On the one hand, I’m pleased to see a Swiss Bank take it on the chin for intentionally defrauding the U.S. Government out of at least $300 million in tax dollars over the last seven years. I’ll be even more impressed if we ever learn the names of the elite Americans that used their services. But, having said that, why is it that theft on such a massive scale brings a slap on the wrist compared to, say, what a burglar gets? Would it be unreasonable to treat the theft of $300 million as two or three times more serious than the theft of five thousand dollars, and not the other way around?
If you want to talk about populism, I think a real populist government would treat the people that ran Enron as much more dangerous and egregious criminals than a pickpocket. But I don’t hold out much hope for that kind of justice anytime soon.
BooMan, will this nightmare ever end? Every day things get worse economically and corruption seems to cascade through the culture of our land and much of the industrial world. If capitalism itself goes through a meltdown, what will replace it? Things are becoming more and more scary.
I don’t know. The global economy is not in a good way. We’ve never seen anything like this. I don’t think the solutions are obvious or that they will resemble things we’ve come to expect.
Hell, they might as well mail us all a consumer stamps worth $10,000 and tell us we have to spend it all by the end of the year. That would probably work as well as anything.
As someone said in my email a couple of days ago, Communism and Capitalism both work, if people are honest, i.e., not human. So long as humans are in the mix, greed and opportunism will always crash whatever system is in place.
Get the HUMANS!!
In all fairness, burglary carries with it the risk of violence, while tax fraud does not.
That said, absconding with large sums of money should be punished harshly enough to act as a deterrent, and that certainly seldom actually happens. As long as you don’t kill anyone — and sometimes even then — being rich is all too often a get out of jail free card.
But which is more violent? Stabbing one person, or making thousands homeless through the inability for people to refinance their homes?
It’s a different kind of violence, but very dire, for very many people.
That would be a good point to make with respect to the predatory lenders and scam artists who drove the multi-trillion-dollar subprime mortgage crisis. It is highly questionable, however, that anyone has gone homeless because of this $300 million in unpaid taxes.
Again, I think it should be punished more harshly than it likely will be, but when measured against the scale of the current crisis, it’s small potatoes.
Now that I’m particularly defending UBS, as they did manage to screw up Poland, Hungary and a lot of E. European currencies but…
You know what? Eff the IRS. I’m sick of this “defraud the government” being slapped onto people avoiding IRS taxes. I realize in this case it’s a bunch of rich people who I have no love for whatsoever (nor sympathy) but seriously, defending the IRS?
The USA is the only country in the world with the lunatic idea that if I live, work and pay local taxes anywhere else on the planet I still OWE the IRS taxes. How is that even possible?
And don’t even get me started on what a fraud the IRS is, how it manipulates, intimidates and abuses perfectly innocent NON-EVADING people, etc.
I saw that the US is strong-arming banks in Antigua as well. Someone’s got to put a stop to it. Is humanity’s last banking hope Macedonia?
Pax
Yes, yes, and yes. Dammit.
When he’s finally sentenced, Madoff should be dropped off a tall building. Then the government warn everyone else that the same thing will happen for the next bilker on down the line.
My personal preference is to tie his limbs to four horses and then send the horses in ordinal directions…
Enron is what destabilized California, what with their phony manipulation of the energy market. That brought about the recall of Gray Davis, unto Schwarzeneggar, unto this budget crisis.
Put their heads on sticks as a warning to others!
Davis was a hack politician if there ever was one. And the Democrats in the legislature are nothing to crow about. Or the Republicans, either, for that matter.