Why Can't Obama Bring Wall Street to Justice?

Discussion in 'Current Events' started by DonGlock26, May 7, 2012.

  1. DonGlock26

    DonGlock26 New Member Past Donor

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    Why Can't Obama Bring Wall Street to Justice?


    Despite his populist posturing, the president has failed to pin a single top finance exec on criminal charges since the economic collapse. Are the banks too big to jail—or is Washington’s revolving door at to blame? Peter J. Boyer and Peter Schweizer investigate:


    Obama’s 2009 White House summit with finance titans, in which the president warned that only he was standing "between you and the pitchforks"

    Why, despite widespread outrage, financial-fraud prosecutions by the Department of Justice are at 20-year lows

    Attorney General Eric Holder’s lucrative ties to a top-tier law firm whose marquee clients include some of finance’s worst offenders

    How Obama’s trumpeted “task force” for investigating risky mortgage lenders—announced in this year’s State of the Union speech—is badly understaffed and has yet to produce any discernible progress

    With the Occupy protesters resuming battle stations, and Mitt Romney in place as the presumptive Republican nominee, President Obama has begun to fashion his campaign as a crusade for the 99 percent--a fight against, as one Obama ad puts it, "a guy who had a Swiss bank account." Casting Romney as a plutocrat will be easy enough. But the president's claim as avenging populist may prove trickier, given his own deeply complicated, even conflicted, relationship with Big Finance.

    Obama came into office vowing to end business as usual, and, in the gray post-crash dawn of 2009, nowhere did a reckoning with justice seem more due than in the financial sector. The public was shaken, and angry, and Wall Street seemed oblivious to its own culpability, defending extravagant pay bonuses even while accepting a taxpayer bailout. Obama channeled this anger, and employed its rhetoric, blaming the worldwide economic collapse on "the reckless speculation of bankers." Two months into his presidency, Obama summoned the titans of finance to the White House, where he told them, "My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks."

    The bankers may have found the president's tone unsettling. Candidate Obama had been their guy, accepting vast amounts of Wall Street campaign money for his victories over Hillary Clinton and John McCain (Goldman Sachs executives ponied up $1 million, more than any other private source of funding in 2008). Obama far outraised his Republican rival, John McCain, on Wall Street--around $16 million to $9 million. As it turned out, Obama apparently actually meant what he said at that White House meeting--his administration effectively would stand between Big Finance and anything like a severe accounting. To the dismay of many of Obama's supporters, nearly four years after the disaster, there has not been a single criminal charge filed by the federal government against any top executive of the elite financial institutions.

    "It's perplexing at best," says Phil Angelides, the Democratic former California treasurer who chaired the bipartisan Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission. "It's deeply troubling at worst."


    http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/05/06/why-can-t-obama-bring-wall-street-to-justice.html


    You ever wonder how Obama can complain about Wall Street, while taking their money and meeting with them behind closed doors? I think he's leading his idiot followers around by their noses. He's not going to do anything to Wall Street EVER. He'll try to tax the crap out of small business and Mom & Pop businesses though, if he gets reelected.


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  2. exotix

    exotix New Member Past Donor

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    The two main entities that hold America & The World hostage are Wall Street & Big Oil … hard to say why conservatives don't tax them other than the Norquist Pledge …
     
  3. Montoya

    Montoya Banned

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    Which us unconstitutional I might add. Where in the constitution does it say congress must pledge to a private citizen on taxes?

    See how the repubs respond to this one.
     
  4. fmw

    fmw Well-Known Member

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    Who on Wall Street has commited a crime that you believe needs to be brought to justice?
     
  5. DonGlock26

    DonGlock26 New Member Past Donor

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    Ah, Obama has been president for several years now. The Democrats controlled congress for the first two years of the Obama admin. Why didn't he go after corruption on Wall Street and in the banking system?



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  6. RP12

    RP12 Well-Known Member

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    Corzine...... Ever hear of him?

    How about the Banks that were caught laundering Mexican Drug Cartel money?
     
