Category: Rule of Law

Bill Black at #OccupyWallStreet on putting banksters in jail


It’s hard to read or watch Bill Black talk about the scope of criminality in our current financial crisis and not get really, really mad.

Black says that Obama should ask for Ben Bernanke to resign from his role as chair of the Federal Reserve. He also says that Obama should fire Tim Geithner and Eric Holder as well, though he says that these men were promoted because of, not in spite of, their work to protect banksters from prosecution. So I don’t think any of us should be optimistic about Obama giving Bernanke, Geithner or Holder the boot.

Schneiderman & Biden investigating criminal charges for foreclosure crisis

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32545640

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Last night on Rachel Maddow’s show, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman revealed that he and Delaware AG Beau Biden are investigating criminal acts in connection to the foreclosure crisis. Skip to 2:37 where Maddow starts talking about foreclosures. If you want to skip over Maddow praising a really cynical DNC ad hitting Romney for wanting to speed up foreclosures, she gets to Schneiderman at around 4:00. Schneiderman almost never appears on TV, so his appearance is definitely worth watching.

Business Week has more on the Schneiderman/Biden criminal investigation.

Schneiderman also spoke very favorably about Occupy Wall Street. He said he sympathizes with the protests and that the sentiments expressed by the Occupy movement were shared around the country, notably that there is no longer equal justice under the law for the other 99% compared with the top 1%. He said that he views Occupy Wall Street as the tip of the iceberg for sentiments that are common around America. Considering his offices overlook Liberty Plaza and that he’s one of the few Justice Democrats, it makes sense that he’s expressing such a rich and supporting analysis of the Occupy movement.

Taibbi on what #OccupyWallStreet wants

The whole post by Matt Taibbi is must-read, but this closing observation is the real point.

These inequities are what drive the OWS protests. People don’t want handouts. It’s not a class uprising and they don’t want civil war — they want just the opposite. They want everyone to live in the same country, and live by the same rules. It’s amazing that some people think that that’s asking a lot.

Yes, exactly.

“The time has come to change hope”

Mark Fiore at Daily Kos has a devastating animation about President Obama’s decision to assassinate American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki without any due process or public evidence of his guilt. Glenn Greenwald notes a report that says al-Awlaki’s assassination was decided by a secret group within the White House, whose proceedings were not recorded. Greenwald writes:

What’s crucial to keep in mind is that nobody can see this “evidence” which these anonymous government officials are claiming exists. It’s in their exclusive possession. As a result, they’re able to characterize it however they want, to present it in the best possible light to support their pro-assassination position, and to prevent any detection of its flaws. As any lawyer will tell you, anyone can make a case for anything when they’re in exclusive possession of all the relevant evidence are are the only side from whom one is hearing; all evidence becomes less compelling when it’s subjected to adversarial scrutiny. Yet even given all those highly favorable pro-government conditions here, it’s obvious — even these officials admit — that the evidence is “partial,” “patchy,” based on “suspicions” rather than knowledge.

Greenwald points out that this is exactly the sort of action that caused Democrats, both in the grassroots and in elected office, to rage against the Bush presidency. To protest the destruction of due process, of the Constitution, of who we are as a nation. But with the exception of Glenn and a few other very liberal bloggers, there is essentially silence when President Obama not only does what Bush did, but goes steps farther in actually assassinating American citizens without due process.

President Obama campaigned on rolling back the surveillance and torture state that President Bush built in the so-called war on terrorism. For the powers Bush and Cheney grabbed during their tenure to be taken away from the office of the presidency, President Obama would have to consciously and deliberately act to reduce the power of his own office. Maybe that wasn’t a reasonable expectation, but it is something that he told us he would do. Not only has he not done that, but he has expanded the rights he believes an American president has to act beyond the view of the public and beyond the rule of law. In so doing, not only is he treading on even more dangerous ground than his predecessor, but he is making everything done by President Bush a locked-in right for future presidents.

I can’t decide if I’m more outraged by the President thinking he can just kill Americans without due process or all the Democrats who won’t say a damned thing against him because, after all, he is a Democrat and not to be criticized.

Lehman Brothers & the Ongoing Financial Crisis

Matt Stoller, writing at New Deal 2.0, on the third anniversary of Lehman Brothers’ bankruptcy.

Why should anyone think that Lehman won’t happen again? Elites have learned nothing. This was obvious during the crisis itself, when Nouriel Roubini noted the stark difference between public and private conversations:

And while policy makers and regulators now claim that everything is on the table in terms of reforming a faulty financial system they stress in private that their preferred approach would be one of “self-regulation” and reforms undertaken by private financial institutions rather than new rules and regulation imposed by authorities.

Many people are frustrated that the response to the crisis hasn’t been stronger. But it was always obvious that the goal of the crisis measures was to get the financial elites back to ordinary business as quickly as possible. In that context, the most reasonable question in the world is, why wouldn’t Lehman happen again? We don’t have a persuasive answer to that question. And until we do, we’re still in crisis.

