Here’s a thought: Do you think you would be walking free today if you told the police you lost $1.6 billion in other people’s money?

Jon Corzine, who allegedly authorized what amounts to theft of customer funds, hoofs it…But the so-called flour bomber who “assaulted” Kim Kardashian was promptly detained by police.

Weidner points out the only thing Corzine has lost thus farin his reputation for testifying “before a congressional committee” and giving “evasive answers.”

“I simply do not know where the money is, or why the accounts have not been reconciled to date,” Corzine told Congress, adding that it was never his “intention” that client funds be used to pay MF Global’s debts.

Corzine’s answers, as frustrating and inexcusable as they seemed, were plausible at the time. But, as of Friday, the disclosure of an Oct. 28 email has changed the game. In it, MF Global’s assistant treasurer, Edith O’Brien, said she ordered such a transfer “per JC’s [Jon Corzine’s] direct instructions.”

“I simply do not know?” On what planet could any one of us get away with such an answer? What was he doing all this time? Playing golf?

While Weidner offers a couple of barely plausible explanations for what at face value seems like clear wrongdoing, and points to difficulties for prosecutors in bringing a case against CEO Corzine, he also states “there is a real risk for Wall Street if charges are not brought against the top management of MF Global.”

“Corzine, as a top Democrat, former governor of New Jersey, and one of Obama’s biggest campaign donors, will be viewed — fairly or unfairly — as someone who used political influence to dodge paying the price for wrongdoing. “

The money went someplace – and somebody moved it. It didn’t just get up and walk away by itself.

For a former Governor and CEO to testify that he has no awareness of anything going on around him, acting as though he needn’t take any responsibility for “misplacing” over one and a half billion dollars – well let’s put it this way, if I did my job this way, I would not have one.

The 24-hour news cycle beings a continual parade of scandals but one has legs shorter than the next. We are so bombarded that nothing seems to gain any traction. Just when we wonder, whatever happened to Mr. Corzine? – some other piece of Kabuki theatre will hit the front page and again, perhaps, someone else will skate.

Guilty or innocent, at the very least, the American people deserve to have everyone, regardless of influence or social position, be forced to step up and answer for themselves the way any average citizen would. We get a harder grilling contesting a speeding ticket, for crying out loud!

Amidst our severe economic difficulties, how can our representatives ask us for continued sacrifice or patience when we see this kind of dumbshow unfold before us?

Remember the Congressional insider trading scandal of a few months ago? Yeah, that’s what I thought. While the STOCK Act, designed to prevent future corrupt behavior of this kind, was passed in the House and Senate and now heads to President Obama for signature, as per usual, it is a watered down bill. Why can’t we just do it once and do it right? And will this “law” be selectively enforced I wonder, if at all.

This is only one more instance of the American people being continually shined on while those who make the rules and rub elbows with the Jon Corzines of this world decide on just how small a carrot they can get away with giving us.

But no worries, the next scandal will be on its way to distract us shortly.
***************************************
Anita Finlay is the author of DIRTY WORDS ON CLEAN SKIN: Sexism and Sabotage, a Hillary Supporter’s Rude Awakening, currently on Amazon.com.

Read how Austan Goolsbee, one of Obama’s chief economic advisors, tiptoes, avoids and runs away from this idea!!

CORKER: There is no question, and I think that first of all, I plan to offer changes to this resolution authority that say that, if a large entity like this has to go through this resolution where in essence they’re liquidated in an orderly way, I think that everything that the executive team and the board members have earned through this company over the last five years needs to be clawed back. In other words, there needs to be some penalties assessed to the management that have caused the country to have to go through this orderly liquidation process. So absolutely, I will be offering an amendment that deals with that, so that we’re taking back, we’re clawing back all the earnings that management has made out of this firm, if it has to go through orderly liquidation. I think that’s very appropriate, and certainly I’m going to be doing that on the floor if it doesn’t make
it into the base bill.

TAPPER: Austan, can the White House get behind that clawback
provision? Are you being out-populisted by Republicans?

GOOLSBEE: Well, look, in the bill now — the president went to
Cooper Union this last week to revisit the spot where more than two
years ago, he went and said we need to have fundamental reform–

TAPPER: But there is no clawback in this bill?

GOOLSBEE: There is a requirement that they’re all fired. If you
get to that point, all the management is fired–

TAPPER: So they take their $500 million to their home in the Hamptons.

GOOLSBEE: — all the shareholders are wiped out. Well, look, as I say, on any details, we’re open to looking at negotiating the details of how we carry out the president’s principles. But if negotiation — and Senator Corker, to his credit, is not in this camp — but if the negotiators are going to come forward more as a delaying tactic and we’re just going to put in hundreds of amendments and try to keep this going so as to stall, delay and kill reform, that’s not going to happen. This is going to pass.

