"Even as you overhear conversations in every bar and union hall that begin with "those bastards should be in jail," few progressives are leading the charge ..."

This is very true. Problem is that many of the brokers and bankers may not have broken any laws, strictly speaking. The laws such as Glass-Steagall had been reversed by Democrats and Republicans to pave the way for the crime wave. What now? Even those who actually broke the law sit in penthouses.

Who will re-instate regulations, take back the money or put these guys in jail?

Another thing - In New York City there are many deceptive mortgage re-financing ads on TV by companies giving the impression that they are affilitated with the FHA or Obama's mortgage plans. (Yes, I have a TV and watch it.) If Eliot Spitzer were still around, we could complain to him. Now all we have are useless Pumblechooks in Albany. Nobody is guarding the store. The crime wave continues. There is a feeling of complete lawlessness.

In the words of Creedence Clearwater:
Five year plans and new deals, wrapped in golden chains.
And I wonder, still I wonder, who'll stop the rain.

Joe

If these cases, a great many of which required the collusion of dishonest brokers, appraisers and loan originators, aren't enough to trigger RICO prosecutions, then what is?

The threat of treble damages, disgorgement and hard time ought to loosen a few tongues farther down the food chain, leading to the alpha perps.

A good article and so true.

Slightly off topic, as the media discuss war crimes and war criminals, it's always about some african, and never about our criminals.

The public perception is manipulated in a very deliberate and skilled manner.

"So, Obama, the centrist, is under attack by the Right with progressives mostly passive even as the public demands action against corporate criminals and their enablers."

We're not passive. They just ignore us.

For G-d's sake, and ours, can we use this as an excuse to round up every damn corrupt person out there already?? What more will it take?

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of
patriots and tyrants. ....Thomas Jefferson

Want to get all these pricks in jail?....get them on tape smoking a joint....

ahhh..justice....ya gotta love it

Blankfein, CEO, Goldman Sachs & Co; Dimon, CEO, JPMorgan Chase & Co; Kelly, CEO, Bank of New York Mellon; Lewis, CEO, Bank of America; Logue, CEO, State Street Corporation; Mack, CEO, Morgan Stanley; Pandit, CEO, Citigroup; and Stumpf, CEO, Wells Fargo & Co. all reported to 'our' Congress that they were really, really sorry that they made a few mistakes, and will try really, really hard to do the right thing this time. A few even promised.

So what's to protest - those upstanding fellow Americans wouldn't lie, would they?

For the first time in my life, I have the desolate feeling that our country has fallen into a black hole and will not emerge intact. Collectively and individually we've lived way beyond our means, borrowing to sustain an ultimately unsustainable lifestyle. In our hubris we've been borrowing from foreigners to enable us to dominate the world.

Reform won't be possible anytime soon because the same elites that got us into these messes are still in control, unaccountable and unaccountably refractory to learning from experience.

The Obama administration is trying, with duct tape, chewing gum and coat hangers--if not smoke and mirrors--to save the collapsing economy, but this is like going to a massage therapist for a massive heart attack.

Even as we struggle, we're hell-bent on maintaining our worldwide military empire, creating more and more--and more and more expensive--enemies as we go along.

Of course the US will survive, but in much diminished and humbled form. It's been a long time coming.

Funny, isn't it, how government of BOTH parties over the past few decades has enthusiastically practiced Top-Down Tough Love social engineering in the form of micro-criminalizing vice down to the molecular level-- on the weakest, poorest, and most vulnerable classes in the population.

But where GOLD-collar crime is concerned, the ethos is DIAMETRICALLY opposed to criminalizing ANYTHING-- especially, um, CRIMES.

It's still another blatant manifestation of the hypocritical and reprehensible Amerikan two-tier rule of law. Politicians and businessmen, who are after all kin, are determined to wiggle their way past some unfortunate decision-making without in ANY WAY being regarded as a lawbreaker.

“We don't pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes.” über-harpy Leona Helmsley infamously remarked. It would seem that only the little people commit crimes, as well. When politicians and businessmen go to work, they must rely on a bubble of privilege and blind trust to give them the necessary elbow room. To impose the iron grip of Law on these elites is folly-- they are, after all, our mandarin class, and plainly superior to ordinary crooks.

