Government won’t prosecute Goldman Sachs in fraud probe

I told everyone none of the banksters would see the inside of a courtroom much less a jail cell. I was hoping I'd be proven ever so wrong (never am I but I keep hoping). And I was correct. I hate when that happens:

[I]f Goldman is a proxy for Wall Street money, Obama was seriously bought by the banks in 2008.

The payback — zero banking prosecutions, including for billionaire thief (and Obama fundraiser) Jon Corzine, who will never see a courtroom or handcuffs.

It's the way it works, folks. Obama is employed, a wage-slave, just like you and me. Meet his paymasters.

As I say, I really want to be wrong about this stuff. Who wants to live in a country as corrupt as this one?

Now, turns out I was ever so right:

The Justice Department said Thursday it won’t prosecute Wall Street firm Goldman Sachs or its employees in a financial fraud probe. In a written statement, the department said it conducted an exhaustive investigation of allegations brought to light by a Senate panel investigating the 2008-2009 financial crisis.

“The department and investigative agencies ultimately concluded that the burden of proof to bring a criminal case could not be met based on the law and facts as they exist at this time,” the department said.

Bottom line — DoJ lets Goldman skate free.

It's at the discretion of the prosecutor whether to prosecute.

Some prosecutors — for example, in cases involving petty (brown-skinned) street crime — need only something approximating the possibility of a conviction, or near enough, so long as they have a single shaky witness from blocks away who might even look credible if cleaned up (or "coached").

Other prosecutors — for example, in cases involving Jon Corzine or others of Our Betters — need no less than a "smoking gun" plus crime scene photos of the perp as the bullet leaves the chamber — without which, they say, they just don't have enough to go to trial (do click, my characterization isn't far off; and yes, that's our hero Pat Fitzgerald talking).

Thus it is with Justice Dept — which in fine shrub tradition, is not just the nation's Justice Dept.:

Four years ago, employees of New York-based Goldman gave three-fourths of their campaign donations to Democratic candidates and committees, including presidential nominee Barack Obama.

For what it's worth (not much apparently) this is the evidence from the Senate that Obama's DoJ decided wasn't enough (note: Senate panels conduct inquiries under oath):

A Senate subcommittee chaired by Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., in April 2011 found that Goldman marketed four sets of complex mortgage securities to banks and other investors but that the firm failed to tell clients that the securities were very risky.

The Senate panel said Goldman secretly bet against the investors’ positions and deceived the investors about its own positions to shift risk from its balance sheet to theirs. ...

The Justice Department’s decision capped a good day for Goldman as the Securities and Exchange Commission decided not to file charges against the firm over a $1.3 billion subprime mortgage portfolio. ...

Note the hippy-bashing in the sentence following the last one. The source for the Sun-Times article is the AP.

If this isn't fraud, nothing is fraud (so long as the perp is Goldman). And yes a very "good day for Goldman". Are we a banana yet, or just headed that way?

Now me, more directly. The Nixon pardon was ground zero for loss of Rule of Law. First it was one man, president-cum-king, the top guy, who could not be prosecuted. When Nixon said this —

"When the president does it, it's not illegal."

— he had managed through his pardon to make himself correct.

Next, under Bush I, the circle of "unprosecutables" opened to include the cabinet, Weinberger et al. Today it includes any major banker, even known thief (and Obama fundraiser) Jon Corzine.

The circle of protection is still widening. I'd watch the Sheldon Adelson news if I were you. If Adelson can't be prosecuted — not convicted, that's for a jury; just prosecuted — you'll know the umbrella of immunity has opened further.

My sad prediction — Adelson skates, never sees a courtroom. What's the script? The Rs charge "political prosecution" and Holder backs down.

The result? Now no one funding a political campaign above a certain dollar amount can be brought to trial for anything but the personally-murdered recently dead (plus witnesses).

"On a scale from one to America, how free are you?" Not free enough, I suspect.