Why isn't Wall Street in jail?

[Edward theurj Berge]

Building on the Alan Grayson thread, the brilliant Rolling Stone investigative reporter Matt Taibbi has done it again with an article by the above name. The US government is complicit in Wall Street's crimes. The worst financial crimes in the history of the world and not one prosecution. Well, Bernie Madoff was prosecuted but he had nothing to do with creating the crisis; he was just a bit player in doing what was created for him by the banks and government. Those banks “were directly involved in elaborate fraud and theft.”

 

So what punishment did they get? Ridiculously small fines by comparison to the devastation they wrought and the money they made from it. It's like if I rob a bank for $1,000,000 and for punishment they say I have to give back $1,000. Great deal, I'm going to rob more banks. Only this time the banks are robbing the US citizens, since we bail them out for robbing us. Something is seriously wrong with this picture.

 

Taibbi explores the Fed agencies set up to police the financial industry. The agencies however do not have prosecutorial power so they must refer any wrongdoing to the Justice Department. The JD does not have the financial acumen to understand these white collar crimes so relies heavily on the Fed agencies for expertise and recommendations. But the regulators are in bed with the criminals so they bury the investigations in an isolated file somewhere in Area 51 so that the case goes nowhere. Or if the case is so egregious that it can't be buried they present it in such a way as to minimize the crime and the perp gets off with the relatively minor fines referenced above.

 

When an ethical yet obviously naive agency employee does try to do their job by properly investigating a financial crime they are thwarted by their superiors. If they press on they are fired. Why does this happen. The top regulators look the other way and are rewarded with cush, lucrative jobs with the industry they are supposed to regulate upon leaving those positions. They get to witness first-hand the crimes and are lured into the criminal world by being bought off. Not to mention the graft they get under the table while still regulating.

 

So the criminal banks and insurance companies pay miniscule settlements from shareholder money, the individual executives-perpetrators face no criminal charges, the terms of said settlements require no admission of guilt, and the laws do not change to prevent future crimes of the same kind from happening again. So we really think we've seen the end of this? And will the next time finally destroy the entire financial system to the point of a world-wide depression for most of us? Who cares, the Kings of Wall Street and their government cronies will be living it up in the Bahamas when the time comes.

 

I fucking care! Read Taibbi's story for the full details. And get on the computer and write to your representatives. And perhaps we should even start to march in the streets to get some justice for these criminals? Just look at the public protests in Madison right now over an insane Republican governor trying to neuter union negotiating power. It seems Americans are finally learning from the middle east that us poor people have power in numbers and that we need to exercise it by active protest to gain world-wide attention. Otherwise we can sit at home and let the criminals destroy our lives.

[andrew]

i was asking this question years ago on this forum! when one's economic policies create untold suffering for millions and millions of people then one is no better than a cold blooded killer in my opinion! now these same cbk's stole a billion dollars of tax payer money last summer in toronto and suspended the constitution of canada for a week-end, so they could plan and scheme who to screw next. this shit has got to go all right, but you do realize that the fact that none of these folks are in jail implies that the whole of the west's power establishment is thoroughly corrupt....that leaves the west's  average person complete in mountains of debt and helpless to do anything to stop these madmen......

[Edward theurj Berge]

Were the people of Egypt helpless? Look what mass demonstrations can do. Perhaps it's time in the west we wake up to our rights and protest en masse? Put down the iPhone, put down the remote, put down the hamburger, turn off Facebook for one damned minute people...

[Philip Wootton]

Perhaps they can't be put into jail because they are and control the jailers.  Even if a few token thiefs of bankocracy and corporatocracy are jailed, nothing substantial really changes except the illusion of justice.  Over the long run, we need fundamental structural changes like the recent discussion of the Zeitgeist plan.  The Zeitgeist plan seems to be mostly about material things and money with maybe and hopefully some good psychological and spiritual offshoots as a possibility.  Something based on spirit and spirit as nature, (integral, metaphysical or postmetaphsical),  needs to gain popular ascendency to offset material  and money rape of the envrionment and us in order to enrich the gloating  and barbaric heart of the 1% that is moving in on "owning" and controlling almost everything, and reducing the masses to ignorant conditioned slaves.  If it weren"t for the feel good niceties of technological accomplishment and consumer products making us feel we are progressing, we would probably have had many revolutions for the true, good, and beautiful in the past.   Short term rebellions for justice need to be in the context of a larger system of spirit, justice, and equality if they are to have systemic and structural changes beyond an immediate venting of anger and hurt.

