“If you do not punish crimes, there’s really no reason they won’t happen again,”

[midnight]

said Mary Ramirez, a professor at Washburn University School of Law and a former assistant United States attorney. “I worry and so do a lot of economists that we have created no disincentives for committing fraud or white-collar crime, in particular in the financial space.”

While “deferred prosecution agreements” were used before the financial crisis, the Justice Department made them an official alternative in 2008, according to the Sullivan & Cromwell note.

It is among a number of signs, white-collar crime experts say, that the government seems to be taking a gentler approach.

The Securities and Exchange Commission also added deferred prosecution as a tool last year and has embraced another alternative to litigation — reports that chronicle wrongdoing at institutions like Moody’s Investors Service, often without punishing anyone. The financial crisis cases brought by the S.E.C. — like a recent settlement with JPMorgan Chase for selling a mortgage security that soured — have rarely named executives as defendants.http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/08/business/in-shift-federal-prosecutors-are-lenient-as-companies-break-the-law.html?_r=



We are being hoodwinked...

[polichick]

1. Our democracy ended the day the Supreme Court installed their man...

...and the people did not rise up and flock to DC.

Since then, it's been clearer and clearer that there is no justice in this country.

[seabeyond]

2. this is what makes me the angriest with obama. be it bushco, banks, wall str or corps. nt

[polichick]

3. It's what makes me remember that he is one of them.

[seabeyond]

6. i love the ironic, ... it is in the past. we must move forward. dumbshits, ALL crime is the past

right after election, christmas, with all in laws and their friends, my LAWYER brother in law was saying obama says he wont go after crimes. WHY (in a whine) he says. WHY go after them. WHY not move forward. WHY....

i walked past and said.... cause they broke the law.

my mother in law chewed my ass out in front of everyone.

but but but, lawyer dude kept asking WHYYYYYYY

makes me sick

[polichick]

7. It's amazing what people will overlook when it's too ugly to see.

[Solly Mack]

4. K&R

[PoliticAverse]

5. If you get caught you may have to pay some of your proceeds back isn't really a disincentive. n/t