There's someone who needs to be on the SCOTUS bench.

Two decades ago more than 1,000 bankers served jail time for their participation in the Savings and Loan Scandal, an event that negatively impacted tens of thousands of Americans.

The 2008 meltdown (which negatively impacted hundreds of million people at home and abroad) has resulted in no bankers even being charged with any crimes,

To add insult to injury, according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO report 11-696, page 31) the US Government as of June 2011 had handed the offending banks sixteen trillion dollars courtesy of US taxpayers.

Do you think two decades of bankers paying politicians to decriminalize financial fraud paid off ?

They learned their lesson with the S&L scandal, spend more money buying off the right people.

No need to buy anyone off. Clinton took care of that when repealed Glass-Steagall.

Need to get Glass-Steagall back. The problem is that President Obama forgets that he's a lame duck. Come on, Mr. President, you aren't running for re-election again. It's time to kick some booty.

The Commodity Futures Modernization Act was also a big factor:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wi...

Overall, however, I'd have to say it's impossible to overlook Clinton's Telecommunications Act of 1996 as the One Ring to Rule Them All:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wi...

It allowed full capture of all mass media by a small group of corporations that now dictate political, economic and social reality for the vast majority of Americans. It ensured the masses would only focus upon what they presented . . . and corporate criminals are nowhere on their list.

Everyone always reflexively cries about Glass-Steagal, but Bill Black has been monotonously consistent in his documentation of breathtakingly epidemic fraud under CURRENT LAW that has gone largely unremarked and completely unpunished. He's also quite critical of Al Gore's "Reinventing Government Initiative" that effectively disbanded all government regulatory enforcement . . . of anything at all (NOT merely banking and finance):

”Regulatory agencies are on orders to make partnership with businesses their standard way of operating. We have tested it long enough to know it increases compliance with the laws of the land.” Al Gore.

http://govinfo.library.unt....

We started losing our media over 40 years ago when they slowly started relaxing the ownership laws. Every decade since has meant a more and more worthless American media.

I read somewhere that in the mid 1950s, a very high up journalist; perhaps the editor of the NY Times, or someone like that, told a room full of colleagues at a Pulitzer Prize celebration that everyone there, including himself, was a prostitute at best.

One of the jewels in the crown of the Illuminati is control of all media. Over the last 200 years they have done a very good job of realizing their goal. A very few members of 'The Tribe' control pretty much everything the world reads, thinks, and opines about today. A lot of people have been programmed to think the bailouts for the banksters were necessary, otherwise the economy would have tanked and the people thrown out of work, notwithstanding the massive unemployment in the Jewnighted States.

The International Banking Cartel, (IBC), is, by definition, a criminal organization. All executive officers of the organizations slithering about under the protective umbrella of the IBC must be held accountable for serious crimes; treason and fraud being two coming immediately to mind. Clear the jails of the non criminal, criminals and make room for the real ones. And while rounding up the banksters, go after the traitors in government, as well.

Absolutely correct. In fact, I posted about the same statement on another discussion yesterday.

The modernization act was what extinguished Glass Steagal was it not?

No, that was the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act (GLB), also known as the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wi...

Further, it was TARP that was itself the largest problem in "solutions" that bailed out the banks . . . which would have--and should have--been shut down and broken up under long established precedent by the FDIC. Equally problematic was declaring Investment Banks like Goldman Sachs bank holding companies that were given unlimited access to the Fed Discount Window AND the FASB changing accounting requirements from "Mark-to-Market" valuation of bank assets to a Mark-to-Myth standard that allowed them to carry wildly inflated values for assets (like mortgages) on their books in order to cover up their actual insolvency under previous accounting standards. http://www.cbsnews.com/8301...

But Al Gore's effective elimination of government regulation was the primary fuel that fed the fire of fraud . . . fraud that remained criminal long after these other major changes were made by Clinton and Congress.

