By Simon Johnson
In a recent interview with PBS’s Frontline, Lanny Breuer – head of the criminal division at the Department of Justice – appeared to admit that some financial institutions were too big to prosecute. In the “too big to fail is too big to jail” controversy that ensued, lobbyists and other supporters of big Wall Street firms tried all kinds of complicated ways to spin Mr. Breuer’s words.
Their job got a lot harder yesterday when Eric Holder, the attorney general, stated clearly to the Senate Judiciary Committee,
“I am concerned that the size of some of these institutions becomes so large that it does become difficult for us to prosecute them when we are hit with indications that if you do prosecute, if you do bring a criminal charge, it will have a negative impact on the national economy, perhaps even the world economy,” (Watch the video for yourself.)
According to Mr. Holder, speaking as the top enforcer of the country’s laws, “some of these institutions have become too large.”
Senator Sherrod Brown (D, OH), a leading voice for making the biggest banks smaller, reacted in this way,
“You expect trouble bringing a criminal to justice when he flees to a hostile foreign country; but it’s shocking that the Justice Department cannot pursue criminal activity when somebody simply walks through the doors of a Wall Street megabank. The laws of the United States must apply equally to both a $2-trillion Wall Street bank and a $200-million bank in Ohio.”
American Banker, a trade publication, called Mr. Holder’s statement a “stunning admission” and suggested this could mark a turning point in the debate about the size of very large financial institutions.
Senator David Vitter (R, LA), who is working with Senator Brown on legislation to reduce the size of our largest banks, said, “It’s another glaring example that ‘too big to fail’ is alive and well” (this is in the American Banker piece). (Any Brown-Vitter legislation would presumably be similar in content to the Brown-Kaufman amendment, which was defeated during the Dodd-Frank Senate debate in spring 2010; you can review Senator Brown’s latest legislative proposal here.)
Senator Elizabeth Warren (D, MA) has been outspoken in her opposition to banks that are “too big for trial.” Despite being new to the Senate, she has already hammered the regulators on this point. Following Eric Holder’s statement she said, “Attorney General Holder’s testimony that the biggest banks are too-big-to-jail shows once again that it is past time to end too-big-to-fail.”
Some defenders of the global megabanks claim the issues are very complicated and much more study is needed before we take any action. The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, for example, seems inclined to do nothing.
This would be a mistake. Eric Holder’s remarks yesterday were not accidental or an aside – he is emphasizing that the world’s biggest banks are now above the law. The Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation did not end the problems of “too big to fail”.
Will President Obama and his team now do anything about it – such as supporting the Brown-Vitter legislation or helping Elizabeth Warren put more effective pressure on the Federal Reserve to take immediate action?
Will the Department of Justice itself answer the tough questions posed by Senator Brown and Senator Chuck Grassley after the Lanny Breuer disclosures? Who exactly at the Department of Justice decides that a bank is too big to prosecute – and on what basis? Is there a rule book or a list of criteria? Or, more likely, is this something totally made up on the spur of the moment and on an ad hoc basis?
The Justice Department’s budget documents prominently quote Thomas Jefferson: “The most sacred of the duties of government [is] to do equal and impartial justice to all its citizens.”
The attorney general just told Congress and the country that this principle no longer applies to very large financial institution.
The Baseline Scenario 
To believe that all Americans are created equal, and then blindly follow it’s path to every end, only leads to a corruption which is very laborious to extinguish. Groups of Americans, are created equal, but they are in no part equal to other groups.
Principles have not applied to many situations since the founding of the country, that does not mean they can not apply to you, or smaller than the very largest financial institutions. All it takes is one larger than yours, to find yourself among the institutions to jail, and there are plenty of these, trust me.
“Too big to prosecute”??? What intelligent human being would accept this ridiculous fiction and patent lie!!! By the same logic if a large systemically significant swath of the population capable of altering global markets decided that oligarchs are legitimate targets – what would be different.
This is a lie and fiction pimped by predatorclass oligarch. In truth, – everyone and every oligarch are culpable and responsible for criminal activity.
This fiction is bruted and pimped by compliciy parrots in the socalled MSM that if oligarchs are prosecuted for endemic and systemic criminal activity the world will come to an end economically. Call their evil bluff. Mechanics will still fix cars, masons will still build roads, paths, walls, and chimneys, carpenters will still frame buildings, teachers will still teach, surgeons will still perform surgeries, entertainers will still entertain, and on and on!!! NO ONE is unprosecutable!!! Crimes and criminals must be punished or there is effectively no law. And in a world where there are no laws – there are no laws for anyone predatorclass biiiiaaatches!
