From Moveon.org:
Did you watch the State of the Union last night?
President Obama did exactly what hundreds of thousands of us have been calling on him to do—he announced a federal investigation into Wall Street. Here's what he said:
"I am asking my Attorney General to create a special unit of federal prosecutors and leading state attorneys general to expand our investigations into the abusive lending and packaging of risky mortgages that led to the housing crisis. This new unit will hold accountable those who broke the law, speed assistance to homeowners, and help turn the page on an era of recklessness that hurt so many Americans."
The best part is, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is co-chairing the investigation and will make sure it stays on track.
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This should be fun. We know who did it. We know what they did. We know how.
All that is left is for them to be arrested and for us to finally get some justice.
While I am completely on board with the proposal of throwing these crooks behind bars, I can't help but feel that nothing will come out of this. Anyone who ends up being charged will first delay the judicial process, as no doubt these individuals have enormous sums of money and can hire an entire firm to bury the prosecutors in paperwork. Second, assuming the process moves beyond extensions and continuances, it is guaranteed that a plea bargain deal will emerge and will absolutely favor the defendants, as by this time the prosecutors will have wasted both their precious time and precious tax dollars playing hide and seek with the defendants, and will be pressured to get results as fast as they can so they can move on to bigger fish. Third, due to most of them being first defendants and committing white collar crime, their sentences will either be reduced or they will be put under house arrest, barring whether they actually get jail time and not just fines.
ReplyDeleteThe economic crisis began almost four years ago, and Americans, unfortunately, have a very small attention span. a lot of people now will agree with the Republicans that going after these individuals is "class warfare," even though four,even three years prior, they were crying foul at the reckless practices of wall street. In the era of the Tea Party and Mitt Romney, billionaires and wall street king pins rule supreme, and because they have congress in their picket, they are able to craft the laws that govern them. Not to mention, they also have a lot of public support. I hope I'm wrong about this, but all of the signs are pointing to exactly the opposite.
To me this seems like an election year ploy. Starting an "investigation" into Wall Street will get plenty of people excited. The average voter will feel that the President is standing up for their values and finally doing something to help them out. In the end, no one, or at least no one of importance, will have to take any real responsibility for what happened as the investigation will probably be designed to fail so that the President can maintain his Wall Street supporters.
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