The Obama administration is compiling an impressive list of prosecutions for insider trading, particularly at hedge funds. It’s important that the federal government aggressively monitor the market for signs of cheating, But it’s also important that people go to jail for creating, promoting, and selling fraudulent financial products that wind up being nearly worthless and destroying the global economy. For the last decade, at the least, Wall Street was operating like a crooked casino. I know a lot of it wasn’t technically illegal and that that makes it hard to put the criminals in prison. But I think everyone would like to see some aggressive and creative legal thinking with the purpose of getting accountability for the financial collapse. Because the truth is that every time I see an announcement about another insider trading case, I think to myself, “That’s nice, but all the really big criminals are still untouched.”
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
Absolutely agree. It’s way past time for Obama and the disappointment named Holder start looking back and apologize for making one of the stupidest statements in political history.
I don’t see why creative legal thinking is needed to prosecute the thieves. Fraud, misrepresenting the value and content of what you’re peddling, has been a felony forever. It doesn’t take creativity. It takes quitting worrying about making the 1 percent mad.
Rooting for the Obamas to put these people in jail is as fruitless as rooting for them to bring members of the Bush II administration to trial for war crimes or treason. On both levels, he doesn’t put them in prison, he puts them in positions of power in his administration.
More magical thinking from the leftiness world.
Sigh.
If someone does go down it will be a relatively minor figure, an example. A threat perhaps, but on the evidence of his first 3 1/2 years? An empty threat.
Bet on it.
Geithner? Vikram Pandit? (Citicorp) Jeffrey Immelt? (General Electric) Dick “It Wasn’t My Fault” Fuld? (Lehman Bros.) Any other Lords Of The 1% Universe in good standing? Don’t hold your breath.
Unless of course you are being waterboarded while in NDAA-permitted indefinite federal custody.
AG
The problem is what the cheaters did was for the most part legal. This was deregulation at its worst.
The repeal of Glass Segal really opened the spigot and we are no where near on the other side of the problems it creates.
It is indeed depressing.
Glass-Steagall or not, the crash would have happened. It wouldn’t have prevented it or stopped it from building.
The firewall was removed. It made a huge difference.
If the firewall had been in place, there would not have been TARP. The commercial banks were in peril because of the investment baking side screwing up royally.
We had nothing like this disaster since GS was put into law. It didn’t take long for “creative” financial instruments like CDOs bundling the sour with the sweet and the CDSs that took AIG down to cause ruin for regular people and not just in the US.
The mortgage crash would have happened, but it needn’t have infected the entire financial industry the way it did.
Wonder if Mittens is one of them…
Your acknowledgment that it would take “creative legal thinking” in order to prosecute these people is an acknowledgment that what they did is not clearly illegal. Many of the financial instruments were “fraudulent” in a moral sense, but that doesn’t mean the banksters didn’t make sure to cover their butts in a legal sense.