AMERICAN CANNIBALS: THE GOLDEN AGE OF WHITE-COLLAR CROOKS

[kpete]

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1
A Slow-Motion Looting

OVER THE LAST TWO YEARS, nearly every institution of American life has taken on the unmistakable stench of moral rot. Corporate behemoths like Boeing and Wells Fargo have traded blue-chip credibility for white-collar callousness. Elite universities are selling admission spots to the highest Hollywood bidder. Silicon Valley unicorns have revealed themselves as long cons (Theranos), venture-capital cremation devices (Uber, WeWork) or straightforward comic book supervillains (Facebook). Every week unearths a cabinet-level political scandal that would have defined any other presidency. From the blackouts in California to the bloated bonuses on Wall Street to the entire biography of Jeffrey Epstein, it is impossible to look around the country and not get the feeling that elites are slowly looting it.

And why wouldn’t they? The criminal justice system has given up all pretense that the crimes of the wealthy are worth taking seriously. In January 2019, white-collar prosecutions fell to their lowest level since researchers started tracking them in 1998. Even within the dwindling number of prosecutions, most are cases against low-level con artists and small-fry financial schemes. Since 2015, criminal penalties levied by the Justice Department have fallen from $3.6 billion to roughly $110 million. Illicit profits seized by the Securities and Exchange Commission have reportedly dropped by more than half. In 2018, a year when nearly 19,000 people were sentenced in federal court for drug crimes alone, prosecutors convicted just 37 corporate criminals who worked at firms with more than 50 employees.

With few exceptions, the only rich people America prosecutes anymore are those who victimize their fellow elites. Pharma frat boy Martin Shkreli, to pick just one example, wasn’t prosecuted for hiking the price of a drug used to treat HIV from $13.50 to $750 per pill. He went to prison for scamming investors in a hedge fund scheme years before. Meanwhile, in 2016, the CEO whose company experienced the deadliest mining disaster since 1970 served less than one year in prison and paid a fine of 1.4 percent of his salary and stock bonuses the previous year. Why? Because overseeing a company that ignores warnings and causes the deaths of workers, even 29 of them, is a misdemeanor.

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LOTS MORE:
https://www.huffpost.com/highline/article/white-collar-crime/

[Hermit-The-Prog]

1. Mobsters are running the country ...

It's an international criminal organization and we're the latest undergoing takeover.

[Hearthrob]

2. I am too stunned to exhale.

Just read this whole article. We are doomed.
I can't envision a democracy fixing this.
Only autocrats have paid attention.

[Baitball Blogger]

3. I was just thinking about how things have changed drastically.

The government agencies that use to protect THE PEOPLE from scam artists and fraudsters no longer do their jobs on our behalf. It's like that whole side of their purpose and objective has been delegated to private lawfirms.

Today, if Robert Vesco was still working his scams, the $200,000 donation he gave to Nixon would have taken.