Re:Why didn’t any Wall Street CEOs go to jail after the fina...
by anigbrowl on Tuesday August 24, 2021 @04:10PM
(#28294286)
I seriously disagree in that there were innumerable thoughtful, measured, and nuanced critiques at the time and they had very little impact. Yes, memes are crude, but they get to the point. And it's a legitimate point; there was a great deal of corruption exposed in numerous markets around the time of the financial crisis, and few of those who profited therefrom suffered any consequences.
I could give a long list of examples and detailed analyses, but my secondary point is that a culture of corruption is enabled partly through talking things to death in abstruse legalistic terms, until everyone is so tired that they become demoralized and lose any motivation to do anything about it.
The US Constitution (not the only operative document, but an important one given the financial industry's very deep roots here) contemplates judicial powers to examine questions of both law and equity. Law is complex and if you have the resources you can hire legal specialists to problematize and pull apart just about any legal assertion. In many respects, a dense thicket of petty legalism surrounds a moral vacuum at the heart of society in which substantive questions about fairness and decency as eschewed as too political for judicial engagement; if you'll forgive my stretching a metaphor, much of our 'shining city on a hill' is just elaborate topiary growing atop crumbling foundations.
I could give a long list of examples and detailed analyses, but my secondary point is that a culture of corruption is enabled partly through talking things to death in abstruse legalistic terms, until everyone is so tired that they become demoralized and lose any motivation to do anything about it.
The US Constitution (not the only operative document, but an important one given the financial industry's very deep roots here) contemplates judicial powers to examine questions of both law and equity. Law is complex and if you have the resources you can hire legal specialists to problematize and pull apart just about any legal assertion. In many respects, a dense thicket of petty legalism surrounds a moral vacuum at the heart of society in which substantive questions about fairness and decency as eschewed as too political for judicial engagement; if you'll forgive my stretching a metaphor, much of our 'shining city on a hill' is just elaborate topiary growing atop crumbling foundations.