Great Quote – Sowell Debunks Greed as Cause of Inequality

19 Responses to Great Quote – Sowell Debunks Greed as Cause of Inequality

1. Chris says:

   Wednesday, January 29, 2014 at 12:35 pm

   Monday: Income inequality isn’t a real problem!

   Tuesday: Income inequality is caused by Obama’s failed policies!

   Wednesday: Income inequality isn’t a real problem!

   Thursday: Income inequality is caused by Obama’s failed policies!

   Friday: Income inequality isn’t a real problem!

   And so on.
2. Tina says:

   Wednesday, January 29, 2014 at 4:06 pm

   And for you dear boy, total denial about what works and what doesn’t work and the Presidents LOUSY economic policy and record!

   Please explain how Obama’s policies have led or will lead to a robust economy, plenty of good jobs and people moving up in the world. When you can tell me how it works then we can talk.
3. Princess says:

   Wednesday, January 29, 2014 at 4:20 pm

   Today JP Morgan Chase announced that their CEO, Jaime Dimon would have his pay doubled to around $20 million. That same company layed off over 7,000 employees and told the rest that there would be no raises this year due to the big fine from that bank’s illegal activity. This really should not be a matter of left vs right. Dimon should be in jail. Instead he got a pay raise.

   Sorry, but that seems ridiculous to me.
4. Chris says:

   Wednesday, January 29, 2014 at 5:21 pm

   Tina: “Please explain how Obama’s policies have led or will lead to a robust economy, plenty of good jobs and people moving up in the world. When you can tell me how it works then we can talk.”

   I’ve spent the last five years doing exactly that. You disagree? Fine.

   But that has nothing to do with my comment. You really do go from blaming income inequality on Obama one day, to pretending that income inequality is not a real problem the next. We’ve all seen you do this. Are you denying that?
5. Tina says:

   Wednesday, January 29, 2014 at 9:30 pm

   Chris: “I’ve spent the last five years doing exactly that.”

   You have not explained how raising taxes on corporations, the wealthy, and investors; creating pages and pages of regulations; redistributing wealth; printing money (QE) for extended periods; and picking winners and losers or shifting cash to special interest groups stimulates overall growth to create a vibrant economy with millions of new jobs and gives people the opportunity to lift themselves into higher levels of prosperity.

   No sir, you have not explained how leftist economic polices work…the cause and effect, nuts and bolts of how it should work.

   You cannot even use the current administration, or the Carter years as an example of how it works.

   “You really do go from blaming income inequality on Obama one day, to pretending that income inequality is not a real problem the next…”

   I have said that Obama’s policies have made it worse; they have.

   I have said that the power to change it is in the hands of individuals, and it is…but I have also acknowledge it would require that citizens quit thinking like victims, quit being run by envy and covetousness, and quit voting for big government politicians. I also acknowledge its nearly impossible in this lousy economy.

   It is made harder when the government refuses to educate our kids positively on capitalism, economics, saving, investing and wealth building. When they are taught to be resentful instead of inspired by the successful.

   It is made harder when government makes it too easy to just stay home, veg in front of the TV, and collect a check.

   You need to get that I don’t give a damn about blame or credit.

   I just want people to be free to pursue their dreams and better in order to give them a good chance.

   So yeah Chris, I am denying the small minded take you have on what I have been writing because it says more about you than it does me or anything I’ve said.
6. Tina says:

   Wednesday, January 29, 2014 at 9:59 pm

   Princess I don’t blame you for thinking it is ridiculous. Maybe you will always resent (right word?) the huge salaries of big company CEO’s. To me its all a matter of perspective and zero’s.

   These people are involved in billion dollar deals and trillions in their bookkeeping. In that world $20 million isn’t that big. Some small companies feel good if they make up to five million gross. The thought of paying a $20 million salary is other worldy.

   It’s certainly a world I will never play in.

   But one thing people need to understand. There isn’t one pile of cash somewhere that we all have to share. It isn’t a zero sum game where if Jaime Dimon gets $20 million twenty million other people have to give up a dollar. His wealth does not come out of my pocket or your pocket unless of course we give it to him in a transaction of some sort where we also benefit.

   I wouldn’t trade places with Jaime Dimon, or anyone else in banking, for $40 million a year if I had to perform my duties under the thumb of this tyrannical administration.

   Nobody will ever feel sorry for a banker or corporate head. Maybe that’s why not too many people write articles exposing what is going on in the industry under Dodd/Frank and the vindictive and controlling Obama Justice Department. But a few articles can be found. The picture they paint is pretty ugly.

   Talk about not learning from past mistakes: A government department is again intimidating banks into lending to minority borrowers at below-market rates, all in the name of combating “discrimination.” Welcome to the next housing mess.

   The 1990s may have brought us supercharged politicized lending, but Eric Holder’s Department of Justice is taking the game to an entirely new level, and then some. The weapon is a “fair lending” unit created in early 2010, led by special counsel Eric Halperin and overseen by Civil Rights Division head Thomas Perez. (read the full article for more on him)…

   … Lenders who discriminate on the basis of race and those who make decisions on the basis of credit scores are two entirely different animals. The former our society doesn’t permit, for moral reasons; the latter we encourage because it’s fundamental to capitalism. A lender will go bust if he can’t distinguish between a risky loan and a good loan. Poor people aren’t well-served by getting loans they can’t afford.

   Historically, fair-lending cases have fallen into roughly two categories: “price discrimination” cases, in which lenders are accused of charging minorities higher prices than other clients, and “red-lining” suits, in which they are accused of intentionally failing to serve minority communities. Sounds straightforward for those who seek to obey the law.

   But not when Justice revives “disparate impact” theory: the idea that even if lenders don’t actively discriminate, they can still be sued if the cumulative effect of their actions implies discrimination. The latter is usually “proved” through statistical analysis (and the old standard—discriminatory intent—is thrown out the window). The Bush administration largely declined to pursue these cases.

   And for good reason. Consider two AIG subsidiaries that Justice alleged “failed to supervise or monitor brokers in setting broker fees” between 2003 and 2006, but that Justice didn’t pursue aggressively until the Obama administration. The government claimed that, in aggregate, African-Americans were charged more than other ethnic groups. AIG settled in March 2010 while it was under federal ownership, and Mr. Perez gained a big legal stick in price-discrimination cases. Suddenly lenders may be held liable for other people’s business practices, even if those business practices aren’t individually discriminatory.(continues)

   The law is being used as a hammer to destroy and as we shall see, extort:

   Ivesters.com

   Already looking at $100 billion in federal legal penalties over the mortgage crisis, major lenders fear they face a large and undefined liability under the government’s aggressive anti-discrimination enforcement and are pushing for officials to define where they’re drawing the line.

   The Obama administration has kept the statistical methodology it uses to prove lending bias in both home and car finance so secret that a bipartisan group of 22 senators — including 11 Democrats — fired off a letter to regulators Oct. 30 demanding details.

   Senators asked the administration to clarify what constitutes a “statistically significant” racial disparity in auto loan outcomes that would trigger prosecution.

   In a Nov. 4 letter of reply, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) refused to say. …

   … Investors.com

   The Obama Record: Moody’s didn’t quite say it, but its move to slash the credit rating of America’s No. 1 and No. 3 banks to near junk is based in part on the banks’ exposure to bad government risk.

   Officially, Moody’s said its downgrading of Bank of America, Citigroup and three other major U.S. banks was due to their “significant exposure to the volatility and risk of outsized losses inherent” in a difficult global market environment. It also cited increased pressures from government regulations.

   Indeed, the Dodd-Frank Act, federal lawsuits and other anti-bank pressures generated by this administration have made that environment all the more difficult.

   Consider that three of the downgraded banks — BofA, Citi and JPMorgan Chase — are defendants in a $25 billion mortgage settlement led by Attorney General Eric Holder. He calls the record sum a “small measure of relief” for alleged “victims” of “unfair” mortgages.

   Holder insists he’s not done shaking down banks. Pressure groups working with him say they won’t be happy until banks cough up at least $350 billion.

   Separately, BofA must pay $335 million to minority borrowers in an unprecedented race-bias suit.

   Truth is, this administration has put banks at risk. It’s a key reason they’re still under stress.

   President Obama declared war on bankers from the moment he took office. He demonized them as “predatory lenders” and “greedy fat cats,” who allegedly exploited the poor and middle class and caused the Great Recession. And even as they’ve struggled to repair tattered balance sheets, he has assaulted them on multiple fronts, including:

   • Suing the nation’s largest banks to recover as much as $30 billion in losses from subprime mortgages.

   • Forcing banks to tear up mortgage contracts and even write down principal amounts.

   • Dumping millions of pages of sensitive bank examination records on the Web, so trial lawyers can pore over them to find something to sue banks on.

   • Prosecuting more than 60 banks for discriminatory lending.

   • Ordering bank defendants to open new branches in unprofitable urban areas.

   • Ordering defendants to give away loans at cut rates to low-income minority customers with bad credit, repeating the cycle of risky political lending that caused the crisis.

   • Helping dozens of major cities across the country pass “responsible banking” ordinances to pressure banks into making irresponsible loans to people who can’t repay them.

   • Unleashing a powerful new agency — the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — on all financial firms to police the flow of capital to favored groups.

   • Robbing the largest banks of more than $20 billion a year in earnings from new compliance and other costs under Dodd-Frank.

   • Collecting and using massive amounts of new data from banks regarding home and small-business loans to set stricter quotas on “affirmative lending” for the underprivileged.

   • Denying banks billions of dollars in revenue sources, while forcing them to raise capital to meet huge reserve requirements.

   • Vastly expanding state power to seize and liquidate banks that don’t meet the new requirements.

   • Forcing lenders to buy U.S. Treasuries to meet new reserve rules.

   That’s right, Obama regulators are essentially ordering banks to buy up riskier government debt — a move that could make the debt crisis even worse if banks are left with billions of toxic government debt on their books.

   Since 2008, U.S. banks have bought $700 billion of U.S. debt. But the pace has quickened under Dodd-Frank. In the first two months of 2012, they bought more government bonds than they did in all of last year.

   In short, the administration has exposed banks to its own risky, recently downgraded debt, and yet it’s less likely to support them in a financial crisis under Dodd-Frank. It’s made it harder for them to come up with the cash and collateral to absorb additional losses from such external exposures. And that’s led to their own credit deterioration. Now the downgrade makes it more costly for banks to raise money by selling their corporate debt.

   Obama has put banks in quite a pickle. But he doesn’t care. He wants to turn them into public-service utilities. Obama seeks to turn the anti-bank-redlining law, the Community Reinvestment Act, into a more potent weapon. And former Clinton top bank regulator, Eugene Ludwig, has advised him on how to do it.

   “At a minimum,” he says, the CRA should be broadened to cover credit unions and insurance companies. But “ideally,” he says, it should “include all other major financial institutions, such as hedge funds and private equity funds.”

   “Hedge funds could hold community development-related debt instruments,” Ludwig proposes. “And private equity funds could invest in community development projects or instruct firms in which they have ownership stakes to fund CRA projects in the communities they serve.”

   Do not worry, he says, unconvincingly, doing business in these neighborhoods “is not about losing money.”

   He also suggests investment funds could earn CRA credits by offering “pro bono financial, accounting, and tax analysis to community organizations and low-income families in targeted neighborhoods.”

   In other words, Wall Street could help anti-bank Acorn clones stay in business so they could be in a better position to shake down Wall Street.

   What Obama and his comrades are proposing, in short, is reallocation of credit on a massive scale.

   I realize that is a lot to take in and may be difficult to understand, but understand it or perhaps face another major crash followed by a deep depression and if we can’t rid ourselves of the criminals doing this a ruined America forever! It already be too late.

   When I hear Americans whining about the high slaries of others at the same time that they are totally in the dark about the evil that progressive radicals are doing through the government I want to tear my hair out.

   Good grief people…we are being plied with promises and government “help” in the daylight and in the dark we are being raped and tosed in a tyrannical prison.

   And NO I am not being dramatic. A government that behaves like this has lost all sense of morality and is no friend to liberty or property rights.
7. Chris says:

   Thursday, January 30, 2014 at 6:31 am

   Tina: “It isn’t a zero sum game where if Jaime Dimon gets $20 million twenty million other people have to give up a dollar.”

