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'Untouchables': Obama Cronies "Protected Wall Street's Most Criminal From Prosecution"

Tyler Durden's picture




 

Submitted by Mac Slavo via SHTFPlan.com,

The slow motion financial holocaust has been underway for some time now.

Goldman Sach recently commented that we are in the third wave of the great crisis. What happened in 2008 remains directly relevant to the personal financial risk that most Americans face at the brink of the next phase of the collapse.

It’s almost like they’re looking for a sacrificial lamb… the banks have gotten away with murder too many times to count. Those who might be tried under a truly fair system instead stand firm with their understanding of impunity, an arrangement befitting their position and stature in society, that they will never be seriously investigated, much less prosecuted, for their role in the manipulation that caused the biggest problems.

Worse, it is utterly clear that Obama’s Justice Department went out of their way to avoid prosecuting Wall Street executives – even despite pressure from Congress’ Oversight Panel, created as a condition of TARP, to do so as a result of piles of evidence that criminal misbehavior was behind the worst of the collapse.

Attorney General Eric Holder was nominally in charge of the Justice Department’s investigations – and it is well worth pointing out that he spent the entirety of his time after being Clinton’s Deputy Attorney General, at Covington & Burling, a legal firm that specializes in representing top Wall Street institutions. Wikipedia notes:

In July 2015, Holder rejoined Covington & Burling, the law firm at which he worked before becoming Attorney General. The law firm’s clients have included many of the large banks Holder declined to prosecute for their alleged role in the financial crisis. Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone opined about the move, “I think this is probably the single biggest example of the revolving door that we’ve ever had.”

Clearly, with big banks as a client in-waiting and a past benefactor with him his law firm had a deep relationship, Holder was never realistically capable of considering a meaningful prosecution of the banks. Most of the rationale given to the public remained based around the despicable idea that banks were “too big to fail.”

Investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald – notorious for launchign the first interviews and data dumps with Edward Snowden – taken on the criminality of the Wall Street banks during the period surrounding the 2008 financial crisis, focusing on the obstruction of the Justice Department, who have effectively refused to target higher-ups in any of their probes:

PBS’ Frontline broadcast a new one-hour report on one of the greatest and most shameful failings of the Obama administration: the lack of even a single arrest or prosecution of any senior Wall Street banker for the systemic fraud that precipitated the 2008 financial crisis: a crisis from which millions of people around the world are still suffering. What this program particularly demonstrated was that the Obama justice department, in particular the Chief of its Criminal Division, Lanny Breuer, never even tried to hold the high-level criminals accountable.

 

What Obama justice officials did instead is exactly what they did in the face of high-level Bush era crimes of torture and warrantless eavesdropping: namely, acted to protect the most powerful factions in the society in the face of overwhelming evidence of serious criminality. Indeed, financial elites were not only vested with immunity for their fraud, but thrived as a result of it, even as ordinary Americans continue to suffer the effects of that crisis.

 

[…] As “The Untouchables” put it: while no senior Wall Street executives have been prosecuted, “many small mortgage brokers, loan appraisers and even home buyers” have been.

 

[…]  the DOJ’s excuse for failing to prosecute Wall Street executives – that it was too hard to obtain convictions – “has always defied common sense – and all the more so now that a fuller picture is emerging of the range of banks’ reckless and lawless activities, including interest-rate rigging, money laundering, securities fraud and excessive speculation.”

[…]

 

As former Wall Street analyst Yves Smith wrote: “What went on at Lehman and AIG, as well as the chicanery in the CDO [collateralized debt obligation] business, by any sensible standard is criminal.” Even lifelong Wall Street defender Alan Greenspan, the former Federal Reserve Chair, said in Congressional testimony that “a lot of that stuff was just plain fraud.”

 

[…]

 

“In 2009… “there was broad support for prosecuting Wall Street.” Nonetheless: “four years later, there have been no arrests of any senior Wall Street executives” … the key point: Obama officials never even tried.

Now dated by four years, PBS Frontline ran an investigative report on the topic: The Untouchables: How the Obama administration protected Wall Street from prosecutions:

 

As regular readers already know at SHTF, countless voices have come forward to expose the criminal fraud surrounding the banks, and the bipartisan criminal cover-up taking place in Washington.

Greenwald noted:

The reason there have been no efforts made to criminally investigate is obvious. Former banking regulator and current securities Professor Bill Black told Bill Moyers in 2009 that “Timothy Geithner, the Secretary of the Treasury, and others in the administration, with the banks, are engaged in a cover up to keep us from knowing what went wrong.” In the documentary “Inside Job”, the economist Nouriel Roubini, when asked why there have been no such investigations, replied: “Because then you’d find the culprits.” Underlying all of that is what the Senate’s second-highest ranking Democrat, Dick Durbin, admitted in 2009: the banks “frankly own the place”.

