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Obstruction of Justice

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Two years ago, I was inspired to write a piece entitled, “Justice Denied” after seeing hedge fund manager, David Einhorn interviewed by Charlie Rose.  I also discussed an essay Jesse Eisenger wrote for the DealBook blog at The New York Times entitled, “The Feds Stage a Sideshow While the Big Tent Sits Empty”.  The piece reinforced my suspicion that the “insider trading” investigation which received so much publicity in December of 2010 was simply a diversionary tactic to direct public attention away from the crimes which caused the financial crisis.

Since that time, a good deal of commentary has been written, lamenting the fact that no criminal charges have been brought against the miscreants who caused the financial crisis.  Unfortunately, Attorney General Eric Hold-Harmless has taken no action against those responsible, while the time for bringing those charges within the applicable Statutes of Limitations was allowed to tick away.

With the expiration of the relevant Statutes of Limitations, the next question becomes:  Does the failure to prosecute those cases rise to the level of obstruction of justice?  Although President Obama has repeatedly insisted that “no crimes were committed” which could have caused the financial crisis, we are now learning that such was not the case.

Jesse Eisenger recently wrote another piece for the Deal Book blog at the New York Times entitled, “Financial Crisis Lawsuit Suggests Bad Behavior at Morgan Stanley” which appeared on January 23.  In that essay, Eisenger discussed how the discovery process in civil lawsuits against the Wall Street Banks involved in the creation of the collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) based on subprime mortgages, revealed that those CDOs were known to be toxic at the time they were marketed.

The Naked Capitalism website has provided and excellent roadmap to the skulduggery involving the role CDOs played in causing the financial crisis.

Matt Taibbi has written another magnum opus on the financial crisis, this time focusing on sleazy conduct which took place after the meltdown.  In his article for Rolling Stone entitled, “Secrets and Lies of the Bailout”, we were reminded how the bank bailouts not only unjustly enriched the culprits who caused the problem – but they also provided the opportunity for those too-big-to-fail institutions to become even bigger while facilitating the cover-up of how the original mess occurred:

The public has been lied to so shamelessly and so often in the course of the past four years that the failure to tell the truth to the general populace has become a kind of baked-in, official feature of the financial rescue.  Money wasn’t the only thing the government gave Wall Street – it also conferred the right to hide the truth from the rest of us.  And it was all done in the name of helping regular people and creating jobs.  “It is,” says former bailout Inspector General Neil Barofsky, “the ultimate bait-and-switch.”

Despite so many efforts to hide the truth from “the little people”, the truth is slowly leaking out as a result of the dogged investigation by journalists and bloggers.  As discovery proceeds in the civil lawsuits against the megabanks, revealing the extent of criminal activity which brought about the most catastrophic economic disaster since the Great Depression, people will begin to ask:  “How did they get away with this?”  Perhaps the best way to answer that question would be to bring criminal charges against those who allowed the perpetrators to get away with it.


 

2012 Jackass of the Year Award

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It’s already time to announce the winner of TheCenterLane.com’s fifth annual Jackass of the Year Award.  This was another one of those years when we had a last-minute contestant, who tried to his best to snatch the award away from those who had been working all year for the honor.

In the aftermath of the tragic mass-murder of 26 young children at the Sandy Hook Elementary School, the National Rifle Association’s vice-president, Wayne LaPierre, held his infamous press conference on December 21, wherein he blamed everything except guns for the killings.  LaPierre blamed television violence, video games, hurricanes, “other natural or man-made disaster(s)”, terrorist attacks, and numerous other scapegoats.  Did he blame porn?  I can’t remember.  After the press conference, even Rupert Murcoch’s New York Post saw fit to trash the guy with its headline:  “Gun Nut: NRA Loon In Bizarre Rant Over Newtown”.  The New York Daily News ran a headline describing LaPierre as a “vile NRA nut”, and the “Craziest Man on Earth”.  Although I lack the professional credentials to render a diagnosis on the sanity of any individual, I do know a jackass when I see one.  Wayne LaPierre is such a severe jackass that he deserves serious consideration as our 2012 Jackass of the Year.

Every year I have to resist the temptation to nominate Stuart Varney of Fox News.  Varney is the senior business commentator for the Fox News Network.  It seems as though Jon Stewart runs at least one video clip per week of Varney making a fool of himself.  Varney is an unabashed hater of solar power and most other sources of “green energy”.  He frequently refers to advocates of green energy as “greenies”, as though such an approach were something shameful.  Nevertheless, Varney was able to dodge the award this year with his recent interview with Tommy Chong.  The interview wasn’t that great, but it was good enough to warrant sparing Varney the indignity of this award.

Unfortunately, there is no single individual whom we can blame for the December 21 hysteria.  The Vancouver Sun ran an interesting article about a local author named Brad Carrigan, who did his part to promote a good bit of the December 21 foolishness through a website where he sold books, videos, his own seminars and sessions at his “spiritual retreat centre in the mountains”.  Unfortunately, Carrigan did not become prominent enough to earn our Jackass of the Year Award.

In an election year, the candidates are usually too easy to single out for this award.  Nevertheless, the 2012 Presidential Campaign brought us this year’s Jackass of the Year Award winner:  Donald Trump.  His idiotic “birther-ism” served no other purpose than to motivate 400,000 people to sign a petition, requesting Macy’s to abandon its relationship with Trump.  A good place to find a handy list of reasons why Trump deserves this award can be found at the New York Daily News website.  There you will find a link to Penn Jillette’s book excerpt at Salon about Trump and what it was like to appear on Celebrity Apprentice.  According to Jillette, Trump really cares about the things insignificant bloggers have to say about him.  As one such insignificant blogger, all I can say is:  Congratulations, Jackass!