Posted on 06/06/2013 10:14:26 AM PDT by grundle
An article in The Contributor today tells the startling news from Occupy Arrests: Over 7,700 Wall Street protesters have been arrested since September 2011. That’s 7,700 more protesters arrested than Wall Street executives, even after the largest financial crisis in history.
Some people wonder if no Wall Street executives were jailed because no Wall Streeters actually did anything illegal, however unethical their actions. We strongly don’t think this is the case. You can read the cases against specific individuals like Jon Corzine (here, here, and here), Dick Fuld (here, here, and here), and Angelo Mozilo (here, here, and here). But the wide-angle view on the lack of prosecutions on Wall Street during the 2008 crisis is just as telling.
After all, over 1,000 bankers were convicted following the Savings and Loans crisis in the 1980s and Enron employees faced jail time for their scandals in the early 2000s.
So what changed?
William Black, a key criminologist in the Savings and Loan crisis, gives one good answer in his 50-page testimonial to the Senate Banking Committee (linked to in this Economist article). Here’s a passage:
We have forgotten the successes of the past. During the S&L debacle, Congress responded to the S&L crisis … by ordering and funding a dramatic increase in DOJ resources dedicated to prosecuting the S&L accounting control frauds … President Bush (II), President Obama, and Congress have each failed to emulate the policies that proved so successful in prosecuting elite frauds that caused prior crises.
That is, Wall Streeters have avoided prosecution in the recent crisis because government never really looked for it. Instead, government unquestioningly accepted as fact that while what Wall Street did wasn’t cool, it wasn’t illegal. And government did this without putting forward the necessary resources to see if that premise were really true.
If they had dug deep, it’s sure they would have found something. Again, 1,000 bankers were convicted in the S&L crisis, but 0 were convicted in the recent financial crisis, which was orders of magnitude worse than what we saw in the 1980s.
To see the details of some of the crimes at the heart of the 2008 crash, watch PBS Frontline’s “The Untouchables,” which first aired in January and aired again last night. It’s as good of a summary as any about why Wall Street doesn’t deserve to be exempt from prosecution.
4) Has close ties to Wall St., but pretends to support Occupy Wall St.
Although Obama claims to support the Occupy Wall St. movement, the truth is that he has raised more money from Wall St. than any other candidate during the last 20 years. In early 2012, Obama held a fundraiser where Wall St. investment bankers and hedge fund managers each paid $35,800 to attend. In October 2011, Obama hired Broderick Johnson, a longtime Wall Street lobbyist, to be his new senior campaign adviser. Johnson had worked as a lobbyist for JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Fannie Mae, Comcast, Microsoft, and the oil industry.
6) Supported the $700 billion TARP corporate-welfare bailout just like Bush
While Senator, Obama voted for the $700 billion TARP bank bailout bill. The bailout rewarded irresponsible and illegal behavior. It redirected resources from more productive uses to less productive uses. It punished the hard working taxpayers who had played by the rules and obeyed the law. It created horrible incentives, and sent the wrong message. The bailout was evil because it rewarded the bad people and punished the good people. No society that does this can expect to remain free or prosperous. Instead of bailing out these corrupt corporations, we should have let them cease to exist, like we did with Enron.
15) Avoided prosecution of Wall. St criminals
Although Obama had promised to prosecute Wall St. criminals, during his entire first term, his administration did not file any criminal charges against any of the top financial executives.
Hmm, article title confused me. Who are the Obama Wall Street executives?
Michael Milken may dispute the premise of this article.
Progressives and Leftists can’t get it through their heads that Wall Street and the FED are basically a branch of the Gov’t, and in particular, the more “Progressivism” we have, the richer Wall Street gets.
I don’t like the comparison, a better one would be how many prosecutions did Bush initiate? I believe it was in the hundreds.
Someone asked Truman about a high price paid by the government for some common item, and asserted that the price was too high, that the defense contractor had charged too much.
“Find me the guy who wrote the check” is what Truman said.
Perhaps one reason why no banksters are arrested is because they didn’t break the law. Not that they didn’t do anything wrong, but the laws are written to permit some things, and not permit others. If you do the things that are not permitted, you are more likely to get arrested.
It’s now a felony in NYC to annoy a cop, courtesy of liberals fighting police abuse, empowering their elected Obamas to do so... yep. Now they cry? Idiots.
Not sure, but I would look at the former head of Solyandra, and the head of GE, and Goldman Sachs.
See when the Fed Reserve creates money from nothing, and buys government securities, they don’t buy them from the government, they buy them from Goldman Sachs.
Response: This statement seems to beg the question: So What? Is our reasoning reduced to: A wall street executive, therefore arrest him?
The real estate collapse was largely the fault of our corrupt political class forcing financiers to fund mortgages for people who could never pay them back. If a financier was tied in with a politician then of course arrest him.
The Occupiers are total filthy slimeballs, that’s one reason.
will be interesting to see how many WS apologists show up on this thread.
WS Apologist Stamped Response: “You must be OWS, go back to DU”......and other well thought comebacks.
Wall Street criminals and the government have a revolving door relationship that enriches everyone involved. There will be no prosecutions. The corruption is too big, too deep, and too lucrative to end. The freak show that was Occupy only served to make Wall Street and bankers in Washington look sane and patriotic by comparison. Obama and Congressional Democrats cheered on and manipulated the rabble of Occupy, hoping to energize the kook and youth vote, but they never intended to close any financial doors in their future, or hurt the people who will make them filthy rich.
Doesn't explain Corzine though. What he did was blatantly illegal, but he gets a pass because he's an Obama crony.
True, but that was some 23 years ago.
That is right. Of course the Occupy folks were Obama folks too.
Corzine gave more campaign contributions.
As I've pointed out before, there are actually some threads of commonality between OWS and TEA Party movements. Where they diverge is taking their complaints to the logical conclusions - OWS failed to do that, and so rail at a specific symptom, while ignoring (and even encouraging, via their preferred "solutions") the unhealthy conflation of the government with major financial institutions.
Well, there was Bernie Madoff.
I blame Bush for his prosecution.
which is like being concerned about a wasp 1/4 mile down the road, and not a AC Warthog flying over your property getting ready to do grim business.
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