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[Bauglir]

No, I don't have any particular aspirations to cleverness on account of my perception of this particular problem. It's just that nobody made any noises about punishing folks before the Tea Party got elected, either. I have no reason to believe we would have gotten anything more than the whine of "tough choices" in bailing banks out that we did beforehand, particularly if the Tea Party were defeated in the elections; consider what their campaigns were like at the time, after all. A lot of it was specifically attacking the bailout. In hindsight, of course, it's easy to see that they never had any intention of implementing fiscal conservatism at the expense of businesses, but had they never seized any power whatever you can bet the narrative we'd have been sold is that the election was an endorsement of forgiving corporate fuckups.

[RedKing]

For your perusal:

2011 Matt Taibbi article about why Wall Street didn't get punished.

Indeed, the shocking pattern of nonenforcement with regard to Wall Street is so deeply ingrained in Washington that it raises a profound and difficult question about the very nature of our society: whether we have created a class of people whose misdeeds are no longer perceived as crimes, almost no matter what those misdeeds are. The SEC and the Justice Department have evolved into a bizarre species of social surgeon serving this nonjailable class, expert not at administering punishment and justice, but at finding and removing criminal responsibility from the bodies of the accused.

2013 Glenn Greenwald article about more or less the same thing.

The harms from this refusal to hold Wall Street accountable are the same generated by the general legal immunity the US political culture has vested in its elites. Just as was true for the protection of torturers and illegal eavesdroppers, it ensures that there are no incentives to avoid similar crimes in the future. It is an injustice in its own right to allow those with power and wealth to commit destructive crimes with impunity. It subverts democracy and warps the justice system when a person's treatment under the law is determined not by their acts but by their power, position, and prestige. And it exposes just how shameful is the American penal state by contrasting the immunity given to the nation's most powerful with the merciless and brutal punishment meted out to its most marginalized.

See, what you're conflating is punishment for crimes already committed and legislation to make it harder to commit those crimes. Yes, increased regulatory oversight was probably a dead deal after the 2010 elections. But prosecution for violating numerous laws ALREADY ON THE BOOKS falls to the executive branch. There's nothing the Tea Party (or anyone else) could have done legislatively to hamper that, save for possibly cutting DoJ funding.

And yes, Big O did talk a good talk about punishing Wall Street. And then his Justice Department did jack-all about it. Because, y'know....need those campaign donations in 2012.

(response to removed post removed)

[Toady One]

I've trimmed a few personal attacks.  Maybe fewer than I should have.  In any case, you don't need to direct attacks at each other over this, unless one of you is a banker or high in the government or something.  Even in that case, your continued restraint on this forum would be appreciated.

[RedKing]

Let me be the first to apologize. I should know better than to retaliate.

And I used to be really low in the government.... >_>
EDIT: And my SO manages a credit-union branch.

But I don't think that registers high enough to give us the "Get Out Of Jail Free" card.

[mainiac]

I tend to lose my temper about this subject a little too easily 

I spent a LOT of time in 2010 trying to convince people that the elections were important in the hot summer sun.

[RedKing]

And they were important, in a lot of ways. I'm just not convinced that they had much impact on the lack of Wall Street prosecutions. As much as I hate to say it, it's going to take a modern-day Huey Long. Which isn't all it's cracked up to be.

[Bauglir]

Oh, man, yeah, the elections were absolutely important. The failure to do things like "not elect Tea Partiers" has fucked the nation over tremendously, as it does any time people get elected on the platform "I believe government doesn't work, and if elected I intend to prove it". Sorry for implying otherwise - all I meant is that I don't see the votes having an impact on this particular issue.

[scriver]

Oh, man, yeah, the elections were absolutely important. The failure to do things like "not elect Tea Partiers" has fucked the nation over tremendously, as it does any time people get elected on the platform "I believe government doesn't work, and if elected I intend to prove it".

The tightwing coalition that ruled Sweden the last 8 years decided they were going to that to our work agency ("the Word Distributer"), which was already hugely unliked to begin with so it's not like people were going to be super upset. So they began by trying to prove that private owned agencies were much more efficient (as is always the rightwing mantra) and cut their budget and workforce (and geographic availability too as a consequence), while at the same time making the Work Distributer pay huge grants to private agencies and broadening WD's tasks from "in the area of jobs and job training" to handling the home situation of fresh immigrants and their integration process, like some sort of general social worker. Basically overloading everyone with work and destroying much of the existing organisation structure.

And yeah, the WD still managed to outperform the private agencies in "% of clients employmented", by the way. Lots of red money wasted, though. Hurray for "small government"!

[SalmonGod]

True, but they're also vastly more capable of abuses of the system.

An individual corporation is capable of more abuses, then any small business.  But small businesses can be scumbaggy too, just in a more fragmented fashion.

Key word here is CAN be.  But isn't there the very significant distinction that the vast majority of large corporations are publicly traded, which puts executive decision makers in a position of legal obligation to put shareholder profit ahead of all other considerations?  So if the company can increase profits by fucking people over somehow and executive decision makers deliberately choose not to, they can get in trouble with the law?  Unless I'm severely misinformed here somehow.

Small businesses CAN be scumbaggy, but my understanding is they also have a lot more freedom to avoid being scumbaggy if this is how the private ownership chooses to operate.

[misko27]

True, but they're also vastly more capable of abuses of the system. I think that's one of the core differences between liberals and conservatives in the US -- whether government should be policing those corporations when they fuck people over.

I disagree. I believe that the essential difference between liberals and conservatives is simple:

CONSERVATIVE, n. A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them with others.

[Reelya]

And they were important, in a lot of ways. I'm just not convinced that they had much impact on the lack of Wall Street prosecutions. As much as I hate to say it, it's going to take a modern-day Huey Long. Which isn't all it's cracked up to be.

The wall street guys, the regulators and Washington lobbyists for both parties plus federal appointments relating to finance are like a revolving door. They're all buddies. It doesn't matter who is elected.

Also, the Department of Justice should handle prosecutions, not congress. Separation of powers and such. The fact that there are congressional investigations that go nowhere is actually a sign that the branches which are supposed to enforce the laws are not doing their job. Congress isn't law-enforcement. Congressional investigations should focus on corruption within the DoJ and SEC.

[RedKing]

And now for a more pressing question:

Why does Mitch McConnell increasingly look like a photoshop joke gone horribly wrong?

Spoiler: It's like a white guy's face cropped onto a slightly shorter white guy. (click to show/hide)

[SalmonGod]

It's that neck.  Like he failed to swallow a beanbag.

[Karlito]

Getting old sucks.

[penguinofhonor]

.