Matt Taibbi: Why Isn't Wall Street in Jail?--- "Everything's fucked up, and nobody goes to jail."

[kpete]

Why Isn't Wall Street in Jail?
Financial crooks brought down the world's economy — but the feds are doing more to protect them than to prosecute them



By Matt Taibbi
February 16, 2011 9:00 AM ET

Over drinks at a bar on a dreary, snowy night in Washington this past month, a former Senate investigator laughed as he polished off his beer.

"Everything's fucked up, and nobody goes to jail," he said. "That's your whole story right there. Hell, you don't even have to write the rest of it. Just write that."

I put down my notebook. "Just that?"

"That's right," he said, signaling to the waitress for the check. "Everything's fucked up, and nobody goes to jail. You can end the piece right there."

Nobody goes to jail. This is the mantra of the financial-crisis era, one that saw virtually every major bank and financial company on Wall Street embroiled in obscene criminal scandals that impoverished millions and collectively destroyed hundreds of billions, in fact, trillions of dollars of the world's wealth — and nobody went to jail. Nobody, that is, except Bernie Madoff, a flamboyant and pathological celebrity con artist, whose victims happened to be other rich and famous people.

THE REST!!!
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/why-isnt-wall-street-in-jail-20110216

[OHdem10]

1. It is hard to put those who run the country in Jail. Wall Street and

Big Business are in charge.

Corporatism is our economic system.

[Name removed]

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[cbdo2007]

3. This may be what hurts President Obama the most. Accountability.

[ThomCat]

27. Obama has never believed in accountability, unless you are poor.

- He certainly believes in holding poor people accountable for the disasters that rich people create.
- He certainly believes in holding undocumented immigrants accountable for the disasters that free trade and the free movement of capital across borders creates.
- He certainly believes in holding activists on the left accountable for his own pathetic failings.

- Oh, but rich people, he doesn't believe in ever holding them accountable.
- And corporations, even ones that poison and kill, or conduct massive fraud and create epidemic poverty, he doesn't believe in ever holding them accountable.
- And politicians who lie to congress and commit war crimes, he doesn't believe in ever holding them accountable.
- And torturers, he doesn't believe in ever holding them accountable.


Don't you wish that you and I, and all of us here could be part of that small group of truly free people who are encouraged and expected to do anything they want with no consequences?

Don't you wish we were among those lucky people so fortunate that the President and all those people working for him were doing everything possible to keep us free and rich despite all our screw-ups? Because deep down they truly believe that it's their job to make sure that millions of poor people have to pay our bills and pay for our mistakes for us?

Don't you wish that Obama believed that it was government's responsibility to make US richer and more free from regulations and intrusions, and believed that THEY were the ones who needed to suffer and sacrifice and work hard and stop complaining and shut up and pay for it all?

Wouldn't that be a nice reversal, if he treated US the way he treats the rich wall street criminals, and treated THEM the way he has been treating unemployed poor people, homeless people, peace activists, the organized left, and the brave whistle-blowers from all branches of government who stood up for what's supposed to be right?

[Autumn]

4. Because they became part of the government,

at the highest levels. Therefore they are protected.

[n2doc]

8. +1 n/t

[TomClash]

5. Best Line

"You put Lloyd Blankfein in pound-me-in-the-ass prison for one six-month term, and all this bullshit would stop, all over Wall Street," says a former congressional aide. "That's all it would take. Just once."

[kpete]

18. WOW!

[LiberalEsto]

6. Why not? Because they OWN the jails

and the courts. It's kinda hard for serfs to arrest their Corporate masters.

[Octafish]

7. The reason is the same employers pay both the crooks and the cops.

From Taiibi's article:


Gary Aguirre, the SEC investigator who lost his job when he drew the ire of Morgan Stanley, thinks he knows the answer.

Last year, Aguirre noticed that a conference on financial law enforcement was scheduled to be held at the Hilton in New York on November 12th. The list of attendees included 1,500 or so of the country's leading lawyers who represent Wall Street, as well as some of the government's top cops from both the SEC and the Justice Department.

Criminal justice, as it pertains to the Goldmans and Morgan Stanleys of the world, is not adversarial combat, with cops and crooks duking it out in interrogation rooms and courthouses. Instead, it's a cocktail party between friends and colleagues who from month to month and year to year are constantly switching sides and trading hats. At the Hilton conference, regulators and banker-lawyers rubbed elbows during a series of speeches and panel discussions, away from the rabble. "They were chummier in that environment," says Aguirre, who plunked down $2,200 to attend the conference.

