Not saying your facts are wrong, but it is very hypocritical of you to accuse others of "garbage logic" with such a terrible argument.
Due to incentives in the U.S. justice system, particularly with regard to prosecution, many, many innocent actors settle or plead guilty even if they're innocent. This problem is well-known and documented.
I agree that someone asserting that a plea deal equals undeniable guilt is also faulty logic, but that was not the argument presented.
My only point is that it's not possible to say that because nobody was convicted that nothing was illegal.. and should be not stated as such.
Please don't equate a poor person with no resources to a company with billions of dollars and massive political clout.
The asymmetry in power makes all the difference.
GS didn't throw away $5B because they were innocent.
2. If I'm interpreting your comment correctly, you're claiming that anyone who is (a) wealthy and (b) settles to avoid further legal costs is automatically guilty. Is this correct?
It absolutely does, though. A poor person can't get a crack team of lawyers to defend them, they get an overworked public lawyer that doesn't have the time to make a decent defense, so it's very risky for that person to go to trial, even if they're completely innocent.
For an entity like Goldman it's the other way around, you only settle if you know you're guilty beyond reasonable doubt, because you can otherwise afford great, dedicated lawyers working full time for years on your case.
No, this doesn't mean that you're automatically guilty if you're wealthy and settle, but the two situations are far _far_ from being equivalent.
This whole "it wasn't illegal" mindset is just so far removed from reality.
Do people honestly think that Goldman Sachs paid 5 billion dollars in settlement money because they did nothing legally wrong?
No, they agreed to pay such a large settlement to avoid criminal convictions, because what they did was a crime.
This is a whole other topic of conversation regarding Eric Holder's justice department techniques of going after settlements instead of convictions, and sadly the end result is that after all of the settlements are done, and the companies profit off their crimes, somehow people get the idea in their head that the actions were never crimes to begin with.. which is not even remotely true.