Tom Toles- The Slammer
BY TOM TOLES
Everyone can imagine vividly the sound of a jail door closing. The slightly vibratoed deep clang of a heavy steel door swinging into a heavy steel frame has been featured in so many films that description is hardly necessary.
But the door that’s closing now is the one of economic justice. Not the distribution of economic-benefits justice, which by the way is also closing. More like the door to economic-legality justice, which is closing with a ka-lang. Or maybe just a whimper. I return from time to time here to one of the themes I started this Blog with: that it was clear that the financial crisis could not have occurred without some laws, (at the very least laws about fair representation), having been broken at high levels of large financial institutions. And that the book could not fairly be closed on this disgraceful and calamitous chapter in US economic history without bringing charges against people in high places who did wrong, and putting some of them in jail. But it looks like that pretty much isn’t going to happen.
Big surprise. But we pause here to showcase the obvious quote: “The report fits a pattern that is scary for a democracy, that there really are two levels of justice in this country, one for the people with power and money and one for everyone else.” We return you now to your standard news feed and its regularly scheduled narrative.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/opinions/wp/2014/03/18/the-slammer/