  7. exotix

    exotix New Member Past Donor

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    Obama and the Dems aren't quite sure what would happen to the Bush Great Depression Recovery … that is, they wouldn't know what instability might happen to an already unstable system (see Europe) … what you're see'ng now is what happened in the first conservative-borne great depression … but no would have thought the conservatives would enter into a cabal to undermine the bush great depression recovery on Obamas' inauguration and continue to obstruct and filibuster and hostage-take to this day …

    The conservatives had waited until recovery took hold before embarking on obstruction (high-treason) of recovery during the first Hoover great depression including Hoover himself as chief spokesman to obstruct the New Deal … which forced America into a second great depression as well as lengthened the time of recovery by almost another 30 years …
     
  8. DonGlock26

    DonGlock26 New Member Past Donor

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    Conservatives are not the president right now- Obama is. Why are the Democrats unable to prosecute corruption on Wall st. and in the banking industry?


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  9. Taxpayer

    Taxpayer Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Or is it possible that the problem occurred without anyone doing anything illegal?​
     
  10. exotix

    exotix New Member Past Donor

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    What part of reading comprehension are you not comprehending ... prosecution of Wall Street just might lead to further instability in systems ... Wall Streets' massive fraud extended from pensions to housing to investments to Global Systems ...

    Just another troll thread if you ask me ...
     
  11. HB Surfer

    HB Surfer Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    On Wallstreet let's start with Barack Obama's money guy... Corzine... you know... the former Democrat Governor of New Jersey. The one the Democrats preferred over Chris Christie.

    I will admit... we bailed out the banks and they screwed us for it buy holding all the property and not releasing it. But, this is CRONY CAPITALISM... not Free Market Capitalism. This is where Barack Obama's friends at GE, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, etc... make a fortune while the rest of us get screwed.
     
  12. thediplomat2.0

    thediplomat2.0 Banned

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    The real action had to occur under the Bush Presidency. Unfortunately, it did not. However, the regulations the President has passed to reform Wall Street have done nothing but made the system more complex, and therefore prone to greater corruption and collapse. One should have known that he was tool of Wall Street when a primary source of financing for his campaign in 2008 was the investment bank Goldman Sachs.
     
  13. exotix

    exotix New Member Past Donor

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    We'll never know that ... the conservatives embarked on obstruction of the Stimulus ... after the Bank Bailouts ... you don't expect Issa to embark on prosecution of Wall Street ... his plate is full with the conservative prosecution and war on women ...

    It's called a *game-changer*
     
  14. thediplomat2.0

    thediplomat2.0 Banned

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    From my perspective, the ideal way of dealing with the banks once the financial crisis hit was through a combination of public and private initiated reorganization efforts. For example, the Cato Institute recommended the taking over of financial institutions in severe distress as conservatorships by the Federal government. From here, these institutions would be forced to declare chapter 11 bankruptcy. This would allow the government to sell off portions of the firms to creditors. In doing so, maybe the government could limit the amount of money spend on such an endeavor.

    Another approach would have been to impose a rule upon all banking institutions to deleverage by filing for chapter 7 bankruptcy. This would be a much more tasteful approach as it could be private sector initiated and would not lead to the layoffs that a chapter 11 bankruptcy would create. Insolvent banks would sell off their nonexempt financial assets to pay for the losses of their creditors, but also to generate necessary capital to liquidate their toxic assets to the fullest extent possible. Once complete, these banking institutions could resume operations, obviously as much diminished companies that would have to build themselves up, but nonetheless solvent.
     
  15. FrankCapua

    FrankCapua Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Don't tax "big oil"? Exxon Mobil paid income taxes of 42% in 2011.
     
  16. exotix

    exotix New Member Past Donor

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    No that's what they're supposed to pay ... with subsidies and tax-holes ... they paid zero and got a refund.
     
  17. The XL

    The XL Well-Known Member

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    Obama is owned by Wall Street, he won't be doing anything to them.
     
  18. thediplomat2.0

    thediplomat2.0 Banned

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    Let me actually affirm that neither chapter 7 nor chapter 11 bankruptcy involves the machinations that I provided. A new form of bankruptcy would have to be created to make the above approach legal.
     

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