Who? And what good would come from a public condemnation other than your feeling validated?

Indictments, prosecution and imprisonment would be a lot better.

Although in reality, if Ms Clinton came out and publicly condemned Wall Street bankers individually or collectively, it wouldn't change anybody's opinion. Her reputation for mendacity is well established at this point.

People throw around the word "bankster" but never seem to get concrete when I ask that. We've had IIRC 8 indictments and 6 convictions of individuals. Do you want more? Whom, and for what crime?

Treasury sec. How about them? How about Goldman Saks who pay here $$$$$ to tell them they're not loved enough? Those rat bastards?

I suppose it may be obvious to you, but it isn't to a lot of us.

and honestly reported.

I believe that is a crime.

Goldman promoted junk bonds as triple-A investments.

Maybe it can't be proven, but the SEC knows it and I suspect you do as well.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2009/11/01/77791/how-goldman-secretly-bet-on-the.html

I am speaking to the fact that Goldman was clearly up to no good and at the very least deserves to be called out for it rather than coddled to like Hillary Clinton has done, accepting really fucking hefty payments for her speaking gigs with them and pointedly covering their asses with soft-pedalling white wash b-s cookie-cutter populist sounding messaging.

...for failing to something something something, banksters, corporatists, something something.

The number of Democrats who agree is so great, it's going to just swamp Hillary in the primary.



- C.D. Proud Member of the Reality Based Community

and insider trading for which the mega banks paid fines without admitting guilt.

has been indicted for any crime committed by his bank since the collapse of 2008. I'd like to see some initial indictments before worrying about re-indictments.

Or is this more of a gut thing?

that led the mass fraud and the meltdown in 2008? Wow, so now leaders are no longer responsible for their companies actions. News to me.

The former Attorney General made it clear that some financial institutions are to big to prosecute and by extension so are their chief financial officers. Is the failure to grasp that admission the result of a narrow mindedness thing, or do you live in a reality where no indictment means no crime as a matter of fact as well as law?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/holder-concerned-megabanks-too-big-to-jail/2013/03/06/6fa2b07a-869e-11e2-999e-5f8e0410cb9d_story.html

were given very broad discretion to determine what is illegal, and ended up drawing the lines so tightly that almost nothing a company did would qualify.

Take the Goldman short: they had a method they used for rating stocks, which many of their own analysts considered bullshit, but still used it to advise clients to go long on positions they themselves were short on. Which is a colossal dick move. But, the SEC doesn't require a firm's proprietary desk to eat it's own dog food, so that wasn't actually a crime.

power works that way. Enough of it can make whatever you do "not illegal" even if it is criminal, especially if your regulators are also your enablers.

A lot of very well-informed people believed that there were prosecutable offenses at Goldman and other banks. There's no doubt that the regulatory agencies were out to lunch, but that doesn't get banks off the hook for fraud. Goldman could have committed fraud even without violating any specific disclosure or conflict of interest requirements set out by regulatory agencies. If they intentionally deceived people they were selling financial products to, that is fraud.

So, for example, it would not be illegal for Goldman to market mortgage CDOs to clients even while their proprietary traders are dumping similar bonds off of Goldman's books. There are a lot of reasons that this could be a perfectly legitimate trade. Maybe the CDOs simply fit in better with the clients' portfolios than Goldman's. And Goldman isn't required to disclose all their proprietary trading activities. So it would be legal to sell things to clients and short those things at the same time.

However, if Goldman knew that the bonds were worthless and misrepresented them as high quality safe investments, that is fraud, period. That would be true even if they weren't dumping or shorting the same investments at the same time. The significance of them (or other clients they advised) shorting the same securities they were marketing to others is that it might (or might not) be evidence that Goldman was knowingly deceiving clients about the quality of the products they were selling.

Whether this could have been proven, and why they didn't try to, are questions we don't know the answers to. But it is certainly believable that the administration didn't want to prosecute out of existence the same financial institutions that they were trying to rescue from bankruptcy, even if there was a viable case against them, or against certain individuals at those banks.

Tacit approval for all of Wall Street's abuses would diacourage me from ever voting for her.

Is there anything in this arena that she is on record as opposing? Has she been able to point out perps? I would applaud that.

names in and google it.

Which hasn't been criminally prosecuted the way it should be (and that even Ronald Reagan would have done so as he did for many crimes in the Savings and Loan Crisis of his time)...

http://www.cbs46.com/story/19465592/homeowners-advocates-want-bank-reps-jailed-for-foreclosure-fraud

To make that prosecutable. As it is the retail banks (which, BTW, is different from "Wall Street&quot paid a pretty huge settlement for what they did.

