John Ketch was the famous hangman, long-dead at the time, but John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon, the authors of the Cato's Letters published this call for the punishment of the banksters who perpetrated the disastrous South Sea Bubble. Sadly, the bankers went unpunished, beginning a long tradition.
Justice is not dead in the United States. Barry Bonds is convicted of his high crime. Our country is protected from Bradley Manning. And besides, Martha Stewart served time. The real culprits go free. Instead, the people will pay the price, while financial profits soar.
I left this comment with an opinion piece by Joe Nocera in today's NYTimes. It may help.
ReplyDeleteTen million foreclosures in six or seven years, 2006 to 2012 - that's what the NYTimes' editorial of 4.9.11 reported. That equals 22% of all mortgages in the nation. If all underwater mortgages foreclose the percentage rises to 36%, but that is unlikely. I get that total mortgage figure from UC Berkeley professor Sylvia Allegretto's report State of Working America, Wealth, published by the Economic Policy Institute. Wikipedia's article on the subprime crisis also implies that total number of mortgages. Also from Allegretto, U.S. home owners now hold only 40% of total home equity, banks hold 60%, this portion is down from 68% in 1990. The median household net worth, the middle household on the savings' ladder, dropped from $109,000 to $64,600, a 40% drop, to levels below 1983. Criminal deception pervaded the entire financial system, as prices escalated by 56% to 85%, some graphs show 100%, depending on how they index the starting prices. William Black makes a good case for "control fraud" and a basis for prosecution in New Deal 2.0 . org. Trillions of $ have been spent to help the criminals, nothing to help the victims, and we all suffer even if we don't have a mortgage.