Mr. T on Too big to go to jail

[Red Steele]

gotta love all the anecdotes. 

http://www.newsday.com/opinion/too-big-to-jail-will-make-you-angry-leonard-pitts-1.8021089

I do know that it personally fried my butt when Citigroup got off scot free after laundering Mexican drug money. Wonder how the new Clippers CEO felt about making money off drug laundering.

[Husker-J]

Not just 'too big' to jail, but it seems that 'white collar' crimes, just don't get the attention of prosecuters, nearly as much as they should.

You know, someone drives off without paying for a fill of gas, and they get more jail time, than a banker that swindles people out of millions of dollars, as an example.  I wonder if part of it isn't due to the complexity of proving things like fraud, racketeering, etc, compared to video surveylance of someone doing an obvuous crime.   However, which really does more harm to society, the person that steals a tank of gas, or the person who wipes out dozens (or hundreds or even thousands) of people's hard earned bank accounts?

[bruce MN]

Red channeling Matt Tiabbi, Leonard Pitts and Jon Stewart. Lawd A'mighty. It's an anecdote when it represents an anomaly from a general condition so not sure where you were going with that. Whatever. As for Tiabbi I doubt that there was an article he wrote early on in the GFC that I or someone didn't link up here only to be derided as the ravings of a socialist writing in the hippie rag Rolling Stone. What he says is what has had lots of us original supporters of Obama very dissolutioned but also realistic about the "deep state" thing discussed here so frequently of late. And I would hope you would be realistic about the executives and the AG's in the Palin and Ryan administrations and how they would have taken what Pitts and Tianbi are saying 4 words come to mind for me in there being any way to address this in a practical, albeit most certainly impossible to do manner which would be Elizabeth Warren and Eliot Spitzer. Which brings in the social and cultural conservatives to say that we can't have important matters handled by "that sort of people". I'd be interested if anyone here knew of anybody in the GOP or The Tea Party for that matter who would go all out on the fraudsters mentioned in the article and T's book? Just about everybody on the faithful right here has blamed it all on some woman in East St. Louis or some guy in South Philly who tricked some poor unsuspecting loan officer into lending them too much on a house. (anecdote tip)

[hardnox]

Following Geithner's recent  farewell lap and whatnot, I've concluded that I was wrong- probably would have been best to let the whole thing collapse in 2008.

Although as I've said, it isn't like I had a lot of influence at ag.com, much less in the larger world.

Like all counterfactuals nobody can prove if the market would have proven to be remarkably resilient in self correction or it would have gotten very ugly (my best guess).

But I'm ready, in wistful hindsight, to grab my tricorn and musket and risk my life and wealth in the cause of liberty. Although as you suggest, hard to be very comfortable knowing that the people beside you in the ranks think that they're fighting over poor black people getting mortgages from the government..

Unfortunately, any future violent reshuffling that may be necessitated will be shrouded in even more obfuscation and misdirection than this first big go was, so it will be harder still to know which way is up.

[r3020]

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@hardnox wrote:

Following Geithner's recent  farewell lap and whatnot, I've concluded that I was wrong- probably would have been best to let the whole thing collapse in 2008.

Although as I've said, it isn't like I had a lot of influence at ag.com, much less in the larger world.

Like all counterfactuals nobody can prove if the market would have proven to be remarkably resilient in self correction or it would have gotten very ugly (my best guess).

But I'm ready, in wistful hindsight, to grab my tricorn and musket and risk my life and wealth in the cause of liberty. Although as you suggest, hard to be very comfortable knowing that the people beside you in the ranks think that they're fighting over poor black people getting mortgages from the government..

Unfortunately, any future violent reshuffling that may be necessitated will be shrouded in even more obfuscation and misdirection than this first big go was, so it will be harder still to know which way is up.

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The housing crisis has nothing to do with race. It is about an all powerful government harassing banks into making bad loans for which they promised to guarantee. For the banks the more loans they make the more they will make.....all without risk. What could be more lucrative?