Why No Wall Street Prosecutions? It’s ‘Just Too Hard’
Are the architects of the financial crisis immune to prosecution simply because it would be too complex? So says an ex-official from the Justice Department. ProPublica writes:
Years after the financial crisis, there have still been no prosecutions of top executives at the major players in the financial crisis. Why’s that? Well, according to a now-departed Justice Department official who used to be in charge of investigating such matters, the Justice Department has decided that holding top Wall Street executives criminally accountable is too difficult a task.
David Cardona, who recently left the FBI for a job at the Securities and Exchange Commission, told the Wall Street Journal that bringing financial wrongdoing to account is “better left to regulators,” who can bring civil cases:
While at the FBI, Mr. Cardona oversaw dozens of criminal probes of large financial firms. The FBI’s probes haven’t led to any successful prosecutions of high-profile executives in relation to…
Prosecuting Wall Street
With a story about prosecuting Wall Street featured on the most mainstream of TV news shows, CBS’s Sixty Minutes, might there finally be enough momentum for some banking executives go to jail?
In this segment, two high-ranking financial whistleblowers say they tried to warn their superiors about defective and even fraudulent mortgages. Reporter Steve Kroft questions why the companies and their executives haven’t been prosecuted.
Five More Countries For Goldman Sachs To Take Over
Now that Goldman Sachs has achieved coups d’etats in Greece and Italy, DJ Pangburn at Death and Taxes lays out five additional countries ripe for bankdom to install leaders:
We present five other countries where Goldman Sachs could install bankers as heads of state.
Where to begin, though? Originally, I considered Ireland to be a prime candidate for some Goldman Sachs coup d’etat action, but it seems that Ireland already got the old Goldman Sachs in/out in the form of Peter Sutherland, a non-executive director of Goldman Sachs, as well as a non-executive at BP. Here are five countries that could use a little Goldman Sachs in/out.
Spain: With concerns in Italy lessening amidst the installation of ex-Goldman man Mario Monti as PM, bankers and investors in the eurozone and abroad are looking to Spain, which the BBC is calling the “weaker link in the eurozone chain.”
This is obviously the first country that requires a Goldman…
Lobbying Firm’s Memo Lays Out Plan To Undermine Occupy Wall Street
Wall Streeters may publicly scoff at the Occupy movement via jokes about bathing and drum circles — however, behind the scenes it is apparently being taken quite seriously. Wondering how the empire plans to strike back? It’s already been laid out, MSNBC reveals:
A well-known Washington lobbying firm with links to the financial industry has proposed an $850,000 plan to take on Occupy Wall Street and politicians who might express sympathy for the protests, according to a memo obtained by MSNBC.
e proposal was written on the letterhead of the lobbying firm Clark Lytle Geduldig & Cranford and addressed to one of CLGC’s clients, the American Bankers Association.
CLGC’s memo proposes that the ABA pay CLGC $850,000 to conduct “opposition research” on Occupy Wall Street in order to construct “negative narratives” about the protests and allied politicians. The memo also asserts that Democratic victories in 2012 would be detrimental for Wall Street and targets specific…
Bankers Undemocratically Installed As Heads Of Italy And Greece
In case you missed it, over the past eight days, the prime ministers of two major European nations stepped down. The newly appointed, not elected, leaders of Italy and Greece will be Mario Monti (formerly of Goldman Sachs) and Lucas Papademos (formerly head of the Central Bank of Greece). A signal that marriage between capitalism and democracy is coming to an end? The Independent writes:
The ascension of Mario Monti to the Italian prime ministership is remarkable for more reasons than it is possible to count. By replacing the scandal-surfing Silvio Berlusconi, Italy has dislodged the undislodgeable. By imposing rule by unelected technocrats, it has suspended the normal rules of democracy, and maybe democracy itself. And by putting a senior adviser at Goldman Sachs in charge of a Western nation, it has taken to new heights the political power of an investment bank that you might have thought was prohibitively politically toxic.
This…
Five Demands To Rein In Wall Street
If we want a country in which the most powerful financial institutions may longer hold our political process hostage, where do we start? Via Rolling Stone, Matt Taibbi puts forth his list of five demands for anti-Wall Street protesters to push for:
1. Break up the monopolies. The so-called “Too Big to Fail” financial companies – now sometimes called by the more accurate term “Systemically Dangerous Institutions” – are a direct threat to national security. They are above the law and above market consequence, making them more dangerous and unaccountable than a thousand mafias combined. There are about 20 such firms in America, and they need to be dismantled; a good start would be to repeal the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act and mandate the separation of insurance companies, investment banks and commercial banks.
2. Pay for your own bailouts. A tax of 0.1 percent on all trades of stocks and bonds and a 0.01 percent tax on…
Woman Arrested For Closing Her Bank Account
Wonkette has a disturbing account of the NYPD’s alleged arrest of Citibank customers for attempting to close their bank accounts. A snippet:
“I heard that a few dozen people had decided to head over to the local Citibank branch to talk about their student debt and close their accounts. I thought one of my friends might be among them so I walked the few blocks to the bank.
As I arrived I saw Citi Bank security guards locking the doors to the bank. Contrary to the City Bank PR statement, the cops were not yet on the scene when Citi Bank officials chose to lock the doors to the branch–effectively kidnapping those inside.”
Wrangling The Giant Vampire Squid
Matt Taibbi has been waiting to watch Goldman Sachs executives go to jail for a while–at least since 2009 when he called Goldman the “great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.”
Released today, the latest installment of Taibbi’s manifesto against all things Goldman sets up a pretty simple proposition based on the recently released 650-page report from Senator Carl Levin’s Subcommittee on Investigations, detailing the collapse of the American financial system. Taibbi wastes no time with whodunnit paragraphs, instead setting the smoking gun on the doorstep of the Department of Justice. Like a rewriting of the Senate investigator’s above quote, Taibbi declares, “Everything’s fucked up, and it’s time for Goldman Sachs to go to jail. You don’t even have to investigate because the Senate did it for you. Just issue those subpoenas.” (The Atlantic Wire)
Apparently the vampire squid also has an appetite…