... like some jail time for those doing these ugly crimes like REAGAN's administration did.

The problem is that these criminals have bought off too much of our lawmakers to take out the teeth from our laws, and have owned this administration to not actually prosecute real crimes on the books and let them run out the statute of limitations on so many of them too now.

I think personally, a real administration, perhaps like Bernie, would lead a more reform minded congress if we can get one away from the campaign money to rewrite our laws without corporate ownership and put in special cases for statute of limitations where they can be put aside if it can be found that those involved in such crimes have themselves or associates/organizations they are connected to been involved in "influencing" lawmakers and the administration in to rewriting laws in their favor or not prosecuting them in a timely fashion.

There are so many real criminals that are in effect going to get away with murder from this real infective corruption that's in our government now.

They specifically made what they did legal before they did it.

Especially if they are committing crimes that still are prosecutable as criminal acts, but the administration is just being paid off not to prosecute them before statute of limitations runs out. They should be prosecuted even more so for those crimes. And I believe there should be new legislation passed extending the statute of limitations indefinitely when it can be found that they or others around them in effect paid off those in government through "favors" like campaign funds to not prosecute them earlier.

I never "get tired of" jailing the banksters as a line, as it is sorely needed now if we really want to reform society. Putting some of these CRIMINALS (and yes let me emphasize that) in prison is the only way we ultimately stop this form of CORRUPTION and BRIBERY that is destroying our government now and so many in society while these people get away with so much in their paths to becoming FASCIST oligarchs!

for selling derivatives they knew were, in essence, boxes full of dog turds, crushed beer cans and burger wrappers while telling the marks that they were AAA investments. They knew what was in the boxes and actively bet against them and advised their best buddies to do the same. And THEN had to colossal gall to demand to be reimbursed for their bad and fixed bets. Worst of all, they GOT reimbursed for their outright fraud. Read Nomi Prins' "It Takes A Pillage" and prepare to be outraged. Goldman should be smashed to pieces along with the rest of the too big to fail banks.

And those are the people who are HRC's closest and most influential supporters.

Connect the dots.

Are you for real???

People hold presidents responsible for things a hundred layers from their actual responsibilities. The same should hold for these thieves.

I am done with you, and it was Blankfein in that particular case. Dimon did the same shit.

If you have a method for rating securities and publish it, even if you think it's wrong, I don't know that that meets the definition in law.

Believe me, selling things you KNOW to be worthless - and about that there is no doubt in the case of the big banks and derivatives - at all, much less as AAA investments (which rating you got by BRIBING THE RATING AGENCY) is the very definition of securities fraud.

how anyone can defend it. Moody's, S&P, Fitch were all bought off.

It is beyond ludicrous.

We are geared up for another one, too, though this time it will be a different "bundling". Every 7 years this shit happens and everyone pretends "No one could have foreseen this!" "This is so unusual, how could it have escaped our experts!?".

Bullshit. Way past time to call bullshit while they are priming us for the next one. Barely let the economy recover before the next one hits.

Some of us aren't stupid and have studied economic history!

But Goldman isn't required (because the SEC has completely dropped the ball) to have its proprietary desk eat its own dog food.

because she wasn't able to defend herself."

That's the angle you are going with? When having a shred human decency means you are not just susceptible but culpable in the crime committed against you, something is haywire.

Seriously.

And blaming me for pointing out that they refused to make rules against things that should be illegal doesn't change anything. I'm just the messenger here.

would argue against the idea that the SEC does a horrible job - I just refuse to excuse bad behavior on the part of the bankers that benefited from the fact that the SEC does a horrible job.

Don't take it personally, unless you are one of the folks that benefited from the fact that the SEC does a horrible job. If so, well, endure the well-earned scorn of hundreds of thousands of people that lost their homes, life savings, and pensions.

Keep up the great work....

to hyper-rich customers and the exact opposite to rest of us suckers.

To a layman, that looked a lot like a smoking gun for fraud.

I'm sure Wall Street has rewritten the laws so that isn't legally fraud, but the crowd in DC has been very creative about making up excuses for wars, military interventions, and even bailing out Wall Street sociopaths.

If they had the general welfare at heart, they would exercise that creativity against the chief executives of the banks that tanked our and the world economy, and pry their fingers off the steering wheel of the economic, foreign, and all other government policy.

And no, issuing fines isn't actually punishment unless it takes a a quarter or half or even ALL their profits for a given year, so the execs who made the decisions that led to such fines would never be able to find work again even if they don't go to prison.

