"Where's RICO?"
By James Howard Kunstler for ClusterFuck Nation
......The feigned cluelessness among some the highest-profile figures in these rackets is something to behold. For instance Citibank was among the companies that helped Magnetar put together their CDOs-designed-to-fail. Citi's chairman at the time, former US Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, testifying before the new Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission said, "Almost all of us, including me, who were involved in the financial system -- that is to say financial firms, regulators, rating agencies, analysts and commentators -- missed the powerful combination of factors that led to this crisis and the serious possibility of a massive crisis." Bank of America's CEO, Brian Moynihan, told a congressional hearing, "No one involved in the housing system -- lenders, rating agencies, investors, insurers, consumers, regulators, and policy-makers -- foresaw a dramatic and rapid depreciation in home prices" [and therefore in investment instruments based on mortgages].
Either they lie or they are profoundly stupid and incompetent. If the former, then they might be induced to spend some time talking to federal prosecutors; if the latter then the US financial system is too hopeless to survive and we will all soon be bartering hand tools and designer shoes for food. Evidence of the latter is ample, for instance, in Citigroup's loss of 70 percent share value during Robert Rubin's chairmanship -- for which, in the crash year of 2008 alone, he was paid $17 million plus $33 million in stock options.
It is amazing this place we find ourselves. The thieves in high places are still in place. The greedy, selfish are transferring the wealth of the planet to themselves at breakneck speed and we are shitting in our home as we cling to obsolete paradigms. Our symptoms are showing everywhere. Our desperation is evident as increasingly we embrace barbaric extraction of Earth's resources, even when it destroys other human's home, water supply, and health. How much is enough?
How's the cancerous phase of unregulated, crony, casino capitalism working for you? Wonder how it will work for our children and grandchildren? Will the debt come due? Will the thieves be stopped?
Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-OH) is courageously calling for a criminal investigation into Goldman and other Wall Street companies that broke the law. Several others in Congress have joined her.
SIGN PETITION: NO "TOO BIG FOR JAIL"
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