We've Bailed out the Banks. When Do We Go After the Crooks Behind our Financial Collapse?

[kpete]

We've Bailed out the Banks. When Do We Go After the Crooks Behind our Financial Collapse?
By James Lieber
Tuesday, October 27th 2009 at 1:56pm


Where did our wealth go? How do we claw it back? When are we going to punish the culprits?

When Barack Obama donned the crusader's mantle during the 2008 presidential campaign, his Web-savvy campaign team created KeatingEconomics.com and pushed it on millions of voters. The main video showed the Ichabod Crane–like Charles Keating—the wealthy, politically connected poster child of the '80s savings-and-loan scandal—in handcuffs.
VIDEO: http://keatingeconomics.com/

The Obama video portrayed John McCain as Keating's stooge and likened the S&L crash to the 2008 Wall Street meltdown, except that the current crisis is global and its bad guys bigger and badder. Today's corporate villains were flashed on the screen, among them AIG, Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac. The opening narrator was Bill Black, a Ph.D. criminologist and lead lawyer at the Office of Thrift Supervision, who helped steer the brilliant federal effort that cleaned up the S&L industry and won more than 1,000 felony convictions of senior insiders while recovering millions of their ill-gotten dollars.


Those watching the compelling attack ad (still online) had every reason to believe that Obama's approach would be just as hard-edged, and that felon-busting G-men would rout the crooks and recover our money.

As it stands now, there is only one federal prosecution related to the credit crash and bailout cycle, and it was begun by the Bush administration's Justice Department in June 2008.

read the rest:
http://www.villagevoice.com/2009-10-27/news/we-ve-bailed-out-the-banks-when-do-we-go-after-the-crooks-behind-our-financial-collapse/1
How Wall Street bought Tim Geithner
http://www.dailyfinance.com/2009/10/14/how-wall-street-bought-tim-geithner/

[Angry Dragon]

TODAY

[ProleNoMore]

1. Justice - One Must Be Kidding - See Who Obama Is Indebted To - Corporate America

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x6971709

[AndyA]

2. Obama seems to be bending over backward so far to accommodate those who brought Wall Street down.

There's no investigation into the acts of Bushco.

No transparency.

No equality for gays.

Still attempting to reach across the aisle, even though his knuckles have been smacked by the GOP everytime.

Obama is either very, very smart or just like all the others. No change. :(

[KansDem]

3. K&R

[Autumn]

4. We don't. Sacred cow mustn't

be touched.

[TheKentuckian]

5. That would be cool and froody but more crucial is at the least

fixing the system that allowed them to rip us off and continue to rip us off to this very moment. Reforming this busted assed system easily trumps holding people accountable. Hell, the game is so broken that it is highly plausible that there was little actual illegal activity.

Again, no beef with accountability but that is very much secondary to putting rules, open exchanges, and oversight into place to make sure the people do not remain hostage to the casino and the corporate communists that benefit from it.

[madrchsod]

6. it`s best to let sleeping dogs lay......

[bvar22]

7. That would be tough.

Half of the crooks are now working at the White House.

[mullard12ax7]

8. Garrison Keeler says to let crooks go, even war criminals, LOL

It's just so ugly prosecuting criminals, who needs to worry their pretty little minds over such ugliness? We should let bygones be bygones according to the "hide your head like an ostrich" people who think criminals will just go away if you ignore them.

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

9. Are hedge funds finally being regulated?

Do they finally have to register with the SEC, like regular stocks or are we still leaving the industry to regulate itself? Do we now have at least a tiny idea of what's going on with credit derivatives and how much they are being leveraged?

If the answer is no, I don't want to know about it. It's too scary and I have trouble sleeping at night as it is.