Holder’s statement was about prosecuting the banking institutions. It cannot apply to prosecuting the officers of an institution, singly or en masse. The national and international economies may be shocked, but will not fall, if some bankers are prosecuted. On the contrary, it would be very healthy to get the criminals out of the system.
Holder may be the worst AG in memory — and I remember John Mitchell.
What disgusts me is that a guy skips out on a $16 pub bill and a high speed chase ensues, yet large banks and other monopolies rape and pillage on epic scales and little or nothing is done. Looking at the data comparing “blue collar” crime to “white collar” crime, white collar crime is far more damaging yet less likely to be prosecuted.
This post is lame. Loyal readers of this blog couldn’t care less what any of these shills think or say. This smacks of appeasement, namely throwing the peasants a carrot. The banks OWN the government pure and simple.
I’m not sure about this whole “too big to fail” argument. The problem with too big is correlation, i.e. the whole big thing is in trouble. In theory smaller is better because small individual failures are easier to manage and insure, if they’re not corrrelated.
But they are. The GFC has hit as a correlated failure of the entire banking sector. Bailing out 10 megabanks or 1000 normal banks all failing at the same time is at least as hard, and it may be harder to make 1000 extraordinary arrangements compared to 10. What’s the point then?
The issue is that a bank’s operating balance sheet (salaries, building, etc) is inseparable from its trust fund (loans, deposits) so it’s impossible to bail out the fund without the bank and the bankers. These need to be separated. And then maybe it would be prudent to keep the funds smaller.
“The size of the largest financial institutions ” too big to prosecute, just send in the Drones, problem solved, (though, be careful what you wish for : -) I would just ask the good Senator from Kentucky to get off the floor of the senate after his marathon whining over the Administration’s national security “kill list.”
How does the Obama administration continue to get by with policies and conduct that would have filled the streets with protestors under a Republican administration? It’s OK if banks are to big to jail – it’s OK – Trust Us. It’s OK to kill a US citizen overseas without substantial due process – it’s OK – Trust Us. Now it’s even OK to kill US citizens in the US – but it’s OK – Trust Us. This administration is a charade, continually stressing that it has liberal bona fides and the best interest of the American public at heart and acts with an air of regal impunity to those who don’t see it their way. These absurdities cry out against the falsity they reveal.
Pavlos has a point, though ending TBTF/J is still a worthwhile goal. My comment at American Banker on this:
Greg, in case you didn’t get the memo, it’s get OUT or there’s hell to pay, this administration is on a timer, the like’s of which you ain’t familiar with yet. Consequences though, can still be paid at the revolving timex/rolex door.
The institutions may be too big to jail but the officers are not. I believe a high ranking bank official was just canned in England and the bank has not ceased operating. One would conclude that it can be done. They may be harder cases to prove, but if enough tbtf banks are worried about prosecution the industry could become somewhat self regulating. As it stands now there is no fear because there are no personal consequences.
Lew Jacobson’s comment is right on point. HSBC et al may be too big to prosecute, but the focus on the institutions and their systemic role misses the point that corporate entities are legal fictions that act only through their employees and agents. Punishing the employees who actually committed the offense would be far more effective in deterring bad behavior and also would sidestep all of the hand-wringing about whether or not an institution is so systematically important that it can / cannot be held accountable for the acts of its employees.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/06/obama-dinner-republicans_n_2820628.html
There you go, they’re circling the wagons against “We the People”.
Senator Warren should take Holder to task for his absurd “theoretical” comment about the DIRE CONSEQUENCES TO THE ECONOMY of putting banking sheisters in jail in the manner of how Rand did it about droning today’s Jane Fonda types in OWS movements….
Occupy Washington Senate was great!
Heck, women can rig up what’s needed under our skirts and keep talking for more than 13 hours. Next time, wear a kilt, guys :-))
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/07/jim-himes-financial-reform-derivatives_n_2827597.html?utm_hp_ref=daily-brief?utm_source=DailyBrief&utm_campaign=030713&utm_medium=email&utm_content=NewsEntry&utm_term=Daily%20Brief
Jim Himes, Former Goldman Sachs Executive, Introduces Bill To Deregulate Derivatives
The Huffington Post | By Chelsea Kiene
Posted: 03/07/2013 10:35 am EST
“…It would weaken Dodd-Frank’s “push out” provision, otherwise known as the Prohibition Against Federal Government Bailouts of Swaps Entities, which bars federal assistance from being provided to any swaps entity.”
