Community | March 03, 2011 | 32 comments

The Financial Industry Has Become So Politically Powerful That It Is Able To Inhibit the Normal Process of Justice And Law Enforcement”

source: http://figrd.blogspot.com/2011/03/guest-post-financial-industry-has.html

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figgdimension
Three years after our horrific financial crisis caused by financial fraud, not a single financial executive has gone to jail, and that’s wrong.

But none of the mainstream, corporate networks covered it. Not CBS, ABC, NBC or MSNBC.
C. Ferguson(Inside Job,Director) told Reuters:

“The biggest surprise to me personally and biggest disappointment was that nobody in the Obama administration would speak with me even off the record — including people that I’ve known for many, many years,” Ferguson said backstage.
He believes Americans, who lost homes and jobs in the millions because of shady mortgage lending and bank collapses, are disappointed that “nothing has been done.”
“Unfortunately, I think that the reason is predominantly that the financial industry has become so politically powerful that it is able to inhibit the normal process of justice and law enforcement,” said Ferguson.

For background on the subversion of justice to the powers that be, see this.
Indeed, as I have repeatedly pointed out, fraud is one of the main causes of the financial crisis. See this and this.
Even Bernie Madoff tells New York Magazine:

“I realized from a very early stage that the market is a whole rigged job. There’s no chance that investors have in this market.”
***
“The SEC,” he says, “looks terrible in this thing.” And he doesn’t see himself as the only guilty party on Wall Street. “It’s unbelievable, Goldman … no one has any criminal convictions. The whole new regulatory reform is a joke. The whole government is a Ponzi scheme.”

The economy cannot stabilize unless fraud is prosecuted. But the folks in D.C. seem determined to turn a blind eye to Wall Street shenanigans, and is now moving to defund the enforcement agencies like the SEC and CFTC.
And yet the large corporate media never covers this issue. An October 2009 Pew Research Center study on the coverage of the financial crisis found that the media has largely parroted what the White House and Wall Street were saying. (The mainstream media is also pro-war.)
In fact, the financial industry has become so politically powerful that it is able to inhibit the normal process of justice and law enforcement, and the American press.
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32 comments // The Financial Industry Has Become So Politically Powerful That It Is Able To Inhibit the Normal Process of Justice And Law Enforcement”

  • PigFarmington
  • ilikeike
  • Mark701
  • bailey78
  • extracrazykiwi2008
  • figgdimension
  • cicly
    • +2
      cicly  
    • Image

    • one of you clever and wordy fellows, please explain to the good people who frequent 'current.com' how banksters and friends cooked the books and got away with their scam for so long, and how it all fell apart. of course, the explanation will have to simplified 'cause even the banksters couldn't explain their convoluted diabolical rip off of the american public: it was even beyond most of them and they worked in the industry!... bots take notice - this is for the good people of the site,not silly poo-poos such as you... if this cold hearted, grand scale rip off is expained so as to make sense, peoples' outrage will be hard to contain, i'm sure. and thank you.

    • 1 year ago
  • ampersand
    • 0
      ampersand  
    • cicly:

      Cicly,
      There are several books about the wholesale distortion and collapse of the unregulated US financial market. ("The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine" by Michael Lewis; "Freefall" by Joseph Stigletz; "The End of Wall St" by Richard Lowenstein; "A Failure of Capitalism" by Richard Posner.)
      I don't mean to be rude, Cicly, but my guess is if your approach is to ask others here to instantly simplify it all for you in now yet again in two or three pre-digested sentences, (as has been done before here from time to time) you won't bother to read any of the books easily found in the list above by a simple search.
      Please understand that I don't hold myself as being any more prescient, or any less lazy, in dealing with the pyramid scheme of US financial markets than anyone else.
      As many did, I suffered significant losses for several major cycles of the market before I came to understand that you need to ignore the predominant media chatter (directed by the financial market interests) and stand back and look at the whole system; who it's design to serve, and who it's designed to manipulate.
      For me, at least, I find that it makes more sense to withdraw from that system and invest in tangible productive assets one can see and control for oneself.
      Again, personally I confess I lean toward the romantic fantasy that if all those who see they are manipulated and ripped off from the existing system, withdraw from it, it might just change, or even collapse. I'd be perfectly happy with either outcome.
      I hope that's helpful.

    • 1 year ago
  • cicly
    • +1
      cicly  
    • ampersand:

      wow. too much info. not what i was suggesting. already know these things. it was for others. avid reader. not lazy. was talking how mortgages and loans were packaged, bundled up and more or less bet upon. simple.

    • 1 year ago
  • ampersand
    • +1
      ampersand  
    • cicly:

      My apologies for hasty judgment in incorrectly inferring your intent.
      It's a noble trait to always be encouraging the flow of information and increased understanding in others, as well as ourselves.

    • 1 year ago
  • cicly
  • the1union1man2organize
  • Seauvan
  • mitekillem
  • Milieu
  • pjacobs51
    • +5
      pjacobs51  

    • Well, we were warned . . . a number of times.

