Guest Post: Too Big To Jail Is Here To Stay
Submitted by John Aziz of Azizonomics blog,
Lanny Breuer, the Assistant Attorney General who claimed that prosecuting banks for crimes poses a risk to the financial sector and so corrupt bankers are “too big to jail” has lost his job:
MARTIN SMITH: You gave a speech before the New York Bar Association. And in that speech, you made a reference to losing sleep at night, worrying about what a lawsuit might result in at a large financial institution.
LANNY BREUER: Right.
MARTIN SMITH: Is that really the job of a prosecutor, to worry about anything other than simply pursuing justice?
LANNY BREUER: Well, I think I am pursuing justice. And I think the entire responsibility of the department is to pursue justice. But in any given case, I think I and prosecutors around the country, being responsible, should speak to regulators, should speak to experts, because if I bring a case against institution A, and as a result of bringing that case, there’s some huge economic effect — if it creates a ripple effect so that suddenly, counterparties and other financial institutions or other companies that had nothing to do with this are affected badly — it’s a factor we need to know and understand.
But the man who put him there, and who is ultimately responsible for the policy — the Attorney General himself — is here to stay.
Attorney General Eric Holder expressed similar views in the context of discussing why more severe charges weren’t brought against Zurich-based UBS AG last year for manipulating the London interbank offered rate. And Neil Barofsky, a onetime senior prosecutor and former inspector general of the Troubled Asset Relief Program that administered the bank bailouts, provided a scathing assessment of Justice Department policy.
The Justice Department likes to quote Thomas Jefferson: “The most sacred of the duties of government [is] to do equal and impartial justice to all its citizens,” a line that appears in its latest budget documents.
This sentiment is hardly consistent with saying that some companies have characteristics that put them above the law. Jefferson himself was very worried about the concentrated power of financiers — he would have seen today’s problems much more clearly than do Holder and Breuer.
Fundamentally, Obama’s continued support for Holder illustrates that Obama is still committed to the policy of holding financiers to a lesser standard of justice than other citizens.
The continued failure to implement even the Volcker rule — let alone a Glass-Steagall-style separation between retail and investment banking — illustrates that Obama is committed to letting bailed-out banks continue to operate in the risky manner that led to the crisis. So does the total failure to ensure a level playing field for retail investors in a market now totally dominated by algorithms.
The big banks continue to ride roughshod over the American people with the complicity of the political class. Too Big to Jail is an affront to the Constitution, an affront to the Bill of Rights, an affront to those like Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Lysander Spooner, Frederick Douglas and all those who at various times crusaded to make equality before the law a reality in America.
The only sensible way forward is that lawbreakers on Wall Street must be prosecuted in the same way as other lawbreakers. That means that Eric Holder and all others associated with Too Big To Jail must lose their jobs.
But I doubt that will happen any time soon.
(24 votes)
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Dude; I'm trying to eat lunch..............
That will be most difficult to "unsee".
Like witnessing a train wreck. It's horrific, but you just can't look away.
This must be at least the 50th time I've said "that is the most disturbing picture I've ever seen on the web" looking at his stuff. Yet I keep coming back again and again.
Like you, I too am a sucker for Banzai7 punishment. :)
This is my self assumed role.
When the crony bitch needs slappin, I'm the one who slaps it.
I'm not writing finely tuned law review articles. Those don't seem to accomplish much of anything nowadays.
Nope, I'm the visual crony bitch slapper and there's still plenty of slappin that needs to be done.
You should make sets of picture cards so we can educate the unwashed masses.
A deck of playing cards!! That's it. It'll make millions. Just send my modest percentage to my local bankster, "Full Faith and Credit" Johnson.
Reminds me of the crazy wife of Eddie Murphy in one of his movies who ended up as a strip dancer in Mexico... the bankers will get a bullet in the mail.
All it needs is Dear Leader in the background, dressed up as a pimp
Norbit (film)
Rasputia (wife)
Tremendously underrated flick.
I love the pink lip gloss and the skillful use of the eye liner.
You are magic Banzai7. :>)
Did you pull this photo off of a SEC computer screen saver?
Ah, the most appropriate image yet for these global prostitutes
high on Reserve Crack
pushing anything to the higherst bidder
selling their children to the street vermin of the world
Obama & Holder are doing 'somebody elses' work... Which makes them both corrupt & stupid...
Thank God.
If Obama were to replace Holder with another place holder Wall Street might actually have to flush the market to show who run Bartertown.
