[paulpauper]

Madoff and Alan Stanford went to jail. although unrelated to the 2008 financial crisis, is evidence white collar criminals can in fact get very punitive sentences. In the case of the 2008 crisis, the link between the actions of any one individual and the crisis itself is more tenuous. The problem was no so much maleficence, but underestimating risk. The risk management models these banks were using could not have foreseen such a large and sudden catastrophic failure. You cannot put people in jail for failing to account for tail risk. Second, the crisis was possibly also caused by poor government policy, such as programs creating incentives for low-income homeowners who may have not have had good credit.

[walrus01]

> poor government policy

there is fairly strong evidence that repeal of the glass-steagall act was a contributing factor to the environment that allowed investment/securities firms to get out of control in the 2001-2008 time period:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aftermath_of_the_repeal_of_the...

[Animats]

Well, what do you expect? Of the last four secretaries of the treasury, not counting the acting ones who had the job briefly, three were from Goldman Sachs. The other one was from Citicorp.

[stephengillie]

So then do we jail our Congess for (un)making laws?

[kbenson]

I'm pretty sure it's not possible to find congress guilty of breaking the law by using the power vested in them by the Constitution. I think the closest you could come would be laws being ratified that the Supreme court then determined (from a case being brought) that infringed on constitutional rights, in which case that portion of the law is struck, but IANAL.

Although, maybe you were joking?

[stephengillie]

I might have used the incorrect sarcasm markup.