   Did you not read all of Princess’ comment? That’s EXACTLY what this is.

   Princess: “Today JP Morgan Chase announced that their CEO, Jaime Dimon would have his pay doubled to around $20 million. That same company layed off over 7,000 employees and told the rest that there would be no raises this year due to the big fine from that bank’s illegal activity.”

   Tina: “…we are being raped and tosed [sic] in a tyrannical prison.

   And NO I am not being dramatic.”

   Uh-huh.

   If this is you being normal-sauce, I’d really hate to see how “dramatic” looks on you.
8. Tina says:

   Thursday, January 30, 2014 at 11:50 am

   Chris you have definitely taken the bait. You think Jaime Dimon lives to cut jobs and salaries. You think the decisions he makes derives from greed instead of the schemes devised by this president to separate the bank from its cash for redistribution. (Read the articles in full that I linked to in the comment).

   Jaime Dimon would much rather expand business and hire people. that he’s “cutting” implies that he has in the past hired people, offered good salaries including bonuses! You have to be an idiot to think this era of big government has been lots of fun for the greedy b’tard. People who have money know how to make things improve or they wouldn’t be where they are…they know how to work with people to make things happen…and they know good people will not work for a pittance.

   The overall public will never know what this administration is doing to our banking system but they should. Forcing banks to buy US treasuries (Obamas debt) is like the way the mafia extracts money from restaurant owners and bars and keeps them under their thumb.

   Jaime Dimon is being paid to protect the bank from this onslaught of government intrusion and force and at the same time make sure the bank remains a viable source of service and revenue to the public. How much is that worth? Probably a lot more than the average job. Who is qualified for such work? Very few people…which is why he gets what he gets.

   Your insults are quite amusing to you, Chris but they also show you have very little interest in the serious legal and constitutional issues that this administration is creating with a very radical agenda that will not result in a single job or the economy being strengthened. In fact they will work to bring the strength of America DOWN.

   Your barbs also indicate an adolescent mind but I will forgive you that for another decade or so. Young people are full of sympathy but few seriously thought out ideas.

   Obama has put banks in quite a pickle. But he doesn’t care. He wants to turn them into public-service utilities. Obama seeks to turn the anti-bank-redlining law, the Community Reinvestment Act, into a more potent weapon. And former Clinton top bank regulator, Eugene Ludwig, has advised him on how to do it.

   “At a minimum,” he says, the CRA should be broadened to cover credit unions and insurance companies. But “ideally,” he says, it should “include all other major financial institutions, such as hedge funds and private equity funds.”

   Do you value constitutional private property protections? At all?

   This manipulation is what created the housing bubble and crash. It is irresponsible and dangerous and it will NOT lead this nation toward jobs and growth or prosperity.

   Princesses children will not have an opportunities to find work much less learn how to build wealth and improve their circumstances with committed radical socialists like this in power.

   You, my friend, are a fool.
9. Peggy says:

   Thursday, January 30, 2014 at 12:10 pm

   You all need to read what’s going on at HSBC and it’s ties to Eric Holder.

   Obama and Cameron Decide Banks Above the Law:

   “One of the “tells” that reveals how embarrassed Lanny Breuer (head of the Criminal Division) and Eric Holder (AG) are by the disgraceful refusal to prosecute HSBC and its officers for their tens of thousands of felonies are the false and misleading statements made by the Department of Justice (DOJ) about the settlement. The same pattern has been demonstrated by other writers in the case of the false and disingenuous statistics DOJ has trumpeted to attempt to disguise the abject failure of their efforts to prosecute the elite officers who directed the “epidemic” (FBI 2004) of mortgage fraud.

   HSBC was one of the largest originators of fraudulent mortgage loans through its acquisition of Household Finance.

   Three recent books by “insiders” have confirmed earlier articles revealing the decisive role that Treasury Secretary Geithner has played in opposing criminal prosecutions of the elite banksters and banks whose frauds drove the financial crisis and the Great Recession.

   As white-collar criminologists we frequently see this reaction from elite lawyers like Breuer and Holder. It’s all about elites protecting their social class and their guild (lawyers).”