      Thomas Jefferson—“I hope that we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.”

      Abraham Lincoln in 1864—“I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. …corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.” (1864)

      Theodore Roosevelt—“The citizens of the United States must control the mighty commercial forces which they themselves call into being.”

      Woodrow Wilson—“Big business is not dangerous because it is big, but because its bigness is an unwholesome inflation created by privileges and exemptions which it ought not to enjoy.”

      Franklin D. Roosevelt—“The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is Fascism—ownership of Government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power.”

      Dwight Eisenhower, farewell address—“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.”

      And, lastly, a literary insight:

      Theodore Dreiser—“The government has ceased to function, the corporations are the government.”

    • 1 year ago
  • Arizona_Huey
    • 0
      Arizona_Huey  

    • Frankly, who cares if they defund the SEC - they have been an epic failure for some time now. They toss Martha in jail to make it seem like they're doing something but 99% of the real hardcore fraud goes undetected or ignored.

    • 1 year ago
  • Saladin
    • +1
      Saladin  
    • Arizona_Huey:

      So rather than fix it we should just give up and let it all happen?

      There's a post like this in every story like this, and it never ceases to amaze me how people just haven't bothered to think it through.

    • 1 year ago
  • Arizona_Huey
    • 0
      Arizona_Huey  
    • Saladin:

      Saladin - I have thought it through and after scandal after scandal after scandal after scandal - it becomes very apparent that the SEC thoroughly ignores and/or buries the vast majority of shenanigans perpetrated by Wall St and large corporations and only goes after a few well publicized cases to justify their existence. They are too slow, have become way too cozy with the people they are suppose to police, have gotten really fat and lazy in their due diligence and in the performance of their jobs/duties! They have already made themselves ineffective and irrelevant to detect and/or stop the exact type of overt crap that brought this country to the edge of disaster economically and financially. I'm only suggesting that it isn't such a bad idea, given its current worthless money sucking state, and end it.

    • 1 year ago
  • mitekillem
    • 0
      mitekillem  
    • Arizona_Huey:

      There's a howling error with your statistic.
      If 99% of the fraud goes undetected, how did they know what the percentage was? I mean if they couldn't detect it, how do they know that it's missing, or being improperly used? To me, if something is undetected, which also means Unknown, how can they derive a specific number, of something that they are very uncertain about?
      It's like saying your 99% certain of something....with an error of +/- 99%.

      If the fraud was detected, then the 99% wouldn't apply. Because the 99% was for undetected fraud. Which you can't have. It's like saying, "we only know where 1% of the money is going, and that was used for coke and whores. We have no idea what we did with the rest".

    • 1 year ago
  • Persecuted
    • +3
      Persecuted  

    • what short time we have on earth, to be so consumed by greed as to sacrifice the lives of people all over the world.... for an eternity of hell? doesnt seem to make sense to me...
      its so openly corrupt, the government, the lobbyists, the wealthy, the financial system, wallstreet. they flaunt their wealth in our faces as we fire our teachers and cut the educational system completely out of america... for anyone whos seen idiocracy... does this look familiar to you? i'm catching flashbacks from that movie on a daily basis... we are outraged, arent we? and we arent doing much about it, are we?

      i'm guilty myself... i own a debit card... i dont recycle... i voted for a piece of shit because i only had two piece of shits to choose from and he was the less shittier one i suppose. of course, i CARE about whats going on but i dont DO anything about it... just like most of you... its easier to care and not act i suppose. its easier to just trust them to do the right thing on our behalves... history shows us the terrible things that corruption and greed can do to its leaders. history shows us what happens to empires as well.

      i think the problem is while we have been turning a blind eye... or acting like whats going on is out of our hands... now it really could be out of our hands... now its not enough to call your congressional leaders office and leave a message... or shoot off an email... now we have to go stand on their door steps and demand our power back, even if that means sacrifice... i digress...

    • 1 year ago
  • NiceN
    • +2
      NiceN  

    • Well, anyone who was witness to the destruction of the Gulf at the hands of BP should know this very well.

    • 1 year ago
  • COMMONSENSEFORCOMMONGOOD_COM
    • +1
      COMMONSENSEFORCOMMONGOOD_COM  

    • Government Political Creed: "WE DON'T EAT OUR OWN!".

      Accept it, and let's do something about it; there will be no accountability, until we hold them accountable. Only you can prevent forest fires, and only YOU, can enforce accountability!.

      Let's put it on our laundry list and take it to D.C.??? Anyone?

      BTW, have you checked out the Russ Feingold determine our agenda blog?

    • 1 year ago
  • ravana
  • Mark701
  • 2warsoffbooks
    • 0
      2warsoffbooks  

    • So Bernie finally finds a conscience?

      How sad is it, when "Madeoff with billions" is the conscience of our economy?

      Rot in hell, Wall St.!

    • 1 year ago
  • figgdimension
  • ravana
  • figgdimension
  • figgdimension
  • dreamsenvoy
  • figgdimension
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