# Will justice be served \[in the financial crisis\]?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-justice-be-served-in-the-financial-crisis/470049
**Category:** The BBQ Pit
**Created:** [October 29, 2008, 3:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-justice-be-served-in-the-financial-crisis/470049 "2008-10-29T03:57:15Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@danzio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/danzio)
#### Post date: [October 29, 2008, 3:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-justice-be-served-in-the-financial-crisis/470049/1 "2008-10-29T03:57:15Z")
Will anybody be prosecuted over this obscene financial crisis caused (primarily) by these unscrupulous lenders and perpetrated by moronic buyers who should have known that there are no free lunches and should never have signed on to more than they could afford. Or were no laws actually broken, thereby disallowing any criminal charges and those who bought more than they could have ever afforded be getting the last laugh while the rest of us continue to pull the wagon while they ride in it and bask in the newfound socialist sunshine?
This just really pisses me off!:mad:
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### Author:  [@Ace309](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ace309)
#### Post date: [October 29, 2008, 4:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-justice-be-served-in-the-financial-crisis/470049/2 "2008-10-29T04:02:58Z")
Who would you prosecute, and on what grounds?
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### Author:  [@friedo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/friedo)
#### Post date: [October 29, 2008, 4:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-justice-be-served-in-the-financial-crisis/470049/3 "2008-10-29T04:15:38Z")
In general, making stupid investments is not a crime.
It will be interesting to see if any of the large firms that got damaged by the crisis were involved in the kind of accounting fraud shenanigans that Enron and Worldcom were. But if so, we won’t know for a while. Those kinds of investigations take months, and prosecutions take years.
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### Author:  [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)
#### Post date: [October 29, 2008, 4:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-justice-be-served-in-the-financial-crisis/470049/4 "2008-10-29T04:15:54Z")
You’d have to start with HUD. Best of luck.
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### Author:  [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)
#### Post date: [October 29, 2008, 4:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-justice-be-served-in-the-financial-crisis/470049/5 "2008-10-29T04:20:55Z")
Seems like the OP is more of a rant than a factual question, so this is probably better suited for the Pit. I have also the edited thread title to indicate the subject.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
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### Author:  [@Tuckerfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tuckerfan)
#### Post date: [October 29, 2008, 4:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-justice-be-served-in-the-financial-crisis/470049/6 "2008-10-29T04:56:50Z")
> [@friedo](#):
>
> In general, making stupid investments is not a crime.
>
> It will be interesting to see if any of the large firms that got damaged by the crisis were involved in the kind of accounting fraud shenanigans that Enron and Worldcom were. But if so, we won’t know for a while. Those kinds of investigations take months, and prosecutions take years.
Given that the execs reportedly were saying things like, “I sure hope we’re all retired before this house of cards collapses.” and that the various rating agencies have said that they knew the stuff they were slapping the triple A ratings on were junk, but they did it anyway, I’m thinking that there’s certainly a criminal element to this mess. The FBI’s already going through the books, emails, etc., of places like AIG. They don’t normally do that to companies.
I seriously doubt, however, we’ll see anything more than the token prosecution of a few execs, while the rest will proceed to move on to the next corporation and promptly run it into the ground.
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### Author:  [@askeptic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/askeptic)
#### Post date: [October 29, 2008, 5:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-justice-be-served-in-the-financial-crisis/470049/7 "2008-10-29T05:13:06Z")
> [@Tuckerfan](#):
>
> I seriously doubt, however, we’ll see anything more than the token prosecution of a few execs, while the rest will proceed to move on to the next corporation and promptly run it into the ground.
Bingo!
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### Author:  [@Typo\_Negative](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Typo_Negative)
#### Post date: [October 29, 2008, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-justice-be-served-in-the-financial-crisis/470049/8 "2008-10-29T15:35:34Z")
I just want Uncle Sam to go after all the bonuses the Execs got before the collapse. I don’t these assholes to make a huge profit on us after screwing us.
