The most extreme of the “right wing” candidates are proposing measures far too feeble to make a difference. Consider for example, the mortgage scandal. Where is the candidate that suggests that to fix our financial system, the bums (the entire financial sector of wall street and the regulators to which they are connected by a revolving door) need to be fired for incompetence and imprisoned for fraud?
A lot of people are proposing “solutions” for the mortgage crisis – but all these “solutions” propose that the people in charge of the too-big-to-fail banks and their regulators will remain powerful, important, and out of jail, despite demonstrated criminality and gross incompetence.
The ruling elite has lost the capacity to discipline itself. Power is slipping out of their feeble hands, falling into the street.
Our society has reached that awkward state, too late for reform, too soon to shoot the bums, but that stage is usually irreversible. It will eventually reach the time to shoot the bums stage.
Illegality by our elite is provoking illegality by ordinary middle class people.
As Market Ticker tells us:
This is where lawlessness leads us – to more lawlessness. Once you commit a lawless act against someone and are not punished for it you have invited them to retaliate with complete disregard for the law in their response. You are only required to deal ethically and morally with an ethical and moral entity across the table – one who ignores the law loses their right to demand that respect in return.
This mess begins with the securitization and sale of these mortgages in the first instance. It begins with whether or not the original banks actually transferred the notes at all (there’s plenty of evidence they did not) and whether the representations and warranties were complied with when these securities were sold to investors (we know in many cases – if not all – they were not, from FCIC sworn testimony.)
We have turned a blind eye to these lawless acts for the better part of a decade – not one indictment has issued for securities fraud over these matters. And it’s not just mortgages – we know banks were involved in ripping off communities such as Jefferson County, we know they are alleged to have been involved in rigging municipal debt offerings (which raised the cost of living for everyone through higher taxes) and yet not one bank officer or bank itself has been placed under indictment for any of it. Further, the FBI warned in 2004 of an “epidemic” (their words) of mortgage fraud, and instead of it being prosecuted the agents were pulled and reassigned.
We have had two sequential administrations – Bush and now Obama – that have intentionally refused to prosecute any of this lawless behavior. This refusal continues to this very day with admissions in depositions under oath of the commission of literal tens of thousands of felonies per month (each instance of falsely swearing before a court is a separate count of fraud upon the court and, in the case of “robosigning”, forgery – affixing a notary’s signature by other than the actual notary.) Yet despite this having been confirmed in multiple depositions going back several months not one indictment has issued thus far and Attorneys General talk about not wanting to “upset” the banks or the “economy.”