AlterNet: Seriously, Jail the Bankers or This Economy Will Never Fully Recover

[marmar]

AlterNet / By Joshua Holland

Seriously, Jail the Bankers or This Economy Will Never Fully Recover
By refusing to hold the corporate criminals at the heart of the housing crisis accountable for their crimes, we’re creating powerful incentives for future malfeasance.


November 17, 2010 | The Great Recession showed the world that the crimes that create the most victims are not committed by terrorists, gangbangers or drug traffickers, but by well-heeled crooks in Wall Street’s executive suites. Tens of millions of people have seen their jobs disappear and their pension funds fleeced, and had their homes taken out from under their feet as a result of the crash of Wall Street’s Great Casino. Yet so far, the culprits have been given little more than a slap on the wrist.

Failing to prosecute Wall Street’s high-flying crooks doesn’t only represent a great miscarriage of justice. Powerful voices within the economic establishment are now making the case that holding the bankers criminally culpable is necessary if we ever hope to stop our national economy from moving from one speculation-driven bubble to the next.

Nobel-prize winner Joe Stiglitz recently told AOL’s Daily Finance that major damage resulting from the financial disaster “has not really been taken on board, and that is confidence in our legal system, in our rule of law, in our system of justice.” His prescription? “I think we ought to go do what we did” in the wake of similar financial crises in the past, and “actually put many of these guys in prison.”

His argument is based not on the visceral satisfaction of seeing the high and mighty brought down a peg, but on cold economic grounds. At heart, economics is the study of incentives, and by refusing to hold the corporate criminals at the heart of the housing crisis accountable in any meaningful way, we’re creating powerful incentives for more malfeasance in the future. ............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/economy/148882/seriously%2C_jail_the_bankers_or_this_economy_will_never_fully_recover/

[dkf]

1. Who are we going to charge and for what offense exactly?

[ixion]

3. You can start at insider trading, and work your way back to fraud

with many stops in between.

[dkf]

4. I agree this is probably the way to approach this.

But I wonder how strong the cases would be. The Bear Stearns hedge fund trials didn't go well for us after all.

[bluedigger]

10. RICO

We don't call them "banksters" for nothing.:shrug:

[ixion]

2. It's very simple: if they, like any other business, committed fraud, they should

be charged and tried in a court of law and suffer the consequences.

[Beerball1]

5. what should happen

will never happen. Our owners won't allow it.

[midnight]

6. I agree. If there is no follow through on ecomomically

destroying a country, they will continue to do it.

[bemildred]

7. Empires collapse from within, it's been very interesting to watch. nt

[xchrom]

8. Jail them AND take their wealth.

It's just part of the risk if they and progeny can remain
On top of I'll gotten gains.

[glitch]

9. All of it.

They didn't hold their positions of privilege responsibly.