Why Isn't Wall Street in Jail?

Politics US Politics
1

“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.”

:laughing: Now that’s a colourful quote. So good, I had to throw up a link. It’s a nice piece of long-form journalism.

[quote=“Matt Taibbi: Rolling Stone mag”]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.
[…]
“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.”
[…]
In the past few years, the administration has allocated massive amounts of federal resources to catching wrongdoers — of a certain type. Last year, the government deported 393,000 people, at a cost of $5 billion. Since 2007, felony immigration prosecutions along the Mexican border have surged 77 percent; nonfelony prosecutions by 259 percent. In Ohio last month, a single mother was caught lying about where she lived to put her kids into a better school district; the judge in the case tried to sentence her to 10 days in jail for fraud, declaring that letting her go free would “demean the seriousness” of the offenses.

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. [/quote]

I’ll hold off my own comments for a bit: don’t want to spoil the story.

2

The govt. doesn’t want the other inmates to get corrupted.

3

Good point. Just imagine what a professional merchant banker (cockney rhyming slang - about the only good thing the British ever invented) could teach the lags about fraud.

4

Just close all the banks and start barter trade … pay bonuses in Mars bars or Dr.Pepper

5

If the American populace wanted any different, they’d make a list of every candidate who received campaign contributions from the offending organisations and boot them out of office and vote some people in who would try the lot of these cretins – bankers, bureaucrats and politicians – and lock up the guilty ones and throw away the keys. Won’t happen though. At some level, the American voter likes being fucked.

6

WHAT?!?!? You want to put the entire American government in jail? :noway:

Corruption is a hallowed tradition in halls of power in God-Bless-America.

Ridding the government of corruption is TREASON! :astonished:

7

As it turns out, the government is in the business of imprisoning people who commit actual crimes. Despite the chirping from the peanut gallery, the US government has jailed fraudsters of all stripes, including congressional representatives, senators, governors, attorneys general, CEOs, CFOs, bankers, lawyers, accountants, stock brokers, etc etc etc, many of whom spend years, even decades in federal penitentiaries. It’s such a trite notion that the rich and famous get away with everything while the poor languish in jails. The shenanigans in the secondary mortgage market were legal at the time, so no those people won’t be going to prison. Sorry to disappoint the resident liberals holding a grudge against Wall Street.

8

Finally. Someone has the guts to stick up for the little guy. The poor businessman just trying to feed his trophy wife. Can’t you vultures leave him alone!

9

I don’t know how anyone can possibly have looked at what happened and a) not hold a massive grudge against Wall Street (or do you enjoy having a lost decade?), b) not conclude there was massive fraud that has not been punished. But hey, I just listen and read real reporters who spent years investigating this and not my own biases against strawman partisans. :wink:

10

No one would ever accuse me of being liberal, although I’m not sure if I’m conservative. Hmmm…

Anyway, I used to be in ‘the business’, and I can completely verify that corruption is rife in the investment industry. Money, like power, is unbelievably corrupting.

I got so upset with the industry, that I fled into the tender arms of technical writing. :ponder:

11

Hey, my investments went down the drain along with everyone else’s. Of course I’m pissed off. But the answer to the OP’s question is simple. The actions of Wall Street were legal, at the time.

Yeah, real reporters who print vulgar statements of their sources and conveniently forget to mention that the federal government is constantly jailing inside traders and other white collar criminals. Jesus, they even put Martha Stewart away. Real reporters who write articles about the unpunished evils of Wall Street, and “forget” to mention that it was government-backed financial institutions that dominated the secondary mortgage market. No, I’m sure there’s no partisan bias there at all.

12

Hey, my investments went down the drain along with everyone else’s. Of course I’m pissed off. But the answer to the OP’s question is simple. The actions of Wall Street were legal, at the time.[/quote]

Yeah, real reporters who print vulgar statements of their sources and conveniently forget to mention that the federal government is constantly jailing inside traders and other white collar criminals. Jesus, they even put Martha Stewart away. Real reporters who write articles about the unpunished evils of Wall Street, and “forget” to mention that it was government-backed financial institutions that dominated the secondary mortgage market. No, I’m sure there’s no partisan bias there at all.[/quote]

I’m not talking about the article at the start of this thread.

13

You must obviously also support the idea of a credit default swap I’m assuming?

14

sulavaca: I have no problem with a credit default swap. What I have a problem with is people saying something is okay when they know it’s not.

15

It’s true, compared to other countries the US is famously harsh on white collar crime. Where I’m from almost nobody has ever gone to jail for white collar crime, yet our economic crimes are in fact worse than the US.
That said, the finance and real estate crowd and their rating agencies sailed very close to the wind to what is considered fraud.

16

For instance, deliberately crafting a shitty investment vehicle, pitching it to your clients, then betting big on its failure?

17

For instance, deliberately crafting a shitty investment vehicle, pitching it to your clients, then betting big on its failure?[/quote]

That one was classic.

That’s right up there with pressuring junior investment fund managers to load their funds up with bad investments held by senior partners.

18

US citizens are very much in the dark on what happened (and still is) throughout the meltdown. If you think this is a liberal vs conservative, dem vs rep, pepsi vs coke issue then you do have the blinders on. Educate yourselves and realise we, citizens of the US of A, are up shit creek.

There is massive fraud occuring on every level of the financial system. We don’t even need new regulations to stop most of it, just people who are willing to investigate and prosecute, instead of participating in the revolving door program of rewarding non action.

I just read an interesting little fact.

30 million spent investigating Monica Lewinsky-Gate
8 million budgeted for investigating the Wall Street meltdown that obliterated trillions of dollars of wealth and enriched bankers with taxpayer money

I’d love to write more but my kids are screaming for blueberry pancakes.

19

[quote=“Shaktipalooza”]30 million spent investigating Monica Lewinsky-Gate
8 million budgeted for investigating the Wall Street meltdown that obliterated trillions of dollars of wealth and enriched bankers with taxpayer money[/quote]
Priorities. :laughing:

20

[quote=“Jaboney”][quote=“Shaktipalooza”]30 million spent investigating Monica Lewinsky-Gate
8 million budgeted for investigating the Wall Street meltdown that obliterated trillions of dollars of wealth and enriched bankers with taxpayer money[/quote]
Priorities. :laughing:[/quote]
Yes, blowjobs are EVIL!!! EVIL I SAY!!!

Why does it take millions to investigate either of these? I don’t get it. You could pay 10 smart people with experience 60k/year (add benefits/office/resources) and easily pay less than 2 million. Why does it take so much money for this shit? That’s why the government is broke…it spends 30 million dollars investigating blowjobs…