Elizabeth Warren has a game-changing idea that doesn’t require Congress

[RiverLover]

Elizabeth Warren has a game-changing idea that doesn’t require Congress
4/15/15



Elizabeth Warren isn't running for president. But she does have an agenda for reining in the big banks that would go well beyond the Obama administration's (underrated) bank regulation moves and substantially alter the role of Wall Street in American life.

In a speech delivered on April 15 at the Levy Institute's 24th annual Hyman Minsky conference, Warren laid out the most comprehensive and ambitious version of her agenda yet.

Naturally, the bulk of her policies would require new acts of Congress. ... But a crucial element of Warren's agenda could be unilaterally implemented by the next president — or even this one.

An agenda a president can deliver — bring back prosecutions

... She wants to see the federal government level criminal charges against financial institutions that break the rules.

"The Department of Justice doesn’t take big financial institutions to trial — ever," she says in her speech. "Even when financial institutions engage in blatantly criminal activity."

...In typical Warren fashion, she lays out this idea like folksy common sense. But to understand what a powerful weapon this could be, you have to understand why officials in both the Bush and Obama administrations haven't used it against big banks.

Reporting on the Justice Department's thinking from Jim Zarroli at NPR, Jesse Eisinger at ProPublica, Andrew Ross Sorkin at the New York Times, and others comes back to a single name: Arthur Andersen.

Arthur Andersen was one of the "big five" major accounting companies in America, until it was found to have been deeply complicit in Enron's financial shenanigans. The federal government took the company to court and won a conviction. But companies don't do jail time and then come out on parole. What happened instead is that the company swiftly and spectacularly collapsed — clients and suppliers don't want to work with a company that they think may go out of business soon, and that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy....

...To Warren, this corporate sob story doesn't hold much water....

http://www.vox.com/2015/4/15/8420789/elizabeth-warren-prosecutions