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	Ongoing questions as to why Wall Street Execs have not been prosecuted for financial meltdown? by Matt Taibbi, Glenn Greenwald PBS Frontline USA   November 14, 2013   Federal Judge criticizes Dept. of Justice for not Prosecuting Wall Street Execs, by Andrea Germanos.   A federal judge with a history of crticizing the regulatory system has issued scathing remarks against the Department of Justice for allowing Wall Street executives to escape criminal prosecutions.   Speaking at an event hosted by the New York City Bar Association, U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff of Manhattan said the DoJ''s "unconvincing" excuses for not prosecuting individuals were "technically and morally suspect."   "[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 said.   While the DoJ has not said that all the top executives are innocent in the lead-up to the financial crisis, it "has offered one or another excuse for not criminally prosecuting them—excuses that, on inspection, appear unconvincing,” the Financial Times reports Judge Rakoff as saying.   "Just going after the company," which could lead to deferred prosecutions and nominal fines, is "both technically and morally suspect. It is technically suspect because, under the law, you should not indict or threaten to indict a company unless you can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that some managerial agent of the company committed the alleged crime; and if you can prove that, why not indict the manager?"   "And from a moral standpoint, punishing a company and its many innocent employees and shareholders for the crimes committed by some unprosecuted individuals seems contrary to elementary notions of moral responsibility," Rakoff said.   Ultimately, "the failure of the government to bring to justice those responsible for such a massive fraud speaks greatly to weaknesses in our prosecutorial system that need to be addressed," he said.   And "to federal judges who take an oath to apply the law equally to the rich and the poor, this excuse, sometimes labeled the ''too big to jail excuse,'' is mindboggling in what it says about the department''s disregard of fundamental legal principles," he continued.   Rakoff''s statements echo the calls of many banking reform advocates who have charged that real accountability will only come when executives are prosecuted and sent to jail for illegal activity.   Rakoff''s comments, however, were not surprising given his history.   In 2011 Rakoff made what was described as a "historic" decision when he rejected a $285 million settlement the SEC sought with Citigroup because it was too lenient and would have blocked an "overriding public interest in knowing the truth." His full ruling, Rolling Stone''s Matt Taibbi wrote at the time, "read like a political document, serving not just as a rejection of this one deal but as a broad and unequivocal indictment of the regulatory system as a whole."   In 2009, Rakoff rejected an SEC settlement with Bank of America.   As Mary Bottari then reported at PRWatch:   As reported previously, the court was weighing the appropriateness of a $33 million fine the SEC levied against BofA for failing to notify shareholders about a massive bonus package paid to Merrill Lynch executives when BofA acquired Merrill in September of 2008.   Because it failed to fully disclose the bonuses as required by law, BofA was fined by the SEC. But Rakoff delved into more fundamental questions. Merrill had just lost $27 billion and was on the rocks. BofA was given $40 billion in taxpayer funds to acquire Merrill and help cover the firm''s losses. So where did the bonus bucks come from? As Rakoff put it: "To say now that the $33 million does not come directly from U.S. funds is simply to ignore the overall economics of the Bank''s situation."   The SEC''s $33 million fine was less than 1% of the 3.6 billion provided by taxpayers. Rakoff ruled that the fine "does not comport with the most elementary notions of justice and morality." In addition, he slammed the SEC for not getting to the bottom of the matter by investigating who precisely was responsible for the bonus bonanza.   Rakoff characterized the settlement as "unfair," "inadequate" and "unreasonable." One year after the collapse of investment banking behemoths threw the economy into crisis, the case raises profound questions about why so few Wall Street titans have been indicted and the continuing lethargy shown by the top cops charged with policing the market.   Noting that the banks had "effectively lied to their shareholders," Jim Hightower wrote in 2009:   Rakoff wanted to know the names of the liars, suggesting that those "who made the wrongful decisions" should be held personally accountable. Also, Rakoff pointedly asked the kind of questions that folks all across the country would ask if they had the chance, such as, "Do Wall Street people expect to be paid large bonuses in years when their company lost $27 billion?" The judge also went after the SEC, calling its meek fine "strangely askew" and bluntly telling the agency''s lawyer that his feeble explanation for the low fine "seems so at war with common sense."   The Untouchables, by Glenn Greenwald.   A PBS Frontline report examines the lack of even a single arrest or prosecution of any senior Wall Street banker for the systemic fraud that precipitated the 2008 financial crisis: a crisis from which millions of people around the world are still suffering.   What this program particularly demonstrated was that the justice department, in particular the Chief of its Criminal Division, Lanny Breuer, never even tried to hold the high-level criminals accountable.   What justice officials did instead is exactly what they did in the face of high-level Bush era crimes of torture and warrantless eavesdropping: namely, acted to protect the most powerful factions in the society in the face of overwhelming evidence of serious criminality. Indeed, financial elites were not only vested with impunity for their fraud, but thrived as a result of it, even as ordinary Americans continue to suffer the effects of that crisis.   