Phil Angelides Discusses America's Dual Justice System: One For Wall Street And One For Everyone Else | zero hedge

Not much different than the Dodd - Frank debacle. Angelides was part of the problem, therfore it's silly to put him in position to be part of the solution.

You don't call the arsonist to put out the fire, you call a fireman.

Funny, Barney Frank and Beans was on the air yesterday defending Dodd - Frank (duh) and saying the regulators didn't have the resources to fight the last crisis, but now they do.

You can sleep easier America, Barney Fife, er Barney Frank is on the case.

My problem with that argument is:

The evidence is clear they had sufficient resources, they spent too much time being distracted by surfing porn and cozying up with the folks they were supposed to be regulating in order to position themselves for their next (more lucrative) job after government (non)-service.

As the Madoff debacle illustrated, the regulators couldn't smell out criminality when it was right under their noses. More resources does not cure ineptitude, it just provides a veneer of competence. The results will be the same.

Angelides quotes may be rather pithy, but did it really take this debacle and ad nauseum public hearing for him to come to this basic conclusion regarding human nature and behavior.

ARE YOU SERIOUS? This seems like basic garden variety "NO DUH" stuff to me. But what do I know?



Phil Angelides Discusses America's Dual Justice System: One For Wall Street And One For Everyone Else | zero hedge:

"Lisa Murphy of Bloomberg interviewed the chairman of the now defunct FCIC, Phil Angelides to discuss the findings presented yesterday by Carl Levin. The topic was the 'greased pig' that is Wall Street. The conclusion is that America now has a dual justice system: 'One for ordinary people and then one for people with money and enormous wealth and power.' As for crime deterrents, considering that to this day not one person has gone to prison, even an idiot can foresee what Angelides has to say on this issue: 'To the extent laws were broken, we need deterrents. If someone robs a 7-11, they took $500 and they were able to settle the next day for $50 and no admission of wrongdoing, they'd knock over that 7-11 again. And we've seen time after time where people and firms have made tens, one hundreds, billions of dollars. They've settled charges for pennies on the dollar. At Citigroup for example they represented that they had $13 billion of subprime mortgage exposure when they really had $55 billion. The penalty to the chief financial officer who made $19 million that year, 2007, was $100,000. Goldman was fined $500 million but the date they settled their stock moved up $2 billion. There's been no real consequence.'"