Bank Nigga
Da 'Bruthas' stick together!
"Fundamentally, Obama’s continued support for Holder illustrates that Obama is still committed to the policy of holding financiers to a lesser standard of justice than other citizens."
This is written as if Obama oversees the financiers rather than the financiers oversee Obama.
I think it is more a matter of peak-a-boo.
Then again.....maybe not. :)
wish they'd be more boo about the peak
I can see no discernable difference between TBTF banks and the government at this point. Period. No way to say where one ends and the other begins.
(Don't make me break out the Dr. Who references here, because I can. I withold purly out of respect for my fellow Zero Hedgers and the fact it may tend to make me look like a super-geek.)
"But I doubt that will happen any time soon."
+1
Holder worked for the banks before DOJ (representing them as a defense attorney), and continues to work for them at DOJ. His job is easier now, because he no longer has to go to court, he just quashes the charges from his desk. The same thing Mary Jo White did prior to her being appointed head of the SEC. And if confirmed we know exactly what she will do when she gets there. Obama is a leftist scumbag with zero respect for our constitution and zero respect for the rule of law. This is prima facia evidence of that.
What do you bet the bought and paid for leftist media does not cover any of this? It's is so easy a caveman could do it, right Obama?
More anti-Obama ravings from a republican who doesn't realize he is a Republicrat.. the media is leftist? no... it is corporatist,
disrespect for the constitution comes from the whole ruling bankster/neo-con/MI complex as well as the Supreme Court. Obama is offered up as a scapegoat for those who can't look in the mirror and behold the real problem.
It looks like some of the real liberal left types, not faux-liberals masquerading as Democrats are starting to wake up and smell the coffee.
Everyone is "riding roughshod" over the American people, because they are fat lazy and stupid and they build shit products and export nothing but their children's income.
The US political class is 10 years ahead of the rest of the world but the rest of the world is catching up. Americans are gluttonous imbeciles whose wealth is there for the taking. They're too lazy and slow to compete in a flat geopolitical world and so they are being eaten alive by their competitors.
Long may it continue its good for everyone who believes in meritocracy.
Fuck you and your Geographical generalizations. There are quite a few AMERICANS around here who are fed up with the bullshit............
Get back to work dickhead.
B M = Bowel Movement
Suck my cock.
What did I tell you guys about feeding the trolls? it just encourages them.
Don't confuse the American people with their present leadership.
What leadership?
All I see is turkeys voting for Christmas.
You are the dumb bastards who vote these fuckers in.
You're nothing but lazy stupid pork barrel suckers. Don't pretend you're better than your "leaders". You ain't. They're the same as you.
Must be MDB's cowboy cousin, all hat, no brains.
No, MDB_ is sophisticated, but recently less so, satire. Hat guy is just a troll.
A 10 gallon hat on a 2 gallon head...............
Is your avatar the poster on your bedroom wall? The one to which you beat off nightly?
2012 was a total NWO Bilderburg op.
First get any conservatives out helped by Rove/Bush gang. Paul and Bachmann were out. Newt was a CFR blocker for Romney. Santorum had Midwest states stolen by vote fraud after the polls closed or were closing.
So they had Obama Lite just in case. They on election night the swing states and others were stolen. Dems made sure to keep the Senate and Obam got lots of last minute and late night votes for all the swing states.
McCain was also a back up in 2008.
What do cowboy hat avatars and hemorhoids have in common?
Sooner or later every asshole has one.
I know, but he is right.
Damn.
unlike Europe or China right? Do tell.
The political and judicial class of the U.S.S.A. are the lackeys of the bankers.
If Bankers are the meal ticket for the judicial and political class, then cutting off the food supply would seem to be the logical course of action to rid the world of these parasites.
It's banker hunting season.
The political and judicial class of the world are the lackeys of the bankers.
There I fixed it for you.
If the law does not apply equally to all, then it applies to no one at all.
This leaves only one way forward: Mob Rule.
Break out the pitch-forks and sharpen up the guillotine. Go grab yourself a banker and "do the right thing".
Why the hell would you sharpen the guillotine? Grind the edge to make that shit as dull as possible. Make sure it's rusty, too.
So that instead of a clean cut, the head is ripped from the body, and then infected so that the (dead) person gets gangrene of the neck?
The Second American Revolution, like Valley Forge in 1777-78.
Right now for many the body is willing but the spirit is weak; but soon Bitchez, soon..........
Why do you think they want our guns?
Forward!