   (Very long article, but worth reading.)

   http://www.financialsense.com/contributors/william-black/obama-and-cameron-decide-that-banks-are-above-the-law

   HSBC Cash Withdrawal Limits Spark Fears of Banking Crisis:

   “Several HSBC customers in England have complained of being stopped from withdrawing large amounts of their own money because they could not provide proof of what they planned to use it for.

   Listeners told BBC Radio 4’s MoneyBox program that they were stopped from withdrawing amounts ranging from £5,000 to £10,000.

   Stephen Cotton told the station that he tried to withdraw £7,000 from his savings account to pay back a loan from his mother.

   “When we presented them with the withdrawal slip, they declined to give us the money because we could not provide them with a satisfactory explanation for what the money was for,” he said.”

   http://beforeitsnews.com/opinion-conservative/2014/01/hsbc-cash-withdrawal-limits-spark-fears-of-banking-crisis-2796170.html
10. Chris says:

    Friday, January 31, 2014 at 7:54 am

    Tina: “Jaime Dimon would much rather expand business and hire people. that he’s “cutting” implies that he has in the past hired people, offered good salaries including bonuses! You have to be an idiot to think this era of big government has been lots of fun for the greedy b’tard. People who have money know how to make things improve or they wouldn’t be where they are…they know how to work with people to make things happen…and they know good people will not work for a pittance.

    The overall public will never know what this administration is doing to our banking system but they should. Forcing banks to buy US treasuries (Obamas debt) is like the way the mafia extracts money from restaurant owners and bars and keeps them under their thumb.

    Jaime Dimon is being paid to protect the bank from this onslaught of government intrusion and force and at the same time make sure the bank remains a viable source of service and revenue to the public. How much is that worth? Probably a lot more than the average job. Who is qualified for such work? Very few people…which is why he gets what he gets.”

    There is no need to even respond to such blatant corporate ass-kissing. It is a parody of itself.
11. Harold says:

    Friday, January 31, 2014 at 8:20 am

    After reading the posts of everyone, I have formed a opinion that it is not a issue of income equality, it relates more to argument of effort equality.

    Studies have formed a theory that eventually rewards and efforts collide. People by their very nature do not condone reward based on lack of effort.

    Yet people who would receive those effortless rewards learn to view them as justified.
12. Tina says:

    Friday, January 31, 2014 at 10:35 am

    You know who: “There is no need to even respond to such blatant corporate ass-kissing.”

    Arrogant jerk who condones theft, participates in class envy and warfare, and demands conformity of thought and existence.
13. Tina says:

    Friday, January 31, 2014 at 10:57 am

    Peggy the reason some, not all, of the bankers have not been prosecuted is because the law demanded that they make the bad loans. This is a case where banks were intimidated, threatened with lawsuits, and threatened with having their ratings lowered if they did not meet acceptable (unspoken) quotas of loans to the poor and in poor sections of the country.

    Then when the house of cards collapsed they were forced under threat of prosecution to take bail out money and absorb failing banks…which they did.

    Now, after absorbing those tremendous losses, they are being prosecuted for the bad loans made by the companies they were forced to absorb! At the same time Dodd/Frank was supposed to fix this problem but it hasn’t. The government continues to push for loans to be granted when people don’t meet the qualifications that were supposedly put in place.

    I’m in favor of prosecuting people who break the law and some people that have been deserved it.

    But from the beginning the bulk of this mess has been caused by agenda driven activist politicians who are using the law to both manipulate and punish bankers to meet their goals. The bankers cannot win and have no recourse.

    What this radical, thieving bunch has done to the banking industry and housing industry is criminal.

    What their thievery is doing to our country is criminal.

    We need to rid the presidents office and the congress of these radical Marxist thugs.

    The problem at HSBC had to do with a change in money laundering law, I think…the clerk was wrong to tell the guy she needed to know what it was for. the bank is compelled to comply as a means of monitoring for possible money laundering.

    Druggies and criminals sure make a mess of things.
14. Peggy says:

    Friday, January 31, 2014 at 12:50 pm

    Tina, There’s a whole other story here. What I got out of the HSBC mess was they and other mega banks were considered too big to fail and those at the top were too elite to be held accountable.

