Did you see this article in the NYT? It explains why there are virtually no prosecutions of the financial industry despite all the illegal practices that helped lead to the financial collapse:
Federal prosecutors officially adopted new guidelines about charging corporations with crimes — a softer approach that ... helps explain the dearth of criminal cases despite a raft of inquiries into the financial crisis....While “deferred prosecution agreements” were used before the financial crisis, the Justice Department made them an official alternative in 2008 ...
Defending the department’s approach, Alisa Finelli, a spokeswoman, said deferred prosecution agreements require that corporations pay penalties and restitution, correct criminal conduct and “achieve these results without causing the loss of jobs, the loss of pensions and other significant negative consequences to innocent parties who played no role in the criminal conduct, were unaware of it or were unable to prevent it.”
So I'm thinking I should start robbing banks. As long as I don't get caught, I'll make a bundle. When I finally do get caught, I'll just pay it back with a penalty. I'll come out way ahead. Once they catch me, I'll promise to stop my criminal conduct. If they prosecuted me, it would cause significant negative consequences to my wife and kids, who are totally innocent and depend on me to support them. Since they don't prosecute wall street under those conditions, I know they won't prosecute me either. After all, we're all equal before the law in America, aren't we?
(Updated -- added what's after the break)
I just read this article in the NYT Sunday Magazine about Sheila Bair, retiring as head of the F.D.I.C., who was one of the only voices of sanity in the government during the financial crisis. This passage seems particularly apropos, donch'a think?:
“I think the president’s heart is in the right place,” Bair told me. “I absolutely do. But the dichotomy between who he selected to run his economic team and what he personally would like them to be doing — I think those are two very different things.” What particularly galls her is that Treasury under both Paulson and Geithner has been willing to take all sorts of criticism to help the banks. But it has been utterly unwilling to take any political heat to help homeowners.