Oooh! Me-me-me Professor Drum! *Waves hand around*

Let me guess. Some talk about punishment, no jail time for the traders or their bosses, a publicly disclosed settlement that sounds big until you realize that it's been set just low enough so that the banks can treat it like a cost of doing business without being seriously penalized financially. Which of course is how the Justice Department and federal government wants it, since they fear the impact of a wounded bank on the world economy more than they want to actually prosecute financial sector crimes.

Doesn't levying a fine just say "Hey, cut us in for a share of your ill-gotten gains and we're good to go."

Yes, indeed. Like allowing a Cocaine Cartel to pay its criminal fines in China White.

You left out admits no wrong doing.

You forgot the part where they pay tens of millions of dollars to some well-connected Justice Department crony to "monitor" their compliance with the deferred prosecution agreement.

Read the article. DOJ is pursuing criminal sanctions and guilty pleas.

your naivete is adorable

Drum said they were going after low-level people. The important question, of course is whether or not they go after higher ups. Another thing they could do to punish the banks would be to make the results of the investigation public so the banks could be sued and the public might call for reforms.

To answer your first question: yes.

Maybe we should elect Republicans and audit the FED?

Honestly, is anyone surprised that the department who controls trillions of dollars and is not accountable to the people might be slightly fucked up, corrupt, and hurting us?

That said, as someone who spent the entire birth of the recession in a classroom with law and finance professors at the graduate level, I will say there are more complicit parties than the FED.

Should we also split the democratic party in two?

There's no equivalent to Teahadists among Democrats. Please proceed with splintering the GOP. It's quite entertaining.

Should we also split the democratic party in two?

It's not already? At least the Dems have more a few members against perpetually feeding the MIC and protecting the .01%.

It's about red states with low information voters because, you know, Jesus.

I'm pretty sure the GOP has already split - there's the TeaOP, where if you are xenophobic, homophobic, racist or a military fetisher you are welcome, then there's the "modern" GOP members, where if you believe that corporations are people and the only thing preventing America from being great is government regulations you are welcome, then there's the social conservatives, where if you think Christianity is constantly under siege in America then you are welcome. The venn diagram overlap would be that we are taxed too much, don't spend enough on defense and something, something freedom.

You can't split the Dems up because in order to split something apart it has to be initially unified...the Dem's are made up of people who just don't self identify as Republicans but still want to belong to a major party. But it's so fractured by subgroups they rarely get any momentum on any issue.

Or to put it more simply "I'm not a member of an organized party, I'm a democrat." (paraphrasing Mark Twain

Will Rogers actually.

Pelosi and Reid got healthcare and financial reform passed, along with the original stimulus and more. And yes- it was herding cats, but it got done.

Insurance is no guarantee of healthcare...

You spent years in graduate level law and finance classes and all you can say is that Glenn Beck and Ron Paul are missing a few little details?

Here's your Republican politicians to the rescue, genius: http://www.washingtonpost.c...

as someone who spent the entire birth of the recession in a classroom with law and finance professors at the graduate level,

He didn't mention anything about being awake, just that he was in the same room.

Actually, he was cleaning the windows.

I spend most of my coffee breaks with "law and finance professors' and I don't know shit about regulatory law. But then, they don't know much about soldering. We mostly talk sports.

This post is not about the FED.

Oh, dear randomworker, don't you yet understand that the Fed, like the Illuminati, the Jesuits, and the Jews, is behind everything?

.

I know. I should just pluck my eyes out with a rusty spork.

One o' these days, we should have a thread where people could explain their handles and/or avatars and why they chose them. Yours, dear Random, is fairly obvious, but I suspect there's a story behind "spork incident."

I just post under my real name. And stop snickering, all of you!

OK if I snort??

[spews absinthe-spiked coffee out of his nose]
Oh- sorry... thought that was a command.....
[sniff]

If I go into my story, Gumby will sue the shyte out of me.

Don't forget the freemasons.

Wait, the Fed is behind the Freemasons?

It's all so very confusing.

You think Republicans have any interest at all in stopping Wall Street corruption? That's hilarious.

Just a quick question? Who gets most wall street cash, a dem or repub? Wall street is in what state? What color is that state?

Look it up. You dont need to shoot from the hip.

Leadership on the banking committees get the most. In the current cycle it's 62% republican money in Congress. 67% Republican in the senate -- as Wall Street evidently expects an R win. Last cycle it was closer to 50:50 in the senate.

Look up the "tea party" folks too. They get a lot if they're on the right committee. Rubio, Toomey, Dold.

They tend not to fund losers and longshots so Romney did get a lot less than Obama. Maybe that's what you're thinking about. Or the Schumer anecdote.

While Obama received his largest donations from GoldmanSachs in 2008, that all changed due to Dodd-Franks and his support of it (and the DoJ's aggressive campaign to investigate the major players behind the crash). In 2012, 80% of Wall Street campaign contributions went to the GOP, as they tried so very hard to put Gordon Gecko into the White House.

Wall street donations Republucan candidates recieve are the largest, dems get money(depending on the state/district) mostly just in case; wall street would prefer they didnt win at all, but they are simply hedging their bets.

http://www.politifact.com/w...

http://www.opensecrets.org/...

I think it's possible to be both.

Graduate school? Was it online?

Clown College.

Yes, who could possibly be more diligent about Wall Street oversight than Republicans?

LOL! It's like you've never heard of Dodd-Franks, or the unending assault on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Or much of anything else.

The most outspoken voice on Wall Street regulation these days is about as far from Republican as you can get. In fact, she kicked a GOP Senator right off the Hill....

Here you go, ignoramus:

http://www.federalreserve.g...

More info here:

http://www.federalreserve.g...

" audit the FED?"

lulz.

you realize GAO already does this right?

and who honestly believes Congress, Congress!, has the wherewithal to assess the Fed on anything beyond a cursory level?

I'm not in favor of abolishing banks. I just want to shrink them down to the size where we can drown them in the bathtub.

Thomas Jefferson would approve.