The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age

    Everybody's doing it, doing it, doing.....

    By Flavius on Thu, 04/28/2011 - 2:36pm |

     

    "But the banks, of course, insist that he (Bernie Madoff)  fooled them....................... ... Let me say this, though: Did they suspect that he was cutting corners, maybe bending the rules a little bit? Probably. But remember the times. Everybody was (my emphasis), as we now know. This was a time of very shabby behavior on Wall Street as we look back on it now. So if Bernie wasn't scrupulously crossing every t and dotting every i, that would not have looked that unusual to the Wall Street of that day '

    Diane Henriques. "Fresh Air" interview with Terry Gross  4/27/2011

    Read it and think about it

    It's a staggering statement.If I or some other Dagblogger  said it, well it could be dismissed as lefty raving. But Ms. Henriques has been  reporting for  the Times Business Section  for at least a decade. And before that at Barrons (a considerably more impressive credential). 

    She is saying that every body on the Street was a crook. While the NYPD still whiles away idle moments in the Bronx with illegal searches for narcotics it could be achieving its targets a lot easier downtown.

    AOBTW what a way to combat the deficit. No need to replenish the rural prisons that  Cuomo plans to close. Just increase the level of the fines to bear a reasonable relationship to the seven figure annual income of the perps.The FT's Gillian Tett has a different theory: that the Lords of the Universe specialize in knowing exactly how to avoid laws rather than evade them. Possibly true. But if everybody is trying to just squeak by it follows that there must be non trivial cohort who decide to do it the old fashioned way.

    I wonder what % of those with incomes over $250K being protected by the Republicans should be standing before the judge agreeing that they'll raid their little tin box for a million dollar fine.

       

    Gillian Tett in the  FT

    Why have so few bankers gone to jail in the wake of the financial crisis…Why….  Bernard Madoff (is) now sitting in jail, while all those faceless people who conjured up subprime loans or dodgy .collateralized debt obligations are not?

    ……To be sure the financial industry is dangerously powerful; and some bankers have behaved in ways that were immoral. But whether (they) have actually broken the law is less clear cut.

    If you look closely at those clever financial products that were conjured up……..a defining feature was that they were intended to exploit loopholes in the legal system. “Innovation” was thus about dancing on the edge of laws, regulations and ratings- but not breaking any rules.

    Comments

    So on a scale of blatantly criminal to operating with high intergrity where exactly are the banks and Wall Street today?  I am sure ' very shabby behavior' rates in there somewhere.


    by synchronicity on Thu, 04/28/2011 - 5:03pm

    It is just a damn shame.

    If everybody--every millionaire on Wall Street--was doing it, then everybody should have had their property confiscated and everybody should have done a stint in prison.


    by Richard Day on Thu, 04/28/2011 - 6:10pm

    I'm tempted to indulge myself in blanket accusations of the Steet even beyond the over the top ones in my blog..A couple of things restrain me.

    First, I don't know what I'm talking about. Often true of many of us here. With me prominently in the fore. But in this case I know just enough- to know that I don't know enough .To be intellectuallly respectable a detailed  accusation should be based on detailed  evidence . Particularly if you claim some expertise which I occasionally do by alluding to the fact  I was the CFO of a Fortune 500 company.- 

    And , in addition, there's  a mismatch between the intensity of my reaction and the subject of the blog. I regard the Republican attack on entitlements as a cruel hoax. We know what flat grants look like as a replacement for Medicare. They look like Arizona.  Times 50. A country in which the aged will endure pain from treatable diseases which are untreated. And then die of them. Not only am I angry on behalf of those future sufferers But also on behalf of the future reputation of this country which the Ryan plan will lower to the moral level  of  Papa Doc's Haiti or the Nicaragua where death came to the archbishop on his altar, or Argentina where the  nuns  thrown into the Atlantic from Helicopters  reappeared on Calle Florida  as a thigh- slapping  cocktail party witticism about "flying nuns"..

    So yeah,there's plenty of justification for my fury.But what I'm blogging about here are  the crimes of Wall Sreet( if that's not tautological) during the decline and fall of W's administration.And I shouldn't entangle  its tawdry sub prime carnival with the emotion prompted by the antics of- at best- an economically challenged mid western congressman.


    by Flavius on Thu, 04/28/2011 - 11:07pm