[LB232323]

The only reason this guy got charged is because he was a plain scam artist running everything out of his personal bank account.

Unfortunately, the highest levels of financial crime are tied to lawmakers and corruption of the highest authorities of white collar law enforcement.

It's usually outsiders and smaller operations that get caught. Corporations are in charge of a corporate oligarchy, which is the United States.

These entities are "too big to fail". They are so essential to the economy that the best you can hope for from the government is maybe a scapegoat going to a comfortable prison or a hefty fine.

TL;DR

Bringing down the largest corporations for crime is like trying to arrest the US president for war crimes.

[throwazero]

> These entities are "too big to fail". They are so essential to the economy that the best you can hope for from the government is maybe a scapegoat going to a comfortable prison or a hefty fine.

Norway faced a banking crisis in the 90s; to solve it, the government simply invalidated the shares and took control of the bank.[1] The government later reprivatized it - i.e. sold new shares - once it was no longer failing.

That seems a pretty okay approach for entities that are too big to fail: let the shareholders, not the public, pay the price of failure.

(You need a sufficiently strong government to do it, obviously.)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christiania_Bank