Why no punishment for CEO greed?

The defining characteristic of crony capitalism is the ability of favored elites to loot with impunity and the failure of regulators to do their jobs.

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In the Texas "Rent-a-Bank" scandal of the 1970s, for example, two ringleaders created a fraud network of 50 lenders that caused billions of dollars in losses. The watchdogs removed and sanctioned one of the main culprits, but because the crimes weren't prosecuted, the same crooks reappeared in the 1980s to do it all over again, only on a bigger scale. Unless you imprison the fraudsters, sophisticated financial scams grow ever more destructive.

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Take the seven senior officials convicted in the failure of one of the lenders that drove the 2008 credit crunch. All of the cases arose from an investigation of Taylor Bean & Whitaker Mortgage. The first trial occurred earlier this spring -- 6 1/2 years after the FBI warned publicly that there was an "epidemic" of mortgage fraud and predicted that it would cause a financial crisis if it weren't contained. The trial and conviction of Taylor Bean's former chairman, Lee Farkas, occurred nine years after his crimes were suspected.

snip

While it is true that banks made thousands of criminal referrals, almost all involved low-level figures. The volume overwhelmed the FBI, which failed to devote adequate resources. As late as 2007, the agency assigned only 120 investigators spread among 56 field offices to probe thousands of cases. More than eight times that number probed the S&L frauds, a far smaller epidemic.

Unlike the S&L debacle, there was no national task force and no comprehensive prioritization. This made it difficult to investigate the huge, fraudulent subprime lenders. And because there were no criminal referrals of these firms, the FBI wasn't even attempting to pursue them.

link:
http://money.msn.com/investing/why-no-ceos-were-busted-post-crisis-bloomberg.aspx?GT1=33002

Sick as it may be.

????

That's why.

:banghead: