O'Malley: Put more cops on Wall Street beat. by Martin O'Malley

There was a glaring omission in the Register's Sept. 23 editorial noting that “CEOs are no longer ‘too big to jail’”: Wall Street CEOs.

There are now two standards of justice in the US: one for the wealthy, powerful and well-connected of Wall Street, and one for the rest of us. Wall Street megabanks — and their executives — have been somehow classified as too big to prosecute and too big to jail in our country. Enough is enough.

The Register rightly praised the Department of Justice for “responding to corporate crimes with criminal prosecutions aimed at the individuals who engineered those crimes” saying “it’s the best way to ensure that people who break the law are held accountable for their actions.”

The same principle must be applied to Wall Street.

If you slap a bank robber on the wrist, he’ll just go and rob a bank again. It’s no different if that bank robber is wearing a suit.

As it stands now, when laws are broken, Wall Street CEOs and their institutions get off with nothing more than fines paid by shareholders that they can write off as business expenses. No admission of guilt, no one faces jail time, everybody keeps their jobs — back to bonuses as usual.

What has this country come to when you can get pulled over for a broken taillight, but if you wreck the nation’s economy you’re untouchable?

There’s no magic or mystery to how we fix this: We must put more cops on the Wall Street beat. A crime is a crime, whether it’s committed on Wall Street or Main Street.

If a bank is too big to fail, too big to jail, and too big to manage, then I say it’s too big. So let’s break them up.

And while we’re at it, let’s restore the layers of protection between Wall Street and Main Street that were there for 70 years.

As president, I will create a standalone division at DOJ to investigate and prosecute economic crimes; require law-breaking banks and their executives to face real consequences instead of just absorbing fines and continuing to break the law; break up the biggest banks and pass a 21st century Glass-Steagall Act.

As president, I will provide the independence and new leadership needed to address this problem. We cannot allow the architects of deregulation back into a position of power. We cannot turn a blind eye to those who have profited from a very close relationship with Wall Street throughout their careers. We cannot elect leaders who believe the size of these banks isn’t a problem, and expect a different result.

Only once we’ve taken these much needed steps to hold Wall Street accountable can we truly say “CEOs are no longer ‘too big to jail.’”

Martin O’Malley, former governor of Maryland, is running for the Democratic nomination for president. Contact: martin@martinomalley.com

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/opinion/columnists/caucus/2015/10/01/omalley-put-more-cops-wall-street-beat/73142584/

(October 1, 2015)