When did Senator Obama campaign on "prosecuting the bankers"? I don't remember that.

[banned from Kos]

Yet its repeated over and over again here as a primary complaint about Obama's "failures".

I am very realistic - show me such a campaign promise and I will be convinced.

[SixthSense]

1. it's part of the job description

the primary function of the President is to see to it that the laws are enforced

[JoePhilly]

3. What specific laws were broken?

[frazzled]

6. Exactly ... unfortunately, most of the shenanigans had been made perfectly legal

The subprime loans, the bundled derivatives, the credit default swaps ... these were apparently sanctioned after the gung-ho deregulation of the 90s and aughts. That there was no oversight, and no one understood the risks is probably not a punishable crime.

[JoePhilly]

13. YUP ... Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act of 1999 comes to mind.

Start with that ... and then the Bush and the GOP Congress instructs all involved in oversight to stand down, and most of the events that follow were legal.

I'm sure some laws were broken, but most if the theft was made legal.

[TheWraith]

8. Indeed. People forget that the whole origin of the problem was in deregulation.

In other words, making new things legal.

[JoePhilly]

14. Exactly.

[CJCRANE]

15. What about the credit rating agencies

colluding with the banks and rating the toxic CDSs as AAA?

[banned from Kos]

25. Completely legal until Dodd-Frank. why?

The Credit Rating Agencies have First Amendment "free speech" immunity.

Like a movie reviewer does - hey, its just our OPINION!

"Hey. that shitty AAA? Opinion only!"

[CJCRANE]

27. There are also concepts like

"fraud" and "insider trading".

[SixthSense]

22. quite a few!

Outright fraud, many securities violations, insider trading, Sarbanes-Oxley violations, and many others.

Take HFT for example. It is illegal to submit an order to the market that you have no intention to fulfill, yet every major bank and many other operations have these HFT machines doing exactly that - on the order of thousands of times per second - every fucking day.

Also, how about perjury? Look up robosigning and foreclosuregate - quite a number of banks have each committed tens of thousands of counts of perjury in foreclosures, at least one bank has racked up a good 150,000.

These are not technical or incidental violations, they are in-your-face felonies that have become a normal part of doing business!

[TheWraith]

26. You seem to be misinformed about a few things.

For instance, the legality of high frequency trading, for which there are no legal bans.

As for illegal foreclosures, there are several ongoing investigations on that count.

[SixthSense]

34. Perhaps you are misinformed

HFT is not in and of itself illegal, but the quote-stuffing and deliberate submission of orders for which there is no intent to execute is - and that's the primary way these HFT operations make money. 90 percent of HFT order submissions are canceled before they can be executed.

As far as the foreclosure investigations, I have little faith in them, based on the results of how the banks handling drug cartel money-laundering operations were treated - with a fine, no one indicted, no one sent to jail. In other words, a simple slap on the wrist.

And that's the current situation in a nutshell - these people destroyed our economy with their epic fraud and none of them are being held to account for it in any serious manner.

[TheWraith]

39. If you have evidence of illegal things, please feel free to submit it to the NY Attorney General.

Otherwise, you're kind of just repeating things on the internet without any proof.

[Fumesucker]

2. Heh.. He specifically ran *against* the private individual mandate..

And yet signed a bill making a mandate law.

Campaign promises mean exactly nothing.

[FarLeftFist]

4. I thought he ran against vouchers as McCain was proposing.

[Fumesucker]

7. "I can envision a day when you have to show proof of insurance at the job interview" -H Clinton..

Obama specifically disagreed with Senator Clinton on that..

[JoePhilly]

12. Hillary supported a mandate.

[Autumn]

20. Obama didn't support the mandate

Which one counts? :rofl: The one Obama didn't support, the one Hillary supported or the one Obama gave us. :crazy:

[TheWraith]

24. I must have missed where there were 435 clones of Obama in the House, and 100 in the Senate.

Because the last time I checked, the President doesn't get to write legislation to his taste and then pass it all by himself.

[Angry Dragon]

43. He has a vote---------- the veto

if he does not use it he is for it

[JoePhilly]

29. The post I responded to quotes Hillary.

And so I provided her position.

Of course the reality is that their HCR positions were basically identical. The "fight" over mandates was a very small detail. Hillary said you needed them, Obama said he thought you could do with out them.

As we learned ... most of the Democratic Congress agreed with Hillary, and not with Obama on this detail. And to get the votes needed for everything else, he made this compromise.

[JoePhilly]

10. He didn'treally "run against" them ... if you go back to the DEM debates ...

Hillary was for them, Obama said he didn't think you needed them.

Regardless, this was not a major point of difference in their overall positions on HCR efforts.

Some now blow this up to be a big thing, ignoring that those who can't afford the insurance will get subsidies, credits, and exemptions.

Those who CAN afford insurance will be expected to get it, or pay an additional tax. I'd compare it to the Home Mortgage deduction. Have a mortgage, you get a deduction ... have insurance, avoid the tax.

[backwoodsbob]

19. actually...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwzYVEunPQ0

[JoePhilly]

33. That is not "running against" ...

I know what he said in the debates ... I reference the fact that he disagreed with Hillary on this in another post.

