Elizabeth Warren Pushes Feds For Answer On Big Bank Enforcement
WASHINGTON — Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) raised the stakes of her quest to find out why a single Wall Street bank has not been prosecuted in the aftermath of the financial crisis Tuesday, sending a letter to the heads of three federal agencies.
Warren, a member of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing & Urban Affairs asked Attorney General Eric Holder, current Securities and Exchange Commission Chairwoman Mary Jo White and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke whether they had done any cost-benefit research into prosecuting a bank versus settling with one, which is equivalent to a slap on the wrist for a profitable financial institution.
“Have you conducted any internal research or analysis on trade-offs to the public between settling an enforcement action without admission of guilt and going forward with litigation as necessary to obtain such admission and, if so, can you provide that analysis to my office?” Warren said in the letter.
On Feb. 14, Warren came to her first banking committee hearing and asked federal agencies tasked with bank regulation a related, straightforward question: When was the last time you took a Wall Street bank to trial?
“We do not have to bring people to trial,” said Thomas Curry, the head of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the independent bank regulator within the Treasury Department.
Warren then put the question to Elisse Walter, the former SEC chairwoman. Her response: “I will have to get back to you with specific information.”
“There are district attorneys and United States attorneys out there every day squeezing ordinary citizens on sometimes very thin grounds and taking them to trial in order to make an example, as they put it. I’m really concerned that ‘too big to fail’ has become ‘too big for trial,'” Warren said.
Warren submitted the question to the OCC for the record, and they responded last week that no, they had not conducted research into trade-offs. “The OCC does not have any internal research or analysis on the trade-offs of settling without an admission of liability,” the OCC responded, according to Warren’s letter.
Now it’s up to Bernanke, Holder and White to answer.
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Elizabeth Warren is asking the questions that most of US want answered, and expresses the OUTRAGE we all are feeling re: the banksters. If prosecuting the small-timers in order to make a deterrence, non-prosecution of the BIG guys tells them the gov’t approves more of same! So non-prosecution of crimes creates more crimes which will not be prosecuted! Looks to me like the SEC, DOJ etc have set this country up for the Banksters to do just what they DID, with expectations of impunity. We must put the brakes on & change their thinking, impose penalties which will hurt THEM (not the depositors), and I’ll just bet that if all the department heads were imprisoned for 1-3 YEARS, they might be reluctant to run their departments the same unlawful way.
Elizabeth, you are the best !!!! You sure piss off these bastards….keep at them and hopefully justice will someday happen for the home-owners who struggled through all of this. We will never forget your honesty and loyalty to those who put you in office, you are one of a kind and I hope you keep turning over rocks. I personally will donate and support your efforts always….
YOU GO GIRL
really why is she the only one to question this monstrosity
Okay, if there are any whistleblowers on the IRS deal out there, get ready and blow them out of the water! Let the fur fly but here is the thing, justice in our legal system has become a monster and those who have money can buy either side of an issue, make or break truth so many different ways NO one is assured or even knows what is law or justice. We kill the messenger who brings truth just as we always have with greed. Our Constitutional freedoms slip away while corporate crime goes unpunished. The proverbial fiddle while Rome burns is still true. We dumb down our kids’ education and buy our way up the ladder. Both parties are rotten with Corporate, big money infill and the Courts are biased. Justice is so much dirt swept off the courtroom floor.
If it goes like it has in the past, I feel sorry for small insignificant down line managers dutifully following orders from above.
Prison awaits their guilty admissions and getting short time in lieu of long sentences.
Big managers that are the real guilty ones will walk as they are well politically connected.
Elizabeth Warren LETTER to FEDERAL RESERVE:::::Ben Bernanke:::::5/14/2013
http://big.assets.huffingtonpost.com/ewletter.pdf