Impunity has been the norm. Systemic money laundering for terrorists, gangs and drug cartels, the likes of which has been officially tied to institutions like HSBC and Wachovia – were settled with fines that represent a slap on the wrist to these ‘too big to jail’ globally-linked banks.

Meanwhile, the next wave is upon us.

 

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Tue, 10/27/2015 - 21:49 | 6719389 HopefulCynic
HopefulCynic's picture

I just love how they re interpret The Rule of Law for: "We Rule the Law"

Tue, 10/27/2015 - 21:54 | 6719405 philipat
philipat's picture

Biill Black would make a terrific AG. Why is, of course, why it would never happen.

Tue, 10/27/2015 - 22:01 | 6719423 Boris Alatovkrap
Boris Alatovkrap's picture

Monetary Industrial Complex

Tue, 10/27/2015 - 22:17 | 6719456 Richard Chesler
Richard Chesler's picture

Corrupt Fucking Negro.

 

Tue, 10/27/2015 - 22:26 | 6719472 JerrySpringer B...
JerrySpringer B All Over This Shiznit's picture

don't worry we'll get back to the crackerz like the past 100 years...this was just a blip on the screen..same results either way

Wed, 10/28/2015 - 00:25 | 6719738 uhland62
uhland62's picture

Cheer up, maybe the choice will be between Carsons (Murdoch endorsed) and Hillary, or Bush III if he recovers. 

I have experienced it in Germany, the Kohl-Regime taking our land for France without compensation. Somebody in the dock for that Billion Deutschmark fraud, breach of constitution?

Not sure whether I believe those who say that only flawed personalities get on the ticket so they can be blackmailed or stepping 'out of line' leads to Dallas, as a friend of mine suggested. The problem is though, that the TPP and TTIP network ensures that this system will be extremely difficult to heal. 

Tue, 10/27/2015 - 21:59 | 6719419 nmewn
nmewn's picture

Ya know, law's a funny thing, under the right crony-circumstances law could say everyone has where a pink carnation on Wednesday's (that's tomorrow...lol) or pay a fine to the state or jailed.

Works out pretty good for pink carnation growers, florists, florist lobbyists and their crony-pols...oddly enough not so much for everyone else ;-)

Tue, 10/27/2015 - 22:03 | 6719429 Boris Alatovkrap
Boris Alatovkrap's picture

This is argument for small government, against statism, Fascism or Communism, is not matter. Power is corrupt, absolute power is absolute corruption!

Tue, 10/27/2015 - 22:06 | 6719437 nmewn
nmewn's picture

Da! ;-)

Tue, 10/27/2015 - 22:49 | 6719531 cdm
cdm's picture

 

thank you, Boris.

 

do not be shy, now.

 

~ cdm

Tue, 10/27/2015 - 23:29 | 6719629 BarkingCat
BarkingCat's picture

What moron would give that comment a down vote??

Wed, 10/28/2015 - 00:02 | 6719698 Boris Alatovkrap
Boris Alatovkrap's picture

Fan of communism, facism, statist, even crony capitalist.

Wed, 10/28/2015 - 04:08 | 6719924 Theosebes Goodfellow
Theosebes Goodfellow's picture

Da, Boris, da.

Wed, 10/28/2015 - 11:29 | 6721184 Chuck Walla
Chuck Walla's picture

FORWARD SOVIET!

 

THE NEW FUTURE AWAITS!

(Freedom sold seperately)

Wed, 10/28/2015 - 00:47 | 6719759 Clowns on Acid
Clowns on Acid's picture

Corzine. he reads the ZH ... is trying to figure out when the hammer is coming down.

Tue, 10/27/2015 - 21:50 | 6719391 nmewn
nmewn's picture

But but but...Dodd-Frank...and and and...ObamaCare...and and and...Bin Ladens dead & GM's alive!

Wed, 10/28/2015 - 03:42 | 6719904 OldPhart
OldPhart's picture

And GM's still making shitty cars.  'Murika!!

Tue, 10/27/2015 - 21:57 | 6719400 Fukushima Fricassee
Fukushima Fricassee's picture

The criminal queer that sucks cock on the golf course has fucked the country beyond repair.

