In February of this year, news broke that Treasury Secretary Jack Lew received an exit package worth over $1 million from Citigroup shortly before joining the Obama administration in 2009. In fact Lew’s contract with Citigroup made explicitly clear that the banker’s eligibility for a special bonus was contingent on his securing a “full time high level position with the U.S. government or regulatory body.”

As the Democratic presidential race tightens in Iowa and New Hampshire, Sanders is turning to the states that follow, including South Carolina, where he trails former secretary of State Hillary Clinton among the significant voting bloc of African Americans.

Sanders will kick-off his “Feel the Bern” tour at South Carolina State University in conjunction with Benedict College in the early-voting state.

In an op-ed published in the Financial Times, John Reed says large banks like the one he used to run are now "inherently unstable and unworkable."

The man who was one of the chief architects of the "Big Bank" model now says the United States never should have repealed the Glass-Steagall banking act in 1999.

That's exactly what Democratic presidential hopefuls Bernie Sanders and Martin O'Malley have been arguing on the campaign trail. They want the law reinstated. Hillary Clinton and the Republican candidates do not.

As I have reflected about the years since 1999, I think the lessons of Glass-Steagall and its repeal suggest that the universal banking model is inherently unstable and unworkable. No amount of restructuring, management change or regulation is ever likely to change that.

The analysis by Syracuse University finds that the government’s criminal prosecution of corporations has dropped 29 percent in the past decade -- particularly remarkable as the decline not only followed headline-grabbing scandals at financial, accounting and energy firms but also occurred even as the number of corporate crime cases referred to prosecutors has increased.

....................

In 1999, the Clinton administration’s deputy attorney general Eric Holder issued a memo telling federal prosecutors that when they contemplate whether to issue charges against corporations, they should consider “collateral consequences, including disproportionate harm to shareholders and employees not proven personally culpable.” That message was amplified by the Bush administration’s Deputy Attorney General Mark Filip, whose 2008 directive to federal prosecutors told them to "take into account the possible substantial consequences to a corporation's employees, investors, pensioners and customers.”

With Obama administration officials echoing the same themes -- and with critics calling the concept “too big to jail” -- prosecutions plummeted: Syracuse researchers found that there were almost 22 percent fewer corporate prosecutions in the five years after the Filip memo than in the five years before.

Some admitted nominating Mr Corbyn to ensure the contest represented the full spectrum of voices in the party and hoped members would dismiss the crazy views of the left in favour of a more mainstream candidate.

Here’s Corbyn as his Labour rivals might like to see him — safely under lock and key.
The grinning leftie was snapped in the stocks for his local paper in 1994.

http://www.sunnation.co.uk/jeremy-corbyns-a-laughing-stock/

“For the new unilateralists of British politics are a threat to our future national security and to our economic security. We’re going to take on their dangerous arguments and defeat them.”

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/aug/31/jeremy-corbyn-poses-national-security-threat-george-osborne

There is a politics of parallel reality going on, in which reason is an irritation, evidence a distraction, emotional impact is king and the only thing that counts is feeling good about it all.
..............................................

The explanation for this parallel reality is something to do with people feeling empowered by their ability through it, to “fight back” against “the system”, the traditional ways of thinking about politics with all its compromises, hard decisions and gradual increments. It is the clarity of full-throated opposition versus the chin-stroking nuance of: “What would we do if we were in government?”

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/aug/29/tony-blair-labour-leadership-jeremy-corbyn

Corbyn has endorsed terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah, and has lent his support to Dyab Abou Jahjah, founder of the Arab European League, which promotes Holocaust denial and obscenely anti-Semitic cartoons on its website. Corbyn’s support is strongest amongst youth who have no memory of the Holocaust and who have grown up in an environment in which constant condemnation of Israel by leftists is the norm.

http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/national-post-view-the-spectre-of-anti-semitism