(and)
“During a testimony before the Senate last week, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke expressed support for Himes and Hultgren’s proposal, Politico reported.”
But let us not forget that the “too-big-to-fail” banks, if they would fail, would not fail because of excessive exposures to “The Risky”, but because of excessive exposures to what was perceived as “The Infallible”, because it is for those infallible exposures that they ingested those growth hormones known as minuscule capital requirements which helped them grow into “too-big-to-fail”
And so what is wrong with our bank regulators? Are they suffering an epidemic ADD? Too-dumb-to regulate?
Don’t they know that except for when fraudulent behavior has been present, all, absolutely all bank crises, have resulted from excessive exposures to something perceived as absolutely safe, which ex post turned out to be risky, and never ever from excessive exposures to what was ex ante perceived as risky.
And so what are they doing allowing for ridiculously low capital requirements for exposures to something perceived as “absolutely safe”? This not only completely distorts the market, but also guarantees that when banks hit icebergs there will be insufficient life-vests. http://bit.ly/Va1G5W
GASPARINO: Mysterious Dark Pools Are Seeing More Trading Action Than The NYSE For The First Time Ever
Linette Lopez | Mar. 7, 2013, 2:09 PM
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/more-trading-in-dark-pools-than-nyse-2013-3#ixzz2Mv2jljGK
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_liquidity
Dark liquidity
“In finance, dark pools of liquidity (also referred to as dark liquidity or simply dark pools or black pools) is trading volume or liquidity that is not openly available to the public.[1] The bulk of these represent large trades by financial institutions that are offered away from public exchanges so that trades are anonymous. The fragmentation of financial trading venues and electronic trading has allowed dark pools to be created, and they are normally accessed through crossing networks or directly between market participants.”
Not openly available to the public…but clearly that these Dark Pool sources are predators upon the public. Intrinsically a private money market; extrinsically a privileged exploitation force with maximized advantage to prey upon the public sector at will.
@Anon Too and Lew Jacobson —
Exactly right — the AG now runs back on the Administrations former position (nothing to see here, we’re doing all we can to get the bad guys), but now admits, well, the banks are too big to jail. But, as many have pointed out, they could’ve gone after the officers, but didn’t. Now the clock has run out. Holder’s new tough talk smells like the wrong end of a horse.
We inhabit a fascist state. The predatorclass and predatorclass oligarchs rule with ruthless disregard for that thing we call the Constitution. Our police are not here to protect and serve, but to oppress and silence their fellow citizens. Amerika is the 21st century version of Germany in 1939. The nazi’s own and control the government and the socalled media, the police state is being swiftly erected and fortified, our former rights, freedoms, and privileges have been insidiously dismembered and discarded. The predatorclass and predatorclass oligarch are immune and shielded from prosecution for a festering litany of systemic and
endemic crimes! Effectively – practically – and in reality – there are no laws! In a world where there are no laws – there are no laws for anyone predatorclass biiiiiaaatches!!!
Burn it all down! Reset! It’s the people’s only viable option!!!
Surely it would be sufficient to make it known that these institutions were too big to save, TBTS?
All this squabbling: bad for the country! We need unity for the impunity!
USA citizens aren’t as stupid as advertised – here’s a lucid conversation about the thought processes – basically caviling grabs at power – of Holder:
“…He (Holder) didn’t say he would never use military force except in the event of insurrection or invasion as commanded by the U.S. Constitution – Article 1 Section 8. All of Holder’s talk about extraordinary circumstance never rises to these levels. The threat must constitute an imminent one that endangers the continuation of our nation. No matter how dire the acts of those that seek to injure us, unless we are threatened in that way, the use of military on our soil is forbidden.How hard is that for the President, Holder or anyone else to understand?….”
“….THEY are the ones endangering the continuation of our nation! They are saying that BANKS are too big to prosecute because there is so much criminal in what they do that getting rid of the criminal would endanger our nation….”
So the bottom line from the Attorney General of the DOJ is that getting rid of criminal conduct in USA endangers the continuation of our nation.
Repeat – if we contain the criminals from wanton criminality like theft, lying and murder ala derivative algorithms to get into the 1% filthy rich club, “we” are endangering the continuation of “our nation”.
All things considered, we’re up there now, historically speaking, as “evil”.