Tue, 10/27/2015 - 22:11 | 6719440 jeff montanye
jeff montanye's picture

these people can never be touched for the crimes of 2009 and earlier.  the statute of limitations, even with the discovery (crime not known at commission) exemption, is probably five or so years.

but what are still prosecutable are the ongoing frauds and manipulations of every yield and price in sight, not to mention repeats in the current time of many of the crimes of the earlier era. and this time when things go down they will not bounce back as quickly since you can only change from mark to market to mark to model once.  not to mention reducing rates below zero is not as easy as reducing them from some percent to zero.  thus the political climate may be less forgiving, not to mention fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, won't get fooled again.

9-11 is still where their balls are closest to the vice, imo, but i may have mentioned that before.

time is not as big a deal with that one.  there still is no statute of limitations on treason and murder.

Tue, 10/27/2015 - 23:16 | 6719590 HowardBeale
HowardBeale's picture

"...these people can never be touched...

If  you use a chainsaw--or other appropriate equalizer--you don't need to touch them!

Expect exactly such "non-intimate" responses in a crony crime zone near you...before "this" is all over. Guaranteed or your money back!

Tue, 10/27/2015 - 22:10 | 6719443 yogibear
yogibear's picture

Criminals rewarded with TARP to do much larger illegal activities.

Tue, 10/27/2015 - 22:23 | 6719467 Joebloinvestor
Joebloinvestor's picture

After the S&L shit where bankers actually went to jail and even congressmen (McCain) got the stink on them, politicians and bankers built a system where they will never go to jail.

Fined, maybe.... sent to jail, forget it.

Tue, 10/27/2015 - 23:35 | 6719638 BarkingCat
BarkingCat's picture

They would have went to jail under the right administration.

I actually think that Romney would have done it.

McCain probably not. He would be too busy wacking off to some war movie.

Tue, 10/27/2015 - 22:24 | 6719469 ersatz007
ersatz007's picture

Need to start protesting with pitchforks...

Wed, 10/28/2015 - 03:45 | 6719907 OldPhart
OldPhart's picture

Fuck the pitch forks, time to pull out the AR's, AK's, and piano wire.

Tue, 10/27/2015 - 22:25 | 6719470 ersatz007
ersatz007's picture

Dupe

Tue, 10/27/2015 - 22:43 | 6719512 Duc888
Duc888's picture

 

 

 

"“My administration,” the president added, “is the only thing between you and the pitchforks.”"

http://www.politico.com/story/2009/04/inside-obamas-bank-ceos-meeting-02...

 


Wed, 10/28/2015 - 04:22 | 6719935 shutterbug
shutterbug's picture

Indeed, the issue is that he should work for the people with the pitchforks. In reality he works for the banksters.

We just need more pitchforks for Obama and his cronies.

 

Wed, 10/28/2015 - 05:49 | 6719997 Give up. Realit...
Give up. Reality is not scientific nor even mathematical.'s picture

The whole premise of this incredibly laughable story is a common deceit of a gullible public. The premise is that the financial workings of our country are infinitely corrupt, juxtaposed with the implausible and wholly unsupported assertion that the workings of jurisprudence in our country could have and should have done something.

The country's system of jurisprudence is twice as corrupt as the financial end of it.  Had the courts and prosecutors had their way in this endlessly corrupt fiasco, a few of the wrong people would have paid in showcase prosecutions, including possibly a few who might have paid for banker-murders they didn't commit.  And the only real result would be the sick, greedy and arrogant law firms involved in the public display of completely phony jurisprudence so common in our country would have walked off with many more hundreds of billions in public money for their connived efforts to increase and extend ever wider the now regularly scheduled paydays of this ongoing flaying-heist.

Interest rates are still set near zero facilitating the endless printing of the currency literally as fast as it can be printed for these banking thieves to steal.  This is theft literally on a genocidal scale.  We're not out of the woods yet, none of us.  The wolves are growing in number and baying louder and louder ...

The only solution that will end this genocidal destruction of the economic vitality of the country is to let interest rates seek a free market rate, and, to stop the endless printing of the currency.  Until that happens, the whole system, both financial and jurisprudence, is clearly in the hands of the wolves that are tugging at the heels of all of us and our children every night as we continue to flee in terror at the terrifying incongruity of our own tortuous Exodus as the FED sheppards us along with its ZIRP teeth gnashing.

Tue, 10/27/2015 - 23:01 | 6719562 RaceToTheBottom
RaceToTheBottom's picture

Jon Corzine.....

May he burn in hell for eternity, feeling every minute.

Tue, 10/27/2015 - 23:19 | 6719612 ebworthen
ebworthen's picture

First they bailed out the banks/corporations/insurers and told the American tax payer to suck it.

