names by now are familiar to even the most casual Middle American news
consumer: companies like AIG, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, JP Morgan
Chase, Bank of America and Morgan Stanley. Most of these firms were
directly involved in elaborate fraud and theft. Lehman Brothers hid
billions in loans from its investors. Bank of America lied about
billions in bonuses. Goldman Sachs failed to tell clients how it put
together the born-to-lose toxic mortgage deals it was selling. What's
more, many of these companies had corporate chieftains whose actions
cost investors billions — from AIG derivatives chief Joe Cassano, who
assured investors they would not lose even "one dollar" just months
before his unit imploded, to the $263 million in compensation that
former Lehman chief Dick "The Gorilla" Fuld conveniently failed to
disclose. Yet not one of them has faced time behind bars.

Instead, federal regulators and prosecutors have let the banks and
finance companies that tried to burn the world economy to the ground get
off with carefully orchestrated settlements — whitewash jobs that
involve the firms paying pathetically small fines without even being
required to admit wrongdoing. To add insult to injury, the people who
actually committed the crimes almost never pay the fines themselves;
banks caught defrauding their shareholders often use shareholder money
to foot the tab of justice. "If the allegations in these settlements are
true," says Jed Rakoff, a federal judge in the Southern District of New
York, "it's management buying its way off cheap, from the pockets of
their victims."

To understand the significance of this, one has to think carefully
about the efficacy of fines as a punishment for a defendant pool that
includes the richest people on earth — people who simply get their
companies to pay their fines for them. Conversely, one has to consider
the powerful deterrent to further wrongdoing that the state is missing
by not introducing this particular class of people to the experience of
incarceration. "You put Lloyd Blankfein in pound-me-in-the-ass prison
for one six-month term, and all this bullshit would stop, all over Wall
Street," says a former congressional aide. "That's all it would take.
Just once."

But that hasn't happened. Because the entire system set up to monitor and regulate Wall Street is fucked up.

Just ask the people who tried to do the right thing.

Here's how regulation of
Wall Street is supposed to work. To begin with, there's a semigigantic
list of public and quasi-public agencies ostensibly keeping their eyes
on the economy, a dense alphabet soup of banking, insurance, S&L,
securities and commodities regulators like the Federal Reserve, the
Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC), the Office of the Comptroller of
the Currency (OCC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC),
as well as supposedly "self-regulating organizations" like the New York
Stock Exchange. All of these outfits, by law, can at least begin the
process of catching and investigating financial criminals, though none
of them has prosecutorial power.

The major federal agency on the Wall Street beat is the Securities
and Exchange Commission. The SEC watches for violations like insider
trading, and also deals with so-called "disclosure violations" — i.e.,
making sure that all the financial information that publicly traded
companies are required to make public actually jibes with reality. But
the SEC doesn't have prosecutorial power either, so in practice, when it
looks like someone needs to go to jail, they refer the case to the
Justice Department. And since the vast majority of crimes in the
financial services industry take place in Lower Manhattan, cases
referred by the SEC often end up in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the
Southern District of New York. Thus, the two top cops on Wall Street are
generally considered to be that U.S. attorney — a job that has been
held by thunderous prosecutorial personae like Robert Morgenthau and
Rudy Giuliani — and the SEC's director of enforcement.

The relationship between the SEC and the DOJ is necessarily close,
even symbiotic. Since financial crime-fighting requires a high degree of
financial expertise — and since the typical drug-and-terrorism-obsessed
FBI agent can't balance his own checkbook, let alone tell a synthetic
CDO from a credit default swap — the Justice Department ends up leaning
heavily on the SEC's army of 1,100 number-crunching investigators to
make their cases. In theory, it's a well-oiled, tag-team affair:
Billionaire Wall Street Asshole commits fraud, the NYSE catches on and
tips off the SEC, the SEC works the case and delivers it to Justice, and
Justice perp-walks the Asshole out of Nobu, into a Crown Victoria and
off to 36 months of push-ups, license-plate making and Salisbury steak.