[andrew]

hi ed, i'm happy that the people in the mid-east are rising up against the corrupt and outdated red/amber power structures that rule there. my context though is more about what system these folks will eventually move into. as i see it, the west is being run by three groups of people: those in the financial sector who are secular pathological orange; those who are a combination of unhealthy red/amber altitude-the cheney/bush types; and the more covert agendas of the mythic blood-line monarchies of europe.......

politically, these groups have set up a rather impotent political system that serves their interest and is based on a rather false dichotomy of left /right polemics to keep the masses divided and at war. when a healthier system that would serve the majority would be something like mandatory voting laws and proportional representation. not perfect but a hell of a lot better than this system that serves a small elite......

very fair assessment philip:)

[e]

"Just look at the public protests in Madison right now over an insane Republican governor trying to neuter union negotiating power."

 

Just about all levels of government are broke. The problem with all of them is they spend too much when the economy turns south (they are all fiscally reactionary). It is not insane to force state employees to look at the issue of pension benefits. This is probably what this is about. That is, state employees feel they don't have to take cuts to their pension plans while those plans are helping to bankrupt state governments.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/27/magazine/27fob-wwln-t.html

 

[Edward theurj Berge]

The NY Times article made clear that pension plans are broke not because of earned retirement payouts but because of government mismanagement of the funds. They made bad investments into the exact type of banking and insurance frauds on which Taibbi reports. So the answer is to take away union bargaining for fair retirement pensions?

Granted the article made the point the government pensions enjoy certain rights that private plans do not. But instead of questioning why private plans do not it is assumed that fair benefits as the government plan are causing the problem; they get too much and it's not fair. Perhaps it is the private plans that get too less and that's not fair? That it is the greedy corporations that do not want to distribute benefits equitably because then god forbid the CEOs might have to reduce their golden parachutes by a couple of million dollars. Yes, we have a budget crisis not only federally but in the states. So again let's go after the workers but not the corporations and their government cronies who created the crisis?

But is this the real issue? Or is it perhaps the corporate-government smokescreen for the real agenda of further weakening unions and workers so that they can continue their corrupt relationship, keeping even larger pieces of the financial pie while everyone else gets fewer leftover crumbs?

[Edward theurj Berge]

PS: The businesses for which I worked have never had a pension plan; it's always been through a 401k plan. In the crash of '08 I lost about half of what retirement money I had because of a plan managers investing in a corrupt system. Meanwhile the bastards that created the crash cashed in in the billions if not trillions of dollars while millions of workers suffered. That we did not have pension plans like government workers is the crime, not the problem. That we do not sufficiently tax corporations and the rich, or enforce criminal financial activity with appropriate financial consequence*--both of which would create sufficient funds for budgets--is the problem.

*And of course cut the things that really need cutting, like military spending, for one.

[e]

Granted the article made the point the government pensions enjoy certain rights that private plans do not. But instead of questioning why private plans do not it is assumed that fair benefits as the government plan are causing the problem; they get too much and it's not fair. Perhaps it is the private plans that get too less and that's not fair?

 

Don't know about Wisconsin. Here is an email from a futures trading group I used to belong too about pension benefits in Illinois. Read it and look at the numbers in the google doc and then tell me if you change your tune.

 

--

Regarding yesterday's Pension Bailout piece I received a few emails. Most of them applauded it but one in particular was rather upset. I wonder if she was a teacher; she didn't say. At any rate, she was so sure that my piece was wrong that she accused me, The Washington Post, Northwestern University, Bloomberg, and the State of New York of all being liars. Thank you for that email, I had a good laugh.

If you don't believe me or the above mentioned companies, maybe the actual numbers will help.

 

The Data

 

Everyone on the list above will receive MULTI-MILLION dollar pensions - one of them will make nearly $20-MILLION...and another nearly $30-MILLION! That's right folks --- IT IS INSANE! Who the hell approved MULTI-MILLION pensions for teachers and or administrators? Are you KIDDING ME?!! The majority of the school districts above, if not all of them, are HIGH SCHOOL districts. They're not even professors!

