An explosive new essay by Matt Taibbi details the egregious wrongdoings of the major Wall Street banks, and how they never ever seem to face the consequences. We are not talking just about greed here, but actual crimes – cooking the books, insider trading, blatant lying, cheating investors. You name did, they did it, and on a huge scale. And it went unpunished. In fact, the political cloak of protection surrounding these bankers made them almost invincible. Any foolhardy junior investigator who had the peculiar idea of actually doing his job would end up marginalized, or (as happened), fired. As Taibbi puts it, “financial crooks brought down the world’s economy — but the feds are doing more to protect them than to prosecute them”.
This is telling on so many levels. It points to the danger of political capture by the financial sector, a problem fingered early on by Pope Pius XI in the 1930s. It points to a culture of greed that poisons the social, economic, and juridical order. It points to a violation of subsidiarity, where excessively large financial institutions use their muscle to trample upon human dignity. It points to a growing gulf between the haves and have-nots that corrodes society. It points to the domination of the economy by an elite cadre of aggressive gamblers with no economic or social value added. It points to the biased nature of the law, which breaks the back of the poor while winking at the rich. Taibbi says it best:
“Which is not to say that the Obama era has meant an end to law enforcement. On the contrary: In the past few years, the administration has allocated massive amounts of federal resources to catching wrongdoers — of a certain type. Last year, the government deported 393,000 people, at a cost of $5 billion. Since 2007, felony immigration prosecutions along the Mexican border have surged 77 percent; nonfelony prosecutions by 259 percent. In Ohio last month, a single mother was caught lying about where she lived to put her kids into a better school district; the judge in the case tried to sentence her to 10 days in jail for fraud, declaring that letting her go free would “demean the seriousness” of the offenses.
So there you have it. Illegal immigrants: 393,000. Lying moms: one. Bankers: zero. The math makes sense only because the politics are so obvious. You want to win elections, you bang on the jailable class. You build prisons and fill them with people for selling dime bags and stealing CD players. But for stealing a billion dollars? For fraud that puts a million people into foreclosure? Pass. It’s not a crime. Prison is too harsh. Get them to say they’re sorry, and move on. Oh, wait — let’s not even make them say they’re sorry. That’s too mean; let’s just give them a piece of paper with a government stamp on it, officially clearing them of the need to apologize, and make them pay a fine instead. But don’t make them pay it out of their own pockets, and don’t ask them to give back the money they stole. In fact, let them profit from their collective crimes, to the tune of a record $135 billion in pay and benefits last year. What’s next? Taxpayer-funded massages for every Wall Street executive guilty of fraud?”
In Ireland, the crooked bankers that brought down the economy are in hiding. In the United States, they are being welcomed into the halls of power, given jobs in the administration, and toasted at elite gatherings like Davos. Why is this happening?
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In