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### Author:  [@Cat\_Whisperer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cat_Whisperer)
#### Post date: [October 29, 2008, 4:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-justice-be-served-in-the-financial-crisis/470049/9 "2008-10-29T16:31:20Z")
Short answer - no. I think the most you’ll see is the token appeasement prosecution that **Tuckerfan** mentions, then the attention of the US public will be distracted by the next shiny object. You can’t really expect the rich and powerful to punish the rich and powerful, can you?
What I really do hope to see, though, is the unhooking of the rest of the world from the US shenanigans. I don’t have a lot of hope for that either, though, because we are so global now.
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### Author:  [@Astroboy14](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Astroboy14)
#### Post date: [October 29, 2008, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-justice-be-served-in-the-financial-crisis/470049/10 "2008-10-29T16:44:01Z")
Nope.
Once again the fact that life is not fair is proven.
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### Author:  [@E-Sabbath](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-Sabbath)
#### Post date: [October 29, 2008, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-justice-be-served-in-the-financial-crisis/470049/11 "2008-10-29T19:21:13Z")
Mebbe. At least, our local Atty. General is making noises. He’s a Cuomo, and he’s ambitious.
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### Author:  [@kidchameleon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kidchameleon)
#### Post date: [October 29, 2008, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-justice-be-served-in-the-financial-crisis/470049/12 "2008-10-29T19:49:52Z")
> [@Tuckerfan](#):
>
> I seriously doubt, however, we’ll see anything more than the token prosecution of a few execs, while the rest will proceed to move on to the next corporation and promptly run it into the ground.
Guys who have run companies into the ground are high on most people’s list to hire. :rolleyes:
> [@spooje](#):
>
> I just want Uncle Sam to go after all the bonuses the Execs got before the collapse. I don’t these assholes to make a huge profit on us after screwing us.
And the Junior Execs? And the managers? And the secretaries? And the mail room clerks? Where the hell do you draw the line? And by what means do you take back bonuses from them? Is this like the ‘windfall tax’ where we tax on an arbitrary basis?
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### Author:  [@Tuckerfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tuckerfan)
#### Post date: [October 29, 2008, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-justice-be-served-in-the-financial-crisis/470049/13 "2008-10-29T20:16:47Z")
> [@kidchameleon](#):
>
> Guys who have run companies into the ground are high on most people’s list to hire. :rolleyes:
:rolleyes: Yourself. What do you think happens to these guys? They wind up mopping floors at the local Seven Eleven? Nope. They either move on to an executive position at another company, or they wind up working as a “consultant” for some other company.
The argument that the boards of the new companies make is that there’s a “limited talent pool” of people who know how to run a major corporation, thus, even though a person might have a black mark on their record, they’re still worth hiring. They can also pitch themselves as having connections in various companies, the same way a disgraced politician gets a job as a lobbiest after having been tossed out office. That’s even if they bother with making any kind of excuse for hiring the fuckwits.
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### Author:  [@kidchameleon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kidchameleon)
#### Post date: [October 29, 2008, 8:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-justice-be-served-in-the-financial-crisis/470049/14 "2008-10-29T20:25:39Z")
> [@Tuckerfan](#):
>
> :rolleyes: Yourself. What do you think happens to these guys? They wind up mopping floors at the local Seven Eleven? Nope. They either move on to an executive position at another company, or they wind up working as a “consultant” for some other company.
>
> The argument that the boards of the new companies make is that there’s a “limited talent pool” of people who know how to run a major corporation, thus, even though a person might have a black mark on their record, they’re still worth hiring. They can also pitch themselves as having connections in various companies, the same way a disgraced politician gets a job as a lobbiest after having been tossed out office. That’s even if they bother with making any kind of excuse for hiring the fuckwits.
Yeah, they get dispersed and demoted. They don’t ‘run another company into the ground’. Can you cite a group of individuals that ran two major corporations ‘into the ground’? There’s plenty of other dumbasses out there to make more mistakes.
