When he was running for President, among the many empty promises made to the country was the assurance he would end “too big to fail.”
One of the central goals of President Obama’s regulatory overhaul plan is to rein in banks and financial institutions that are “too big to fail.” The meltdown that followed the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers exactly one year ago, followed by the nightmarish spectacle of bailing out reckless giants like American International Group and Citigroup, are things that policymakers never want to see again.
“Too big to fail isn’t a policy; it’s a problem,” Ben S. Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, has often remarked.
But at least for the moment, Too Big To Fail is an even bigger problem now than it was before the crisis. And while Mr. Obama has offered two basic ideas to address it, his economic team has yet to offer anything close to a concrete plan.
To that end, the democrats foisted Dodd-rank upon us. Not only did it not end “too big to fail,” it made things worse. Small banks are dying out, and big banks are growing in size.
The Dodd-Frank Act was supposed to end investors’ perception that the largest financial firms are “too big to fail” (TBTF) and remove the risk that a large institutional failure could create financial instability unless the government protected investors from loss. Four years on, Dodd-Frank has imposed huge regulatory burdens that are sapping economic growth, but it has not ended TBTF or the possibility of taxpayer bailouts.
Obama’s dereliction is so “transparent”, if you will, that the left found itself in a uandry. At HuffPo, Eric Zuesse asked “Why Won’t Obama Go After Criminal Bankers? When it comes to Wall St crimes, Obama is literally looking the other way.
On 24 September 2013, Syracuse University’s “TRAC Reports,” which is the only organization that tabulates the federal government’s prosecutions of elite financial crimes, headlined “Slump in FBI White Collar Crime Prosecutions,” and reported that “prosecutions of white collar criminals recommended by the FBI are substantially down during the first ten months of Fiscal Year 2013.” This was especially so in the Wall Street area: “In the last year, the judicial District Court recording the largest projected drop in the rate of white collar crime prosecutions — 27.8 percent — was the Southern District of New York (Manhattan).”
On other words, the investigations are there. The criminals referrals are there. Obama is protecting them. 95% of the economic gains went to the 1% and that’s precisely what Obama wants.
Salon was even more outraged:
PBS Frontline’s stunning report last night on why the Obama administration has refused to prosecute any Wall Streeter involved in the financial meltdown doesn’t just implicitly indict a political and financial press that utterly abdicated its responsibility to cover such questions. It also — and as importantly — exposes the genuinely radical jurisprudential ideology that Wall Street campaign contributors have baked into America’s “justice” system. Indeed, after watching the piece, you will understand that the word “justice” belongs in quotes thanks to an Obama administration that has made a mockery of the name of a once hallowed executive department.
Reagan prosecuted thousands of bankers on the S&L scandal. Obama has given more matches and fuel to those who burned down our financial institutions and left countless billions of our money to go up in smoke. It is arguably the biggest malfeasance of Obama’s tenure and no one talks about it.
We have arrived at a point in history when it was never more clear that there is a two-tiered justice system (maybe more than that). Hillary Clinton on July 25
I am confident that I never sent or received any information that was classified at the time it was sent and received.
As events have proven, that patently false. As I wrote, Scooter Libby went to prison for less than what Clinton has done. 671 of Clinton’s emails contained classified information. For nearly the same actions, Thomas Drake and David Petraeus faced charges.
Unfortunately, the laws are different for the Clinton’s than they are for us. FBI Director James Comey provides this assurance:
This is one I am following very closely and get briefed on regularly. I’m confident we have the people and resources to do it in the way I believe we do all our work, which is promptly, professionally and independently.
But there is a fly that’s bigger than the ointment:
Comey, a Republican, would approve any initial recommendation for a prosecution, but it would be left to Attorney General Loretta Lynch, a Democrat, to decide whether to proceed.
National Security Attorney Edward MacMahon opines:
MacMahon said that if a lower-level government employee “cooked up their own home server” and received emails containing classified information, “they would have already been arrested.”
Then he adds:
I don’t think there’s any chance of them charging Hillary Clinton.
She’s too big to jail. Not just physically.
There is so much talk about wealth inequality and income inequality. Both have gotten worse under the Obama regime. Justice inequality is about to join them. Barack Obama is no Ronald Reagan. He can’t even fill Richard Nixon’s shoes. Bill Clinton did say “There’s one set of rules for us and another set for everybody else.” Why not add one more piece of Obama’s legacy on the top of the funeral pyre Obama is making of American integrity.
Years ago I asserted that Obama would do for the US what he did for Parc Grove. I could not have been more clairvoyant.
DrJohn has been a health care professional for more than 30 years. In addition to clinical practice he has done extensive research and has published widely with over 70 original articles and abstracts in the peer-reviewed literature. DrJohn is well known in his field and has lectured on every continent except for Antarctica. He has been married to the same wonderful lady for over 30 years and has three kids- two sons, both of whom are attorneys and one daughter on her way into the field of education.
DrJohn was brought up with the concept that one can do well if one is prepared to work hard but nothing in life is guaranteed.
Except for liberals being foolish.