In the parking lot, the humorous moment of the morning: A car, owned by a Tea Party member, with the window display announcing 'You can't cure stupid, but you can vote it out of office.'
It did provide a grin, and food for thought as OS shopped for groceries.
At the next election, this country desperately needs to elect grown-ups, people who will demand (and make happen) certain basic truths take hold, such as Judge Rakoff is insisting upon: Banks who defraud investors, customers and the country at large, walking away with $700 million, cannot be asked to settle for pennies on the dollar with no admission of wrongdoing. The defrauded never are compensated, and the truth is never known. The government becomes complicit with the criminals, and essentially charges 'protection tax' to keep the whole corrupt game in play. It's a recipe for tragedy, sooner or later.
Mish, Heaven bless 'im, continues to track the Rakoff v. Citigroup and it ally, the SEC, who has decided to issue press releases to douse the fires of public disdain.
He points out that the last person prosecuted and jailed for securities fraud by the SEC was (drumroll please...) Martha Stewart.
Really.
While essentially ignoring billions of dollars in repeated fraud allegations against Citigroup, the SEC brought full weight down on Martha Stewart over (drum roll please) ... $45,673.
Martha Stewart went to prison and was fined $30,000. Since then, no one has gone to prison or even been criminally indicted in $trillions of dollars of fraud in the global financial crisis. And unless someone does admit criminal action, the SEC reserves the right to do more whitewashing without seeking admission of guilt.
OS continues to follow and harp on this and the MF Global scandal, because they strike at the heart of this country's ability to function. If the Martha Stewarts and those more humble go to jail, and firms like Citigroup and individuals like Corzine go free after surrendering their pocket change, we will one day reach a tipping point, where the citizenry decides to either simply sit on its hands and refuse to participate in a fixed game--which may already be occurring--or it (more ominously) blows up, or some combination of the two in sequence.
Neither option is desirable, each leads to poverty, despair, decline. It is not the kind of world we wish for our children and theirs. Unlike some more nihilistic souls, OS spends his energies begging that these things not happen.
One thing that struck OS on his vacation in England was that much of the peaceful and prosperous way of life he witnessed there, and enjoys here, is due to a robust system of banking. Currency gets exchanged, card transactions complete within seconds, goods get imported and exported and onto the shelves while fresh, and at reasonable cost. Cash and credit, borrowed and paid back, lubricates the intricate machine. If the banking system is crippled, everyone loses, the farmer, the merchant, the employer, the employee, the school, the church, the charity, on it goes. It's happening already, in ways great and small.
The Citigroups and the Corzines, the SEC, the Fed, and all the lawyers and politicians will end up blowing the system to bits. It will never operate perfectly, but it doesn't need to in order to work wonderfully well. It needs to operate in a culture that assumes honest dealing underpins the system.
You can't cure stupid, and you can't rid the world of all the Corzines--but you can vote for grown-ups, and insist they insist on governance where virtue is rewarded and crime punished.
It's not that much to ask of them. If they do that one thing, a lot of the other problems will sort themselves.