Then they slatherd Wall Street and the Kleptoligarchy with $10+ Trillion of QE, and did not increase S.S. payments, nor recognize: 15+% unemployment rate, student and auto loan bubbles, housing bubble 2.0.

Hangable treason by any other name.

Where is Jon Corzine?

Tue, 10/27/2015 - 23:48 | 6719674 Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer's picture

Last time we saw him he was working on something even better.

Tue, 10/27/2015 - 23:44 | 6719661 MedicalQuack
MedicalQuack's picture

Watch "The Untouchables" here at the Killer Algorithms page along with a lot of other videos from folks smarter than me...video # 12

http://www.ducknet.net/attack-of-the-killer-algorithms/

 

Wed, 10/28/2015 - 08:01 | 6720186 HowdyDoody
HowdyDoody's picture

Irony alert: A talk on the dark arts of mathematical deception given at Google's New York HQ.

Wed, 10/28/2015 - 00:33 | 6719748 onmail1
onmail1's picture

CabalA$$LickerLiarDemonicObamma : 'Dey all geeve ass politicians monei , so dat wee caan ween eelections. Dats haw democrazy workz. Haw caan wee send dem to jail.'

Wed, 10/28/2015 - 00:59 | 6719777 GRDguy
GRDguy's picture

I don't understand what else folks need to know about 2008.  The banksters (financial sociopaths) lied and stole, and sometime murdered. By murder, I mean the means of survival were stolen from folks and their lives were greatly shortened.  Same as if you put a drop of poison in someone's coffee every day.  Certain high officials of the government were involved, and if a bankster goes, so do they.  So nothing was done.  End of story.

Wed, 10/28/2015 - 01:02 | 6719784 GRDguy
GRDguy's picture

By the way, little Timmy was mentioned on Bloomberg today:

Couldn't believe that Bloomberg actually published this commentary:
http://http//www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-27/inside-the-secretive-circle-that-rules-a-14-trillion-market
"Fifteen of the biggest players in the $14 trillion market for credit insurance are also the referees.
Firms such as JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. wrote the rules, 
are the dominant buyers and sellers and, ultimately, help decide winners and losers."
And this:
"After the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. in September 2008 exposed the complexity of the CDS market, Timothy Geithner, then president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, decided it needed an overhaul -- and fast. At his bidding, executives of the largest CDS dealers and money management firms met at Goldman Sachs’s headquarters in Lower Manhattan. Working with markers on paper white boards, the group drew up a new system for improving the settlement of CDS obligations.
Their solution: Let us decide."

Wed, 10/28/2015 - 04:09 | 6719919 shutterbug
shutterbug's picture

The criminality of the USA govenment is second to none.

No other criminal organisation can even come close to that one. They have their own nukes, armies, fleets and Can Do everything they want. Stopped by NO law.

 

Many people who financially killed many thousands, and played terrorist/bully around the world and killed many thousands more, should be sitting in jail for life....

No such thing and they never will... Nazi went to jail for their war crimes. USA government does the same thing, just in a different manor and they won't spend 1 day in jail.

Wed, 10/28/2015 - 04:07 | 6719923 Jaggernut
Jaggernut's picture

What is this, breaking news? When Obama was running for president he raised the most every in history for his campaign - over one billion dollars. And who from? Did (does) America this that money came with no expectations from a small Irish fella with a funny hat and a pot of gold?

Let's ask ourselves how many stories do we need to read about how corrupt the gov is? Or are we addicted to feeling bad? Maybe we just avoiding the really hard questions?

Wed, 10/28/2015 - 04:12 | 6719928 shutterbug
shutterbug's picture

I guess we need to keep reminding ourselves "it is not fiction, even if we would like it to be so" ...

it's just the plain and very hard truth that (big parts of certain) governments are the worst organisations a.t.m.

Wed, 10/28/2015 - 04:39 | 6719955 To Hell In A Ha...
To Hell In A Handbasket's picture

lol, tell me something I didn't know. In the UK, we stopped prosecuting the heads of our top companies caught committing financial crimes after the GuinnessBlue Arrow debacle. So conditioned is the British public with a torrent of propaganda articles claiming fraud cases are TOOOOO difficult for the average person to understand and for the perpetrators to consistently get off on minor and dubious legal technicalities,(where the average Joe would not) financial crimes committed by a top FT-500 company and especially fraud is virtually unprosecutable in the English courtrooms.