That's the way it's supposed to work. But a veritable mountain of
evidence indicates that when it comes to Wall Street, the justice system
not only sucks at punishing financial criminals, it has actually
evolved into a highly effective mechanism for protecting
financial criminals. This institutional reality has absolutely nothing
to do with politics or ideology — it takes place no matter who's in
office or which party's in power. To understand how the machinery
functions, you have to start back at least a decade ago, as case after
case of financial malfeasance was pursued too slowly or not at all,
fumbled by a government bureaucracy that too often is on a first-name
basis with its targets. Indeed, the shocking pattern of nonenforcement
with regard to Wall Street is so deeply ingrained in Washington that it
raises a profound and difficult question about the very nature of our
society: whether we have created a class of people whose misdeeds are no
longer perceived as crimes, almost no matter what those misdeeds are.
The SEC and the Justice Department have evolved into a bizarre species
of social surgeon serving this nonjailable class, expert not at
administering punishment and justice, but at finding and removing
criminal responsibility from the bodies of the accused.

The systematic lack of regulation has left even the country's top
regulators frustrated. Lynn Turner, a former chief accountant for the
SEC, laughs darkly at the idea that the criminal justice system is
broken when it comes to Wall Street. "I think you've got a wrong
assumption — that we even have a law-enforcement agency when it comes to Wall Street," he says.

In the hierarchy of the SEC, the chief accountant plays a major role
in working to pursue misleading and phony financial disclosures. Turner
held the post a decade ago, when one of the most significant cases was
swallowed up by the SEC bureaucracy. In the late 1990s, the agency had
an open-and-shut case against the Rite Aid drugstore chain, which was
using diabolical accounting tricks to cook their books. But instead of
moving swiftly to crack down on such scams, the SEC shoved the case into
the "deal with it later" file. "The Philadelphia office literally did
nothing with the case for a year," Turner recalls. "Very much like the
New York office with Madoff." The Rite Aid case dragged on for years —
and by the time it was finished, similar accounting fiascoes at Enron
and WorldCom had exploded into a full-blown financial crisis. The same
was true for another SEC case that presaged the Enron disaster. The
agency knew that appliance-maker Sunbeam was using the same kind of
accounting scams to systematically hide losses from its investors. But
in the end, the SEC's punishment for Sunbeam's CEO, Al "Chainsaw" Dunlap
— widely regarded as one of the biggest assholes in the history of
American finance — was a fine of $500,000. Dunlap's net worth at the
time was an estimated $100 million. The SEC also barred Dunlap from ever
running a public company again — forcing him to retire with a mere
$99.5 million. Dunlap passed the time collecting royalties from his
self-congratulatory memoir. Its title: Mean Business.

And the conclusion:

So there you have it. Illegal immigrants: 393,000. Lying moms: one.
Bankers: zero. The math makes sense only because the politics are so
obvious. You want to win elections, you bang on the jailable class. You
build prisons and fill them with people for selling dime bags and
stealing CD players. But for stealing a billion dollars? For fraud that
puts a million people into foreclosure? Pass. It's not a crime. Prison
is too harsh. Get them to say they're sorry, and move on. Oh, wait —
let's not even make them say they're sorry. That's too mean; let's just
give them a piece of paper with a government stamp on it, officially
clearing them of the need to apologize, and make them pay a fine
instead. But don't make them pay it out of their own pockets, and don't
ask them to give back the money they stole. In fact, let them profit
from their collective crimes, to the tune of a record $135 billion in
pay and benefits last year. What's next? Taxpayer-funded massages for
every Wall Street executive guilty of fraud?

The mental stumbling block, for most Americans, is that financial
crimes don't feel real; you don't see the culprits waving guns in liquor
stores or dragging coeds into bushes. But these frauds are worse than
common robberies. They're crimes of intellectual choice, made by people
who are already rich and who have every conceivable social advantage,
acting on a simple, cynical calculation: Let's steal whatever we can,
then dare the victims to find the juice to reclaim their money through a
captive bureaucracy. They're attacking the very definition of property —
which, after all, depends in part on a legal system that defends
everyone's claims of ownership equally. When that definition becomes
tenuous or conditional — when the state simply gives up on the notion of
justice — this whole American Dream thing recedes even further from
reality.

