The article in the url below contains an update on the prosecution by the Obama administration of the recent financial crisis (Issues: Financial Crisis, p235):
“Four years after the disintegration of the financial system, Americans have, rightfully, a gnawing feeling that justice has not been served. Claims of financial fraud against companies like Citigroup and Bank of America have been settled for pennies on the dollar, with no admission of wrongdoing. Executives who ran companies that made, packaged and sold trillions of dollars in toxic mortgages and mortgage-backed securities remain largely unscathed. … In contrast, after the savings-and-loan debacle of the late 1980s, more than 1,000 bank and thrift executives were convicted of felonies.”
Given the level of resources invested in solving the problem, it is not clear that any of this is likely to change:
“Meager resources have been applied to investigate the financial assault on our country, which wiped away trillions of dollars in household wealth and has resulted in 24 million people jobless or underemployed. The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, which Congress created to examine the full scope of the crisis, was given a budget of $9.8 million — roughly one-seventh of the budget of Oliver Stone’s “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.” The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations did its work on the financial crisis with only a dozen or so Congressional staff members.”
The author, a former state treasurer of California, was the Chair of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission.
Have a good weekend
David
Instructor Teaching Site: http://www.sagepub.com/strategiccsr/
The library of CSR Newsletters are archived at: http://strategiccsr-sage.blogspot.com/
Will Wall Street Ever Face Justice?
By Phil Angelides
March 2, 2012
The New York Times
Late Edition – Final
A23