Let me reiterate what the point of yesterday's missive was: the Union is NOT on the hook for these insane pension packages - YOU ARE !!

"Son, are you going to become an engineer or a doctor?" Reply..."Are you crazy mom! I don't have to design a thing or save a life to become a MULTI-MILLIONAIRE. All I have to do is teach - and quite poorly in many cases - a classroom of whiny brats for a few years and BAM...I'm golden. You know, like a bankers golden parachute. Heh, I even get summers off."

If that sounds harsh to any teachers reading this - I simply don't care. The numbers above are BEYOND ABSURD and anyone who defends that is simply wrong. Moreover, when Illinois teachers assembled in Springfield to lobby for a TAX HIKE to pad their greedy pensions...I lost all respect for them. They don't care if you're out of work, underpaid, or in a one-income household; they want you to pay more money into their pensions.

Sickeningly, the governor of this pathetic state wants a near 100% state income tax hike...yes 100%...to fund this insanity.

 

[James Barrow]

e, are these salary figures in the data related to school principals or for local government senior officials? In comparison, the highest any School principal can earn in the UK is $180,000 whereas the highest on the list you linked to is $385,000.

[Edward theurj Berge]

Oh look, it's got a spreadsheet with numbers on it so it must be real, or at least interpreted like the fascist nuts are depicting. It beats me why you accept this stuff at face value; perhaps you're a closet conservative? More like way out of the closet. Now go out and find me a chart for the CEOs of Golden Sachs, and even their poorest paid financial analysts. Then tell me teachers get a better deal. Oh, I forgot, they teach children to make society a better place instead of raping the economy for pure greed. I can see why the latter would of course be worth what they're paid...

[Edward theurj Berge]

See Matt Taibbi's interview with Amy Goodman at this link. It turns out that Governor Kasich of Ohio, a former employee of Lehman Brothers, got State pension funds to heavily invest in the toxic mortgage-backed securities and it devastated those pensions. I'm not clear if this was when he was employed by Lehman or as Governor. Either way, he is now blaming the pension funds themselves as causing a budget shortfall and wanting to cut them back while the criminals who perpetrated this crime have made billions if not trillions of dollars on those heinous sales they knew were worthless. The rest of the interview is info from his article and disgusting that these criminals are given a free pass while they further degrade the rest of us.

[e]

Most are superintendents of school districts James. Now most work in rich wealthy suburbs and their salaries are paid by the suburbs real estate taxes (no problem there, if the suburbs want to pay these people this much money that is their prerogative.) But the pensions are paid and GUARANTEED by the state i.e. poor families from the city are footing these insane pensions for wealthy suburbanites and because the pensions are underfunded, the governor actually proposed to double everyone’s state income tax.

--

Edward the premise of Integral is that both conservative and liberal values need to be integrated for effective solutions to prevail. All too often the first tier political discourse resorts to caricature… [ in Frankenstein’s voice] Liberal good! Conservative bad! (vice versa).

Let’s get a little more perspective on these public salaries and pensions. Ready to go to school Edward?

http://www.illinoisloop.org/salary.html


So I can go 10 miles in one direction and kids from poor inner city public high schools read at a 3rd grade level and their facilities are in tatters etc. I can go 10 miles in another direction and the high schools look like Ivy League college campuses with state of the art gyms etc. There is an invisible barrier that keeps millions (1 in 4 US kids grow up in poverty) in poverty and an elite ruling class and their offspring in mansions on TAX PAYERS MONEY. To some this is unconscionable that once was a calling to become a teacher or public servant now makes you a multi-millionaire capable of affording a home in Aspen and a home in Boca Raton Florida by making more money in salary and pension then the mayor of Chicago, Governor of Illinois, Secretary of the UN and the President of the United States... on the backs of taxpayers! (shouldn't this money go to where it is needed most?) BTW Edward if the teachers are worth all this money why is it that so many high school kids from the inner city drop out or are severely underprepared if they go to college? Oh that's right the expensive teachers and all the money is at work in the rich suburbs. Your liberal values at work huh? And you call me an enabler!


You can see salaries here if you doubt the truthfulness of the Google doc. The salaries and pensions are part of the public record. See the top 200.

http://www.familytaxpayers.org/salary.php