Read the full thing here

Comments

[Bob]

You're exaggerating the problem of bigots and trolls.  The majority don't fit your profile.  It's unfortunate that there's some truth in your claim, but there is no way out of it but to retain your perspective in the face of dramatic heterogeneity in the community--this is what you get with a truly open forum.  Welcome to America, warts and all.

[Maniac Researcher]

Bob --

Your tepid attempt at apologizing for violent discriminatory rhetoric will not appease anyone here - neither your Hitleresque ZH peers nor the semi-reasonable audience (who has never heard of ZH because they didn't catch the name drop on the Limbaugh show).

I did, however, enjoy your "welcome to America" quote. Yes...a truly open forum -- a bastion of democracy! Warts and all!

Such a wide open thread makes me think about all the qualities that have made America great: laziness, obnoxious ineffectualism, and utter spinelessness in the face of bigotry. You know - all the great qualities needed to construct a 'dramatically diverse' open forum such as this.

It really makes one's heart swell with patriotic pride, doesn't it?

[DOT]

"

[DOT]

Keith, is that you?

[tahoebumsmith]

I respect everything Matt Taibbi has to say. I have wondered sometimes if Matt Taibbi isn't Tyler Durden. Heads are going to roll, it's just a matter of time...tick,tock,tick,tock,tick,tock,tick,tock..

[Maniac Researcher]

Again - knowing the guy, you are comically mistaken.

[tahoebumsmith]

: )

[Johnny Lawrence]

The entire system from top to bottom is so fucked up.  I can speak directly about the brokerage level, and there is no incentive to be honest with clients.  Our compensation system is not set up like that.  If you're honest, you make much less money than the people around you.  All of the higher-ups always say "do what's in the best interest of the clients", but it's all bullshit and they know it.  There is no best interest of the clients.  It's all about maximizing production and fucking the client.  There is no reward for doing what's truly best for the client.  And the saddest part about it is that clients don't realize they're being ripped off.  And if you try to explain how they're being ripped off, they don't even bat an eyelash.  They've been brainwashed.

Whole fucking industry sucks.

[Aristarchan]

Very true. I have made money by being absolutely honest with my customers....to a fault. Yes, my profit margins suffered, and sometimes they stopped buying shit from me and started buying from flashy manufacturers with marketing skills and artificially low prices....but they always came back to me, because I make quality parts, I will build low quantities without a penalty, I will work at night to make a delivery if it is needed, and I never lie to them or rip them off. And, most importantly, if they need a part now, and they need it right, they know I will do what it takes to deliver. My father taught me that....and he went broke using that business model. But, he was trying to service the public...too many customers. I have only a few customers so I do not over-extend myself and wind up promising things I cannot deliver. Of course, I am not getting wildly rich, but I make very good money and can sleep at night.

[MachoMan]

My father quit the sell side business 20+ years ago because he got sick of selling bullshit.  I can't fathom how much worse it has become.  Although, it has put him in peculiarly good position to not get hosed on the buy side...

I get cold calls from people every once and a while trying to get me to invest with them (not sure how my name is floated around).  I generally dictate the terms of the call at the beginning, explaining that I am on the level and I cannot fathom they have a legitimate financial product that I would be interested in purchasing.  The conversation then goes into physical precious metals...  the diligent ones still persist in selling me paper shares of something, but are willing to try and do whatever it takes and so if physical is what I'm interest in, then they'll sell it to me.  At which point in time I have to break the news to them that I can purchase by myself online from numerous reputable establishments in a very fast and convenient format. 

Sometimes, if I'm feeling like an asshole, I ask them to send me an investment history for the last ten years.  It always causes a moment of silence.  Priceless.  [just kidding asshole, I have no inclination to purchase anything from you].

Unfortunately, I suspect few are as disciplined as I am with my money...  cold calling grandma probably yields a different result (hell, grandma probably actually has money).

[props2009]

Is the S&P rigged?

http://dawnwires.com/investment-news/why-the-sp-is-rigged-one-chart-says-it-all/

[Silva Plata]

While both the conservatives and the liberals in my extended family are busy fighting, blaming and accusing each other of being the problem, they are all getting fucked.  Their ignorance is exhausting.  I'm about done with this country.  I don't know what else to do.

[Johnny Lawrence]

I feel the same way.

