We have reached the point where what are supposed to be meaningful fines are becoming meaningless service fees. These companies get away with it, it sometimes being actual murder, by paying fees that they have worked into their bottom lines.
And this is one of many reasons I wish Elizabeth Warren had presidential aspirations. She really “walks the walk” when it comes to using the government’s power to benefit the general public. If I lived in her state/district, I would vote for her in a heartbeat for whatever she is running for.
She would be such a better choice than Hillary or Bernie.
they should be paying full fines, plus reparations for the harm to others and value destroyed by their action. In cases where this harms the company in way that their workers will suffer rather than the management and stockholders, that should be the only conditions for relief, and only in exchange for forfiet of executive and board compensations, benefits, bonuses, options along with criminal charges where appropriate.
In other words pay-up your fines, don’t even think about taking it out your your workers or you are going to jail. Once thats the choice stock market will take care of the rest of the flaying of their hides.
Not only should they be paying full fines. The fines should be significantly bigger, ie. linked to the fraudulent profits. Having read Michael Lewis’ Flash Boys and now the Big Short I’m more convinced than ever just how much damage Wall Street has done all the while skimming off everyone else’s pensions and savings and tanking the world economy in the process. (There really ought to be jail time for the CEO’s and board members, if corporations have the same rights as humans they should take the same punishment.)
I should add in the Big Short, where a few of the guys that anticipate the subprime collapse and decide to short the market by buying the credit default swaps (the insurance offered on the subprimes by AIG and others, which are also fraudulently rated triple AAA by Moody;'s and S&P etc) finally meet one the guys on the other side selling them and are floored to find out he doesn’t care, his purpose is to sell as much as he can because it somebody else’s money.
When you consider that Martha Stewart went to jail for much less, you know the system is rigged.
Why better than Bernie?
Elizabeth Warren has elected to stay where she feels she can do the most good. Considering the obstructionism we have seen of basic government duties during the past decade from a party that shall remain nameless, she probably looks at the office of POTUS and cringes. You are right, however, she would be a very good president.
I don’t mind naming and calling out ANY party. Neither of the two major ones are working for ordinary people anymore.
No Berniebros comes to mind; -) Also, younger, femaler, gout-free, no weird gun rights voting record.
The short sellers are culpable as well because many of them implored the banks to create more of these investment packages on their promise to buy them, which they did while betting 100 to 1 against them. They fueled the ramp up, instigated the adoption of loose standards for mortgages, an crashed millions of homeowners while their only plan was to bet the investments would fail.
What’s the number to the nearest assassin’s guild? I have some targets for them.
You know, that makes a lot of sense and gives me a greater appreciation of her (as if I am not a huge fan of her work already). This election is going to be all about voting for the least of 2 evils at this point. No fun.
Because false equivalence. It’s easier to paint both democratic candidates as 2 peas in the same corporatist pod instead of saying outright “I know Hillary Clinton is beholden to a number of corporate, anti-democratic machinations and will not represent the people if elected, but I’ll vote for her anyhow”
What does that have to do with Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren?
The best government money can buy?
Come November, most here will of course do just that.
If she’s the nominee, you bet. Four words: Supreme Court Justice nomination(s)
Because the alternative will be even more beholden to corporate, anti-democratic machinations, worse on every other issue (if not flat out crazy), and because any Democrat would make better Supreme Court nominations.
Yay for the two-party system.
I agree that some of his supporters are obnoxious, but of all the reasons that one might have to criticize Sanders, this is very guilt-by-association. It’s hardly like he eggs it on, unlike Trump.
