Saving For a Space Ship Posted October 5, 2018 Report Share Posted October 5, 2018 America's new aristocracy live in an accountability-free zone https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/05/americas-new-aristocracy-live-accountability-free-zone-david-sirota Quote ...Next up came the 10-year anniversary of the financial crisis – a meltdown that laid waste to the global economy, while providing lucrative taxpayer-funded bailouts to Wall Street firms. To mark the occasion, the three men on whose watch it occurred – Fed chair Ben Bernanke, Bush treasury secretary Hank Paulson and Obama treasury secretary Tim Geithner – did not offer an apology, but instead promised that another financial crisis will eventually occur, and they demanded lawmakers give public officials more power to bail out big banks in the future. In a similar bipartisan show of unity, former Trump economic adviser Gary Cohn gave an interview in which he asked “Who broke the law?” – the implication being that no Wall Street executives were prosecuted for their role in the meltdown because no statutes had been violated. That suggestion, of course, is undermined by banks’ own admissions that they defrauded investors (that includes admissions of fraud from Goldman Sachs – the very bank that Cohn himself ran during the crisis). Nonetheless, Obama’s attorney general, Eric Holder – who has now re-joined his old corporate defense law firm – subsequently backed Cohn up by arguing that nobody on Wall Street committed an offense that could have been successfully prosecuted in a court of law. Meanwhile, JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon garnered non-Onion headlines floating the idea of running for president – a reminder that a decade after his firm played a central role in destroying countless Americans’ economic lives, he remains not only unincarcerated and gainfully employed, but so reputationally unscathed that he is seen as a serious White House candidate. Again, the message came through: nobody who engineered the financial crisis will pay any real price for wreaking so much havoc. Then as Hurricane Florence provided the latest illustration of climate change’s devastation, ExxonMobil marched into the supreme court to demand an end to a state probe of its role denying and suppressing climate science. Backed by 11 Republican attorneys general, the fossil fuel giant had reason to feel emboldened in its appeal for immunity: despite investigative reporting detailing the company’s prior knowledge of fossil fuel’s role in climate change, its executives had already convinced the Securities and Exchange Commission to shut down a similar probe... Quote Link to post Share on other sites
dougless Posted October 5, 2018 Report Share Posted October 5, 2018 I don't think its just the USA, Fred Goodwin hasn't been charged with anything yet..... Quote Link to post Share on other sites
InlikeFlynn Posted October 5, 2018 Report Share Posted October 5, 2018 (edited) 3 minutes ago, dougless said: I don't think its just the USA, Fred Goodwin hasn't been charged with anything yet..... Far from it, in fact he was given a large lump sum and vast pension along with police and legal protection to keep his name out of the press and the righteously angry public out of his herbaceous borders. "To those that have shall be given" Edited October 5, 2018 by InlikeFlynn Quote Link to post Share on other sites
cashinmattress Posted October 5, 2018 Report Share Posted October 5, 2018 Just aristocrats in the UK have been for many centuries? Quote Link to post Share on other sites
stop_the_craziness Posted October 5, 2018 Report Share Posted October 5, 2018 (edited) 2 hours ago, InlikeFlynn said: Far from it, in fact he was given a large lump sum and vast pension along with police and legal protection to keep his name out of the press and the righteously angry public out of his herbaceous borders. "To those that have shall be given" After I watched that recent BBC documentary I did wonder what it's like to be Fred Goodwin. All that money and protection, but you are a pointless pariah and have no real purpose in the world at all. For someone who had a massive "masters of the universe" ego it must be a weird existence. A bit like being dead whilst you are still alive. I wonder what he does all day. Edited October 5, 2018 by stop_the_craziness bad grammar Quote Link to post Share on other sites
nightowl Posted October 5, 2018 Report Share Posted October 5, 2018 28 minutes ago, stop_the_craziness said: After I watched that recent BBC documentary I did wonder what it's like to be Fred Goodwin. All that money and protection, but you are a pointless pariah and have no real purpose in the world at all. For someone who had a massive "masters of the universe" ego it must be a weird existence. A bit like being dead whilst you are still alive. I wonder what he does all day. My guess is play golf maybe. It must be weird even then, as soon as you tell anyone your name their immediate thought is "the guy who f****d up big style!" Quote Link to post Share on other sites
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