Do you think that justice has been done to the people who
did all the bad things that created the 2008 financial meltdown?
Think again.
In the September issue of The Atlantic, William Cohan lays
out the bad and the ugly about “How The Bankers Stayed Out of Jail.” Read it here.
Here’s the short version:
Since that horribly destructive financial crisis, 49 banks and other financial
institutions have paid almost $190 billion (yeah, that’s BILLION) in fines and
regulatory settlements. All of the payments came out of their shareholders’
pockets. Some of the penalty payments were tax-deductible (!).
How many Wall Street executives and other big players have
gone to jail for their manifest misdeeds?
One.
Cohan mentions, for comparison, that in the aftermath of the
U. S. savings-and-loan crisis of the 1980s, more than a thousand bank execs and
others went to jail for their crimes that drained $132 billion from taxpayers’
pockets.
I think it’s going to be a long wait for the perp walk.
(While I think of it, I’ll guess it could be a long wait to
find out which Volkswagen executives and managers go to jail for tampering with
their diesel cars’ emission control systems.)
Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2015 All rights reserved.
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