I find it really annoying that holder and Breuer pretend that their hands are tied. We (meaning me James and yrself ) know full well that prosecuting the bank is not the only option available. What about suing the individuals at fault? The AG and his deputy have aided and abetted these bad actors for over 4 years. They defended these very same firms at C&B before joining the big O and they’ll rep them in the future. I smell bullshit
It’s mega time for civil disobedience. All Americans, when called for jury duty should acquittal all trials except for murder or rap. Let the drug pushers users off, let speeders off, let them all off. Lets apply the same standards to all Americans. Let follow the lead our leaders have set forth.
History says: When an entity is beyond our law because of inability to enforce there are only two options. 1) Establish Diplomatic Relations and proceed under the extensive protocols available for that endeavor. 2) Declare War and proceed to establish authority or die in the attempt. As Franklin reputedly said: “A Republic if you can keep it.”
“7 Signs You Have Terrible People Skills”
http://tinyurl.com/9y9k8as
……so F**k off, as the saying goes
Back at ya,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_deadly_sins
I’m good with the Goddess maryann, and stand my words and principles. Cannot fathom unadulterated greed and supremist pathologies and thankful for being free of those afflictions. May the Goddess have mercy on your cold hard heart!
Can the too big to fail analogy be compared to the U,S. debt?
Are there too many people, organizations all over the world who have come to depend on the U.S. economy, that is which profitable and that is which is unprofitable?
Are we able to dictate our terms due to our financial and mlitary prowess?
Don Levit
The “too-big-to-fail” play some in the major leagues, some in the minor… but they all share being franchised and empowered bullies.
Find the crack and drive. Whether it is from above or below, sideways or from the blue. The drive is besides too big to fail/jail it is about no one is too big to fall. We don/t need another William the Conq. or Hitler to prove that.
If there is not respect for the people, there is no respect.
At all.
Defend your rights, Defend your people, Defend by all means. It is a battle of the uber elites. We the people have but two choices– remove their authority or be reduced to a minority.
I agree with Greg, one more example of how the Obama administration has failed us. Obama should have let the biggest banks go under when he took over. Bad assets are spun off with bond holders taking their losses as is usually the case when moral hazard operates correctly in investment. Then immediately following, a new bank opens with the good assets, properly capitalized with no interruption in banking to its customers. This was done en-masse during the S&L crisis. But, what would you expect from a president who suspends habeas corpus. Wait a minute, I was wrong he says he won’t ever use it. At least you knew Nixon was bad.
Layer obdurate over wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy, and gluttony and you have HOW the Supreme Being’s (AKA as TBTF Banks) “rights” protected ala monkey brain on imagination “financial innovation”.
(Hey, I like that, could be a country music song – “….monkey brain high on imagination gave us the financial innovation…you’re up Tony F – add your line :-)) )
We’re way beyond some measly tyrant rising up, aren’t we?
We’ve got a suck-it-all-up machine masquerading, philosophically, as a fractal of life-maintenance that has been crowned “sovereign” in its perfection and launched upon an unsuspecting world – a PLANET that exists in a completely different fractal….when virtual and real physics collide…some ONE gets even “richer”….
Gotta know when to fold ’em…the 480 USA citizens worth 2.08 TRILLION don’t need any more help from the peanut gallery – especially in the way of psychobabble from the busybodybabushkas…
Take a look at that viral internet graphic of how small is the pie that is left for 300 million in USA to divide – rob Peter to pay Paul.
Now THAT is gluttony – the big slice that 480 are stuffing their pie holes with….
I suspect what AG Holder really meant to convey is that bringing a criminal case against a large bank as a corporate entity – and not necessarily against individual officers and executives of the bank – is very problematic. The “problem” is that any large corporate entity – be it a bank, IBM, Microsoft, or Countrywide – charged with an anti-trust violation, mortgage fraud, or some other criminal violation; can bury the Government in paper delaying “justice” for years if not decades. Large banks and corporate entities have the financial wherewithal to employ armies of lawyers to fight the Government. In the end, most of these firms know they can outlast the Government – or wait until a “more business friendly” administration comes to power and the new Attorney General quietly directs the career prosecutors handling the case to settle. What Mr. Holder was really acknowledging is the unvarnished truth: If you’ve got enough money to pay the lawyers, you can get away with just about anything. Gerry Spence, the famed trial lawyer, may have put it best when he said, (paraphrasing slightly), “In America, your ability to obtain ‘justice’ is in direct proportion to your ability to pay.”
