| Submit your comments on this article |
| Home Front: Politix |
| Is MF Global's Jon Corzine Going to Get Away with it |
| 2012-03-13 |
| an actual NYTimes opinion piece that goes against the Obama narrative... I've found that starting a conversation with lefties on this general subject makes them very uncomfortable, especially when I note that the Bush admin prosecuted Enron guys. It's sure starting to look as if Jon Corzine is going to get away with it...Let's not mince words here. These executives committed a crime. Virtually every knowing violation of the Commodities Exchange Act is a crime, but taking money from segregated customer accounts is at the top of the list. And for good reason...I understand that bringing complex financial cases in front of a jury is not easy. But what prosecutors don't seem to understand is that the country needs them to bring these cases. When they took a pass on Angelo Mozilo, the former chairman and chief executive of Countrywide, and Richard Fuld, who was chief executive of Lehman Brothers when it went bankrupt, they sent a signal that the highly paid executives who gave us the financial crisis would not be held to account. A failure to prosecute anyone at MF Global would be, if anything, even worse. It would mean that executives at a broker-dealer can indeed steal customer money and get away with it -- so long as it was "unintentional." And it would only deepen the cynicism so many people feel about government. I've heard it suggested, for instance, that the Justice Department won't prosecute Corzine because it would hurt President Obama. (Corzine, the former governor of New Jersey, had been a big fund-raiser for the president.) I don't happen to subscribe to that theory, but I certainly understand why others might. |
| Posted by:Lord Garth |