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This article in the Huffington Post about how Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner is pushing the state attorneys general to quickly as possible “bring to bed” their investigations of the wide-scale systematic violations of law by the nation’s largest financial institutions is a great reminder that, in America, there is a very important theft-to-punishment inflection point for the super rich and powerful. As demonstrated in this graph:
When you steal things of minor value, the value of what you stole is correlated with the level of punishment you receive. Shoplifting a candy bar is going to result in less punishment than stealing a car.
At some point, you steal enough to basically reach the punishment limit, which is the flat part in the graph. You will likely get the same amount of jail time if you steal $3 million or $6 million.
Eventually, though, if you systematically break the law to steal such an absurdly large amount of money for a long enough time that you become so politically powerful and integral to the entire economy, you hit the magical theft inflection point. It is the amount at which you become too big to jail and, as you can see from the graph, accountability just drops off a cliff.
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Gee, and I didn’t even get close to my lifelong dream of being impt enuf to bribe. I am so far away from being TBTJ.
He is obviously as guilty as the rest of them, and should be treated accordingly. Supermax Federal Penitentiary Time. No prison resort for them. Hard time. See how long they last in General Population…
Bankers steal with the pen (or computer) and get honors and rewards
Bless you Jon Walker. Loved the chart.
Just don’t hold your fucking breath you WILL turn blue for BO & EH to do anyhing to bring even one to justice. Might hurt his chances at a cushy position when they are out of office.. Of course I DO hope that is soon..
Can someone tell me why Geithner was hired in the first place? He obviously doesn’t understand that he represents the U.S. taxpayer, not the banksters. Does he think he’s still working at the NY Fed?
America is a SIMPLE, capitalist country.
Here one can get:
- as much medical care as one can afford,
- as much JUSTICE as one can afford
- as much government as one can afford
That hasn’t been the case for a decade & prolly a lot longer. Treas Sec works for the banksters.
Yup. As Woody Guthrie put it:
Cartoon to go with the post
Perfect.
X2
Every time the GOP goes law and order GOP code for jail the dark people we should bring out this chart:) Now do you have a chart of amount stolen total in connection to the size of the crime nationally. lets say 100 bankers steal 100 million and 100,000 banks robbers steal 100 million type of thing.
It seems if we focus on going after rich crooks we could prevent more theft cheaper after all jailing and prosecuting a 100 bankers is cheaper than jailing 100,000 and prosecuting 100,000 bank robbers.
Sure rich crooks have great lawyers and the prosecution is expensive but just looking at cost just how many bank robbers with guns does it take to equal the prosecution of a Bernie Madoff both in cost of prosecution and amount stolen?
I’m going to put the best possible spin on this. Not saying it is correct, but just that it is the best possible spin. Geithner sincerely believes that the cure to the economic depression is a stronger banking system. Where he got this idea I don’t know, but his whole life experience seems to suggest that it was imprinted onto his brain at an early date in his adulthood. Obama, as we now know, is the big business candidate. He brought in businessmen to run the administration, got rid of the handful of academic economists who tried to tell him the truth (Christie Romer for one), and therefore goes along with Geithner because he believes it, too.
That there is absolutely no warrant to that belief is beside the point. This is faith-based economics, and you don’t argue with faith. You either believe or don’t believe. We unfortunately are governed by the true believers.
So it’s not a plot to bail out friends of the Pres. It is just sheer stupidity and gross incompetence. As I said, this is the best spin. You can imagine what the alternatives are.
Wallstreet wanted someone they trusted to keep them out of jail and to make sure that they kept getting bailed out?
Neo Hooverism?
Zero accountability for these criminal monsters means we’re done.
Love the cartoon!
OT but related (and since you’re from Sac-o-tomatoes), how ’bout this Bible-thumping Repug getting home detention for his perverted crimes:
http://www.sacbee.com/2011/03/16/3478653/lyons-home-detention-is-up-to.html
It’s not just the Banksters that are TBTJ. If you’re rich, white & connected, you can get away with just about anything.
remember this?
heard of any charges yet?
The United States government resembles a criminal enterprise.
So the Securities and Exchange Commission concluded that Bernie Madoff stole his money from his window on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository — is that what you’re saying?
The one year anniversary of the destruction of the gulf of mexico is coming up, the only people paying a price for this criminal act are the innocent bystanders, and the flora and fauna of the gulf.
There are lots of things to be angry about,
but this anniversary should be the occasion for some kind of public outcry.
I am somnewhat ashamed to admit that one of my close friends was his mentor at the Fed. I don’t think he knew at the time what a monster he was breeding.
He stole money from rich people, which is why he had to pay.
Cenk just announced UN 10-0 for a no fly Zone over Libya..
Ding.
In other words – this
The last thing I can be is informative, just trying to be helpful: one can make oneself come but one can’t make oneself laugh.
Brilliant.
[insert name here] should be in prison.
Look at what Tim Geithner has been doing for the last 20+ years:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Timothy_Geithner
Geithner has spent the last 2 decades tearing the engine out of our economy. He’s like the Gremlin in the Twilight Zone’s “Nightmare at 20,000″(youtube)… And like the Gremlin, only a small minority seem to have noticed him and his actions. But that is changing. As Rod Serling put it:
“tangible manifestation is very often left as evidence of trespass. Even from so intentioned a quarter as The Twilight Zone”
Jon, this is brilliant.
Thank you.
should make the x axis logarithmic. add some numbers.
Great song! I especially like the final punchline:
“And as through your life you travel,
Yes, as through your life you roam,
You won’t never see an outlaw
Drive a family from their home”
Woody clearly saw the banksters as much more devastating theives than gun slinging outlaws.
Interesting point regarding Geithner’s earlier adulthood. Source Watch lists him as having spent his first 3 years out of College woring for Kissinger and Associates. And then he went on to become a Director at the Peterson Institute.
If Geithner’s thinking has been shaped by Henry Kissinger and Peter G Peterson it would explain much.
As one who lives by the pun, I say Jon you have become immortal.
Did Bernie Madoff not make it to the drop off cliff?
Or was it he stole from rich people not the poor?
Well, duh- of course it was because he stole from rich people. Do you really think he would have been prosecuted if he’d stolen from poor people? Everyone would have just thought that poor people are suckers who fell for a get-rich-quick scheme and that it’s all their fault. Just like the trolls who think the collapse of the housing market is the fault of us “deadbeat homeowners who used our houses like ATM’s.”
Poor old Bernie Madoff. If he had just written the same kinds of big checks to the Obama campaign as most of his Wall Street colleagues, he’d have been bailed and not jailed. Those checks were the best investments ever made.