The New York Times has a big article up on the lack of prosecutions coming out of the financial crisis
“This is not some evil conspiracy of two guys sitting in a room saying we should let people create crony capitalism and steal with impunity,†said William K. Black, a professor of law at University of Missouri, Kansas City, and the federal government’s director of litigation during the savings and loan crisis. “But their policies have created an exceptional criminogenic environment. There were no criminal referrals from the regulators. No fraud working groups. No national task force. There has been no effective punishment of the elites here.â€
Largely because an evil conspiracy wasn’t needed, when everybody in government and the regulatory agencies was already convinced prosecuting financial fraud was a Bad Idea because it would frighten the Market, that oh so convenient impersonal historical force which cannot be reasoned with, only appeased. Doesn’t help that much of Obama’s financial people are poachers turned gameskeepers. The whole strategy for dealing with the economic crisis seems to have been to pump money into the very banks who caused it, bail out Wall Street and dump the costs on Main Street, then use the crisis to e.g. bump off social security because it’s now unaffordable.
The real surprise in this is how little real public anger there has been; no bankers have been dangling from trees or gotten their overpriced houses torched — only Fred the Shred’s windows were thrown in.