Um. No. It’s not a delaying tactic. But since we saw in the case of Goldman Sachs that they were betting on the market crashing and profiting by our losses, we need to find some way to put the fear of God into these jerks so that they do not try to profit by playing Ponzi schemes with our dough. Corker’s idea is just one way to make sure we have leglsiation with teeth.

Whether Senator Corker is just doing some populist-type posturing or not, the point is made — if we don’t have accountability in this reform bill and, as Dem. Senator Sherrod Brown discussed earlier, a way to overcome this “too big to fail” debacle, any reform falling short of tackling those two concerns effectively is meaningless.

What do you think would be fitting punishment for irresponsible and dishonest Wall Street sharks? I have a feeling I know the answer!

We watch daily hearings on Capitol Hill in the spirit of doing what is right for our country. Please!! Spare me the nonsense and pandering. While collectively we deal with markets that are now down over 50%, the pols and the bankers have effectively robbed the bank and left the taxpayers with the bill to clean up the mess. Barron’s wrote a brief piece on this topic: how the Financial Sector Spent $5 Billion Lobbying Washington Over the Last Decade!!

It is high time we attach names and faces to those politicians and lobbyists who fed at this trough!!

LD

Cartoon by David Fitzsimmons, Arizona Daily Star

Ben Bernanke’s testimony over the past two days gives us our best clue yet about where the administration and the Fed are going with bank rescue. And the answer seems to be … nowhere.

Simon Johnson and James Kwak read it the same way I do:

This is another sign of the serious brainpower that has been expended on finding ways to avoid or minimise government ownership of banks, and to avoid the slightest possibility of offending shareholders – shareholders whose shares have positive value primarily because of the expectation of a further government bail-out.

And The Economist’s Free Exchange puts it bluntly:

At this stage, I joked, I’d be just as happy with them just saying, “We have a strategy, we will continue to inject capital to prop up zombie banks indefinitely. That’s pretty much the whole plan and we’re counting on it bringing the financial sector back to life someday, somehow”. Is it just me or is that pretty much what Ben Bernanke said yesterday?

No, it’s not just you.

Well, that’s good to know. I mean, it seems like a whole bunch of us have been saying this makes no sense, and we don’t want our hard-earned taxpaying dollars going down the drain, but we felt like voices crying out in the wilderness. Perhaps we are not alone afterall:

I’d add a political-economy point. Here’s Noam Scheiber, in the new TNR economics blog:

Yesterday afternoon I spoke to a senior Democratic aide in the Senate who repeatedly emphasized that, the way things stand now, it would be almost impossible to get another cent for the banks. Congress has “bailout fatigue,” the aide said.

Indeed. As long as capital injections are seen as a way to bail out the people who got us into this mess (which they are as long as the banks haven’t been put into receivership), the political system won’t, repeat, won’t be willing to come up with enough money to make the system healthy again. At most we’ll get a slow intravenous drip that’s enough to keep the banks shambling along.

More and more, it looks as if we’re headed for the decade of the living dead.

I couldn’t have said it better myself. But like I said, I’m not a major economist who won a Nobel Peace Prize. Krugman is and did, so I’m gonna listen to him.

So speaking of banks wanting more money, guess who is back at the trough asking for more money from us, the taxpayers I’ll give you a hint – it’s an alphabet company. Yep – you got it, AIG:

Hell freakin’ yeah, they’re back. Some nerve, too, if you ask me, especially after their lavish spending ways. They want us to continue to subsidize them when tey have not demonstrated any fiscal restraint or responsibility?? Are you kidding me?

And while I am on this topic, it is high past time for the Democrats to stop blaming this situation totally on the Republicans. I can understand WHY they are trying to convince everyone that they had absolutely NOTHING to do with this, but the reality is that they have been in charge of BOTH Houses of Congress for over two years now. Where was their oversight of the SEC, in its non-existent oversight of people like Bernie “Made-Off”? Where were they when Franklin Raines ran Fannie Mae into the ground (and Raines, who left in disgrace, was one of Obama’s advisers)? Where were they when Jim Johnson ran Freddie Mac into the ground (and we know where Tim Johnson is – he was on Obama’s Veepstakes Search)?

So, yeah – Bush was horrible – we know that. But for the past 2 years, the DEMOCRATS have been the ones in charge of the purse-strings and the oversight, so stop the blame game, start taking some responsibility, and STOP HANDING OUT OUR MONEY LEFT AND RIGHT!!! Enough already!!

And that ESPECIALLY goes for you, Nancy Pelosi, with this new $410 BILLION dollar package chock-full of pork the House is proposing!! ENOUGH!!!