Courtesy of Jaime Falcon.
Below is a promo video for Frontline's series, beginning January 22, 2013. I have not seen any of it. It may be terrible. Or perhaps excellent. We will know they are taking the issue seriously if Bill Black is featured prominently. Here is Jaime Falcon's view of why Wall Street leaders have avoided prosecution:
Wall Street decides who is electable and who is appointable. Eric Holder? Tim Geithner? Jack Lew? Ben Bernanke? Barack Obama? George W. Bush? Hank Paulson? Alberto Gonzales? Lanny Breuer? This is a who's who of Americans not interested in pursuing high-level white-collar criminals.
Too big to fail, too big to jail… is all BS. Republicans are not interested in capitalism if it means free markets. Democrats are not "the party of the people" if it means challenging financial sector elites. Democrats and Republicans are not interested in justice when it comes to their benefactors' misdeads. "Disgusting" is putting it mildly. It is an abomination. It undermines the fundamental values upon which this democracy was created.
Why have they escaped prosecution? There is one simple reason that underlies all other reasons: money. Wealth and power are wielded as weapons against the public. All it takes is vast sums of money to ensure that private risk and losses are socialized. It is a gamed system. Money in this country has been weaponized.
Unfortunately, we have had very tragic leadership in office since the crisis. Each has failed to have an epiphany of morality. They have all continued down the road of compromised ethics in order to protect themselves at the expense of all of us.
The only thing that the Bush and Obama save-their-benefactors response to the crisis has guaranteed, is that we will one day face another crisis… a much larger crisis. That, of course, could be many years, and many bubbles, away.
Let's see how close Fontline gets to the core issue.
