Matt Taibbi: Bush Was Tougher On Corporate America Than Obama Is

JamesL

JamesL

AMY GOODMAN: Who was tougher on corporate America, President Obama or President Bush?

MATT TAIBBI: Oh, Bush, hands down. And this is an important point to make, because if you go back to the early 2000s, think about all these high-profile cases: Adelphia, Enron, Tyco, WorldCom, Arthur Andersen. All of these companies were swept up by the Bush Justice Department. And what’s interesting about this is that you can see a progression. If you go back to the savings and loan crisis in the late '80s, which was an enormous fraud problem, but it paled in comparison to the subprime mortgage crisis, we put about 800 people in jail during—in the aftermath of that crisis. You fast-forward 10 or 15 years to the accounting scandals, like Enron and Alelphia and Tyco, we went after the heads of some of those companies. It wasn't as vigorous as the S&L prosecutions, but we at least did it. At least George Bush recognized the symbolic importance of showing ordinary Americans that justice is blind, right?

Fast-forward again to the next big crisis, and how many people have we got—have we actually put in jail? Zero. And this was a crisis that was much huger in scope than the S&L crisis or the accounting crisis. I mean, it wiped out 40 percent of the world’s wealth, and nobody went to jail, so that we’re now in a place where we don’t even recognize the importance of keeping up appearances when it comes to making things look equal.

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You can basically take all of the worst qualities of republicans, Crony capitalism, NSA, useless wars, drone strikes, big money running the show, and in almost every single instance liberals are worse, even though they are the ones who constantly use it as a wedge issue.

I guess to be fair, republicans dont exactly have a stellar record when it comes to fiscal conaservatism, but Americans have become so goddamn stupid that provided a liberal politician gives a negative quality lip service, its good enough for them, and there is no one who is better at demgoguery than them, so they are actually able to dupe the public into thinking they are the ones taking care of the little guy.
 
Been saying it all along. Had a republican been in office under the EXACT same circumstances the leftist mainsteam media would be losing their god damn minds over this issue. Not one, not one single person held to account. I mean all they did the ruin the economies, plural, economies of the entire fucking world. Not only have there been no prosecutions of these people, they have been rewarded and the free money from the fed is still rolling. Contrast this to the S&L crisis during the 80's, a mere pimple on the ass of what happened in 2008.

http://billmoyers.com/2013/09/17/hu...son-during-the-last-fraud-fueled-bank-crisis/

William Black: Sure. The savings and loan debacle was one-seventieth the size of the current crisis, both in terms of losses and the amount of fraud. In that crisis, the savings and loan regulators made over 30,000 criminal referrals, and this produced over 1,000 felony convictions in cases designated as “major” by the Department of Justice. But even that understates the degree of prioritization, because we, the regulators, worked very closely with the FBI and the Justice Department to create a list of the top 100 — the 100 worst fraud schemes. They involved roughly 300 savings and loans and 600 individuals, and virtually all of those people were prosecuted. We had a 90 percent conviction rate, which is the greatest success against elite white-collar crime (in terms of prosecution) in history.

In the current crisis, that same agency, the Office of Thrift Supervision, which was supposed to regulate, among others, Countrywide, Washington Mutual and IndyMac — which collectively made hundreds of thousands of fraudulent mortgage loans — made zero criminal referrals. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which is supposed to regulate the largest national banks, made zero criminal referrals. The Federal Reserve appears to have made zero criminal referrals
 
Not only who was in power but who the perps were.

In the S&L fiasco, a lot of the perps were in Texas.
In this one, a lot of the perps are in New York.

I can do the math on that.
 
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