{"id":275732,"date":"2016-10-26T17:50:18","date_gmt":"2016-10-26T16:50:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=275732"},"modified":"2016-10-27T00:12:26","modified_gmt":"2016-10-26T23:12:26","slug":"aristocracys-immunity-prosecution-disturbs-tarps-g","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/editorials\/aristocracys-immunity-prosecution-disturbs-tarps-g\/","title":{"rendered":"Aristocracy’s Immunity From Prosecution Disturbs TARP’s I.G."},"content":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse<\/a><\/p>\n

For the very first time, on October 25th, a high federal official, the \u201cSIGTARP\u201d or Special Inspector General for the TARP program that bailed out the largest financial institutions and their top investors after the 2008 economic crash, is now making a specific proposal to hold the top-level crooks accountable for the incentive-systems they had put into place motivating their employees to pump-and-dump \u2018investments\u2019 during the growth-phase of the \u2018free market\u2019 Ponzi game that existed since 2000 when the end of the FDR-era Glass-Steagall Act and the start of totally unregulated financial marketeering went wild after 2005 and came crashing down in 2008. Despite the deregulation that Bill Clinton and George W. Bush (and both political parties in Congress) instituted, there still remained on the books some laws that high financial executives were breaking, but the SIGTARP has now come to an impasse in trying to obtain the evidence that will enable investigations to proceed against the top executives, and so she is coming out to urge cooperation of the rest of the government in order to enable it to happen. The SIGTARP, Christy Goldsmith Romero, urges<\/span><\/a>:<\/span><\/p>\n

A PROPOSAL TO BRING ACCOUNTABILITY TO THE \u201cINSULATED CEO\u201d<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

I propose that Congress remove the insulation around Wall Street CEOs and other high-level officials by requiring the CEO, CFO and certain other senior executives to sign an annual certification that they have conducted due diligence within their organization and can certify that that there is no criminal conduct or civil fraud in their organization.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

According to a Reuters report from Patrick Rucker, titled\u00a0\u201cWall St. Rescue Fund Watchdog Says U.S. Bank Heads Too Insulated\u201d<\/span><\/a>, “Wall Street executives are too shielded from prosecution and should answer for misdeeds committed by underlings, the watchdog for a multibillion-dollar [federal-government] bailout\u00a0[of the mega-banks] said on Wednesday.\u201d This article, dated Wednesday October 25th, continued: “Senior banking officials should attest each year that their companies are free of criminal fraud and civil abuse, said Christy Goldsmith\u00a0Romero, special inspector general of the Troubled Asset Relief Program. ‘Every executive should be able to conduct due diligence,’ she told Reuters in an interview. ‘If they are too big to do that, then they are too\u00a0big, period.\u2019”<\/span><\/p>\n

That policy, if honestly placed into practice, would likely result in lengthy prison terms for many of the people who are the big-dollar political donors; and so it can\u2019t possibly happen. But the very fact that someone in a federal-government capacity has finally said publicly that it needs to happen is shocking enough.<\/span><\/p>\n

The article continues: “U.S. taxpayers have invested more than $400 billion since the crisis, mostly in large Wall Street banks. Goldsmith Romero leads a staff of roughly 140 investigators examining possible abuse of the TARP program.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Romero on Wednesday sent to Congress her agency\u2019s 550-page investigative report (not linked-to by Reuters but here<\/span><\/a>) on that subject, and Rucker continued:\u00a0“Goldsmith Romero said the report also described cases where executives are complicit in fraud but the highest-ranking officials are walled off. ‘The knowledge stops,’ she said. ‘It resides at lower levels and stops there. And in many cases, I think that’s by intentional design.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The reporter, Mr. Rucker, makes clear how grave this situation really is:<\/span><\/p>\n

“Goldsmith Romero has never before suggested a reform of the financial system. She said that she felt compelled to speak up this time after facing so many cases where senior\u00a0executives seemed out of reach from prosecutions.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

So: although the aristocrats\u2019 immunity will not be removed, a federal official has now had the courage to state that it must be removed.<\/span><\/p>\n