[Village Idiot]

I just forwarded this story to about 20 of my friends and family. The half that will read it are those who are genuinely angry and or haven't participated in the placation. The other half don't want to hear about it, I'm sure.  I count my father in the half that doesn’t care - as long as portfolio value keeps growing.  The difference between my father and me:  my father inherited his money, while I earned mine.  It's really hard not to be angry at the man for being so weak.  Thank goodness for the glue that grandchildren provide.  Dad, even to this day you disappoint me.  What a fucking shame. 

Long live the strong and righteous...and help the meek, I guess.

[dark pools of soros]

Lynn Turner, former chief accountant for the SEC, now currently a shemale stripper ...

[nathan1234]

The reason Wall Street is not in jail.

a) Wall Street owns the Fed

b) The Fed answers their Masters

c) The Treasury has been run by the same Wall Street gang.

d) Paulson, Geithner. et al will also end up behind bars once the cat is officially out of the bag.

More points are there but that would mean Presidents, Senators and Congressmen/Conresswomen also going behind bars.

The  motto while they plunder is - "You watch my back and I watch yours"

[DOT]

OT  /   What the fuck is going on in Wisconsin?

http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/education/local_schools/article_c...

[Rusty Shorts]

Welcome to the Machine

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vk6iI1Fh4VQ

[Bear]

Who ever ruled that public workers could strike must have been ... oh, yes a public worker.

The TSA is now organizing! One hundred years ago, unions were a necessity to counter corporate excesses and to provide a modicum of protection ... the TSA needs to be protected from our most generous Federal Government, who pays its employees twice (yes 100% more) as much as its private counterparts.

We love in the Rabbit Hole. 

[Bob]

Contrary to my expectations, there is a segment of the middle class that does have some balls.  Unlike their private sector counterparts of the past twenty years, the public employees are not gonna roll. 

The Wisconsin Governor is moving "boldly and decisively" to eliminate the last class of workers who have decent wages and benefits.  The right, having known such success that now the mantra of sticking it to the bottom 70% of the population (while ignoring the banksters) is accepted (by the corporate media) as the unquestionably "responsible and adult" thing to do, is now swinging into concerted action nationwide.

Think what you want about evil government employees, but this is the final battle of the war against the working class.  Watch this one closely . . . it will determine the fate of society's bottom 70%.

FWIW, I see TPTB losing. 

[MachoMan]

I see the problem a little differently.  Essentially, not only are there only so many teets of the government to suck, but its milk reservior is shrinking.  The money taken from the private sector to continue funding public ranks will eventually be too onerous to bear.  (see generally what will happen with food prices).  The winner of this battle has already been determined...  it's basic math.  The system (all systems) are incapable of continuing to meaningfully fund the public sector and benefits.  The teachers, et al, will lose because the rest of us will not pay their ways.  [and I say this as someone whose virtual entire family works for the state in some form or another, including life long educators].  The money is not there and no one can give that which does not exist.  [stuffing (printing) feathers (money) up your butt (and dropping it from helicopters) does not make you a chicken (wealthy)].

The TPTB will fail.  However, it will not be because of our best efforts or theirs...  it will be because of rudimentary math.  They will flail wildly in sick desperation trying to keep their (gain an even larger) stranglehold on the plebs.  Ultimately, the use of the government as a mechanism of control will fall prey to outright and overt control.  Instead of an IRS, SEC, FBI, et al, agent slapping you with a billy club, our overlords will be cracking the whips themselves (well, they'll recruit a few of us willing to do it to be able to have a bed to sleep on at night).  Power will be decentralized...  There will be pockets of virtually every range of corruption possible, including none at all.  Regional robber barons will be our defacto leaders.  The neo robber barons will be those persons left with real wealth after the shells of government and limited liability organizations are removed...

The only time the government becomes resurrected is when we decide to begin collectively bargaining again.  And, if we're diligent and can weed out the necessary corruption that ensues, we'll get a good run out of it... before it gets captured the same and we start the process again...

But do not confuse public employees with the working class...  the working class has actually faced deleveraging, job loss, and the brunt of the depression...  it's now the public sector's turn... 

[Bob]

We could talk about the details all day but I think things are coming to a boil with the public employees . . . who do represent the final obstacle to complete domination of working people by TPTB. 