But if cops find a joint and two baggies in your glove compartment, they can bust you AND confiscate the vehicle. Incarceration is a growth industry; even Texas can't clear out Death Row fast enough to make room for all of the people on the tenant list!

Another of the troublesome side-effects of political expediency, currently enshrined as the virtue of "pragmatism".

· Yr Obd't Servant

"So, Obama, the centrist, is under attack by the Right with progressives mostly passive even as the public demands action against corporate criminals and their enablers."

You should write Obama the pragmatist.

For the last 40+ years, the Dems have been imitating the "pragmatism" of the Republicans.

That pragmatism is essentially the separation of morality from economic issues. It works great in mobilizing the right for Republicans--as this article makes clear.

When Democrats were strongest--ie the New Deal--they sucessfully combined economics with issues of morality. Doing so provided the kind of moral clarity that mobilized the left for the Democrats.

It also allowed room for public moral outrage at economic crimes and abuses.

For the O'Dems to sucessfully mobilize the left again, they have to stand up for issues such as single-payer healthcare that once again join the economic to the moral.

And get back to the kind of moral clarity that moves liberal people to act.

Follow the $$. Congress works for all these thieving vandals. Why, any of us think any kind of justice need apply here, forget it. Obama and gang will hand over trillions so these zombies can continue to suck our blood. Amerika's economy is now a bad redo of the 60's classix "Night of the living Dead."

Even if these scumbags didn't technically break any laws-which I doubt-wouldn't a reasonable response fro Obama be-my administration will do everything we can to re-regulate to at least the level prior to Reagan,AND all these thieves responsible for our mess will be barred for life from any fiduciary position.Of course Obama will do no such thing,no offense to those posters who say give him time.He's an agreeable sort and obviously a good father and not a sadistic dolt like the "wanker",but he's taking his cues from his ultra-rich sponsors who want yet more looting of our treasure to continue.IMO the most important negotiations going on are merely to discuss how much longer the middle class can be squeezed and the poor neglected before the masses revolt and at least try to enact some street justice on some of the Overlords.Just a matter of timing to maximize what these poor excuses for human beings think is their Divine Right.
On a lighter note,doesn't Madoff go to #1 on the scammer list,he stole from his own attorney?!

t_g
A friend's son used to be one of "the young masters of the universe". Ex-Oxford alumnus, PhD from Yale (originally mathematics, later business studies). All the impressive abbreviations behind his name and of course not Mr, but Dr at the front.
He started to work in New York for a well-known investment firm, raked in the millions, tens (or even hundreds??) within years. He lived fast and I just didn't recognize the nice little nerdish and polite kid. Now he is in his late 30s, let go from his job (jumped or was pushed - who knows?) and just checked himself into an institute...
I wonder if this is a tale for our times?
His parents are of Hungarian origin, his widowed mother (my friend) just moved to Australia. Very normal folks, went to school together in Budapest. What happened to their son? Is it a generational problem or has something fundamentally gone wrong with our society?

All we do is sign one effectual petition after another, just like the millions of them to "stop" the Iraq war, impeach Bush and Cheney, investigate their crimes and prosecute, and the countless petitions to save the environment the corporate class has destroyed in thousands of ways. The net effect is near zero, but that won't stop us! That's about all "progressives" have done for 30 years. Oh yeah, and march a lot, and get ignored a lot.

They aren't impressed with petitions and marches, but we keep doing them anyway because we don't know how to organize. We're too busy arguing with each other over clumsy ideological points, we don't agree on what we really want so we can't formulate articulate demands, and we're scared to death of appearing to be too angry and not taking it anymore. We're afraid the cops will beat us senseless if we show publicly how we REALLY feel, so we repress how we really feel, and pretty soon can't even say clearly what we feel or think. Our repressed rage morphs into free-floating inexpressible nausea. But there's always another petition per minute to sign. That'll do the trick!

The Right isn't worried about screaming at the top of its lungs over anything that annoys it, because Authority is always on its side. The cops won't be using tasers on rightwing pundits or their Dittohead brigades calling for the heads of those commie Democrats for passing the stimulus bill. But as Schechter says, we can beat them every time when it comes to raising a moral ruckus over some idiotic cartoon in one of Murdoch's third-rate papers.