Elizabeth Warren, a U.S. Senator who held off from making any endorsement during the Presidential primaries, is now campaigning for Hillary Clinton to become President \u2014 the same candidate that Wall Street executives are overwhelmingly funding to win the Presidency \u2014 but Warren is already verbally<\/i> supportive of what Romero is urging. On September 15th, David Dayen at The Intercept bannered,\u00a0“Elizabeth Warren Asks Newly Chatty\u00a0FBI Director to Explain Why DOJ\u00a0Didn\u2019t Prosecute Banksters\u201d<\/span><\/a>,\u00a0and he reported that on that day: “Warren released two highly provocative letters demanding some explanations. One is to\u00a0DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz, requesting a\u00a0review of how federal law enforcement managed to whiff on all 11 substantive criminal referrals submitted by the Financial Crisis Inquiry\u00a0Commission (FCIC), a panel set up to examine the causes of the 2008 meltdown. The other is\u00a0to FBI Director James Comey, asking him to release all FBI investigations and deliberations related to those referrals.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Warren\u2019s campaigning for Clinton, who has always been against accountability at the top in the U.S., is drastically inconsistent with this public display<\/i> of supporting such accountability, and is therefore untrustworthy.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I (who until now had always voted only for Democrats)\u00a0earlier reported<\/span><\/a>\u00a0the fundamental dishonesty of the Democratic Party\u2019s elite about precisely this matter:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

Privately, Obama had told Wall Street executives that he would protect them. On 27 March 2009, Obama assembled the top executives of the bailed-out financial firms in a secret meeting at the White House and he\u00a0assured them<\/span><\/a>\u00a0that he would cover their backs; he promised\u00a0\u201cMy administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks\u201d<\/span><\/a>. It\u2019s not on the White House website; it was leaked out, which is one of the reasons Obama hates leakers (including such heroes as Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, and Julian Assange). What the DOJ\u2019s IG indicated was, in effect, that Obama had kept his secret promise to them.<\/span><\/p>\n

Here<\/a><\/span>\u00a0is the context in which Obama said that (from page 234 of Ron Suskind\u2019s 2011 book,\u00a0Confidence Men<\/i><\/span><\/a>):<\/span><\/p>\n

The CEOs went into their traditional stance. \u201cIt\u2019s almost impossible to set caps <\/i>[to their bonuses]; it\u2019s never worked, and you lose your best people,\u201d said one. \u201cWe\u2019re competing for talent on an international market,\u201d said another. Obama cut them off.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBe careful how you make those statements, gentlemen. The public isn\u2019t buying that,\u201d he said. \u201cMy administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks.\u201d<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

It was an attention grabber, no doubt, especially that carefully chosen last word.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

But then Obama\u2019s flat tone turned to one of support, even sympathy. \u201cYou guys have an acute public relations problem that\u2019s turning into a political problem,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd I want to help. But you need to show that you get that this is a crisis and that everyone has to make some sacrifices.\u201d According to one of the participants, he then said, \u201cI\u2019m not out there to go after you. I\u2019m protecting you. But if I\u2019m going to shield you from public and congressional anger, you have to give me something to work with on these issues of compensation.\u201d<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

No suggestions were forthcoming from the bankers on what they might offer, and the president didn\u2019t seem to be championing any specific proposals. He had none: neither Geithner nor Summers believed compensation controls had any merit.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

After a moment, the tension in the room seemed to lift: the bankers realized he was talking about voluntary limits on compensation until the storm of public anger passed. It would be for show.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

He had been lying to the public, all along. Not only would he not prosecute the banksters, but he would treat them as if all they had was \u201can acute public relations problem that\u2019s turning into a political problem.\u201d And he thought that the people who wanted them prosecuted were like the KKK who had chased Blacks with pitchforks before lynching.\u00a0According to the DOJ<\/span><\/a>, their Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force (FFETF) was \u201cestablished by President Barack Obama in November 2009 to wage an\u00a0aggressive, coordinated and proactive effort to investigate and prosecute\u00a0financial crimes.\u201d But, according to the Department\u2019s IG<\/span><\/a>, it was all a fraud: a fraud that according to the DOJ itself had been going on since at least November 2009.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

If this matter that Romero is raising will be coming up during a Hillary Clinton Administration, the lying about it will simply continue, that\u2019s all. Barack Obama is no less vicious a liar than Hillary Clinton is, but she\u2019s not nearly as skillful a deceiver as he is, but that\u2019s the only real difference between them. She\u2019ll get the job done for the political megadonors, just the same, like she always has.<\/span><\/p>\n

