If you hold a hearing about financial regulators’ and the Justice Department’s refusal to throw bankers in jail for money laundering for Mexican drug lords and ignoring sanctions against Iran, Libya, Sudan, Myanmar, and Cuba, the only Republican who will show up is a recent stroke victim who can barely speak.
Now, these regulators work for Obama, and it’s Eric Holder’s Justice Department that ultimately decided that prosecuting HSBC officials or revoking their charter would cause too much financial ruin for innocent parties. Too big to fail has become too big to jail.
Hell, I know it’s a judgment call, here, but the problem is real. If we can’t hold people accountable because it would screw up the economy, we need to fix something. It’d be nice if the Republicans wouldn’t boycott any committee hearing that is critical of this situation.
It’s kind of amazing that the GOP passes up chances to politicize stuff like this to talk about domestic drone strikes and Benghazi.
Perfect issue to politicize except that it would open cans upon cans of worms for them and offended the very people who lick their boots.
WHose boots they lick, don’t you mean?
I don’t find it amazing, either, when I consider how much money they gave to the Romney campaign.
And while a small minority of Tea Party rubes are very anti-bank, the Koch Brothers, Club for Growth et al. who fund their favorite candidates sure aren’t.
http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2012/08/28/Wall-Street-Gives-Up-on-Obama-and-Roots-for-Romney
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Even a bank boot-licker like Mark Warner was giving them tough questions? Ouch!!
It just makes it clearer to me that the rich own both parties. We do need a third party and not those ineffectual Greens. We need a strong Labor party.
We need more talk of having drone strikes on corrupt greedy banksters, aka ECONOMIC TERRORISTS
Or, we could be paragons of mercy and just gimoize their flabby asses.
I’ve been experimenting with referring to the banks as unelected big government.
And depending on the reaction I sometimes throw in a “and we can’t even vote them out-the bastards”
I’ve started doing this because I am completely mystified as to how a tea partier or “conservative” can have so much disdain for our government but oppose regulation for banks, credit card companies, cable companies, cell providers, health insurance companies, etc. It is such a miserable experience every time I have to deal with these providers and I can’t imagine it is better for others.
It is this sort of Republican fealty and Democratic fealty to banks that causes the perception of “there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between the parties”. Which as I remember was an old George W. Wallace trope.
There is a difference. The Democratic Party has Senator Elizabeth Warren. Maybe it’s time for the President and other Democrats to start listening to what she is saying. Their electoral future might depend on it.
The Republicans, on the other hand, for the most part do not do homework enough to know what the issues are and to know that this sort of behavior is what threatens their sacred markets the most.
There will come a time, if nothing is done, in which the chicaneries and inequalities in the system are so recognized that 100 million people will repudiate their debt–medical, credit card, student loans, and mortgages. Then you will see real financial collapse.
Too big to fail is too big to exist; break them up now. And break them up well. And pass a financial transaction tax indexed to inflation.
Too big to fail is too big to exist; break them up now.
Yes, now. Not 2009, when the economy was still hanging over the precipice, but now, or at least soon.
The excuse for failing to prosecute the banksters is that it would cause too much upheaval in the financial markets to bring the wrong-doers to justice. Well, our financial markets don’t appear to be a model of stability right now. How much damage is being done under the status quo? Yes, a few people are gaming the system, becoming fabulously wealthy and bankrolling a handful of key politicians.
The current system has been judged acceptable by the very people benefiting from it. And I would hazard a guess that organized crime preferred it when Hoover and the FBI wouldn’t even acknowledge its existence.
Something needs to change; Eric Holder clearly isn’t the person to do it.
Back in the run up to the 2010 slaughter, I was door knocking for my now ex congressman and found it was a major point of contention that the admin didn’t do anything about the banks. If anything could burn them again it would be this stuff. Sure, the rethugs are going to be blamed for sequester related economic pain, but so many people were screwed by the banks and their protectors in the administration that it will always burn hot in their minds.
All I can say about 2014 is don’t count your chickens …
Here we have a cabinet officer admitting that the banks are untouchable parasites on American democracy.
With each year they’ve gotten stronger. They own the money supply and deign to let the people have their crumbs. They get infinite free credit, in the forms of trillions in loans and guarantees whenever they need it. They own the regulatory infrastructure and stand immune to our laws. They can do business with organized crime and pariah regimes. They get infinite legal immunity. They own the political press and get to wage open propaganda campaigns about “fixing the debt”. They get infinite forgiveness for being wrong about inflation fears and confidence fairies. Not only that, they get to fund entire parties who will blanket the airwaves with brain dead homilies about the “free” market these monopoly actors have turned into their stack of gambling chips.
If we can’t hold people accountable because it would screw up the economy, we need to fix something.
Hopefully, with the economy stronger and the banks on more solid footing, there will be a chance to revisit those cases without the sword of systemic collapse hanging over the DoJ’s head.