Why Isn't Wall Street in Jail?

by: jsalera

Sun Feb 20, 2011 at 11:01:33 AM EST

Matt Taibbi latest article in rolling stone is titled with a question. It is a question that is on the mind of the populace lately and a question that the MSM is doing everything it can to bury. As protests over state austerity cut-backs gather steam in Wisconsin and Ohio one can only wonder where these protests will spread to. What does certain is that they will spread. People have a tendency to get angry when they are ripped-off and the government protects the crooks.

What is not so certain is that the protests are aimed at the right target. If you see the state budget cut-backs as merely symptom of the disease – as I do – and not the disease itself the protests are off-target.

The disease is Wall Street. Everything you see going on around you – the foreclosure crisis, the unemployment rate (the deindustrialization of America), the stealing of pensions and benefits, commodity inflation, the demise of the US dollar, etc. (this list could go on for a page or two), is rooted in Wall Street’s looting of the nation. And looting is the right word.

The importance of Matt Taibbi’s article is that it directs attention to the disease and doesn’t use the symptoms as a distraction.

The title of the article is:

Why Isn't Wall Street in Jail?

It has a quaint little subtitle as well:

Financial crooks brought down the world's economy — but the feds are doing more to protect them than to prosecute them.

Here are the first graphs of the article:

Over drinks at a bar on a dreary, snowy night in Washington this past month, a former Senate investigator laughed as he polished off his beer.

"Everything's fucked up, and nobody goes to jail," he said. "That's your whole story right there. Hell, you don't even have to write the rest of it. Just write that."

I put down my notebook. "Just that?"

"That's right," he said, signaling to the waitress for the check. "Everything's fucked up, and nobody goes to jail. You can end the piece right there."

What needs to be the focus as we move forward in this critical time of our nation is that the debt created on Wall Street is not the debt of the American people but the debt of banks - many of whom are off shore banks that have no interest in a prosperous and independent Amerca. 

It is not the responsibility of the American people to pay off the debts that these banks have shoved onto the American government. That debt is the responsibility of the banks themselves.

To his great credit, Senator Carl Levin was successful in inserting the Volcker Rule into recent bank reform legislation (Dodd-Frank)(at least that is my information - clarifications welcome). That legislation also contains provisions to close failed banks. It is time to start using those provisions to close supposed too-big-to fail banks and purge this debt from the sytem which will allow the better run banks to fill the void.

If there is only one article you are going to read all year -  Matt Taibbi's article should be the one.

Update:

The President of Iceland has just announced he will not sign legislation that makes the debt of Iceland's bankers government responsibility without a referendum. The legislation is the Icelandic version of the Troubled Assest Relief Program (TARP).