Obama: The American people see not everybody is following the rules. Wall Street

[gateley]

is an example.

:thumbsup:

(From his presser going on now.)

[Avalux]

1. Good! Keep it up Mr. President....

I want to hear more of that!

[justiceischeap]

2. Yes, Wall St. is an example, another example would be Congress

but hey, what do I know, I'm not one of the 1% and I like Apple products (which, apparently makes me evil).

[gateley]

3. He's been straight about the Congress, too - good showing.

And I'm an Apple SNOB, so I'm more evil than you! :hi:

[PragmaticLiberal]

4. Obama: (and I'm paraphrasing) I put my butt on the line to stabilize the financial industry.

[Occulus]

5. turn 'stabilize' to 'enable' and you get truth

[Name removed]

6. Deleted message

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[GodlessBiker]

7. So why, then, have there been no prosecutions?

[flamingdem]

8. You can't prosecute for immorality, only for law breaking nt

[GodlessBiker]

10. So the "rules" he was referring to are moral rules not legal rules?

When you say someone isn't following the rules, I don't think people mean by that moral rules. I think they mean rules which require sanction by an enforcing body.

If you are playing a card game and accuse someone of not playing by the rules, you don't mean it as a moral offense. You mean it as doing something which you cannot legitimately do in cards and that you must stop or leave the game.

[flamingdem]

13. If there were legal grounds I'm sure we'd know about it by now

I don't recall reading that there are legal grounds to prosecute though I read the Goldman Sachs CEO was lawyering up.

[GodlessBiker]

16. You're sure we would know about it? Really? Really?

[kenny blankenship]

17. The cynicism has no bottom.

[woo me with science]

21. Oh my fucking god.

"If there were legal grounds I'm sure we'd know about it by now."

You do realize that our dear Third Way President has been pressuring state attorneys general for settlements that allow the banks to avoid any current and future criminal investigations, right?

[Cherchez la Femme]

28. Look forward, dumb man!

Sets a precedent for every crime to be ignored because it's 'past'.

Well, only if you're already rich... like having shares in for-profit prisons.

[jwirr]

29. Unfortunately we have been removing the laws that regulate banking

and wall street for the last 30 years. Are there any laws for them anymore?

[gateley]

9. He answered that. The financial community is very clever and

knows how to get around the rules. They were immoral, not necessarily illegal.

Didn't you hear him say that?

[emcguffie]

11. Yes he said it, but that's just a dodge. That's what I think.

Because, although the environment was much looser than before the Glass-Steagall Act was dumped, financial institutions did break rules. They did break laws. It may have been the loosening of laws that started the whole shebang, but when things got going, according to some attorneys general, laws were certainly broken and fraud was perpetrated.

[Myrina]

12. That's the same excuse Dimson gave for not getting bin Laden ...

... he's a tricky bugger, sneaky, clever ... or in other words I'm not looking for him.
Same with this POTUS and the Wall Street terrorists, methinks.

[flamingdem]

14. Investigate. Do the work. Bring your results back to DU. Until you do there

is no way to argue this point.

[Myrina]

31. DU is a DISCUSSION BOARD. Full of OPINIONS.

And I am entitled to mine. Correct? Until it's something else, bite me.

[kenny blankenship]

15. Exactly. If laws have been broken the Administration must follow the law and prosecute.

The fault is with the bankers if they have committed fraud. But if the President's Justice Dept. doesn't prosecute these crimes, then the fault is with him equally.

If no laws were broken because the laws now allow fraud (the escape clause of the centrist cynics), then the fault is with a corrupt political system, and a people who refuse to act accordingly.

[flamingdem]

18. Can you tell us who broke what law? No one here seems to know nt

[woo me with science]

25. Kinda hard to find out

when your President is actively pushing for settlements to allow the banks to avoid criminal inquiries.

:eyes:

[kenny blankenship]

30. Accounting Control Fraud has occurred when bank officials mislead shareholders & regulators

regarding the capitalization of their banks and their risk of exposure to loss. When bank CEOs forge ahead with loan underwriting for mortgages for which the borrower frequently has no demonstrated income to pay back the loan, and then sell these mortgages to suckers, representing them as safe as government securities, through some forumla that they can't explain even to themselves, they are committing fraud. They aren't just being incompetent at their jobs, but instead pushing growth of lending in the short run, ignoring the inevitable defaults in the long run, for the sake of their next quarter's bonus. When CEOs leverage their banks' deposits against derivative instruments that they can't explain but which expose them to potentially astronomical losses, they are again committing accounting control fraud, misrepresenting the risk their institutions are exposed to.

Somehow the Dept of Justice of Ronald Reagan, of all people, was able to do what the Obama Administration can't bring itself to do. It prosecuted S&L CEOs for accounting control fraud. The Congress wrote and Regan signed a law to make it easier for executive branch agencies to deal with criminally run banks with appropriate force and quickness.

The Prompt Corrective Action law ( USC Title 12, 1831
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/12/usc_sec_12_00001831---o000-.html should have been invoked by the Obama Administration if it cared about following the law and ending the reign of corruption. But Obama would rather go down in history as an accomplice than a reformer. The cesspool awaits and will claim its own.

[Courtesy Flush]

22. They don't always break laws

They don't need to. They write the laws.

[Modern_Matthew]

24. Throw them in prison, anyway. No tears from the 99% will be shed. nt

[nichomachus]

19. Dear President Obama, you're part of the problem

or don't you get that?

[Ganja Ninja]

20. Too bad Obama's Attorney General Eric Holder can't see it.

Where are the perp walks Mr President?

[hifiguy]

23. That is, shall we say, an understatement so gross

as to be laughable. It would be far easier to list the people on Wall $treet who obeyed any rules. To suggest that the Great Implosion is the work of a few "bad apples" is absurd. The thievery and fraud was systemic from top to bottom.

Nice way to cover the asses of your wealthy buddies, Mr. President.

[woo me with science]

26. I am fucking sick of words that say one thing

and actions that do the opposite.

At least the Republicans are up front about fucking you over.

[Cherchez la Femme]

27. So why didn't he/isn't he prosecuting?

More empty words and NO ACTION.