Just disgusting. The corruption is deep and complete. The banks completely and literally own legislators and regulators. The banks should have been allowed to fail as they would have under a capitalist free market. Unfortunately we do not have that. Instead what we have goes beyond fascism, straight to corporatism with big business literally dictating government actions through legislation written by their lobbyists. The government does not represent the people; the government represents the corporatists, which for example explains why enormously profitable oil companies not only pay no income taxes but also receive billions yearly in government subsidies.

Presidents seem to become altogether too congenial with the corporate elite...perhaps repeated dinner guests. Where are the ordinary people at dinner?

Servers and dishwashers.

Ah, those people. What about the gardeners and the people who haul out the garbage?

What exactly are, 'ordinary people?'
Do you mean, Gentiles? Aka, Goyim? 'Animals in human skin?' Are those the 'ordinary people?'

For purposes of this discussion, the 99%? or let's say, people with incomes below an arbitrary level like $100,000, who have to go out to work or stay inside and diligently do something to earn a living (hopefully needed by others). People who don't make money merely by manipulating money, stocks, or assets on paper, who don't sit around organizing a trade to execute in a millisecond and other trades to repeat, creating momentum in a stock, driving it down, then buy a whole bunch of shares and start the buying upward, taking advantage of the driven-down price and hysteria that drive it upwards to make thousands or millions in a few minutes or an hour (all in a day's work.... )Obviously, this is a rudimentary economic definition, not something set in stone. Jamie Dimon, for example, is not very ordinary. Religion? Who cares?

you don't seem to see who obama is working for now that he's a lame duck he can screw us all harder

A lame duck is not hard enough to screw anybody. It is just a jelly roll kind of thing with feathers.

Obama is not the one doing the screwing. He is just the fuzzy thing the screwers hold in front of their crotches to hide what they are up to.

I don't disagree emmanuel, but the bastard sure seems to enjoy his work. It's been a long time since a president had power and his own ideas. about 50 years and a couple of days now, I'd say

And he must be taking Cialis given the appointments he has made

No, probably just Instaflex.

Whom are you working for, Jackwad?

golly, I'm unprepared to answer. I didn't know that I'd be confronted by an intellectual like the formidable chrsippus. All my respect, sir. Have a good day. Lots of people like me on whom you can launch your brave ad hominem attacks.

Au contraire, mon ami. I don't do ad hominems unless they're of the tu quoque kind. When you discover what that means get back to me, OK.

MODERATORS - THIS TROLL IS A BIT ON THE OBSCENE SIDE AND HAS MADE A PERSONAL THREAT. SEE COPY PASTED BELOW......

And you are a miserable dipshit liar who really
isn't interested in argument but only in puffing up your shrivelled ego. Give
me your address, motherf******, and I will provide you with enough pain to last
you until you die an agonizing death.

That is definitely a terroristic threat. Time to find his address, which, as we all know, is not at all difficult, and then report him to his local police department. Insults are one thing, but threats to do bodily harm are crimes.

A step ahead of you. But, thanks. This is the fourth hasbara troll who has made personal threats against me. My son-in-law is a lieutenant in our sheriff's department and I've already e-mailed
Chris-syphilis' name and the page to him.
One of the threats was from Vancouver, BC, not too far from my home in Washington and the RCMP notified my daughter's hubby that they had paid a visit to the party involved, a troll on Huffington Post, and that he was an orthodox Jewish guy in his thirties, still living with a single mother.

A Jewish guy? Really? Go figure. A Jewish guy was saying nasty things and making threats?

Did you know that: Ted Bundy, Son of Sam, Jeffrey Dahmer, Wm Gacy, and Rodney Alcala are all Jews?

Jesus called those people, 'the children of Satan.' Hmm. Do you wonder why?

Tapatio, since you have access to a police department via your son in law, now, more than ever, appraise him about what is going on and have him, through his channels, start alerting colleagues to take a serious look at their oaths to protect and serve US, not the corporations. It is time all law enforcement people realize the present organization posing as the federal government of the USA is not a bona fide government but a criminal organization hell bent on taking over the country with the peoples' money.

Ah, no, I didn't know that they were Jewish. In fact, I'm rather certain that a couple of those criminal were not. Most Jewish criminals are white collar criminals.

