From Charles Ferguson, the director of “Inside Job”
Nearly two years later, the Obama administration has established a clear record. Beginning almost immediately, the president consistently opposed any effort to control financial industry compensation — even for firms receiving federal aid, as most were in 2009. Then came a long period of total inaction, followed by the toothless Wall Street reform bill passed this summer and the appointment of a former Fannie Mae lobbyist, Tom Donilon, as the new national security advisor. There was no action on the foreclosure crisis and no serious attempt to investigate the causes of the crisis. The SEC has brought only a handful of civil cases ending in trivial fines, with neither firms nor individuals required to admit any wrongdoing.
Most tellingly, there has not been a single criminal prosecution of any firm or any individual senior financial executive — literally zero — and, of course, no appointment of a special prosecutor.
Both parties, he continues, are supine to Wall Street so instead of financial reform they squabble about other issues, direly warning all the while that a vote for the other side is a vote for Doom. His answer, the people must force the politicians to reform the system. It won’t be easy. But it must be done.
Wall Street financiers and their Washington puppets, have done very serious damage to our country.
We are more vulnerable than we have ever been. We are competing with serious rivals who are playing for keeps. Instead of re-channeling ourselves as a nation and making the necessary changes and recalibrations for the benefit of future generations, we have lined the pockets of mortgage pimps, quantitative card sharpers and two bit structured finance artists.
I consider this to be an unforgivable offense.
We obsess about terrorists, as we should, but shouldn’t we also devote equal attention to those who continue to commit acts of financial terrorism against our economic homeland?
This is the point that needs to be driven over the backfield fence.
And then we need to act on it. All of us.
A Visual Representation of the Wall Street-Main Street Disconnect, from Financial Armageddon