Should Wall Street Chiefs Go To Jail?

I don't think that poor struggling people should invest in rich men's bad debts.

Plain and simple. No bailout.

We all know this is about wealthy sheisters afraid of losing their butts and trying to "recover" getting the poor working level-headed "schmuck" to "be strong and be american" and "rescue the country" with Trillions in new burdens on their already-almost-broken backs.

No. No way.

If there's going to be a package to "forgive" their bad investments, then I want my mortgage forgiven. Build the country this time from the bottom up. You can take your rich-man's "trickled down" lie and shove it up your kiesters (Congress/The Whitehouse)

Oh, and I want to hear more about how BigOil's lobbying put us directly in the deficit predicament we're in now. Saying this is all the housing debacle is insulting to the intelligence of the American people.

You don't want to insult people in an election. It's not a good idea.

I my mind there are two categories the reasons why we're in this financial mess fall into. The first is outright fraud, cooking the books, intentional deceit, etc. The second reason is many of the leaders of these firms used poor judgement to enter into risky transactions.

With regards to the second, there is more money made with risky transactions than with safe transactions. Think of mortgages. We all know that if you have stellar credit you could get a mortgage at a great interest rate. However if your credit isn't so hot, then the banks take on more credit risk and charge you, the less credit worthy client, a higher rate of interest.

So of course Wall Street chiefs should go to jail if they broke laws. If they exercised poor judgement, I don't see how we can jail them, but whatever professional licenses they have they should be stripped of (after all we're talking about leaders who should have the experience to know better). Whatever profits, including salary they received while at that firm (and any subsequent investment profits made from it) the government should seize in its entirety. It would send them to the poorhouse where they belong. These Wall Street chiefs shouldn't take home millions (hundreds of millions, billions?) and then expect the US government (and every taxpayer) to pick up the tab for their bad judgement.... if they can get away with it they'll do it again in the future.

And that brings us to enabler politicians.... many (if not all) of these Wall Street chiefs lobbied various members of congress for deregulation which prohibited these firms from entering into certain businesses and types of lucrative transactions. I think the politicians who supported the deregulation initiatives should be made public and the voters should decide what to do at the ballot box.

A few days ago we discussed Fannie and Freddie on TMV and how McCain co-sponsored legislation to address accounting fraud. From what I can tell the Dems apparently killed it.... but I find it suspicious that the GOP couldn't get this passed since they controlled Congress at that time. They were able to pass pretty much everything else they had a high priority on. Now that it's come to light that McCain has umpteen former lobbyists from Fannie I can't help but wonder if McCain looked the other way while his legislation died.... What better way to prove one's innocence than to say, "I co-sponsored this legislation but it died." When in fact it had already been languishing for a couple years already. Maybe McCain wanted to take it on so it would die once and for all. I mean until it died Fannie and Freddie would have been concerned about it... Of course I'm thinking out loud here and I don't have all the facts (so no hate mail), but it is very interesting given the whole situation and McCain's record on deregulation....

I'm in 100% agreement with Silhouette. If there's going to be a bailout, I want the rest of my mortgage forgiven too. Screw this corrupt, unregulated BS, and screw this hypocritical, incompetent, duplicitous government too. (there... I'm starting to feel better already ;-) And yes, throw some white collar crooks in jail; let there be some personal consequences to sociopathic greed, PLEASE!!!

Fraud and theft are still crimes are they not? Prosecute.

I'm a capitalist, bone-deep. Wall Street folks don't get to raid my depleted budget, saddle me with bad debt and call us even. I want value for my investment. Here are the only conditions under which it is sane to bail out the financial system with American taxpayers' money:

Rules for structuring the new RTC

1. You want a bailout? Open your books. No blank checks. The quicker we know how bad a job you’ve done, the quicker we can salvage a portion of any valid properties in return for the guarantee of my tax money.
2. Public dollars will only be given to firms which are holding bad mortgages if they participate in sharing the pain of writing down a portion of the loan balance of homeowners who are at risk of foreclosure. More than financial entities must benefit from this raid on our public treasury. Individual homeowners have an increased chance to hang on to their property and prudent homeowners who didn’t borrow unwisely avoid the devastating hit of having a home in foreclosure on their street.
3. Nobody who gets a bailout can leave with a golden parachute. Snip the lines, fold it up and roll it back into the pot to defray the cost to the taxpayer.
4. If you get my tax money, you abandon Wall Street compensation structure and your executives will be compensated at the same rate as an equivalent civil servant would be until the time that effective regulation of the financial sector is enacted (see rules 1-4) and your company is placed under it.

Can’t be done you say? Then. You. Can. Fail

I'm for them giving back the billions in pay and bonuses they've gotten.

Criminal activity should be prosecuted, and poor business judgment should not be rewarded, or at least should not be allowed to skirt accountability. I would think most clear-thinking people would agree with that.

With that given, two other points are poor business judgment should not be criminalized, and bailouts only attempted to prevent the most extreme and dire circumstances to the economy as a whole.

Unfortunately, both the Fannie/Freddie and AIG circumstances seem to fit the second definition above, even with the un-Godly costs associated.

At the same time, there needs to be many strings attached to these efforts, and even as a Capitalist, these events show the need for some regulatory reform. We are not, and never have been, an unbridled Capitalist economy (because we will NOT accept the inevitable huge boom/bust cycles associated with that), so let's at least make that devil work for the better good, not just the good of the few.

Off topic - what is this new Disqus 'flag' feature? Has it been there all along, and I didn't notice it because it wasn't red until recently?

Prosecute fraud and limit the bailout to what will keep the economy afloat. Otherwise, what's to keep this meltdown from reoccuring?? No one seems to know what the longterm effects of this will be. We DO know that the next president will be stymied from spending any money on developing new energy sources, recovery in hurricane-stricken areas, education, healthcare etc. Why even bother to campaign on them?

Also, the two parties seem to be momentarily cooperating in a nonpartisan way to deal with the crisis--- as they did after 9/11. There is a lot of pressure to act in a ridiculously short period of time, which in itself terrifying. A lot of terrible decisions have been made in times of crisis. If bad decisions are made now, how long before the finger-pointing starts anew???

Oh, and I am definitely an opponent of deregulation, and agree with AR that unbridled capitalism brings on the excesses and greedy environment that invariably leads to this kind of meltdown.

Jail them all!!! the deregulation of the banking system-the repigs did their dirty work in secret and they insured that the unregulated(by statute) derivatives and "swaps"-done in semi secret by ex R Tx sen Phil Gramm(currently a vice chair and chief lobbyist of UBS, and McCain econ advisor and favorite to become the treasury secratary in a McCain admin)while head of the senate banking cmte in the 1990s. It was Gramm who did the giant financial houses bidding and is the one who is ultimately responsible for the current meltdown. The bush administration did its part by underfunding the regulatory agencies and tying their hands when they attempted to actually enfore the law by putting unqualified pary hacks in charge. The current financial tsunami is the result of unbridled greed and a shadow market with Hedge funds, derivatives and "swaps". None of those who are involved actually understand what they are selling and trading. Try reading about what they are and you will get lost in the language which was made obtuse on purpose.Repig lobbyists are, right now, doing as much as they can to insure that this bailout not only holds no one responsible, but leaves the CEOs and other high level management with all their ill gotten gains and also wants to insure that this bailout is free money to them. Profits to them, losses to the US taxpayer. Can you all say FREE RIDE!!!

If we can't prove criminal conduct then they don't go to jail. OTOH, the new management should have the right to dismiss while ignoring previous contractual obligation for huge retirement packages. How about if we leave them with enough to afford a two bedroom condo in Detroit?