Why Isn't Wall Street in Jail? - Opinions on the article?
Hi Monkeys,
Would love to hear all y'all's takes on this article by Rolling Stone:
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/why-isn…
P
Hi Monkeys,
Would love to hear all y'all's takes on this article by Rolling Stone:
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/why-isn…
P
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Same reason BP is not in jail.
It's simple. There is a very tight network between government and business. And it's a friendly network. I was amazed to see what a huge role lawyers played. I bet they got much richer than any banker over the years.
It's more simple than that. You can't imprison something intangible. Morons.
Maybe I'm naive, but what was illegal about securitizing shitty mortgage pools and then underwriting insurance on them? Blindly greedy, yes. But illegal? Not so sure. While there was undoubtedly fraud committed in the actual origination of said mortgages, that falls on both the lenders AND homeowners -- the former of which are mortgage originators, not investment bankers.
I don't see this guy mentioning Fannie and Freddy, the implicitly backed government agencies that might have cost taxpayers a penny or two with the financial crisis
Someone didn't read the article... "In 2003, Freddie Mac coughed up $125 million after it was caught misreporting its earnings by $5 billion; nobody went to jail. In 2006, Fannie Mae was fined $400 million, but executives who had overseen phony accounting techniques to jack up their bonuses faced no criminal charges." (top of page 4).
Nicely done.
These fools need to open up their eyes to reality instead of blindly shilling for Wall Street in the hopes that they will one day make hundreds of millions of dollars. Somehow, they seem to believe that refusing to recognize the faults of those currently at the top of the Street will help them get there. Fucking trolls.
Please note the author of this article. Thank you.
Let me answer his question with another question. Why isn't Afghanistan in jail?
Anyone that writes off the article without reading it is a moron. Take off your horse blinders and use your brain for something other than updating comps.
But anyone that writes off the title of the article without reading the article is not a moron. They are the opposite.
I'm with TheKing on this one. I was expecting the same bullshit article about Wall Street bonuses being too high causing banksters to steal from the middle class, but this article is actually really good.
As someone on Wall Street who does things the right way (i.e., no insider trading or other scamming), you should be more outraged at lack of enforcement on the scammers than anyone else. The people on Wall Street who cheat cut into your profits/bonus, give your job a bad name, and eventually bring on more regulation that is only going to make your job harder/less profitable while they keep cheating.
I'm not saying Lloyd Blankfein should go to jail (as far as I can tell, he didn't do anything criminally illegal), but harsh punishments and strict enforcement of the rules benefit everyone, especially those of us on Wall Street.
+1
I hope more of you read this. I don't work on Wall Street, but I know a lot of you do.
I was hoping to hear some honest self-reflection about the role of Wall Street and bankers in society, its seemingly supra-legal status, and how one might be able to turn a blind eye to this gross injustice and continue on with her work. A child whose parents jumped the border when he was but a few months old is not an American, and if he gets caught picking weeds at a dollar an hour when he's 12, he could be deported, but lawbreaking crooks on Wall Street go unpunished.
Do you think this is a problem? If so, what is the solution?
I think this is a huge problem. Unfortunately, I am not sure how you reform the system to ensure the SEC and USAO actually do their jobs. Someone smart needs to come up with something, though.
This is why I have such a problem with people that just rail on unions and workers, but really stay quiet when we discuss people getting away with fraud and other illegal activities. The poor are the poor and they get some assistance. The rich get richer and get away with many things. (By rich I mean the mega rich, not some guy making $1-10M per year). Who gets screwed? The middle and upper-middle classes, unfortunately.
I want to clarify my stance on the article. Obviously, Taibbi's bread and butter is anti-Wall Street type articles. There's a certain tone to his articles. Still, after reading the article, he has points that I can agree with. The "SRO's" are not getting anything done in terms of "regulating". Look at the SEC and all of their porn fetishes, it's a wonder they had time to do anything.
By the way, not to high-jack the thread, but I read Harry Markopolos reports on Madoff that he sent to the SEC years ago. After reading how much in-depth research he had on Madoff, it's absolutely AMAZING that they didn't bring him in that day. That's another situation where politics trumped common sense.
I always hear people dismiss him because of "a certain tone to his articles," and honestly, that's a bunch of horse shit. He tells it like it is and doesn't feel the need to sugar coat it when he calls guys like Dick Fuld / Frank Cassano massive assholes. The fact is that the mainstream media rolled over and ignored the real issues that came out of the financial crisis - Taibbi is one of the only people out there investigating and writing about things like the rocket-docket courts and the cozy relationship between Wall Street and the regulators.
+1 to the king
Why don't journalists go to jail? Their horrible misuse of statistics, combined with spreading of largely false information should be a punishable offense.
NB: this is a sarcastic post.
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