@Lawhon
… which is why need clearly stated legislation, right? That’s the case you’re making whether you’re willing to acknowledge it or not. Want to squeeze these criminal enterprises into a smaller package? Just legislate it. Congress has the power to do just that. If they don’t like it they can go elsewhere, perhaps to Switzerland for their world headquarters. That bastion of unfettered capital has just voted caps on banker salaries.
All of this, incidentally, begs the real question: what does any of this have to do with capitalism? The idea that these bloated, waddling, decrepit entities, businesses that constantly have to find new forms of arbitrage with thinner and thinner margins to get by, should have a built in advantage in the credit markets guaranteed on the backs of taxpayers, that idea is as far from marketplace capitalism as you can get. Many are still illiquid and if they were ever forced to mark their assets to market and to capitalize accordingly.they’d be roadkill.
The longer we persist in this fantasy, that gigantism is some sort of virtuous state, the more painful and dangerous the excision is going to be.
When enough of these banks who are really in denial, find themselves with a 4th stage cancer from the perception of a life maintenance product, they will simply vanish into the night. Our short term problem is that another one shall show up, and take their place as if nothing occurred. This is the true definition of insanity, which doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result.
If you would concern yourselves about how regulators favor so much “The Infallible”, The AAAristocracy, and thereby discriminate against “The Dirty Risky”, usually the small guys, then you could perhaps see that there is no reason for giving the banks the ultra-low-capital-requirements-growth-hormones which helps them grow into “too-big-to-fail” monsters… but: “No! The regulators can do no wrong… that possibility is not allowed under our agenda”
They lied about there being weapons of mass destruction, they lied about “austerity” being anything other than turning countries of moon walkers into roadkill to cover their losses of “swords” being abandoned and not available to turn into ploughshares, and they are most certainly lying about never using drones to kill off a “Kennedy” or “JPII”, or “MLK” having a cup of tea at a cafe, and they are ALSO lying about seeking peace when they finally do a kabuki theater production of a “peace talk”…sheesh, using “profiling”, it’s a slam dunk psychological assessment based on what they DO over and over and over and over and over and over and over (ah, heck, it’s a fractal) again. Yes they are insane. Like, duh. And now it’s “STOP THE PRESSES” because someone told the truth? How about doing your JOB and enforcing the rule of LAW – last everyone looked lying stealing and murdering to GET RICH QUICK was something we all EARNED over thousands of years of CIVILIZED experience to STOP with equal and opposite FORCE!
The “media” behaved shamefully – like a bunch of rampaging killer monkeys, teeth bared, tearing at the brief glimpse of unity in the USA – “…I may not agree with everything s/he has to say, but I will defend to the death their RIGHT to say it….”. Monkey see “truth”, monkey freaks out…
In the meantime, what on earth is this “bitcoin” stuff….?
http://rt.com/shows/keiser-report/episode-416-max-keiser-005/
Salvaging the BELIEF in a constant flow of currency into a sustainable life-maintenance economy *fractal* since there is nothing in those dark pools of derivatives other than bottled water from the Gowanus Creek Canal? That poor dolphin died faster than a canary in the coal mine…
And boy-oh-boy are they LYING about the “jobs” numbers – such basic arithmetic – 4 years of new unemployment claims filed a month are always MORE than jobs added…and how are 250K a month of new jobs added to a country of 330 million NOT a sign of economic eugenics?!
Cancer’s been cured? We’re all on a new energy grid? Pollution cleaned up? No kids to educate so they can be scientists, doctors, engineers? Everyone secured in decent housing? Basics not on back order?
If they’re to big to jail can we at least raise the fines?
Simon boy, how come you never apologised for using the faulty 0.85 bps analysis put together by IMF bureaucrats?
Are you not ashamed of yourself? now that the whole 0.85bp subsidy theory has been fully debunked.
I am ready, please apologise.
I’m beginning to believe our largest banks are being controlled by drug dealers trying to keep the money straight. And Simon is trying to prove it too.
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/14/big-banks-have-a-big-problem/
My view is that the “to big to” discussion has the wrong objective term. They are at least to big to “understand” …. a business that needs 150 pages of footnotes to modify the basics of a balance sheet is beyond the capacity of any CEO. So, the operative term ought to be to big to “manage”. The obfuscation of JPM’s executive team today and over the last 10 months shows this clearly; they really had no clue. A risk management regime has to understand portfolios, not with VAR’s and other statistics, but with an understanding of simple P&L characteristics of the driving forces that produce profits and losses. If I have learned one thing over 40 years of managing risk, it is that the entire business of managing risk with PHD’s is flawed….it has replaced the basics of understanding a trade with statistical analysis, which we all know has some element of hiding from the truth.