Well "America" you are in some serious trouble and you have no one to blame but
YOURSELVES.
You are a criminal nation from the begining, and you have little interest or motivation to change.
You commit to paper a "constitution" ---which you claimed was your 'map' that you have never followed, and now you are lost, in your own 'backyard'.
You spend billions on a God that you cannot prove exists, and will rush to silence any who protest it, while you wait for that God to rescue you from yourself.
You worship "idols" in the form of Movie and Music stars while you have children who sleep in third world conditions and eat third world food---if they get to eat at all----and all of it right in the "nation" that leads the world in Agricultural production.
you spend trillions of tax payers dollars ---while the very wealthy escape paying a fair share of those taxes----to "spread Democracy"---usually to those who do not want it, and then, you hate them for not being grateful to you for the destruction that you delivered to them.
Then you do as little as possible for the "vets" you scammed into doing all of the "blood work", while at the same time make a great "dog and pony show" for those veterans---while many of those veterans live in poverty and need.
You have more people in prison than any other nation for "property crimes" while you elect to high office, international criminals/social parasites responsible for the death of millions of innocent people and the destruction of their countries.
You have the highest degree of Medical Technology, while almost half of your citizens do not receive any medical care, and you hold in high esteem the Doctors who, if they do not participate in the sham, willingly remain silent and participate as "delivery personnel for a faulty system/product".
There is not enough space here to list your many short falls/comings/crimes against nature and the world, and it will shorten this posting to stress that you are doomed to failure------ at your own hands.

"It may well be that your only reason for existence is/was to be a horrible negative example for history"---
but then if that is the case, you will have been the best the world has ever known.

You do not have much more time left to make the needed changes; and 'Jesus' is not coming back any day now to save you; YOU made the mess, YOU live with it or change it.

Good Luck America, you really need it.

"The 25 individuals responsible for the crisis" link in this article is excellent. Phil Gramm is number one on the list, Mr Deregulation himself. He was the McCain campaign manager and the most likely culprit for sneaking the Enron Loophole into deregulation legislation.

I can agree with Americans generally can blame themselves, as we have become a nation of households with large screen high definition TV with surround sound, with one or two computers per family, with a family van or SUV plus a luxury regular car for the commute to work and back, with high interest mortgages, with credit cards maxed out, and somehow always on the brink of economic melt down.

However, we are really talking about the executive money managers becoming greedy to the point of criminality. That's the point at which you identify the culprits. And we are at the point where it really isn't good enough to simply say and executive team manipulated information so shareholders wouldn't know how bad things were. We should be talking in terms of prison time for these sociopaths.

The problem I see is the Republicans are robotically repeating their economic dogma - Ronald Reagan, trickle down, free market capitalism, and the market takes care of itself - when the Bush Republican economic track record is blatantly horrific. They doubled the national debt and tripled the longterm unfunded fiscal committments and left the country in a full economic collapse due largely to corporations exploiting the deregulation. So we have been there and done that, and it doesn't work.

Obama's approach is along the lines of FDR's New Deal. He is absolutely on target with JOBS, which was a main focus of the New Deal. However, it was World War II that actually brought us fully out of the Great Depression. Just after WWII, America had a very strong industrialized economy geared up to full production with lots of jobs.

The problem both parties have not addressed is that since the post WWII economic strength we have become an economy dependent on making money from money investments. What we need is not a reboot of the same system but a change back toward industrialized production - what can be called creating tangible real wealth instead of numbers on a computer screen. The New Deal for jobs is good, but we need a Marshall Plan, our excellent plan for the industrial and economic recovery of Japan after WWII.

Folks,
The only way to fight crime in high places is through austere and disciplined habit patterns. Scrimp, save and help only those that are down. Cut the restaurants, combine your tasks for less car usage. Stop going to bars. Do this for just one year and you'll see the heads of these crime companies in jail. Why? Because when everything goes to shit inside these corporations the management gets in huge fights and rats out the biggest chislers to the law as a matter of survival. They still have money to play with so they are still in tight lipped lawyerese lock step. Crash there income and watch the fireworks. All these crooks have body guards, limo drivers, etc. who know a lot. Once their paychecks stop, so does their loyalty.
Sure, that means we have to bite the bullet for another year even harder but what else is new? The government is not going after these bastards.