However, if Donald Trump is to be President, then no one can intelligently say what his policy on accountability would be \u2014 other than that he\u2019ll work with Congress to get an independent prosecutor to investigate the criminal allegations against Hillary Clinton, including the ones that the untrustworthy FBI alleges that it has already investigated in an impartial manner. Regarding the specific issue that Romero is implicitly also urging, the reinstatement of the FDR-era Glass-Steagall Act, which Bill Clinton and the Republicans terminated in 2000 and which had limited bank-size, Trump is on record as demanding that it be done<\/span><\/a>. (That\u2019s one of the reasons why he has been receiving far less from Wall Street than Hillary Clinton has been. Wall Street loathes Trump. Almost everything in this \u2018election\u2019 is nearly the opposite of what is commonly presumed.)<\/span><\/p>\n

For the first time in recent memory, there really is an important difference between the two major-Party Presidential candidates. The last time it happened was 2000, when the far-right candidate, George W. Bush \u2018won\u2019. This time around, it seems likely to be repeated (and maybe this time by a landslide): the far-right candidate Hillary Clinton will probably win \u2014 same result, just different nominal parties this time around. In an important sense, this year\u2019s George W. Bush is Hillary Clinton. (He demanded regime-change in Iraq; she demands regime-change in Russia.) This year\u2019s Al Gore is Donald Trump. Except that this time the big issue isn\u2019t global warming, but instead nuclear war against Russia. Of course, GW Bush was bad on both issues (denying climate-change, and demanding \u201cregime-change in Iraq\u201d where the Moscow-friendly dictator Saddam Hussein ruled). But so too is Hillary<\/span><\/a> (who followed up her ardent advocacy for regime-change in Iraq, by regime-change in Moscow-friendly Libya, and regime-change in Moscow-friendly Ukraine, and regime-change in Moscow-allied Syria; and who is now pushing for regime-change in Russia itself, and thus unchallenged U.S.-aristocracy control over every other nation\u2019s aristocracy).<\/span><\/p>\n

All of this election-year, the supposedly big issue was bigotry, but the thing that\u2019s actually destroying this country and the entire world is class \u2014 rich versus poor; the super-rich crushing everyone else \u2014 and the \u2018news\u2019 media are controlled not by the many poor but by the very few super-rich. And this is why Romero\u2019s call for justice is, sadly, just a cry into the wind.<\/span><\/p>\n

Regarding politics, one has no reason to trust what one hears from the politicians,\u00a0 <\/span>reads in the newspapers and magazines, or hears or sees on radio and TV. The elite scams are overwhelming from all of the Establishment sides. But finally, an obscure federal official, Ms. Romero, the SIGTARP, has spoken her conscience, despite knowing that she\u2019ll only be punished for it once she\u2019s out of office. Unlike the Democratic Party politicians, she\u2019s not grandstanding. She\u2019s instead truly heroic, speaking truth to power, and really meaning it \u2014 and ready to face the consequences for having done it.<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s remarkable. It\u2019s Quixotic, in a really heroic way: pathbreaking, even if that path leads only to a brick wall. At least it will expose to the public the extent to which the system itself is their enemy. Not Mexicans. Not Blacks. Not Whites. Not Muslims. Not Christians. Not Jews. Not Russians. Not men. Not women. Not even (though bigots are dangerous fools) bigots against any such group. The system, right here in the U.S., needs to be changed. Nothing can authentically be blamed on any \u201cnot us\u201d target \u2014 either for invasion, or otherwise.<\/span><\/p>\n

Romero wants to cancel the immunity of aristocrats \u2014 the people who control this country<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of\u00a0 They\u2019re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010<\/i><\/span><\/a>,<\/i> and of<\/span> \u00a0<\/i>CHRIST\u2019S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity<\/i><\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse For the very first time, on October 25th, a high federal official, the \u201cSIGTARP\u201d or Special Inspector General for the TARP program that bailed out the largest financial institutions and their top investors after the 2008 economic crash, is now making a specific proposal to hold the top-level crooks accountable for the incentive-systems […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1254,"featured_media":270698,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[461],"tags":[115,30,698,804,6257,49,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-275732","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-editorials","8":"tag-barack-obama","9":"tag-big-brother","10":"tag-hillary-clinton","11":"tag-politics-2","12":"tag-trump","13":"tag-usa-news","14":"tag-white-house"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275732","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1254"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=275732"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275732\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/270698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}