DB
Agree whoeveryouare! The discussion is obfuscated! We are talking about stonecoldcriminals! Psychopaths!!! Laundering drug money! Robbing poor and middleclass Americans on an epic scale! Systemic criminality! Systemic fraud,, collusion, bribery, insider trading, tax evasion, grand theft on a massive scale that dwarfs even the most enterprising organized crime cartel!!! All of it shielded and excused by the purchased spaniels and parrots in the socalled government, regulatory apparatus, and the sniveling propagandists and information warriors in the socalled MSM!
There is no such thing as TBTF, or tobigtoregulate, and especially to big to prosecute!!! This is a fiction and lie pimped and bruted by the predatorclass fascists and oligarchs who have commandeered America. There’s only one way out for the restofus, the 99%, – Burn it all down, rese!!!
In a world where there are no laws, – there are no laws for anyone predatorclass biiiiaaatches!!!
Ashes ashes, all fall down!
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( “The most sacred of the duties of government [is] to do equal and impartial justice to all its citizens.”)
The greater issue – and one that is pervasive throughout the Amerikan socalled judicial system is the entrenched plurality and disparity in prosecution of the socalled rule of law. Poor and middleclass Americans are subjected to ruthless brutal enforcement policies that include long prison sentences and crippling property siezures for pot posssion – while the predatorclass CEO’s and managers laundering billions for drug
cartels, committing systemic fraud in mortgage markets, dodging billions of dollars in taxes through offshore tax havens are unprosecutable, for given paltry insignificant fines settling outofcourt with no admission of wrongdoing.
This two tiered system of justice mocks and shames every principle this nation was founded upon and undermines the Constitution and theruleoflaw.
There is one ruthless brutal system of justice hammering the 99%, and a privatized prison industrial complex profiting by imprisoning the 99%, – and another completely separate system of justice intent on shielding, protecting, and excusing the predatorclass, and predatorclass oligarchs.
Effectively and in practical reality this dual system of justice renders the entire judicial system and every process null and void. There is no universal ruleoflaw applicable to everyone – so – there are no laws. There is only the prejudice and unjust application of two judicial systems. One for the predatorclass who are unprosecutable. And another for the 99% who are ruthlessly prosecuted for predatorclass profits.
There are no laws! And in a world where there are no laws – there are no laws for anyone predatorclass biiiiaaatches!!
Burn it all down! Reset! It’s the only option for the 99%!!!’
In a world where they
@TonyF, “….Poor and middleclass Americans are subjected to ruthless brutal enforcement policies that include long prison sentences and crippling property siezures for pot posssion – while the predatorclass CEO’s and managers laundering billions for drug
cartels, committing systemic fraud in mortgage markets, dodging billions of dollars in taxes through offshore tax havens are unprosecutable, for given paltry insignificant fines settling outofcourt with no admission of wrongdoing….”
You can thank “religion” for making this sordid state of affairs possible. Letting them watch your crotch for you certainly led to unintended consequences regarding “rule of law”.
I think you make a good case. I would be interested in your response to this: http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/03/21/brown_vitter_form_left_right_coalition_to_break_up_banks_but_why.html
“Too Big to Jail”, Eric Holders unwise comments will now send this country into true anarchy. Those small or medium should fold while they are ahead. They can’t survive without the economic advantage of a performing financial fraud knowing they are free from prosecution.
@Thunker Gate – you just need to come up with a “religion” to replace rule of law and then you can claim god ordered the anarchy and sanctions the fraud.
cut and pasted from PBS News Hour on Friday – it was news to me about “zionism”:
“DAVID BROOKS: Yes. I thought it was a remarkable speech.
It was an ardent statement of Zionism, which made the Israelis feel listened to.”
Hard to keep up with “isms”…
To cut to the essential of TBTF. The USA IS A BANANA REPUBLIC. In every way the Constitution is intentionally sidelined for the 1%.
Bernanke said on a press conference last week about TBTF that he “never meant to imply that the problem was solved and gone. It is not solved and gone; it’s still here, but there’s a lot of work in train.”
Click to access FOMCpresconf20130320.pdf
Several small signs indicate a shift in the TBTF discussion, and Holder’s statement is just one of them.