PBS Frontline - The Wall Street Untouchables

I just watched this new one hour documentary that ended fifteen minutes ago.  It is now available to watch online.  This brings back some old memories for me.  I wrote on my blog exactly what was going to happen to our banking system almost a year before the 2008 collapse in a few posts surrounding what I referred to as “The Game”.   Well before the 2008 collapse I contacted every leadership member of the House Financial Services Committee and the Senate Banking Committee.  ie, Both political parties.   I also contacted the Federal Reserve Board of Governors.  My message was clear.  Our financial system is coming down.   Well, it was much more detailed than that.  But, I literally received no response from anyone other than the Board of Governors.  Their response?  Contact Congress.  Literally.  Unf*ckingbelievable.

In this Frontline documentary, the same contacts were made with the major Wall Street banks.  Board members were contacted by often frantic efforts of concerned employees in an effort to avert crisis.   The boards apparently did nothing.   

What is clearly noted in this documentary is either how systemically-incompetent the U.S. Justice Department is or how beholden they are to their corporate masters.  I have a very hard time believing the answer is the former.   There is ample evidence presented in the documentary that no wiretappings, no seizure of company documents and no investigation was ever done into fraud in the executive offices on Wall Street.  Literally, not a single investigation.  Now we don’t know that for a fact but there is evidence presented in this documentary to that effect.   In the Reagan-inspired S&L crisis, a thousand FBI agents and untold numbers of Justice Department members were involved.  In this, the worst financial/economic crisis in our nation’s history?  We know of no formal investigation after four years. 

In fact, the evidence is so drippingly obvious that this documentary presents a blogger who did his own investigation and uncovered over 35 informants of senior executive fraud on Wall Street.   A blogger.  The largest, deepest legal authority in the world with unlimited resources to investigate and prosecute couldn’t match wits with a blogger interviewing informants at a local Connecticut bar.   In fact, as noted in this documentary, the Justice Department has relied on the findings of outside lawsuits filed against Wall Street in its efforts to enforce civil penalties on Wall Street.   That shows they still haven’t done any serious diligence after four years.  Still nary a single criminal lawsuit filed against a single Wall Street executive as it pertains to this crisis. 

From the comments by two congressmen and a handful of legal experts cited in this documentary, it becomes apparent our corporate masters own our government.  But, then, after witnessing the actions of our politicians, who on main street seriously questions that reality? 

Change you can believe in.