Buzz Flash – by MARK KARLINProviding additional evidence that the Obama Administration’s Department of Justice (DOJ) is protecting “banks too big to fail,” Pulitzer Prize winning financial reporter David Cay Johnston has revealed that the DOJ has refused to force JPMorgan Chase to comply with an ongoing investigation into the bank’s possible knowledge of Bernard Madoff’s fraud scheme of a few years ago.
The information obtained might reveal that the bank chose to financially benefit from criminal activity:
Bernard Madoff’s principal bank, JPMorgan Chase, has for years obstructed federal bank examiners trying to ascertain what it knew about his gigantic Ponzi scheme, an official document obtained by Newsweek shows.
The Justice Department refused in September to back up Treasury inspector general staff who wanted a court order to enforce a subpoena, in effect shielding JPMorgan from law enforcement, the October 8 document shows.
The Justice Department told the Treasury Inspector General “that they were denying the request for enforcement of the subpoena,” which means officials “could not undertake further actions regarding this matter,” wrote Jason J. Metrick, the inspector general special-agent-in-charge.
Johnston disclosed the latest damning indication of the DOJ shielding Wall Street banks that dominate US finanes in a Newsweek article. The DOJ pattern of not exploring potential big bank criminal activity was admitted to by Attorney General Eric Holder — as BuzzFlash at Truthout reported at the time — as recalled by Johnston:
Last March Attorney General Eric Holder told a Senate hearing he was afraid to prosecute the Too Big to Fail Banks, as it could do even more economic damage, in effect declaring them Too Big to Prosecute.
“The size of some of these institutions becomes so large that it does become difficult for us to prosecute them when we are hit with indications that if you do prosecute, if you do bring a criminal charge, it will have a negative impact on the national economy — perhaps even the world economy,” Holder testified.
Although Madoff has been serving an effective life sentence in prison since 2009, a special Treasury Department inspector general with independent powers is still trying to ascertain if JPMorgan Chase turned a blind eye to Madoff’s mega-ponzi scheme that left many individuals and organizations (including charities) with enormous losses.
The bottom line of the Obama DOJ’s position is that Americans are left vulnerable to criminal bank activity on a massive scale because if they were held accountable, Holder believes, the US economic system would be hurt.
But the 2007-2008 crash showed what such uninvestigated and unprosecuted behavior leads to.
In short, the chief law enforcement officer of the United States is authorizing our largest banks to engage in criminal behavior because, he claims, preventing them from doing so might negatively impact our economy? But hasn’t it prima facie been proven again and again that the likely criminal bank activity undermines our financial system?
This is so nonsensical, such a defilement of justice and economic integrity that there must be another answer to Holder’s protection of suspected (and as indicated in civil and other suits) criminal actions on Wall Street.
The financial masters of the universe call the shots in DC. Holder and his law firm base, Covington and Burling, represent many of them — and Congress and the White House are beholden to them for campaign cash and revolving door jobs.
(Photo: SEIU International)
Yeah, we already know that the attorney general is a fugitive from justice.
Just add this to his long list of crimes because he will eventually have to answer to a patriotic judge for them. If he’s lucky.
Spineless congress