I think this is exactly right and we’re seeing it play out on a daily basis. Rather than enact policies that lift people up and rebuild the conditions necessary to create consumer demand, politicians in the US are pushing for austerity that enriches wealthy elites. Rather than make banks take losses in Europe, the citizens of Greece, Spain, Portugal, Italy, the UK and Ireland are being forced to suffer. It’s all about maintaining normalcy for financial elites, who are at most asked to spend some time thinking about how they might police themselves or make minor changes to reduce the chances of needing massive public bailouts in the future. As this is essentially a bridge to far for the finance industry, nothing is actually changed, we remain in crisis, and the chances of another major bank collapsing are as real as they were on 9/14/08.

UBS trader arrested for billions in unauthorized losses

Apparently a UBS trader lost $2 billion in unauthorized trades and lost a ton of money for the Swiss bank. When UBS found out, they sought to have him arrested and brought to justice.

UBS uncovered the trading losses on Wednesday and called the London police and financial regulators at 1 a.m. on Thursday. Mr. Adoboli was arrested at 3:30 a.m. on suspicion of fraud by abuse of position. Mr. Adoboli retained the law firm Kingsley & Apley to represent him, but a spokeswoman declined to comment on the case.

Hold on while I do the math. OK, I think I got it. It took London police two and a half hours to arrest someone for defrauding the big bank. By contrast, three years after the financial collapse, not a single bank executive has been sent to jail for defrauding homeowners and institutional investors. It’s almost enough to make one think that there are two tiers of justice regarding the banks and fraud.

Carville: Obama should prosecute banksters

Via John Aravosis, Democratic uber-strategist James Carville thinks President Obama should start panicking, fire lots of advisers, make a consistently strong case “like a Democrat,” and, most importantly in my book, start prosecuting Wall Street crooks. Carville writes:

Indict people. There are certain people in American finance who haven’t been held responsible for utterly ruining the economic fabric of our country. Demand from the attorney general a clear status of the state of investigation concerning these extraordinary injustices imposed upon the American people. I know Attorney General Eric Holder is a close friend of yours, but if his explanations aren’t good, fire him too. Demand answers to why no one has been indicted.

Mr. President, people are livid. Tell people that you, too, are angry and sickened by the irresponsible actions on Wall Street that caused so much suffering. Do not accept excuses. Demand action now.

I think this is exactly right. Holding Wall Street accountable would be a dramatic sign to the public that the President is on their side and, importantly from an electoral standpoint, on their side in a way the Republicans are not. Of course the continued choice to not prosecute banksters is very clear in its meaning as well.

More AGs drawing lines in the sand on bank settlement talks

Originally posted at AMERICAblog

Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson has written a very powerful letter to Iowa AG Tom Miller, NY AG Eric Schneiderman and an associate AG at the Department of Justice stating where she stands on the fifty forty-five state robosigning settlement talks with the nation’s five largest banks. In it, she calls for a settlement with “teeth”. She goes on:

[T]he banks should not be released from liability for conduct that has not been investigated and is not appropriately remedied in any settlement. For example, a settlement that focuses on mortgage servicing standards should not release the banks or their officers from liability for securities claims or conduct arising out of the securitization of mortgages or liability arising out of the use of the Mortgage Electronic Registry System (“MERS”), where those claims have not been investigated or fairly addressed through the settlement. In addition, I am sure we all agree that the banks and their officers cannot and should not be released from criminal liability in any civil settlement

This is strong stuff. Swanson also supports the FHFA lawsuit against the banks and calls on her colleagues not to do anything to impede it. She writes, “We should fully welcome and support all legitimate efforts to investigate the banks and to hold them accountable for their unlawful activity, which has been enormously destructive to this country and our citizens.”

Swanson joins Schneiderman, Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, Beau Biden of Delaware, and Martha Coakley of Massachusetts as AGs who have stood up for strong settlement demands and their right to investigate. Biden has recently come under criticism by Delaware’s Democratic Governor Jack Merkell, who wants Biden to back off the banks and not try to investigate them. Biden’s response, fortunately, is strong:

“My job is to protect homeowners, investors and all Delawareans affected by the abuses of the mortgage industry that created this economic crisis. I do not settle matters that have not been investigated, and there remains a lot of work to be done in understanding the scope of the mortgage industry’s bad conduct that has hurt so many. Our economy works the best when everyone plays by the rules, and we must hold those who brought our financial system to the brink of collapse to account.” [Emphasis added]

There’s clear momentum in the direction of holding banks accountable. As more attorneys general come out against a broad settlement on foreclosure and securitization fraud, the less likely any settlement becomes. Kudos to AGs Swanson and Biden for standing up to the banks and for their constituents.