‘Justice Deferred [sic]’ And ‘Too Big To Jail’

First, let me offer my thanks to friends/neighbors George and Barbara B-not-Bush, who provided me unasked with their print copy of this month's New York Review of Books. And while I do not know the man face to face (perhaps fortunately, as that is because I have not confronted the federal bench), I have come to have great respect for Jed S. Rakoff, US District Judge for the Southern District of New York, writer for NY Review of occasional reviews of nontechnical legal books, such as the one this post focuses on, Brandon L. Garrett's Too Big to Jail: How Prosecutors Compromise with Corporations.

I don't think I need to explain to any of you why you should care about this matter, but here's the short of it: in the past couple of decades, Justice departments of presidents of both major political parties have worked out agreements with large corporations such that the corporation is not prosecuted and not punished for clearly illegal misdeeds... and the persons responsible, be they board members, upper-level managers, legal teams, professional investment staff, or anyone else employed by these corporations, are not prosecuted or retrained at all. In other words, crimes are committed and noted, slaps on wrists are administered, and the people who committed them are not so much as formally reprimanded, let alone charged. Needless to say, the frequency of such crimes is growing greatly; that's what happens when felonies are simply neglected without any attempt to punish their perpetrators or to repair the faulty corporate procedures that allow them... indeed, encourage them... to be committed.

Judge Rakoff outlines the contents of Mr. Garrett's book much better than I can. Please read the review at the link above.

(Aside: regrettably, HPL seems not to have even one copy of this book, though they have at least one other book by Garrett in their catalog. Too Big to Jail is not even an expensive book on Amazon; I may get one myself.)

TBTF-Man Has Come-To-Jeebus Moment

According to Robert Reich, Sanford Weill, the individual Reich says is more responsible than anyone else for Wall Street banks' "too big to fail" status, has finally got religion and thinks TBTF is a bad idea... after he has already cashed in, of course:

...

[Sanford] Weill created the business model that Wall Street uses to this day — unleashing traders to make big, risky bets with other peoples’ money that deliver gigantic bonuses when they turn out well and cost taxpayers dearly when they don’t. And Weill made a fortune – as did all the other executives and traders. JPMorgan and Bank of America soon followed Weill’s example with their own mega-deals, and their bonus pools exploded as well.

Citigroup was bailed out in 2008, as was much of the rest of the Street, but that didn’t alter the business model in any fundamental way. The Street neutered the Dodd-Frank act that was supposed to stop the gambling. JPMorgan, headed by one of Weill’s protégés, Jamie Dimon, just lost $5.8 billion on some risky bets. Dimon continues to claim that giant banks like his can be managed so as to avoid any risk to taxpayers.

Sandy Weill has finally seen the light. It’s a bit late in the day, but, hey, he’s already cashed in. You and I and millions of others in the United States and elsewhere around the world are still paying the price.

...

"Summertime... and the livin' is eeeeeasy..." if you live by banksters' rules.

Bill Moyers Interviews Yves Smith And Matt Taibbi:How The Banks Are As Criminal As The Mafia

This excellent interview should be on your must-view list. Each of these authors has a new book out (which I'll leave to them to describe) about the intimate and frequently criminal relationship between the federal government and the banks which, in these Glass-Steagall-free days, allows banks to take unjustifiable risks with their account-holders' money, defraud the depositors about those very risks, and expect the taxpayers to pick up the losses because the banks are "too big to fail." Often enough, the few remaining honest conservatives advocate allowing these TBTF banks to fail anyway, but that is just another way of transferring the disaster to the public through their relationship, not with the government directly as taxpayers, but with the banks as account-holders.

I am not certain there is any way out of this bind, but holding the banksters directly accountable, as fully as possible, would be a good start. And that means, in the November elections, electing, um... not Republicans because they're in bed with the banks, and, er... not Democrats, because they're in bed with the banks. Never mind.

(Via Glenn Greenwald at Salon. For more by Taibbi, see Taibblog [on blogroll]. For more by Yves Smith, see Naked Capitalism [on blogroll])