Somehow I never ran across that statement of Jesus'. It seems rather unlikely.

Someone actually said that? My goodness. What happened to free speech? If someone can not voice an opinion without such filth being thrown at them, makes a sad moment in what is otherwise, a thread written by intelligent, civilized people with important things to say.

It is not the first time I have come across comments such as the one quoted above. Just remember, anyone who speaks like that in public has a very low opinion of themselves because their epithets reflect very badly on them and make the rest of us believe the errant creature is something not worthy of notice and should be considered more like an itchy tick which has to be squished with eloquent 'insect repellent.'

Actually I'm somewhat pleased by these hasbara trolls. Their comments reflect very badly on their masters at AIPAC and in Jerusalem. Hopefully, they do quite a bit to help the BDS movement and the peace movement.

I figured it was only a matter of time before you called in the moderators. So you lose, you little troll. I gues you just can't stand the heat in the kitchen. So typical of you teenaged trolls.

Chris-syphilis, I WILL BE 70 IN A COUPLE OF YEARS

Just going into adolescence, Tapatio. You got me beat by a few years. I'm just on the edge of childhood and heading into adolescence which begins around 65 and lasts until we're around 100. Young adulthood, 100 to 200, most of us are not allowed to get to yet. Sarah Brightman sings a song which asks the question, 'who wants to live forever?' I sing back, 'I DO.'

When will you discover to act civil and mature? We won't wait for you to get back to us, because we know we will be waiting a long time, if not forever.

You are boring and cowardly. You just can't stand either argument or rhetoric. So pathetic.

You project your own sins and discredit only yourself.

I've got plenty of sins. Which ones are you referring to?

What a joke!! Obama is raking in the booty! Not only do the crooks not do any time their fines are just chump change---hardly enough to buy a legislator. Why, at the collapse of the banks, did the rotten government help out the crooks and let the people be thrown out on the streets? The corrupt government rewards the crooks and slams the public. Some democracy we got here. Stop voting for creeps in office now and don't replace one corporate lackey with another of the same. Do not vote for either of the evil twins. Vote non corporate!

The people need to start voting with the peoples' militia. The people need to begin rounding up all traitors to the Constitution and Bill of Rights and put them behind bars. Then the people have to begin conducting the onerous trials necessary to establish guilt. When found guilty of treason, the perpetrator must be executed; that is the law. And, 'they' who constantly hold the banner, 'Rule of Law' over our heads, will learn that the people agree.

You're typical of the whiners and the carpers who do NOTHING but put stuff on the internet. Why don't you get a job?

the best reason not to get a job is because you end up giving so much to a system set up to screw you hard and kill, sicken and indebt your progeny. I think it's time for the rats to abandon ship. The other alternative would be to let Chrysippus roll his left nut toward washington and let its mass destroy everything in its path. Unfortunately if he does so we'd probably see that nearly all of the mass of his giant balls is unfortunately in a dimension which none of us are able to detect. That is a frequent malady among 80 year old usaf philosophy teachers. Normally it goes along with being unable to detect the parts of themselves which are real from our point of view. Chrysippus should look up Bill Hicks, It's only a ride on youtube if he wants to get a look at some serious philosophy instead of his warped philosophy through the filter of his u.s. military indoctrination.

I discovered the great Bill Hicks and His Hot Licks back in the seventies. Truly Bill Hicks is an American icon of out of the box musical thought.

Oops, wrong Hicks. I was thinking of Dan.

he was only 19 in 1980. How did you find out about him so early?

Too bad you are familiar with only "pop" philosophy. Instead of getting youir insights from Youtube, why don't you try reading a book sometimes? You are an ignornat fool who knows how to shoot off his mouth, but nothing comes out but drivel.

you are an angry person. do you have a good reason to be angry? do you even remember what you're angry about?

That 'drivel' you talk about, Chrysippus, sounds just like what seems to keep coming from your keyboard. I have no idea what comes out your mouth. I would hate to guess and try not to make assumptions.

So far I have not read much that is constructive in anything you have posted so far, Chrysippus.