What happened to us? Why did our investigative agencies stop from going after financial crime,
until it was too late? When did fraudsters suddenly get acceptance? Was it Supreme Court rulings? Was it that they were better at spreading the wealth?
These links, two from DU, are what drives my questions:
AMERICAN CANNIBALS: THE GOLDEN AGE OF WHITE-COLLAR CROOKS
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.
https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=12974625
Unlike Madoff, The SEC Really Went After Vesco
2011 article.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/williampbarrett/2011/11/02/unlike-madoff-the-sec-really-went-after-vesco/#3c6ed08f5e3c
It probably won't be until the 22d century--if even then--that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission lives down its repeated failure to stop Bernard L. Madoff as he pulled off history's biggest Ponzi fraud. The agency's own inspector general says SEC staffers botched eight different credible tips over a 16-year period about his $65 billion criminal wrongdoing, which has led to a 150-year prison sentence. To put it bluntly, for whatever reason--reputation, political clout, intimidation, budget cutbacks, timid leadership, agency incompetence--Madoff was given kid-glove treatment.
The contrast couldn't be sharper with the SEC's handling four decades ago of allegations involving a big-time rogue of a different era: Robert L. Vesco. As it got wind he might have looted $125 million from offshore mutual funds, the agency repeatedly questioned Vesco under oath and subpenaed hundreds of boxes of documents. It ignored his invocation of political clout--he made a $200,000 "campaign contribution" to a crony of President Nixon, hoping to deride the investigation, but which ended up financing the Watergate break-in. The SEC ultimately sued Vesco for securities law violations. The agency so stepped up the heat that Vesco fled the country in 1973 ahead of a criminal indictment, never to return.
How Ponzi made his money and how his name became infamous
https://www.democraticunderground.com/10181316664
= new reply since forum marked as read
