Elizabeth Warren vs. Bank regulators

[merithyn]

I'm really beginning to like her.

http://americablog.com/2013/04/elizabeth-warren-hearing-illegal-foreclosures-video.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=zD7zM9K0X4c

[garbon]

I'm really beginning to like her.

[derspiess]

I guess if I ever want to get on Meri's good side I'll take the populist grandstanding route.

[Ideologue]

Hasn't worked for me.

[Ed Anger]

I guess if I ever want to get on Meri's good side I'll take the populist grandstanding route.

And have a vagina.

[CountDeMoney]

I'm really beginning to like her.

I don't know why;  she's not defending libertyhood and freedomness.  The banking industry will do that for you.

[Malthus]

I guess if I ever want to get on Meri's good side I'll take the populist grandstanding route.

And have a vagina.

I guess "in a glass jar, on my desk" doesn't count. 

[garbon]

I'm really beginning to like her.

I don't know why;  she's not defending libertyhood and freedomness.  The banking industry will do that for you.

I don't think she's really doing that either. She's doing what makes her sound good to people who eat up that rhetoric.

[Jacob]

I don't think she's really doing that either. She's doing what makes her sound good to people who eat up that rhetoric.

She should look into a career in politics.

[garbon]

I don't think she's really doing that either. She's doing what makes her sound good to people who eat up that rhetoric.

She should look into a career in politics.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Bank regulators are unsophisticated rubes, but Warren sadly misses the point. She's been bitching a lot at "lax enforcement" and how banks haven't been taken to trial etc. Well there are things that have to be understood:

1. By and large most big banks and CEOs in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis either committed no acts that violate criminal codes or they did so in a way that left no evidence clearly linking them to the acts. They are essentially cases that cannot be won, prosecutors do not charge crimes they only believe "might" have been committed and of which they have no hope of acquiring evidence.

2. In the rare cases where a CEO actually did commit crimes that were found by investigators they were charged and prosecuted. U.S. Attorneys are not exactly notoriously afraid to take big cases, where they can be won they love taking big cases against prominent people.

3. That leaves criminal cases against corporations themselves. Cases that often suffer from all the same problems as the cases against the CEO, in that it's difficult to elucidate exactly what crime was committed as per U.S. Code and difficult to produce any evidence. Further, there is usually a disparity in how much money DOJ allocates for a trial and how much money a Fortune 500 corporation is willing to spend defending a case. The government theoretically has vaster resources than Fortune 500 companies but they don't actually allocate much of those resources, or at least enough, to win these cases. They end up cost taxpayers millions and millions of dollars and still you end up with a case where you have a 50/50 shot of a conviction before a jury. Why exactly shouldn't we want our U.S. Attorneys coming to plea agreements? Her argument that somehow coming to plea agreements is bad mkay only makes sense if she's willing to take the position that the public should spends tens of millions of dollars on losing cases against major corporations.

4. After Arthur Anderson was destroyed by Federal prosecution the government recognized pursuing the equivalent of the death penalty for a Fortune 500 corporation puts anywhere from 15,000 to 300,000 people out of work (some of the largest banks employ that many) and gets you what in return? The President does have power, through his Attorney General, to push on areas of prosecutorial focus and there's a reason there hasn't been much focus in nuking major banks.

At the end of the day our current laws and certainly our court systems are not how you want to reign in big banks. You'll most likely fail no matter how hard you try and how much money you spend, and when you do win you just hurt the economy badly. Instead of agitpopulism designed to gear Warren up for her leftist progressive primary campaign in 2016 what would actually be useful is new legislation on banking reform more along the lines of the original Glass-Steagall act and not along the lines of Dodd-Frank which barely did anything to address many of the worst problems with banking and in fact entrenched some of them.

Warren is on the outskirts of an important issue but the way she approaches it is unrealistic and only designed to make poor people who are too stupid to think about an issue critically (Meri) or people who want to burn all the rich (CdM) vote for her and has nothing to do with real reform.

[CountDeMoney]

Arthur Andersen was not "destroyed" by federal prosecution, it destroyed itself by its very complicity in covering Enron's tracks.

[fhdz]

Yes, surely we're not ascribing victim status to AA now, are we?

[CountDeMoney]

Apparently prosecuting the destruction of criminal evidence is governmental overreach.

[MadImmortalMan]

Everyone knows the regulators don't do anything but surf porn.