The irony is that people will bother (to the limited degree that they do) to vote in elections when they can chose a president, but not in the other, more important elections. I guess because the presidential race is about personality, but they actually have to have some understanding of the issues for house and senate elections.
But we need an intelligent, informed electorate to get candidates in office that represent the interests of the people, and this is a voting public of which half support tRump, so an informed, intelligent electorate is apparently pretty far removed from what we’ve got.
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And you have a list of specific bankers who are responsible for this phenomenon? Shouldn’t we also be looking at certain politicians? And a certain electorate which persistently voted for people who more or less promised to turn the country into a better place for the wealthy?
And what section of the criminal code you figure the FBI should recommend some particular bankers be accused of violating? Or does actually breaking laws matter? Is your being generally displeased enough?
Not saying that upward wealth redistribution isn’t a bad thing. Just I think it’s a bit weird to try individual people for the not-crime of benefiting from it.
Fraud- well, yeah, that’s a crime, but these guys are mostly smart enough to keep themselves at a remove from the actual fraud. Broker pushes bond guy who pushes loan consolidator who pushes bank guy who pushes mortgage broker who actually commits some fraud at the consumer level. And when they push, they don’t say “Gin up some fraudulent loans.” They say “I need more of these bonds to sell.” Or “I need more of these loans to consolidate.” The impetus for the crime gets created high up. Proving that that impetus was mindfully encouraging fraud wouldn’t be easy. And American juries have been pretty damn undependable in convicting people of fraud when the situation was a lot more clear-cut than that.
As did a lot of folks involved in the tech boom. How many of them are in Federal prison? Or ever were?
It isn’t as if this is the first time this has ever happened. 2008 was a normal event in the history of capitalism. There have been many, many financial panics and many many recessions and depressions as a result of financiers and investors crashing the bus. The New Deal built a system which made Wall Street somewhat less lucrative and a lot less “exciting,” then we unbuilt that system and brought the lucrative and exciting back. Then, predictably, in blew up.
As much as the whole financial sector may be way bigger and more expensive than its social utility justifies, this is the world we let them make. The vast majority of the people who screwed the pooch here were doing nothing but following the script.
The biggest problem in 2008 wasn’t that everyone was committing crimes left and right. It was that they weren’t.
How many banksters are we going to see prosecuted by President Hillary Clinton’s DOJ?
And when it’s clear that the answer is “none” how long will it take for those of us who complain about it to be accused of sexism?
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