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The Ten Reasons The Banksters Get Away With It
The Wall Street Crime Syndrome Goes Deeper Than We Think:
Q. Why No Prison?
A: It's The System, Not Just The Prosecutors
By Danny Schechter, Author of The Crime Of Our Time
Hats off to writer Matt Taibbi for staying on the Wall Street crime beat, asking in his most recent report in Rolling Stone: " Why Isn't Wall Street in Jail?"
"Financial crooks," he argues, "brought down the world's economy -- but the feds are doing more to protect them than to prosecute them."
True enough, but that's only part of the story. The Daily Kos called his investigation a "depressing read" perhaps because it suggests that the Obama Administration is not doing what it should to rein in financial crime.
Many of the lawyers he calls on to act come from big corporate law firms and buy into their worldview. They have no appetite to go after executives they know and naively hope will help speed our economic "recovery."
Kos should be more depressed by the failure of the progressive community--his own readers-- to focus on these issues, and for not pressing the government to do the right thing. Without pressure from below, there is often little action from above.
There is no doubt that Administration policy gave crooks great latitude, as financial journalist Yves Smith explains, " The overly generous terms of the TARP, and the failure of Team Obama to force management changes on the industry in early 2009 was a fatal error. It has embedded and emboldened a deeply corrupt plutocracy.
There is, however, much more to this story. It's also more about institutions than individuals, more about a captured system that enables and covers up crime and, then, deflects attention away from the deeper problem.
Ten Problems
You could see that when Television host Bill Maher pressed Taibbi to name the biggest Wall Street crooks, on his weekly political comedy show, he didn't fully understand what we are really up again.
Here are ten factors that help explain the procrastination and rationalization for inaction. The government is not just to blame either. Several industries working together, through their firms and associations, associates, and well-paid operatives, collaborated over years to financialize the economy to their own benefit.
Personalizing bad guys makes for good TV without offering a real explanation.