    The drug money kept the banks afloat during the banking crisis and the CEOs jumped on the opportunity to fill their pockets.

    Also, Eric Holder’s connection to the Mexican drug running cartels with Fast and Furious could link the laundered money to him. (Wonder if that was the big investigation that reporter was working on when his car crashed and burned mysteriously in So. Cal. a couple of months ago?)

    HSBC Busted! (Sort Of) Revisit “Fast and Furious”!:

    “Let me simplify this last one: “failed to maintain controls designed to prevent money laundering” is a lot of verbiage for saying HSBC laundered money.

    “The bank was unable to properly monitor $15 billion in bulk cash transactions between mid-2006 and mid-2009, and had inadequate staffing and high turnover in its compliance units, July’s report said.”

    Right. The poor bank wasn’t able to do it. That $15 billion in bulk cash just slipped through inadequate staffing. If you believe that, please contact me about some amazing real estate investment opportunities.

    I scanned several of these stories and none of them bother to give any real background to the concept that banks stay in business by laundering drug money. The Chicago version doesn’t even tell you what the LA Times reveals: “The report also blamed U.S. regulators, claiming they knew the bank had a poor system to detect problems but failed to take action.” So there was government collusion.

    The closest to the truth came from the New York Time’s Dealbook. It made some fascinating points that ought to start a firestorm:

    “State and federal authorities decided against indicting HSBC in a money-laundering case over concerns that criminal charges could jeopardize one of the world’s largest banks and ultimately destabilize the global financial system… the case raises questions about whether certain financial institutions, having grown so large and interconnected, are too big to indict.”

    Indeed, banks are constantly laundering narco money. Consider this website for J. P. Morgan which hosts the essay “The Price of Globalization.” The article quotes two sources approvingly who claim that the banks launder a five hundred billion to a trillion dollars a year in drug money, and that US banks deal with about half of it. You seriously think any “too big to fail” US bank is going to start turning away that sort of business?

    It gets even better (and by “better,” I mean worse). The Guardian/Observer ran a story in December 2009, that “Drug money saved banks in global crisis, says UN advisor.”

    “Drugs money worth billions of dollars kept the financial system afloat at the height of the global crisis, the United Nations‘ drugs and crime tsar has told the Observer. Antonio Maria Costa, head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, said he has seen evidence that the proceeds of organized crime were “the only liquid investment capital” available to some banks on the brink of collapse last year. He said that a majority of the $352bn (£216bn) of drugs profits was absorbed into the economic system as a result.”

    So this brings us right back to the “too big to indict” claim mentioned in Dealbook. “Godfather Politics” is not just the name of this great blog. It is also a reasonable description of modern governments as virtually branches of organized crime.

    This is why “Fast and Furious” needs to be investigated thoroughly, but not as an operation that was “botched.” It should be investigated as a real attempt to give weapons to a favored drug cartel. A lot more could be said, but I’ll leave you with the following two videos from a local Fox News television journalist for the last word.”

    Read more at http://godfatherpolitics.com/8495/hsbc-busted-sort-of-revisit-fast-and-furious/#ooWf0bVc0RwhzZeR.99

    Journalist Michael Hastings killed in fiery L.A. crash:

    Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2013/06/19/journalist-michael-hastings-killed-in-fiery-l-a-crash/#ixzz2s0k9Xk9y

    Michael Hastings conspiracy theories: Web goes wild after NSA, CIA reporter killed in crash:

    Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/conspiracy-theories-abound-michael-hastings-death-article-1.1377392#ixzz2s0lUYGqn
15. Tina says:

    Friday, January 31, 2014 at 10:04 pm

    Peggy thanks for all of the information.

    Banks have worked with government to trace drug money and funds that support terrorism. I guess it isn’t surprising that there’s corruption going on.
    Sorting out the guilty would be daunting ; it would also require an administration and justice department that can be trusted. There hasn’t been much evidence that we can trust or count on those currently in positions of power.

    anyone who breaks the law should pay the price. But the government attempted to tell us the gun sellers were the ones breaking the law when in fact government pressured them to do it. It’s been the same with the banks…making the job of understanding exactly what is going on difficult.
16. Chris says:

    Saturday, February 1, 2014 at 2:22 pm

    Tina: “Peggy the reason some, not all, of the bankers have not been prosecuted is because the law demanded that they make the bad loans. This is a case where banks were intimidated, threatened with lawsuits, and threatened with having their ratings lowered if they did not meet acceptable (unspoken) quotas of loans to the poor and in poor sections of the country.”