Aguirre saw a lot of familiar faces at the conference, for a simple reason: Many of the SEC regulators he had worked with during his failed attempt to investigate John Mack had made a million-dollar pass through the Revolving Door, going to work for the very same firms they used to police. Aguirre didn't see Paul Berger, an associate director of enforcement who had rebuffed his attempts to interview Mack — maybe because Berger was tied up at his lucrative new job at Debevoise & Plimpton, the same law firm that Morgan Stanley employed to intervene in the Mack case. But he did see Mary Jo White, the former U.S. attorney, who was still at Debevoise & Plimpton. He also saw Linda Thomsen, the former SEC director of enforcement who had been so helpful to White. Thomsen had gone on to represent Wall Street as a partner at the prestigious firm of Davis Polk & Wardwell.

Two of the government's top cops were there as well: Preet Bharara, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, and Robert Khuzami, the SEC's current director of enforcement. Bharara had been recommended for his post by Chuck Schumer, Wall Street's favorite senator. And both he and Khuzami had served with Mary Jo White at the U.S. attorney's office, before Mary Jo went on to become a partner at Debevoise. What's more, when Khuzami had served as general counsel for Deutsche Bank, he had been hired by none other than Dick Walker, who had been enforcement director at the SEC when it slow-rolled the pivotal fraud case against Rite Aid.

"It wasn't just one rotation of the revolving door," says Aguirre. "It just kept spinning. Every single person had rotated in and out of government and private service."

[Dappleganger]

9. I wish Taibbi would do a documentary.

Just finished his Griftopia book and loved it!

[Name removed]

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[Vinnie From Indy]

11. It is hard to imagine another scenario that so blatantly exposes

the rot and corruption of our political process. The nakedness of it all simply astounds and amazes. The fig leaf is finally completely removed from the farce that we are a nation of laws. Laws are for the "little people".

[Tippy]

12. K&R

[Newest Reality]

13. When it finally hits you

that you are living under a Corporate Occupation, then you understand that, not only have the rules been changed, who they apply to becomes a matter of place.

The United Corporate Regime points a finger at the size of government so that the uniformed remain unaware, for now, of the remaining days of the takeover. There are still many bits and pieces to dismantle, but the White House now seems full-bent on collaboration in the process. Now, it is substance, not size that matters in what remains of government, et al. What we are hearing and seeing speaks loudly, but does it fall on deaf ears?

We, the ordinary people, go to jail as this subtle and gradual war draws towards a resounding victory, (is there any true opposition so far? and the rulers and controllers are obviously exempt. How can you be above the law when the law when the system coddles your crimes and wears blinders on your acts?

[Lindsay]

14. Another excellent article from Taibbi

for those in power to ignore.

Still, good for him for all his hard work. And thanks for the link.

[Name removed]

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[earth mom]

16. RS ROCKS! One of the few HONEST publications left in this country & why I will keep my subscription

to them and will never read the gawd damn sell out Huff Poo again or all the other corrupt media bastards in this country!

[Initech]

17. Hey if CU logic says that corporations are people, couldn't we prosecute them as such?

I finally see an upside to Citizen's United!!

[frazzled]

19. Because a lot of what they did was, unfortunately, "legal"

Because they designed complex trading schemes that were too complex for anyone to understand (including themselves and the regulators), and because the laws allowed them to do what amounted to legalized gambling. Because banks were allowed to be undercapitalized and take too many risks.

What they did was unconscionable, but a lot of it wasn't illegal.

Matt Taibbi should be focusing on how the laws should change (some did, but some risky behavior is still allowed). But alas, I don't think he has the know-how to talk about policy like that. He's best at whipping up outrage. That's all well and good, but it doesn't solve the problem.

[xchrom]

20. tell it to the 'moderates'. nt

[robinlynne]

21. same reason Bush and Cheney are out?

[glinda]

22. We are a lawless Country.

[Canuckistanian]

23. Shit, they nailed Capone for tax evasion...

Can't they do the same for the scumbags who caused even MORE misery than 100 Capones combined?

[Wednesdays]

24. Of course someone goes to jail!

Don't we have the highest per-capita prison population in the world? Shoot, just try to lift some electronic gadget out of Wal-Mart, and you'll see someone going to jail...posthaste!

See...laws do matter in this country!

[Major Hogwash]

25. It's like a huge contest to see how many people they can fuck up and get away with it.

It's unreal.
It's a nightmare that we can't wake up from for the next 2 or 3 decades!!

[dreamnightwind]

26. I saw this

it was excellent. Glad to rec this.

[cbdo2007]

28. Tell President Obama - Either he holds Wall Street accountable or we will hold him accountable.

This will be his legacy, more than anything else if he doesn't work to punish these people.

Imagine if I had done the same thing, gotten a stock tip that made me $50,000 bucks and I'd be in jail for a year. Not when there are Millions and BILLIONS involved, it's just a small fine. It would be like fining me $150 on my $50,000 gain.