Worst of all, justice officials both shielded and feted these Wall Street oligarchs as they simultaneously prosecuted and imprisoned powerless Americans for far more trivial transgressions. As Harvard law professor Larry Lessig put it two weeks ago when expressing anger over the Department of Justice (DOJ) persecution of Aaron Swartz: "we live in a world where the architects of the financial crisis regularly dine at the White House." (Indeed, as "The Untouchables" put it: while no senior Wall Street executives have been prosecuted, "many small mortgage brokers, loan appraisers and even home buyers" have been).   As I documented at length in my 2011 book on America"s two-tiered justice system, With Liberty and Justice for Some, the evidence that felonies were committed by Wall Street is overwhelming. The evidence directly negates the primary excuse by Breuer that the bad acts of Wall Street were not criminal.   Numerous documents prove that executives at leading banks, credit agencies, and mortgage brokers were falsely touting assets as sound that knew were junk: the very definition of fraud.   As former Wall Street analyst Yves Smith wrote in her book ECONned: "What went on at Lehman and AIG, as well as the chicanery in the CDO [collateralized debt obligation] business, by any sensible standard is criminal."   Even lifelong Wall Street defender Alan Greenspan, the former Federal Reserve Chair, said in Congressional testimony that "a lot of that stuff was just plain fraud."   A New York Times editorial in August explained that the DOJ"s excuse for failing to prosecute Wall Street executives - that it was too hard to obtain convictions - "has always defied common sense - and all the more so now that a fuller picture is emerging of the range of banks reckless and lawless activities, including interest-rate rigging, money laundering, securities fraud and excessive speculation."   The Frontline program interviewed former prosecutors, Senate staffers and regulators who unequivocally said the same: it is inconceivable that the DOJ could not have successfully prosecuted at least some high-level Wall Street executives - had they tried.   What"s most remarkable about all of this is not even Wall Street had the audacity to expect the generosity of largesse they ended up receiving. "The Untouchables" begins by recounting the massive financial devastation the 2008 crisis wrought - "the economy was in ruins and bankers were being blamed" - and recounts:   "In 2009, Wall Street bankers were on the defensive, worried they could be held criminally liable for fraud. With a new administration, bankers and their attorneys expected investigations and at least some prosecutions."   Indeed, the show recalls that both in Washington and the country generally, "there was broad support for prosecuting Wall Street." Nonetheless: "four years later, there have been no arrests of any senior Wall Street executives."   In response to the DOJ"s excuse-making that these criminal cases are too hard to win, numerous experts - Senators, top Hill staffers, former DOJ prosecutors - emphasized the key point: Administration officials never even tried.   One of the heroes of "The Untouchable", former Democratic Sen. Ted Kaufman, worked tirelessly to provide the DOJ with all the funds it needed to ensure probing criminal investigations and even to pressure and compel them to do so.   Yet when he and his staff would meet with Breuer and other top DOJ officials, they would proudly tout the small mortgage brokers they were pursuing, in response to which Kafuman and his staff said: "No. Don"t show me small-time mortgage guys. This is totally about what went on in Wall Street.. We are talking about investigating senior level Wall Street executives, even at the Board level"   (The same Lanny Breuer was recently seen announcing that the banking giant HSBC would face no criminal prosecution for its money laundering of funds for designated terrorist groups and drug networks on the ground that the bank was too big to risk prosecuting).   As Kaufman and his staffers make clear, administration officials were plainly uninterested in pursuing criminal accountability for Wall Street.   One former staffer to both Biden and Kaufman, Jeff Connaughton, wrote a book in 2011 - "The Payoff: Why Wall Street Always Wins" - devoted to alerting the nation that the Administration refused even to try to find criminal culprits on Wall Street.   In the book, this career-Democratic-aide-turned-whistleblower details how the levers of Washington power are used to shield and protect high-level Wall Street executives, many of whom have close ties to the leaders of both parties and themselves are former high-level government officials.   This is a system, he makes clear, that is constituted to ensure that those executives never face real accountability even for their most egregious and destructive crimes.   The reason there have been no efforts made to criminally investigate is obvious. Former banking regulator and current securities Professor Bill Black told Bill Moyers in 2009 that "The Secretary of the Treasury, and others in the administration, with the banks, are engaged in a cover up to keep us from knowing what went wrong." In the documentary "Inside Job", the economist Nouriel Roubini, when asked why there have been no such investigations, replied: "Because then you"d find the culprits."   Underlying all of that is what the Senate"s second-highest ranking Democrat, Dick Durbin, admitted in 2009: the banks "frankly own the place".   The harms from this refusal to hold Wall Street accountable are the same generated by the general legal immunity the US political culture has vested in its elites.. It ensures that there are no incentives to avoid similar crimes in the future.   It is an injustice in its own right to allow those with power and wealth to commit destructive crimes with impunity. It subverts democracy and warps the justice system when a person"s treatment under the law is determined not by their acts but by their power, position, and prestige.   And it exposes just how shameful is the American penal state by contrasting the immunity given to the nation"s most powerful with the merciless punishment meted out to its most marginalized.   