Why Isn't Wall Street In Jail?

Why Isn't Wall Street in Jail?

Excerpt -

"Nobody goes to jail" . This is the mantra of the financial-crisis era, one that saw virtually every major bank and financial company on Wall Street embroiled in obscene criminal scandals that impoverished millions and collectively destroyed hundreds of billions, in fact, trillions of dollars of the world's wealth — and nobody went to jail. Nobody, that is, except Bernie Madoff, a flamboyant and pathological celebrity con artist, whose victims happened to be other rich and famous people.

Same reason many of our leaders aren't accountable for their actions.
the lack of accountability in leaders and etc disgust me.

I'd say it really comes down to being rich. If you're rich, you're far less likely to be charged with white-collar crime.

u think the article was really ballsy on rollingstones part IMO

Indeed. And that was a great, informative read.

My stomach actually churned a few times in disgust =/

Though I agree more people should be in jail for fraud one has to look at the source. Rolling Stone states near the end of their article, "...Illegal immigrants: 393,000. Lying moms: one. Bankers: zero" as it relates to people sent to prison last year.

A simple Google search I did came up with former UBS bank employee Bradley Birkenfeld being sentenced to 40 months for conspiracy and bank fraud. Birkenfeld began serving his deferred sentence at the Federal Correctional Institute in Schuylkill, Pennsylvania on January 8, 2010.

Don't blindly believe everything you read as gospel. A little research will do you good.

coming from rolling stones magazine i figured a lil bit of salt must be added. :P

The article is talking about CEOs and other executives. Either way, finding one case of one employee doesn't discredit the entire article.

Birkenfeld was involved in a Swiss banking scandal and he turned himself in so he could be a witness for the IRS.

"Rolling Stone" has as much integrity as a pedophile does running a pre-school.

If they lean anymore to the left they will fall over.

Weird that they said bankers rather than CEO's :P
I get your point, but that wasn't in the same like as to what Merlin was referring to I don't think.

but being an Ohioan I do say that the case of the single mother was a bit eh -_-

Well, the article as a whole is targeting CEOs and Execs, not that it matters. I still think Merlin is just as bad as anyone who takes the article as "gospel," for dismissing it over such a petty detail.

And yeah, that is a seriously dumb reason to send someone to jail. =/

how is that a petty detail?
is it because they wanted to go the "made up statistics" route?

i think he's pretty much saying that you should take it with a grain of salt just because it's obvious that it's slanted with stuff like than in tow.

journalist have a bad knack of telling one side of the side and choosing to neglect the counter-arguement which would explain the just actions etc etc. while there is accountability problems they dont come up as often due to the media coverage and what not that would arouse if a scandal was to happen, i mean after Enron you would think CEO's for the most part wouldn't try and pull shadey ***like that.

I wouldn't say they made up the statistic, seems open to interpretation to me. Of course they're going to be overdramatic and one-sided, that's what the media does.

I'm pretty sure most people who have the will-power to trudge through an article like that, are aware of the journalistic slant.

that's my point.
just because that's what they are known to do doesn't make it right in the least lol.

It's not right. But that doesn't mean I'm going to post a derogative comment which might deter people from reading a generally enlightening article.

I think there's a lot in there (slanted or not) that many people aren't aware of or even thinking about.

This article needs to be read by every person on the planet.

The mental stumbling block, for most Americans, is that financial crimes don't feel real; you don't see the culprits waving guns in liquor stores or dragging coeds into bushes. But these frauds are worse than common robberies. They're crimes of intellectual choice, made by people who are already rich and who have every conceivable social advantage, acting on a simple, cynical calculation: Let's steal whatever we can, then dare the victims to find the juice to reclaim their money through a captive bureaucracy. They're attacking the very definition of property — which, after all, depends in part on a legal system that defends everyone's claims of ownership equally. When that definition becomes tenuous or conditional — when the state simply gives up on the notion of justice — this whole American Dream thing recedes even further from reality."

yup.
just means as i said.
you gotta take it with a grain of salt.
:D

As I originally stated "more people should be in jail for fraud" does not discount the whole of the article. Though I might not agree with Matt Taibbi's politics the gist of his article "might" bring about change.

The Ken Lay's, Jeff Skilling's, and Bernie Madoff's of the world got what they deserved. I guess karma *** slapped Ken Lay the hardest of the three though.

Or they can just watch Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps
/grin

You are aware that Birkenfeld was convicted in 2009 but they kept him out of prison until EARLY 2010 because the justice department was using him. To make matters worse for your argument, the 393000 immigrants weren't imprisoned they were DEPORTED. The article isn't referring to people sent to prison its referring to people who have been caught over the past year. If you had read the preceding paragraph you would know that. "Which is not to say that the Obama era has meant an end to law enforcement. On the contrary: In the past few years, the administration has allocated massive amounts of federal resources to catching wrongdoers — of a certain type." This is followed by the immigration and Ohio mother statistics and then the quote you cited.

But then you probably have to sit through The Twenty. *** that ***.

As I originally stated "more people should be in jail for fraud" does not discount the whole of the article. Though I might not agree with Matt Taibbi's politics the gist of his article "might" bring about change.

The Ken Lay's, Jeff Skilling's, and Bernie Madoff's of the world got what they deserved. I guess karma *** slapped Ken Lay the hardest of the three though.




think of this for a second...Ken Lay was a close personal friend of bush the first and bush the second. bush the first used to be the head of the cia, who daily make new identities for people. be willing to bet bush the first knew people who knew people. Ken got convicted while his other close personal friend was running the government that convicted him. had he "survived" to report to prison his family would of lost all their assets. be cause he "died" the night before he was to report his family got to keep litrally a billion bucks. the coroner who signed off on his death cert is another close family friend. they cremated him before any other agency could confirm it was him in the box. he was too big a political liability to be pardoned by his close personal friend so it was REALLY convienient that he died when he did and that no one outside of his friends ever saw the body...after all politicians dont lie, officials dont lie and rich people dont ever get over...right

I think you may be onto something...