Seems like a PR coup paid for by major banks who are majorly scared. It's all about sidestepping crime by saying "There may have been SOME crime, but it wasn't the ROOT cause of the crisis".

Therefore what? No prosecutions whatsoever? Does the author really think that the law on Wall Street is this relative? That criminal acts only attract prosecutorial attention in those rare (read 'nonexistent') cases where they are the clear and singular causes of global economic meltdowns?

The author goes on to "point out" that "prosecuting these crimes is HARD." Maybe that's what a hack being paid to lie might say, but actual prosecutors know better. Elliot Spitzer (who REALLY know this game, having seen it from both sides) noted in 'Inside Job' (a) how popular cocaine and hookers were (and still are) among Wall St. types (b) how simple it is to prosecute vice cases and (c) how easily they can ruin the careers, lives, and families of those who get busted. After all, the further up the status ladder you go, the harder these things are to live down.

Sure, prosecuting white collar crime by auditing paperwork is tricky, and that's what makes the approach a rookie move. The real pros (like Spitzer) don't bother. Instead, they run a dragnet that catches a number of bank employees with their pants down (often literally). They threaten them with the end of their jobs, marriages, and dignity over a bunch of petty crap that they can make go away IF the poor bastards dig up the kind of dirt on their bosses that the prosecutors could never find on their own. Magically, dirt appears.

Spitzer's big point, however, is that nobody works like this without their boss's approval. If there's strong pressure NOT to do their jobs, those jobs don't get done. And they're not going to get done if the White House is loudly signaling DO NOT investigate or prosecute.

Bill Black had some interesting commentary on this point exactly, including remarks by Gretchen Morgenson and Louise Story, who reported that "in 2008, the FBI, belatedly, realized that it had improperly targeted relatively trivial mortgage frauds while ignoring the massive lenders that specialized in making fraudulent mortgages. The FBI developed a plan to reorient its resources towards the “accounting control frauds” that always should have been its priority. We now know that the Department of Justice (DoJ) deliberately, and successfully, sabotaged this effort to investigate the major frauds.

The second underlying scandal that their column disclosed is that two key members of what Tom Frank aptly termed Bush’s “Wrecking Crew” – Geithner and Bernanke – who President Obama chose to promote and reappoint and make his anti-regulatory leaders sought to discourage or limit federal and state prosecutions, enforcement actions, and suits. Geithner’s express rationale was that the financial system extreme fragility made vigorous investigations of the elite frauds too dangerous."

http://www.creditwritedowns.com/2011/04/fiat-justitia-ruat-c...

In any case, we seem to be moving from "yes, there was crime, but don't prosecute" to "yes, there MAY have been crime, but we CAN'T prosecute" to "yes, the crisis was bad, but it wasn't CAUSED by crime, so we're not about to prosecute."

Matt Taibai summed it up best in his February RS column "Why Isn't Wall Street In Jail?"

"Over drinks at a bar on a dreary, snowy night in Washington this past month, a former Senate investigator laughed as he polished off his beer. "Everything's fucked up, and nobody goes to jail," he said. "That's your whole story right there. Hell, you don't even have to write the rest of it. Just write that." I put down my notebook. "Just that?" "That's right," he said, signaling to the waitress for the check. "Everything's fucked up, and nobody goes to jail. You can end the piece right there."

Nobody goes to jail. This is the mantra of the financial-crisis era"

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/why-isnt-wall-stre...