Judge Rakoff Virtually Indicts Obama on Non-Prosecution of Banksters

[unhappycamper]

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Judge-Rakoff-Virtually-Ind-by-Eric-Zuesse-Banksters_Impeach_Judge-Jed-Rakoff_Obama-131116-823.html

Judge Rakoff Virtually Indicts Obama on Non-Prosecution of Banksters
OpEdNews Op Eds 11/16/2013 at 12:20:46
By Eric Zuesse

On November 12th, Britain's Financial Times headlined, "Top judge criticises DoJ for not holding individuals accountable," and reported that U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff accused the Obama Administration ("the Department of Justice') of "excuses" for not prosecuting banksters. In his speech (linked to in the FT article), Rakoff said that the "Department of Justice ... has offered one or another excuse for not criminally prosecuting them -- excuses that, on inspection, appear unconvincing." Rakoff noted that, "the stated opinion of those government entities asked to examine the financial crisis overall is ... fraud was committed." And Judge Rakoff also noted "the increased success that federal prosecutors have had over the past 50 years or so in bringing to justice even the highest level figures who orchestrated mammoth frauds. Thus, in the 1970's, in the aftermath of the "junk bond' bubble, ... the progenitors of the fraud were all successfully prosecuted, right up to Michael Milken. ... In the 1980's, the so-called savings-and-loan crisis ... resulted in the successful criminal prosecution of more than 800 individuals ... In striking contrast with these past prosecutions, not a single high level executive has been successfully prosecuted in connection with the recent financial crisis, and given the fact that most of the relevant criminal provisions are governed by a five-year statute of limitations, it appears very likely that none will be." Rakoff then explained how the Obama Administration systematically blocked the types of investigations and prosecutions that, in previous decades, had held banksters personally liable and placed them into prison.

Basically, Rakoff set forth an indictment of Barack Obama. Rakoff's reason given for doing this now was that the 5-year statute of limitations is running out; his speech is thus a call for alarm, and possibly even a call for prosecution of the President, if that ever becomes possible. Rakoff is essentially laying out a case for prosecution of Obama as an accessory after-the-fact in aiding and abetting, if not masterminding, a cover-up of the crimes that had caused the 2008 collapse.

What is especially interesting about Rakoff's speech is his description of the tactics that the Obama Administration used in order to achieve this result. Rakoff, who knows very well the laws and precedents in regards to prosecution of executive financial crimes, lays out the methods of diversion from that system that were applied throughout the Obama Administration. He doesn't do this in detail - for example, he doesn't at all mention the role that the Administration's vigorous and successful effort to stop the state attorneys general from moving forward separately to investigate and possibly criminally prosecute these crimes under state laws and to divert those efforts into the omnibus 49-state "settlement" - but the outline he provides is quite clear, and does accurately describe the way the Administration dealt with accountability for the 2008 collapse, which was by blocking accountability for it and by transferring that onto civil penalties against the banks that had carried out these frauds, which is to say: wrist-slap fines against those banks' innocent current stockholders, fines so small anyway as to be inconsequential in comparison to the profits that were gained from these frauds (and from the taxpayers' bailouts sopping up the "toxic assets&quot .

As to the reason why congressional and other Republicans, who rail so vociferously against Obama for "death panels," "fake birth certificate," etc., have not pursued him on this, the reasons go beyond anything that's touched upon in Rakoff's speech, but the George W. Bush Administration had actually begun the system that President Obama has merely continued; and so, any prosecution of Obama would also expose the previous President, who was, of course, a Republican. Consequently, if there is to be any action taken against Obama, it would need to be initiated by Democrats. The Republican Party is complicit in any crimes that the Obama Administration might have perpetrated, because those were conservative crimes - such as protecting from prosecution the criminal elite who brought on and profited from the MBS bubble.

[dickthegrouch]

1. I thought the three branches were designed to be independent

Why blame the Executive branch for a failure of the Judicial?

Even if the head of the Judicial branch is an Executive branch appointment, there should be no more connection. Put the blame where it really lies instead of finding another way to attack Obama.

Any reasonable mathematician along with a good database expert could figure out in days who was responsible for all this, where the money was lost and who received it to pay it back. Granted there's lots of databases to go through, but they are all available for the price of a subpoena to the right authorities.

There's NO excuse for not prosecuting except someone would have to do some hard work.

[bvar22]

2. Obviously, there ARE other "excuses" for not prosecuting Wall Street Criminals.

Otherwise, we would be seeing Perp Walks.

The DoJ is appointed BY the President,
and serves at the pleasure of The President.

To believe that there is an firewall between the President and the DoJ is hopelessly naive.

[truebluegreen]

3. The Justice Dept, and the Attorney General are not part of the Judicial branch;

let alone its "head"--that would be the Supreme Court. The executive branch administers the laws, and as such is responsible for bringing cases. So yes, Obama is largely responsible.

Not prosecuting is not a result of ducking some work, but rather ducking responsibility and protecting the wrong people.

[upi402]

4. This

is why we need someone aside from Hillary. We just can't afford more wall-to-wall corporatism.

[truebluegreen]

5. +100