    This is simply not true.

    The vast majority of banks which made subprime loans before the housing crisis were not subject to the CRA and were under no obligation to make the bad loans that they made. They did so of their own volition.

    You know this already.

    Peggy, I’m glad to see you get it. The fact that no one at HSBC has been prosecuted for the bank’s record of money laundering for terrorists, rogue nations and drug lords is one of the greatest injustices of our time. The Obama administration and the DOJ is absolutely letting down the American people and neglecting their duty by declaring the bank too big to fail.

    What makes this so hypocritical is that this is still a country where young black males are arrested and put in jail in overwhelming numbers simply for possessing small amounts of marijuana. We live in a multi-tiered justice system where the rich can get away with huge crimes while the poor are punished for the slightest infraction.

    This is why the notion that Obama is waging some kind of “war on wealth” is so farcical. His administration hasn’t taken any significant action to reign in the corruption of our big banks or punish the wrongdoers. Some in his administration worked for the same banks which caused this mess.

    But yeah, those poor bankers and corporate titans are being so persecuted by Obama. Ridiculous.
17. Peggy says:

    Saturday, February 1, 2014 at 7:03 pm

    #16 Chris: “What makes this so hypocritical is that this is still a country where young black males are arrested and put in jail in overwhelming numbers simply for possessing small amounts of marijuana.

    I believe the main reason young black males are overwhelming jailed is because they have the highest unemployment and are committing the majority of the crimes. If they had stayed in school and had a job I don’t believe the raw number and percentage would be as high as it is. They wouldn’t be dealing in drugs if they had a paycheck coming in that would support them.

    I believe our laws should be applied equally and if a gun is used during a crime it should be a federal crime with a minimum of 10 years in prison not a county jail. I also don’t believe that small amounts of marijuana should hold high jail time, if any at all. I’d rather a drug rehab be required. (This is one of Rand Paul’s major issues and I agree with him.)

    Glad to see you agree with me on the DOJ and this administration not holding the banking industry accountable for their wrong doings as they should. Felony criminals who wear suits or hoodies should be before a judge and jury and serve the appropriate sentence.

    (In case you missed it Chris did you see my response to the Palin discussion?)
18. Tina says:

    Sunday, February 2, 2014 at 12:48 am

    Chris that two year window that your liberal pals used to create credible talking points are doesn’t tell the story. You are wrong as my research has shown time and again at Post Scripts.

    President Obama has said that the reason more prosecutions were not made was because the law was not broken. The laws on the books created the perfect storm and made this happen. The very premise of the law should have sent up red flags and fireworks warnings. The political goal was more important than the health of the industry.

    Regulators also laid down on the job…was it on purpose? Who knows.

    Fannie Mae created the instrument that allowed the bundling of bad loans. It happened over a decade or more. It wasn’t against the law to bundle loans and sell them…no measures were in place to monitor the numbers of bad loans that the various institutions were bundling and selling.

    You can’t prosecute when people were simply doing what the law allowed and the government encouraged!
19. Chris says:

    Sunday, February 2, 2014 at 10:09 am

    Tina: “Chris that two year window that your liberal pals used to create credible talking points are doesn’t tell the story.”

    If I’m not mistaken, the two years focused on for the analysis were the two years that subprime lending was at its highest.

    Now, if you’re claiming that these two years were not representative, and that CRA loans actually made up a far bigger portion of subprime loans than those two years suggest, than the only way to prove your claim would be to show that CRA loans actually were more likely to default than private loans during other years.

    But as far as I can remember, you’ve never done that.

    “President Obama has said that the reason more prosecutions were not made was because the law was not broken.”

    I’m talking about prosecuting HSBC. Are you actually arguing that laundering money for drug lords and terrorists is not against the law?

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