There was so much blatant fraud and racketeering if would have made Capone blush.

the Dept. of Justice casts a wide net with small mesh that only catches little fish.

Instead we got, "Look forward, not back!" To even deny that anyone should have been prosecuted for the massive fraud, not only for the crash of 08, but for the LIBOR scandal and the many others that required the banks to pay fines would be ludicrous. Washington is owned by Wall Street through campaign donations, exorbitant speaking fees, the revolving door, and media access and treatment in the media.
Hillary has been in the big thick of it since Bill was President and personally knows all of the players. She owes allegiance to them before us based on what they have paid to her, that's how it works in the reality based community. There is and always has been a Quid Pro Quo between campaign donations (bribes) and politicians doing what their Donors tell them to do. It has gone way out of control even before Citizens United, and Bernie is trying to change that.

People seem certain that these were not enough.

Show us what you got.

A recognition that banks don't commit financial crimes, bankers do, and that levying fines against banks and not indicting individuals is no deterrent to their criminal behavior unless heads roll at the top. It would be incredibly naive to believe that longstanding patterns of massive criminal behavior go on without the imprimatur of those on the top floor.

You seem very certain an indictable crime was committed. So I assume you can say what the specific crime was, and who you think did it.

When I see a big fish go to trial, your words will mean something in my book.

Did Dimon even rate any securities?

And the buck stops at the TOP, with the people who set the policies and define the corporate culture. Fucker should be in the Big House for the rest of his life.

but this one is teetering on a foundation of fecal matter propped up by toilet tissue.

We are due for another global financial collapse, since it has been about 7 years since the last one. That sort of precision isn't random - it is engineered.

But harder to come up with an actual specific legal case.

Alternately it seems like people want to criminalize the business cycle.

If the business "cycle" is rooted in corruption, then it is a criminal enterprise.

If arresting a mugger is "criminalizing" the pick pocket and assault industry, there is a pretty damn good reason why it is criminalized.

Stupid autocomplete...

It's not as clear to me as it is to a lot of people here that "Wall Street" (whatever that ends up meaning in a concrete sense) is a vast corrupt enterprise.

heaven knows auto-complete is a menace, I just copy/pasted your remarks.

That said, back to the topic, ratings agencies SPECIFICALLY lied about the validity of stocks.

That's criminal, no way around it - it's no different than fleecing an elderly person of everything they have while they are in your care. It's despicable.

The SEC doesn't require a firm's proprietary desk to eat its own dog food. As long as they had a rating method and used it, even if they privately knew it was bullshit, that doesn't run afoul of the SEC's minimalist regulations.

not criminal? Huh?

But a lot of exchanges of money that feel like they should be bribery aren't.

Prevaricating on the exact definition of what bribery is ... well, isn't that interesting. You have two lawyers in this thread asserting that it was bribery, and they certainly know the law better than my humble self.

I know as a layman, it quacked like a duck, waddled like a duck and swam like one. The feathers were a dead give away, but hey, the bill wasn't ...

paid by said entity that quacked, waddled, swam, and had feathers.

She's channeling her inner Marie Antoinette.

"Off with their heads!"

I slouch in chairs but wouldn't slouch if I knew I was going to be photographed.

Does republicans work for them. They are going to use an awful picture to go along with it.

Classic right wing rag.

The piece is from Salon, and it's still a hit piece

and connecting the dots a "hit piece?" This isn't some Benghazi bullshit out of reichwing fever dreams.

We live in a time of hero-worship empty-vessel-hope-projection identity-politics. Anything bad about my candidate is a hit piece; anything bad about your candidate is good reporting.

about how the banksters operate than damn near anybody. She documented the Clinton connection to the too-big-to-fails and their slimy minions (Summers, Rubin) at considerable length in "All The Presidents' Bankers." She KNOWS what she is talking about. The woman is freaking brilliant and tells the truth and nothing but.

condemned by all. Then stomped into dust and blown away.

SCOTUS , The President , Congress and MSM will help .

OWES.

her 100+ consultants, after pouring over polling data, have told her it's time to change course and channel Bernie and Elizabeth. That's when Hillary gets programmed what to say, and how to say it, about those greedy Wall Street, hedge-fund, corporate types (like her son-in-law). It's not about empty rhetoric - that's NOT leadership - it's about taking specific action and condemning, BY NAME, those out to destroy this country.

Notice how she has to read from her notes - not her heart, like Bernie - and try to sound oh so convincing that she's a true progressive. Of course, we all know it's disingenuous bullshit, but, then again it just might work when you got billions in dirty cash to throw around for ads to sling mud at Bernie.