IMO, people have reached the level of anger where they are no longer interested in anything anyone has to say to them about why or what or when in explaining to them why they should get screwed while the upper 20% have spectacularly prospered . . . not to mention the banksters. 

I expect that this will embolden millions of others--the Arab protests have given form to what American working people have been feeling for decades and you can see the public unions picking up the ball.  Are they the right ones to do it?  It doesn't matter--somebody's just gotta pick up the ball, and they're the ones who happen to be doing it.

The corporatists and their minions--including the media mouthpieces--clearly think they've found the winning strategy with their rhetoric about being "adult."  IMO, they will come to regret that slap.

[MachoMan]

The public employees are crying for entitlements...  their protests will embolden no one but those seeking to cry alongside them for additional entitlements.  They are all up against a brick wall...  there is simply not enough fun bux to go around.  Sorry...  reminds me of when enron went under and we heard all the sob stories about enron employees who had all their retirements in enron stock...  eggs...  single basket... 

The issue is that the public employees are on the same side of the battle lines as the banks...  as TPTB...  as the indigents...  who all ride the rest of us (real middle class) into the ground.  The public employees, seeking entitlements, are not on the same side as those who seek to claw back entitlements from bankers...  they're all part of the same pit of vipers...  allbeit some less venemous and beligerent than others.

So no, the plight of public employees is laughable...  the private sector already had its cuts...  the fact that the public sector is up in arms at the possibility of getting hosed is simply laughable to those who have already lost a job...  and become so disenfranchised that they no longer want to look...  who have capitulated in their pursuit of the idealized version of the american dream (I'm pretty sure the american dream was always to get paid for doing nothing).

The public sector plight will only enfuriate the disenfranchised more...  there is absolutely no solidarity between those who lost their jobs due to governmental waste and excess and those who helped perpertate it...  the enablers will get no solace from the fury of those falling from the middle class ranks...  to portray governmental workers as "workers" is a pretty big stretch of the imagination...  there are a few who do...  but, in large part, their work is wholly unnecessary and they should have never had a job to begin with...  this is what they have yet to come to grips with...  but, in time, when tax revenues continue to dwindle and/or their pay is eroded through devaluation without corresponding cost of living increases, they will have no choice.  Then and only then may they have any semblance of legitimacy in joining the ranks of the presently disenfranchised...

the plight of public workers in no way represents the middle class...  wake me up when people are protesting for austerity...  then things will be interesting...  protesting for entitlements is...  completely disconnected from our present reality. 

[Bob]

What I'm saying is that our "present reality" (slavery to a status quo which only works for the rich) is about to get a serious and woefully overdue kick in the teeth.  The public employees should suck ass because everybody else has already resigned themselves to it?  I doubt that's gonna be convincing. 

As somebody with obvious working class sympathies, I think the already disenfranchised are very strongly going to relate to the public employees' struggle . . . don't think everybody who has been screwed is gonna play divided and conquered against them.  They're doing what we all should have done . . . and what we've longed to see for far too long. 

Rip on the public employees?  I say don't shoot the messenger or look a gift horse in the mouth.

[MachoMan]

The problem is that the public employees are not attempting to protest and champion equal footing with their private counterparts...  THEY ARE PROTESTING TO THE EXCLUSION AND DETRIMENT TO THEIR PRIVATE COUNTERPARTS.  This is a zero sum game with a shrinking pie.

Public employees have already captured a significant portion of the voting and power block, thereby ensuring they are politically entrenched enough to not fall prey to the financial storm...  I cannot fathom that the sympathies of any disenfranchised worker (it would be redundant to call them private, given they're all private) are generated with the plight of public workers...  in fact, I would suggest the opposite...  open a bottle for them and they can join the party.  [rather than join them in protest].

Each dollar going to the mouth of a public employee was stolen, at some point in time, from the middle class (the people losing jobs and facing cutbacks)...  this is about as far as their "relation" to the struggle goes.

The signs of the private sector protestors should read, "why the fuck are you not subject to the job cuts I am?"  (hint: because they're a protected political class and you are not).

