| A law not universally and consistently enforced is not a law. As for the financial penalties, the directly culpable individuals do not pay them. Nor, in the long run for such "too big to fail" institutions, do the shareholders. The customers pay them. Especially when you have companies in an oligarchical, if not monopolistic, position. Penalties become a cost of business that gets passed on. In several of these penalties of very large institutions, people have "crunched the numbers" and found that, at most, the penalty represents a quarter or two's profit. Measure that against the years of outsized profit gained during and often in good part due to the abuse being penalized, and "cost of doing business" is all the further put in context. As an individual, when you go to jail, it doesn't as much matter what your assets are. While you're in jail, you don't get to enjoy them. (This is not entirely true, and we also have now the example of Skilling (Enron) essentially spending his way out of prison. But, he still suffered some direct, personal hardship.) As a corporation, such costs are spread over a large institution and number of people, and individuals may face little or no hardship. Even those senior executives who "resign", "take the fall", or are booted out often continue to receive millions in compensation, on top of what they've already squirreled away. (Lower level members can and are screwed over -- "sacrifices" to the good of the institution that has chosen to excise them.) I think respect for such senior executives among the larger population these days is really largely a matter of envy. An envy often driven in turn by one's fear for one's own increasingly precarious financial and physical circumstances. Respect for such people as "leaders" continues to decline. Look at the bottom basement approval ratings for members of Congress. People have figured out that those people do not play by the same rules -- do not exist in the same legal and financial world, as the normal population does. We in the U.S. expostulate that we are a "nation founded on laws". When the application of those laws becomes selective and overtly subject to finance -- justice, or its absence, "for sale" -- you weaken that very foundation. (As a complementary point, arguments can be made that efforts to define and apply the law more universally have strengthened the country. For example, the suffrage and civil rights movements.) P.S. I'll add that Warren, and Sheila Baer, and a few others are actually responsible for forcing through some of the few real and at least somewhat effective consumer (i.e. "normal person") protections in the mess of activity that constitute's the U.S.'s "financial bailout" efforts. Finally, as to the politics, that whole "Native American" thing is a red herring -- emblematic of much bigger liars (as compared to their claims rather than facts) who make strident declamations to divert attention from their own atrocious behavior. |