the statute of limitations is fast approaching...

[ProblemAgain]

and i ask myself this same question.....why are the execs that made the decisions that hurled us into the financial meltdown still in their jobs and still collecting 7 and 8 figure salaries and bonuses while the employees they laid off lost not just their jobs but their careers, their homes, their retirements and the taxpayers footed the bill to avoid the cliff?

U.S. judge asks: Why haven't the financial executives been prosecuted?

• 

"Who Stole the People's Money?" Thomas Nast's 1871 attack on Boss Tweed, used by the New York Review of Books to illustrate Jed Rakoff's essay. (Los Angeles Times / December 30, 2013)

By Michael Hiltzik

December 30, 2013, 11:17 a.m.

As the five-year statute of limitations approaches for the wrongdoing that bequeathed us the Great Recession, the question of why no high-level executives have been prosecuted becomes more urgent.

You won't find a better, more incisive discussion of the question than the one by U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff of New York in the current issue of the New York Review of Books.

Rakoff, 70, is the right person to raise the issue. He's a former federal prosecutor in Manhattan, where he handled business and securities fraud. A Clinton appointee, he's been on the bench for more than 17 years. 

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It's unsurprising to find Rakoff emerging as a critic of the government's hands-off treatment of Wall Street and banking big shots in the aftermath of the financial crisis: He's never shown much patience for the settlements in which the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission allow corporations and executives to wriggle out of cases by paying nominal penalties and promising not to be bad in the future. These are known as "consent decrees."

In 2009, he tossed a $33-million SEC settlement of a white-collar case with Bank of America, calling it "a contrivance designed to provide the S.E.C. with the facade of enforcement and the management of the Bank with a quick resolution of an embarrassing inquiry." The parties later agreed to a higher fine and stricter terms. And in 2011 he rejected a $285-million consent decree Citigroup entered with the SEC. That rejection is still being pondered by a federal appeals court.

In his new essay, Rakoff takes particular aim at the government's habit of prosecuting corporations, but not their executives -- a trend we railed against earlier this year. 

"Companies do not commit crimes," Rakoff observes; "only their agents do...So why not prosecute the agent who actually committed the crime?" He's witheringly skeptical of prosecutions of corporations, which usually yield some nominal fines and an agreement that the company set up an internal "compliance" department. "The future deterrent value of successfully prosecuting individuals far outweighs the prophylactic benefits of imposing internal compliance measures that are often little more than window-dressing." 

http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-us-judge-20131230,...

[A4L]

Well you are making sense!

Kind of the same weird logic that says that a company is too big to fail so tax payer's should bail them out. Yet there is no moral relationship whatsoever to what these people have done with their companies and the tax payer help that they receive. Nothing.

And it certainly is not fair to the other smaller companies that have played by the rules and get no help, nor to all of the more needy that are trying to make ends meet, not proportionally. The theory is that if the big company goes it brings down everyone else with it. I get that, and it may be true, but the morality is nonetheless obliterated in the process.

I am all for prosecuting people that have done wrong, especially if they have been given more privileges than most others, and live with no appreciation for it. But it should go for everyone regardless of position or stature or in or out of government, and be blind to party affiliation. Special Interests are not a Constitutionally authorized immune group of people. It is only in this corrupt elitist segment that this runs rampant and it seems that we should all agree that it is wrong and accountability should be given in equal portions. IMO.