“Sweeping Wall Street reform?” Oh, now I get it! That’s where we sweep everything under the rug and make believe there’s: “Nothing to see here. Move along.”
If you have any questions about the concept of "laws being for little people," or if you wonder whether or not we live in a corporate kleptocracy, then you really should give yesterday’s column by Bloomberg’s Jonathan Weil a quick read. In a (hyphenated) word: mind-boggling!
(h/t to Naked Capitalism Publisher Yves Smith)
JPMorgan Scores Victory for Repeat Offenders
By Jonathan Weil
Bloomberg Media
Jun 30, 2011 12:01 AM ET
Read just about any article in the financial press about a Securities and Exchange Commission settlement with some accused fraudster, and you probably will see two lines bound to get a lot of eyes rolling.
One is that the defendant neither admitted nor denied the SEC’s claims. The other is that the penalties include a court injunction or SEC order barring the alleged crook from breaking the securities laws in the future, as if it had been perfectly legal to violate them beforehand. No one, it seems, ever gets nailed for anything.
As if that weren’t maddening enough, here’s an open secret: The SEC hardly ever enforces these obey-the-law orders. This brings us to last week’s headline-grabbing settlement between the SEC and JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM)’s securities arm over a toxic bond deal four years ago called Squared CDO 2007-1…
I strongly encourage you to read Weil’s entire column. (Again, it is a quick read.)
For much more on this, checkout my post (loaded with links to supporting stories and commentary) from June 14th: NYT Editorial: “It’s Past Time For President Obama To Take Off The Gloves.”