I agree that the present status quo is going to get a kick in the teeth...  every welfare queen from the atlantic to the pacific is going to get shed from the dole.  What you seem to not understand is that the banks, the public employees, and the indigents (either through disability or too generous of a social safety net) are ALL ON THE SAME TEAM.  This is why we cannot progress...  this is why our deficit continues to grow...  this is why austerity is patently impossible...  because of the tyranny of the majority.  Let me know when they want to start volunteering to cut their benefits...  then we'll see some meaningful change...  (until then, full speed ahead towards collapse...  when basic math catches up to us).

[Bob]

I'll agree to disagree then.  We'll see how this plays out.

[MachoMan]

which part?

[GoinFawr]

Machoman when you type crap like the above misinformation, this is what I hear:

"Misery loves company"

"Let's scrap over the scraps"

"You don't deserve to have it better than schmee, even if that has indirectly made it better for me."

"The global wage race to the bottom benefits all Americans, so you're either with us or against us."

You're proper fucked if you can't even tell who your real enemies are. 'Basic math' says you're playing right into the hands of those stealing the most by trying to make sure they get the even scraps they've thrown your neighbours too. Stupid stupid, real dumb.

You need to flip your priorities,  your 'action item list' or whatever, start at the top, not the bottom. I know, I know,  it will be much harder because the top has the power and you might actually have to risk sacrificing something yourself, you might actually have to do something other than just bitch about your tax burden,  but if you grow a pair and go after the real criminals in the end the 'austerity' will work instead of just serving to further entrench you and yours in neo-feudalism. Which is exactly what you are currently advocating.

Bonne Chance!

[Troy Ounce]

>>>>>>>>>>>BUY SILVER AND BANKRUPT JPM<<<<<<<<<<<

^{Someone with a better idea?}

[connda]

I love Matt's analysis, but even he fails to use the $64000 word -- call it for what it is for Christ-sake -- It's called Corruption!

At the corporate level: Criminal malfeasance
At the government level: Corruption

It's not only time for the Banksters to do hard-time, they should be followed to prison by complicit Guberment regulators.

What a fucking mess.

[Bear]

Well said Connda

[Bear]

20th Century robber barons acted just as greedy, became household names, and hailed by all as heroes of American capitalism.

The real difference between those 20th Century barons and the 21st ones is that today these pathetic greedy men are destroying the American Middle Class and with it the whole of America ... and unfortunately we elected 600 more of them to run our Federal Government who are more interested in power (the ends justify the means) than what is right.

Revolution is not the answer because there are too many conflicting objectives to produce a coherent approach and revolution just becomes an opportunity for the most powerful to pommel the least powerful.

The answer my friends is blowing in the wind ... we need a committed group of well known journalists who will put their ideology (the Left can do no wrong) aside and dig into the murk and mire, find several Deep Throats, and win a bevy of Pulitzers. 

[primefool]

start by boycotting the economics departments of major colleges. what is taught is a bunch of vodoo pseudo science - essentially training a bunch of kids to carry the bags of the destructive sociopaths at the head of the so called profession.

[primefool]

It is quite clear looking at various relevant charts going back 100 years - that the economics profession has been a massively destructive force in modern life. Joined at the hip with politics, intellectually dishonest second rate psychos. Please advise your kids appropriately. To hell with that summer job at that famous bank where they pay 8000/month to summer interns to bring in the pizza and tell good jokes.

[primefool]

Delusional and drunk with the power that comes from close affiliation with politics - these Econopaths will take credit for technological progress ( eg. Greenspan and his "lasers"), maybe they think they had something to do with the invention of the microprocessor or the internet. Deluded fools.

[Chappaquiddick]

6 months of that and he'd want an extension for bad behaviour!!  Besides which he looks like a fudge packer already - it might just make him worse.

[DavidC]

And Madoff wasn't even caught - he handed himself in! The SEC did NOTHING!

DavidC

[Judge Judy Scheinlok]

Madoff was informed in the year 2000 by an SEC insider that his enterprise was a blip on their radar screen. He reacted by increasing the size of it to pay for inaction and silence.

[chumbawamba]

"Read the full thing here"

Why?  I already know the story.

I am Chumbawamba.