The real mystery from all of this is that it has not led to greater social unrest. To some extent, both the early version of the Tea Party and the Occupy movements were spurred by the government"s protection of Wall Street at the expense of everyone else.   Still, Americans continue to be plagued by massive unemployment, foreclosures, the threat of austerity and economic insecurity while those who caused those problems have more power and profit than ever.   And they watch millions of their fellow citizens be put in cages for relatively minor offenses while the most powerful are free to commit far more serious crimes with complete impunity. Far less injustice than this has spurred serious unrest in other societies.   * Glenn Greenwald is a former constitutional lawyer. Mr.Breuer has since stepped down from his position.   PBS Frontline - The Untouchables: http://video.pbs.org/video/2327953844   http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/money-power-wall-street/   * Matt Taibbi a contributing editor for Rolling Stone, regularly covers the GFC faallout in searing investigative commentaries. He’s the author of five books and a winner of the National Magazine Award for commentary:   http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/everything-is-rigged-the-biggest-financial-scandal-yet-20130425   http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog Visit the related web page
	Developing countries see hidden cost in food price hikes by IRIN News   When food prices rise, poor people in developing countries not only change or reduce their diets, they are also more likely to engage in riskier but better paid occupations such as mining and prostitution, according to a new report.   Squeezed, jointly published by the Institute for Development Studies (IDS) and Oxfam, also reports that the increased strain on families brought about by price hikes is accompanied by a rise in domestic violence and alcohol and substance abuse.   “The failure of wages to keep up with rising food prices is putting a strain on family relationships. For many men, the inability to be the family breadwinner is a real source of stress and can lead to conflict and violence within households. Parents’ inability to invest in the futures of their children is also a major source of stress,” Richard King, policy research advisor at Oxfam and co-author of the report, told IRIN.   The report noted that while there is optimism about rising wages, these have failed to keep up with the pace of food price hikes and inflation.   “People are working harder over longer hours, and their wages are not keeping pace with inflation, so they have to adapt wherever, and however, possible,” said the report.   Women, in particular, have borne the brunt of burgeoning food prices, with many of them having to juggle both domestic chores and work to feed their families. In Zambia for example, female nurses and teachers have had to moonlight as street vendors to supplement their incomes, while in Kenya, some young mothers were forced into prostitution to make ends meet, the report said.   According to Naomi Hossain, a research fellow at IDS and a co-author of the report, the need to earn cash to buy food is quickly replacing the importance people put on social relationships.   “As families increasingly struggle to earn enough to eat, we are seeing how money is becoming more important than relationships, to the point that the social implications are potentially alarming. Policymakers need to catch up,” she said.   “Uncertain and relatively high prices mean prioritizing earning the cash needed for food above all else… Global food policymakers need to check their assumptions about adjustments to food prices, and decide whether they want the kinds of societies where cash matters above all else,” Hossain wrote in a recent blog post.   And Oxfam’s King said, “People are becoming more individualistic, and reciprocal sources of support that people tend to rely on are becoming strained. There is rising stigma and uneasiness attached to turning to neighbours for help, in the knowledge that the same will be expected in return.”   According to the UN Food and Agricultural Organization, poor families were more likely to marry off their daughters so that they there would “one mouth less to feed”. In rural Bangladesh, a Tufts University study found that women in households with lower food security reported experiencing “psychological abuse, and about half of women reported physical abuse from their husbands”.   The Overseas Development Institute reported that initial mechanisms for coping with higher food costs - including cutting back spending on expensive foods, borrowing to cover costs of living, and finding ways to work and earn more - were quickly followed by signs of distress, such as “sales of assets, beginning with consumer goods, with land, tools and livestock, sold only after that buffer was exhausted.”   IDS’s Hossain accuses policymakers of being blind to the social changes brought about by food price hikes. Instead, they fixate on “changes they can measure,” she said.   Agriculture as an economic venture has also suffered. While a hike in food prices should ideally inspire more people to engage in agriculture to produce more food, the result, according to the joint IDS-Oxfam study, has been the opposite.   “Instead of flocking to farming as prices rise, the view of agriculture is that it has become much less reliable over the past few years as a result of uncertainties related to input costs, returns and the effects of climate change. People are turning to more lucrative yet dangerous occupations instead - gold mining in Burkina Faso, for example. Education is seen as a ticket off the farm, and agricultural aspirations are rare,” Oxfam’s King said.   The study recommends, among other things, improved social protection policies to address the vulnerability of the poorest people, including cash transfers or subsidies. Improved management of food reserves and regulation of the international grain trade is also needed. Steps to make agriculture a more reliable vocation should also be taken, such as investing in training, technology and sustainability. Visit the related web page
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