Bernie is such an original who's not afraid to be a true progressive leader in the fight against Wall Street corruption. You won't see him with his hand out taking "gifts" from those pricks on Wall Street, while pretending to be the champion for the "little guy" on Main Street.

Go Bernie Go!!

Yeah, I noticed that, too.

And throw us a few crumbs.

And as for the "crumbs," I guess those of us on Main Street should just be thankful if we get that much.

Thankfully, we have Bernie to champion our cause. Under his leadership, we'll be dining at "five-star restaurants" while those pigs on Wall Street can feast on scraps, wallowing in their own shit, after Bernie dismantles their evil empire piece by piece.

Do I sound a little pisssed? Yeah, that's cause I am. I've had it with these greedy fucks on Wall Street, and the politicians who cozy up to them to extract the cash they need to empower themselves. It's like one big circle jerk and I'm fuckin sick of it.

It's time to stand up to these Wall Street thugs; it's time to stand with Bernie!

Go Bernie Go!

Orchestrated the biggest transfer of wealth in history, and that wasn't enough for them.

All of the big banks that caused our economic crash a few short years ago are among her top ten donors. She's Wall Street's candidate, and it could hardly be more obvious.

I think this DLC schtick, embracing liberal positions on social issues while going full bore 1%er on economics, has run out of gas. Not enough people are fooled by it anymore, and times have just changed.

Tiny little pieces. Hillary would never do that. She is owned by them.

She's playing someone. It is more likely she'll turn on us than on Wall Street if elected.

grow up

shouldn't whine about not having enough money.

so your original statement is ridiculous.

This is LOADED with Republican and Fox News talking points.

Years of patient planning (and in the case of Mother Jones, decades) have enabled them to lull us into a state of liberal complacency before suddenly, decisively foisting their right-wing agenda on us when we are at our most vulnerable.

Whoa!

Fans of multi-dimensional chess the world over stand in awe.

How did you find out?

I was able to keep up with the 3rd and 4th dimensional chess, but when it went to the 5th dimension I was lost.

Or if something was posted back then, why resurrect it now?

We're still more than half a year away from any primaries.

the Great Recession are? We cannot expect her to tell us what she thinks on an issue?

If she cannot tell us what she is going to do about the banks, the inequality and the financial risk takers then why should anyone think she is going to do anything.

Loaded - damned right it is - with questions we have every right to ask and every right to expect an answer to. Think were we would be if someone had asked this kind of question before they repealed Glass-Steagell.

Author of the End Game Memo. So there ya go.

You would have to be a complete fool to not get it, or completely deluded or completely uncaring about the issue.

I suspect more than a little economic privilege from some of those quick to take up Hillary's cause.

I know everyone here knows. I just don't want the fact that the author of the memo that is directly related to the world economic crisis, is her adviser to not be mentioned every time I can mention it.

Love the subtle comment, "I suspect more than a little economic privilege from some of those quick to take up Hillary's cause." It's no skin off our noses to say what we see.

He is human garbage.

was repealed and took a $15 million per year gig as head of one of the banks that benefited most from the repeal.

If that was a coincidence, I am Napoleon.

But he's only one of a bunch of advisers to Clinton, so it doesn't matter.

and her good friend Kissinger the war criminal, whom she described in print as a "defender of human rights." One is judged by the company one chooses to keep. And she chooses to keep company with an awful lot of the scum of the earth.

And I don't understand how anyone doesn't get how important this is. If we called out Republicans for the same thing, everyone would be agreeing. But here, with her, excuses, excuses, excuses.

Just copying the headline from CNN on the first article that popped up in google when searching Hillary calls out wall street.

But actions and friends speak louder than words.

I mean, $400,00 dollars for 2 speeches?

That hardly gives me confidence that she is ready to go after Wall St. on behalf of the little guy.

Where on earth do YOU get that kind of confidence? Is it just her words? Jesus...

"If she has, I can't turn up any such quote."

My bad.

God forbid someone like err, Goldman Sachs should be criticized for example.

I mean it's not like they had any role in it with all their selling of subprime crap.

Right?

"Here's your $400,000 dollars, Hillary. Keep up the good work. Feel free to criticize "Wall St.", just don't, you know, make it too personal. We know you have to keep up appearances and all."

have zero interest in honest conversation here.

So bash away.

It would be refreshing.

Tell me that Hillary is NOT a close friend of the most elite Wall St. forces that drove us into the 2007-2008 economic recession and is re-poised to do the same thing.

I have much better things to do today than play your ridiculous games.

Creative movement of the goalposts referenced in the OP...