http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/why-isnt-wall-street-in-jail-20110216?page=6A long but interesting read.
I have stated numerous times our elected officials have sold out the middle class. The Bankers and Wall Street rip us off because they know darn well nothing will happen to them. If the financial crisis was so bad, them why isn't anyone doing jail time? These CEO's pay a fine which is usually a portion of the money they stole, they don't have to admit any guilt and go about there merry way. Disgusting!
the irrepressible pull of riches and power
Your answer in seven words.
All of this paints a disturbing picture of a closed and corrupt system, a timeless circle of friends that virtually guarantees a collegial approach to the policing of high finance. Even before the corruption starts, the state is crippled by economic reality: Since law enforcement on Wall Street requires serious intellectual firepower, the banks seize a huge advantage from the start by hiring away the top talent.
Your answer in more words.
http://theparagraph.com/2009/06/bush-ii-slowed-sec-during-financial-fraud-fury/Your answer in a hell of a lot more words:
“It was like someone poured molasses on the enforcement division,” said one manager about the Bush II Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) during the chairmanship of Christopher Cox.20 As financial fraud raged on Wall Street, Cox’s management slowed financial law enforcement at every stage of a case.212223 To open a case, an investigator had to wait, sometimes for months, for the five-person (Republican majority) commission to review and approve it. To research a case, an investigator had to deal with lousy support facilities. For example, the old, patchwork data system often forced an investigator to go outside the agency for real-time trading information. And the lack of administrative help left an investigator to spend hours a day on tasks such as scanning documents and making ones own travel arrangements. To bring a case to court (an enforcement action), an investigator had to get it through eight levels of review before placing it before the commission for approval. Some cases were dropped during this review process because they had become so old. To settle a case where the corporate culprit would pay a penalty, again the investigator had to send it to the commission, which would often slash or wipe out the fine. In one case, the commission set the penalty below that which the company itself had proposed, leaving the investigator to go back to the company to explain the lower amount. Seeing one’s work undercut at the final stage, swayed investigators away from taking up difficult cases of big financial fraud, and towards easier cases, such as small Ponzi schemes and insider trading. For example, cases of naked short selling — an illegal practice rife for big fraud — were not pursued, with 5000 complaints over 15 months resulting in zero enforcement actions.24 Under these conditions investigators left the agency, further slowing enforcement. So here we see one way that the pro-corporate Bush regime fought corporate regulation: by hindering civil servants from doing the job.