[MarcusAurelius]

Ok now I am really pissed.....really......so pissed that well......I am just pissed. That is about all that is accomplished in writing about stuff like this. As much as I love to read Matt's brilliantly written, colourful metaphoric and very truthful pieces about the a-holes in the US financial sector.....wait did I say US sector what I meant was financial sector in general all over the f---ing world. I sympathize with his cause I really do...but here it is...ready.....no really are you ready? Nothing will happen unless the masses demand that something be done. Do you wish me to repeat it? No. It is the same thing as government perks, executive bonuses, foreign government bamboozles (like Murbarak's making off with billions in foreign aid money that YOU paid for the he and his ilk embezzled from his people), charities stealing money from their cause and a whole host of other corruptive practices. Nothing happens unless you DEMAND it from those in power and if they don't you throw them out LITERALLY. However that doesn't happen any more. Nay, it never did. I was involved personally with a white collar crime myself in the past where the people literally stole 35 million from investors here in Canada. What is sad is it was mostly US investors that some jack ass fund-raiser had recruited, promising them unusually high rates of return for a proven business model that had been operating for 3 years with provable profits. Well to make a long story short they tried to illegally sell securities, they misled investors with lies on accounting sheets and they then didn't even level with people when they asked why payments were late. It's ok....corporate shield protects us. 

    I sat on the insolvancy directors board and I saw how utterly useless the system is at protecting any sort of inevestor interest. Let me tell you what would happen if they did prosecute these guys. The lawyers would get rich, the insolvency court would get wealthy and likely no one would end up in jail. White collar crime is unpunishable. Now maybe Tabi has a point that if one of them unded up in one of these hot bed prisons...things would change? really? They might for a little while until the payoffs and huge incentives for stealing were in place again. What causes this is outright greed. It is also what catches investors when they consider these guys accountable. However the mistake Tabi makes is he thinks that the CEO's are the only ones perpetrating these crimes. It starts from the little fellow in the small offices around the world cooking the client statistics so that he can get the easy commission from the mortgage sale. He lies to the regional office the regional office lies to the head office and the head office lies to the corporate office. Each takes their little piece of Joe Six Packs ass including the government and the real estate agents commission (outlandish I admit because I am one and I know what kind of work that we do to get 5-8% of a property value? Please!) Now when you have millions of Joe six packs buying and selling well....you can see why these pricks could care less at the time when the mania is hot. If they did it wouldn't pay and they couldn't sell their BS to their stock holders and directors about the record profits and dividend checks heading out the door to all the big Dicks. Regulation is not the answer either....it just makes more black market possible and neither is prosecution as some other BS artist will take his place just like when a drug lord gets bumped off. The answer is to stop making it so F---ing lucrative for everyone to get a piece of the pie and all out effort to saddling someone with the loss. Because everyone participates you can't simply point a finger at one group of fellows as much as I despise these banking elites and say..."he did it". They were simply liing to themselves about the bubble not being a bubble and justifying their own jobs to the directors and share holders with big profits. Who cares where they come from as long as there are BIG profits to pay BIG dividends and offer BIG stock options to all the executives and insiders. Just remember the apple isn't just rotten skin deep....it is generally rotten to the core when you see the bruise finally.

[chindit13]

Great article. Sadly, no matter how widely disseminated the article becomes, no matter how many pairs of eyes read it, and no matter whose eyes those are, absolutely NOTHING will come of it.

The reason? None of us is hungry enough to do the needful, myself included. We’re all waiting for somebody else to (figuratively) fire the first shot.

Nobody is marching, nobody is picketing the Fed, Treasury, SEC, White House, Congress, AIG-GS-JPM Headquarters, nobody is playing real patriot.  Not me, not any of you.  Instead we write blogs, write articles, write letters to Coingresspeople (Freudian typo; those bastards can be bought cheap), think that voting will work, or pull accounts from BAC.

What will it take for you and me to grow a pair? As infuriating as this article is, clearly it isn't enough. “They” know it. They win.

[PrinceDraxx]

For the post about horsemeat hamburgers: Why did they close them for that?

My daddy served in the "Korean Conflict" and told me that they were served horse meat all the time there. Of course you know how old men lie about shit. LOL

[PrinceDraxx]

damn double post