In that quote Obama talks about what impacts a mandate might have ... and how those could impact those who can't afford it.

And then, in the actual bill, he mitigates those issues ... the actual bill includes subsides and exemptions for those who can't afford insurance.

As a candidate, Obama did not want mandates, as President, he had to deal with other Democrats who had agreed with hillary that you needed a mandate (and we can ignore the GOP, they were going to do nothing).

And so, to get the votes needed, Obama compromised with his own party. He allowed a mandate, as Hillary called for, but he ensured the bill included language to mitigate the impact on those who could not afford it, and provide subsides so they could.

I'd agree this is not the optimal outcome, but personally, I prefer this outcome to nothing, which is what happened to "HillaryCare" back in the 90s.

A big fight, and then ZERO progress.

[JoePhilly]

5. Hillary must have convienced him

:shrug:

[Fumesucker]

9. Or maybe he was just lying?

:shrug:

[JoePhilly]

11. Yea, he hates us.

[Fumesucker]

17. You think the mandate is a great thing..

It enrages me to be forced to buy the product of an industry I hold responsible for the death of one of my loved ones.

[JoePhilly]

30. Let me get you a fainting couch.

Obama is NEVER going to be able to end for profit Health insurance.

You can OPT OUT ... and get no insurance ... and if you can't afford it ... you will be fine.

And if you can afford it ... and you simply do not want to have any insurance ... good luck.

By your statement, you don;t want "no mandate" you want nationalized health care, which is fine ... but that is NOT the same debate as we are having.

Obama did not run on nationalized health care. mandate or no mandate, YOU, would be looking for insurance ... or, you would be saying I won't carry insurance.

Either way ... Obama did not promise you national Health care.

If you can afford insurance, and you decide not to but it, then you will pay additional taxes to cover what it costs everyone else to care for you if you get seriously ill.

Obama did not create the system, and he can't dismantle it. Our government is not structured to allow that.

[Fumesucker]

40. There was no problem "dismantling" something far older than the for profit insurance industry..

Habeas Corpus, you might have heard of it.

[Autumn]

21. You got it

:thumbsup:

[Bandit]

16. What do you think he meant when he coined the phrase

"Main Street, Not Wall Street" ? I doubt he meant prosecutions but I do think he had something in mind don't you?

[Fumesucker]

18. Yes, getting elected.. n/t

[CJCRANE]

23. It doesn't matter whether he did or not

...if it's the right thing to do.

[SomethingFishy]

28. So we only prosecute criminals when someone promises to

in a campaign? Really? Wow, so I can go out and defraud people without worrying? Thanks for telling me, I would have never figured that out. I mean, this must be some new law I am unaware of. My ignorance is astounding.

I always thought that if you defrauded someone and got caught you paid the price. No I know that you don't pay the price you get paid for it.


And for those asking what crime was committed well, when you take a bunch of toxic loans, package them together and sell that as a safe investment, while purchasing insurance against the very package you are claiming to be a triple A rating well, in the country I was born that is called FRAUD. But hey, there is no need to prosecute anyone over the collapse of the entire economy, we can just hire the guys who did it to take control of the economy and that will solve everything.

Hell of a plan.

[banned from Kos]

32. Straw man - plenty of actual Wall St crimes have been prosecuted

see Alan Stamford or Raj (Director at Goldman) or the SAC Capital group - 15-20 at least.

I am talking about the wish of many here - to prosecute someone simply because they are/were a bank executive.

Jamie Dimon, for instance. Clean as a whistle. No legal expert has ever alleged Dimon was criminal.

[SomethingFishy]

41. Strawman? Do you even know what that word means?

I responded to a comment you made about people being upset with Obama because the people who fucked the economy instead of being charged with their crimes were rewarded with positions in this administration. I responded to what you said... not what you meant to say

I have no desire to prosecute people who didn't do anything wrong. But I'm also not fucking stupid enough to want the people who did commit crimes running the goddamn economy.

[socialismNanarchy]

31. He works for the bankers

Looking at Obama's voting record as a senator and his actions as president the only thing he will do to the bankers is give those billion dollar banks trillion dollar bailouts.

He works for the bankers, the big corps, the military defense contractors. He is a corporatist.

[fascisthunter]

35. he works for the Banksters... we get it

[begin_within]

36. Isn't Obama pretty much irrelevant now anyway?

[The Straight Story]

37. He (and congress) should uphold the laws of the US - and investigate

to see which laws, if any, were broken.

Kind of like your local police dept can investigate you and charge you for jay walking, driving drunk, not paying child support, extortion, etc and so on.

Out elected officials should investigate and if there is nothing to charge anyone with in the recent banking debacles than so be it.

Obama ran on serving the people, and part of serving is rooting out things like corruption.

[banned from Kos]

42. They are! We have had many indictments and almost as many convictions.

Mozilo slipped away - with a $68 million fine. But many are behind bars - see Allen Stanford among others.

[ieoeja]

38. Bush II ran against fighting terrorism.

So when 9-11 happened, should he have ignored it since that was not only an issue he did not run on, it was an issue on which he actively ran against?