An Obama Economic Team to Sweep Wall Street Clean

[MachineGhost]

What did these men and women collectively achieve during Obama’s first term? A remarkably Wall Street-friendly set of policies. To recap, the big banks continued to be bailed out; the weak Dodd-Frank financial reform act continues to get watered down as its specific rules are hammered out; not one Wall Street trader, banker or executive has been held criminally liable for actions leading up to the financial crisis; and the Standard & Poor’s 500 (SPX) has doubled since its nadir in March 2009. The Federal Reserve also did its part: pumping trillions of dollars into the capital markets to keep interest rates at rock- bottom levels (a gift to Wall Street and a tax on savers).

A pretty amazing list of favors, if you think about it. Yet Wall Street clearly thinks it is owed even more. The antipathy between the financial sector and Obama has never been greater. Eight of Republican challenger Mitt Romney’s 10 top donors in the election were Wall Street firms. (Meanwhile, the markets responded to Obama’s re-election with a 400-plus point drop.)

So, President Obama, the time has come for you to do in your second term what many people hoped you would do in the first: Institute meaningful reform on Wall Street. An essential first step is to sweep out the remaining vestiges of the Rubin- Altman nexus. Bring in a new group of people who not only understand how Wall Street really works but also have dedicated much of their lives to changing it.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-11-1 ... clean.html

[moda0306]

not one Wall Street trader, banker or executive has been held criminally liable for actions leading up to the financial crisis

Has America degenerated to the point where you can criminally hold someone liable if they don't break any laws, but you don't like them anyways?

Isn't fraud a crime?

[notsheigetz]

Has America degenerated to the point where you can criminally hold someone liable if they don't break any laws, but you don't like them anyways?

I think America has degenerated to the point where there are so many laws on the books that any American can be successfully prosecuted if government officials set their mind to it.

[Pointedstick]

not one Wall Street trader, banker or executive has been held criminally liable for actions leading up to the financial crisis

Has America degenerated to the point where you can criminally hold someone liable if they don't break any laws, but you don't like them anyways?

Isn't fraud a crime?

I've wondered for a long time why fraud isn't a perfectly fine vehicle for holding the hucksters responsible. It seems to me that there was plenty of fraudulent activity going on.

[Benko]

Can you seriously believe a chicago style pol is going to clean up anything???

[RuralEngineer]

My personal favorite in the litany of evils that Obama allowed to be perpetrated on his first term was the doubling of the S&P 500.  What horror!  Apparently only the vile capitalists have 401k's.

[WiseOne]

Check out the Frontline "Money, Power, and Wall Street" episodes.  I bought the episodes on itunes but you can get the audio versions for free.

Their take is that indeed it would have been easy to punish the large banks and investment firms for using credit default swaps irresponsibly to circumvent insurance regulations, and for predatory lending not just to mortgage borrowers but to municipalities and international institutions.  But, Tim Geitner and the Obama administration were afraid that going after the banks would have destabilized the financial markets even more. You can make a case that the market's miraculous recovery in 2009/2010 while the rest of the economy was in shambles, was almost entirely due to a giant free gift from the government, paid for by us.  It's ironic that Wall Street completely forgot about the TARP bailouts and the remarkable lack of attached strings.