This news article is typical of the brainwashing narrative http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-26178868 Now check the date of this case? That's right; it's been 28 years of a constant drip-drip-drip effect of articles and legal experts telling the British pleb that financial crime is too complicated to convict the bosses of these companies. Only the underlings and poor get convicted of financial crimes. The well connected always seem to escape the long arm of the law. Wall Street and The City of London are just as corrupt as each other and have the crony political structures in place protecting the same criminal cabal.

Wed, 10/28/2015 - 05:18 | 6719980 Panic Mode
Panic Mode's picture

I think ....., it is basically a feedback loop

1) The politicians need the bank fine to keep their job lucrative.

2) These bankers & politicians crooks have too many corruption links to each other. If either of them in jail, the other will certainly expose the crime. They will protect each other.

3) If the banks fail, the government fail and the politicians think they will lose their lucrative jobs.

Wed, 10/28/2015 - 05:49 | 6719998 tunetopper
tunetopper's picture

Smoking guns:
Robert Herz - chairman at FASB
Lance Uggla- founder of Markit and CDS Indexco

Wed, 10/28/2015 - 06:21 | 6720020 overmedicatedun...
overmedicatedundersexed's picture

thanks george, you nailed it long ago...

"It's a big club and you and I are not in it"

Wed, 10/28/2015 - 06:56 | 6720058 gregga777
gregga777's picture

The Government of the United States of America has ZERO legitimacy. I'm absolutely disgusted at the blatant criminality of the entirety of the Obama regime, the United States House of Representatives, Senate, Supreme Court, Democratic Party and Republican Party. A pox on all of their houses. I'm ashamed to be an American.

Wed, 10/28/2015 - 08:04 | 6720196 HowdyDoody
HowdyDoody's picture

Paradoxiaclly, the Obama regime is quite honest. They show the corruption in full view with full immunity. Previously it was all hidden (to a great extent).

Wed, 10/28/2015 - 07:05 | 6720073 gregga777
gregga777's picture

The biggest criminal organizations in the United States of America are the United States Government, Fortune 500 Corporations, the Federal Reserve System,the Republican and Democratic parties and last, but not least, the Banks. Well, fuck their laws. The federal government have absolutely zero legitimacy to promulgate and enforce laws. Fuck them all. They can all go to Hell, and the sooner the better.

Wed, 10/28/2015 - 07:26 | 6720121 MasterControl
MasterControl's picture

The weather underground would be proud.

Wed, 10/28/2015 - 08:01 | 6720188 Reichstag Fire Dept.
Reichstag Fire Dept.'s picture

What makes anybody think the USSA government is going to put in jail the people that create their money supply?

When a cop abuses a suspect and then the judge misinterpreted the application of the law, do they throw the law maker in jail?

Wed, 10/28/2015 - 08:34 | 6720298 sharkbait
sharkbait's picture

Get used to it.  Selective enforcemnt of the law is the ultimate tool of tyranny.  Just wait till Hillary and her gang of thugs is running the show.

Wed, 10/28/2015 - 08:50 | 6720374 Not if_ But When
Not if_ But When's picture

I'm still working on my IRS payment plan to zero out my tax liability from last year.  Looking forward to the same next year.

It could be said that I was charged, prosecuted, and convicted of failing to meet my obligation as a taxpayer.  That I did not adhere to the standard and therefore am additionally penalized by paying interest on it.  We have two paid off cars - the newest of which is 10 years old - live in a modest home, and budget everything carefully.  I'm not a greedy person preying on society.

Many people of stature (as shown in this article) imply or flat out acknowledge that fraud was committed at the highest levels of Wall Street.  There exists also a standard against which they could be prosecuted.  But they weren't for all the reasons so repeatedly mentioned.  Not to be underplayed is just one of the overriding reasons:  IT WOULD REQUIRE EFFORT.

The concept of EFFORT is anethema to any bureaucrat such as Holder and Larry Breuer.  A bureaucrat's goal is to put forth THE LEAST AMOUNT OF EFFORT required to maintain their job and cash their paycheck.  ("too complicated" and "hard to obtain convictions" as perfect examples).   When you combine that with all the factors in this article (and ZH comments) - it is obvious why Wall Street believes they've been given the "all clear" signal going forward.  The TBTF and Moral Hazard has been cemented as a permanent state of affairs.

Meanwhile, this lowly citizen will continue with my IRS payment plans to support my government which serves me so well.  I'm glad that "failure to meet a standard" at least applies to me. {{  Isn't the Rule of Law a standard?  }} BTW, I never got the opportunity to congratulate Lloyd Blankfein and Jamie Dimon on their newly minted billionaire status - Congrats guys.

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