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### Author:  [@The\_Tao\_s\_Revenge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Tao_s_Revenge)
#### Post date: [October 29, 2008, 8:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-justice-be-served-in-the-financial-crisis/470049/15 "2008-10-29T20:48:50Z")
> [@spooje](#):
>
> I just want Uncle Sam to go after all the bonuses the Execs got before the collapse. I don’t these assholes to make a huge profit on us after screwing us.
Me too. I want Congress to pass a special 101% tax on income and assets for these fuckers that names them personally by name as only payers of this tax. I’d also like a litt provision that attempting to fly the US to avoid this tax is a crime punishable with life in prison and a country knowingly accepting them is an act of war.
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### Author:  [@The\_Tao\_s\_Revenge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Tao_s_Revenge)
#### Post date: [October 29, 2008, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-justice-be-served-in-the-financial-crisis/470049/16 "2008-10-29T20:50:36Z")
> [@kidchameleon](#):
>
> Yeah, they get dispersed and demoted. They don’t ‘run another company into the ground’. Can you cite a group of individuals that ran two major corporations ‘into the ground’? There’s plenty of other dumbasses out there to make more mistakes.
After they ruined people’s life time worked for retirements what kind of money they going to be making at these “demoted” jobs?
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### Author:  [@kidchameleon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kidchameleon)
#### Post date: [October 29, 2008, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-justice-be-served-in-the-financial-crisis/470049/17 "2008-10-29T21:05:50Z")
> [@The\_Tao\_s\_Revenge](#):
>
> After they ruined people’s life time worked for retirements what kind of money they going to be making at these “demoted” jobs?
The same as everybody else: The best offer they can negotiate. In some cases nothing. Some of those guys won’t be able to get another job. Some of these guys probably did a bang up job will get a deserved raise. Who the hell knows? It’s some amorphous, faceless blob that people are upset about, not individuals, outside of a few front men.
How many people knew what role the assistant CIO of Bear Stearns played? If he deserved his bonus? Not me. Yeah, their CEO probably got too big of a bonus but you know who loses on that? The dumbass owners who agreed to pay him that. The tax payers are probably going to come out ahead, just like we did with Chrysler.
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### Author:  [@Tuckerfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tuckerfan)
#### Post date: [October 29, 2008, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-justice-be-served-in-the-financial-crisis/470049/18 "2008-10-29T21:21:56Z")
> [@kidchameleon](#):
>
> Yeah, they get dispersed and demoted. They don’t ‘run another company into the ground’. Can you cite a group of individuals that ran two major corporations ‘into the ground’? There’s plenty of other dumbasses out there to make more mistakes.
How about Bob Lutz? He took the reins at Chrysler, sold it to Mercedes who promptly looted the company, dumped Lutz, and then jettisoned the company. Lutz went on to GM, and we’ve seen how well _they’re_ doing under Lutz’s stewardship. They’re now trying to _buy_ the dissecated corpse of Chrysler because it has _more_ money than GM. Then there’s Albert “Chainsaw Al” Dunlap, who made a career of taking companies, gutting them, selling them off to other companies, while pocketing huge amounts of cash and moving on to the next company. Kirkorian is another one with similar “skills.”
There was a website dedicated to such things, but my google-fu is failing me. The only thing I can dig up is one run by the AFL-CIO, and the one I’m thinking of was run by an investigative reporter.
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### Author:  [@welby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/welby)
#### Post date: [October 30, 2008, 2:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-justice-be-served-in-the-financial-crisis/470049/19 "2008-10-30T14:41:31Z")
I’d hope that there were state-level investigations of the realtors and mortgage brokers who encouraged buyers to falsify thier loan applications. It won’t happen, but it’d be nice to see it.
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### Author:  [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)
#### Post date: [October 30, 2008, 10:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-justice-be-served-in-the-financial-crisis/470049/20 "2008-10-30T22:42:22Z")
No. Next question?
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