In yesterday’s column I discussed the fact that Andrew Ross Sorkin (ARS) of the New York Times and CNBC has unmasked himself in a video entitled “Two Myths and One Reality” as the scourge of Wall Street who had worked tirelessly for five years to find the “criminal element” that caused the financial crisis.
“If there’s one question that I get just about more than any other, ‘So why didn’t anybody go to jail, and did nobody try?’ And there’s an answer to that too.
A lot of people had an incentive to try to find a way to bring not justice, but to put people away. Prosecutors, law enforcement, journalists; it would have been a better story. But for the last five years we’ve tried, all of us have tried, to find that criminal element.”
I explained that ARS pretended to function like a modern-day Scarlet Pimpernel dedicated to freeing the French aristocrats (elite U.S. bank CEOs) from the Great Terror (the threat of prosecution by the Department of Justice) in order to gain access to the CEOs. ARS revealed in his video that he did this in order to aid his exhaustive five-year search for “the criminal element.”
What I deliberately left out of my last column was the sting in the tail of ARS’ tale. The last line of ARS’ discussion of his quest to root out the criminal element was:
“And while things happened that were upsetting and frustrating and unethical and immoral sadly, it may not have been criminal.”
ARS has proven that the gods are prone to whimsy. The irony is that ARS concludes by telling us that his quest to find the “criminal element” of elite bankers failed. This is the first Virgin Crisis: conceived without sin by any senior officer of any large bank. He and his League of inveterate journalists devoted to exposing the crimes of the bank aristocrats instead proved that the aristocratic bankers represent the only sector of America that is so pure that it has no criminal element.
ARS’ modern journalistic League of the Scarlet Pimpernel has proven the central premise of the creator of The Scarlet Pimpernel, Baroness Emma Magdolna Rozália Mária Jozefa Borbála “Emmuska” Orczy de Orczi. Her works made clear that the aristocrats rule because they are superior morally and intellectually.
The twin outrages are that the inferiors of the elites banks’ CEOs have dared to impugn the aristocrats’ enlightened rule and that the CEOs’ critics have sought to recreate the Reign of Terror. The CEOs’ critics seek to pervert the criminal justice system into an instrument of terror designed to usurp the legitimate power, steal the wealth, and deprive the liberty of our Nation’s best and brightest – the CEOs of our elite financial institutions. As in France during the Reign of Terror, the U.S. mob is baying for the blood of the financial aristocrats. The Baroness would not be surprised that ARS and his modern-day League have proven that the cream of society still rises and forms a natural aristocracy of talent, integrity, honor, and duty. The true crime is committed by people like me who call for prosecutions of our modern nobility – our aristocratic bankers. Our call for the punishment of the innocent, elite bank CEOs constitutes treason against our rightful Wall Street rulers. We have committed repeated acts of lèse-majesté. We are not worthy!
Before you are dragged away to the Bastille for this heresy, would you answer this. Can you see any way, outside a thorough restructuring of our government and its electoral process, that we of the inferior classes could put someone like Thomas Hoenig in charge of the Fed and fill the DoJ with a competent staff of financial prosecutors?
For a major infraction, a business should be stripped of it’s corporate franchise, making everyone personally liable for their actions during the period of malfeasance. Prosecuting the CEO and other executives and managers should not be too difficult after a bit of lower level plea-bargaining.
There is a bit of news about removing Bill Gates from his Chairmanship. A possible discussion topic might be the roles and responsibilities and penalties of the corporate franchise in a modern world.
Speaking of Divine Rights:
1) Why do the banks have a default monopoly on the storage of and transactions with fiat? But if you say the Fed handles that role then why don’t all US citizens have a risk-free account at the Fed (better the US Treasury) rather than the government providing deposit insurance to the banks and credit unions?
2) Why do the banks have a legal tender lender of last resort? And a crappy asset buyer of first resort? Considering that only the House of Representatives shall appropriate money under the Constitution?
Is it too late to file criminal charges against MERS for its illegal operation in Maryland (MERS had no license) which lead to the MD Supreme Court throwing out 10K foreclosures. There had to be collusion from the Gov on down.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtzrcWnAej4
They clear fraud here;
They miss fraud there;
Those Frenchies clear fraud everywhere!
Are we in Basel, or
Are we in hell?
That demmed elusive …. [maybe a rhyme with Mundel? — help me out here somebody!]
Or maybe something like “That demmed abusive A. Merkel”? Naw, not Wall Street enough…
“that damned elusive bank smell.”?
I won’t say banker though they all stink morally speaking but only because their business, lending stolen purchasing power for usury, is inherently wicked.
Respectable bankers? There are none in the present system just like there were no respectable slaver traders.