Police in Washington made numerous arrests today in connection with the ongoing mortgage foreclosure crisis, in which millions of homeowners lost billions of dollars due to the fraudulent actions of bank executives.

But the arrests were not of the criminals who caused the crisis; the people led away in handcuffs today were the victims of the crime.

They were among the more than 100 people from across the country at a Justice Department demonstration organized by the Home Defenders League. They marched from Freedom Plaza in downtown Washington to the Department of Justice, expressing in their chants their frustration with the government, specifically Attorney General Eric Holder, for not holding the banks accountable for robbing homeowners of their wealth.

The participants had slogans printed on propped-up tents and chanted such lines as, “Who do we want in jail!? THE BANKS! When do we want it? NOW!”

Some of the participants stated in interviews that they were willing to be arrested if it meant having their voices heard; others simply told their story.

“I am here because I want the bankers jailed, the ones that caused this housing crisis and foreclosure crisis and are putting people out in the street,” said Deborah Noel, of Springfield, Mass. “Right now it is time for them to pay, we are not going to stop, we are going to continue to work together and rally together until something is done.”

“This is not how we are supposed to live, being pushed out of our homes, being depressed and upset every day,” she continued. We’re supposed to be able to live comfortably.”

Noel’s story is just one of many that shine light on the problem this country is having with how the banks handled the lives of ordinary people.

While most Americans lost something in the Great Recession, it was clear that many of the participants at today’s “Bring Justice to Justice” rally, like Sahara Donahue, of Idaho Springs, Colorado, had lost a great deal.

““I was foreclosed on last year in my home of 24 years, and was evicted by a Tri-County SWAT team, so I left my home that I had fought for two years to stay in through the court system at the point of an AR-15,” Donohue said. “I had to be here today, and I am honored to be here with Home Defenders League and Occupy Our Homes trying to help change things.”

Cammy Depew of Gonzales, La., struggled as a single mother to jump through many hoops just to make her house payments. In an interview, she outlined the complexity of the process she went through to try to save her home, as her case was shuffled from one bank servicer to another. Finally, she said, “when I started to work on a modification with them, they put me in foreclosure. I was not even notified of the sheriff’s sale.”

“I am here because it took everything for me to buy this house, which I bought for stability for my kids. I had a large amount of equity in the home; my plan was to get them through school, buy a piece of land then give each of my daughters a parcel, so they would be in a stable situation and would never be in the situation that I was in, moving from home to home.”

As of 4:30 p.m. Monday there were at least 17 homeowners arrested, with more arrests expected. These are everyday people who believe that if big banks led by billionaires and millionaires can be bailed out, why can’t average Americans? Perhaps as these arrests and what motivated them gets discussed, our government will be shamed into addressing the plight of millions of homeowners who are underwater on their mortgages, and reserve the jail cells for the real criminals in this saga.

Richard Long contributed to this post.

The CEO of a big company makes 1795 times what its clerks are making, and the company is now in trouble. Does it matter which company, when so many other companies are in a similar situation? There is a three-year-old law that requires companies to disclose to shareholders the ratio of CEO-to-worker pay, but the law isn’t being implemented.

Law Says Disclose CEO Pay Ratio

There is a law that the government is not implementing, requiring companies to report the ratio of CEO pay to worker pay. The reason the government is not implementing the law is corruption: The people who are supposed to implement the law keep delaying, some then leave government to get huge checks from the very companies that want the already-passed law blocked from being implemented. No one is stepping in from above to make things happen. Meanwhile, Republicans in Congress are getting paid to do what they can to block implementation.

Specifically, section 953(b) of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act requires public companies to disclose the median annual total compensation of all employees, the total annual compensation of the chief executive officer, and the ratio of the median employee pay to the CEO’s pay. This law has been passed and has been on the books for three years. But three years later the administration still has not implemented it.

From last month’s CEO Pay And SEC Delay,

Something many people don’t know is that the Wall Street reform law was supposed to do this, but years later the regulations still have not been written! The SEC delays and delays, and then the head of the SEC leaves to take a high-paying job with a “bank consulting” firm.

There is a new Chair of the SEC. Will SEC Chair Mary Jo White get this law implemented, or not?

The Story

A recent Bloomberg story by Elliot Blair Smith & Phil Kuntz looks at the CEO-pay law and what is blocking implementation. Bloomberg: CEO Pay 1,795-to-1 Multiple of Wages Skirts U.S. Law begins by looking at the case of JC Penny CEO Ron Johnson,

Former fashion jewelry saleswoman Rebecca Gonzales and former Chief Executive Officer Ron Johnson have one thing in common: J.C. Penney Co. (JCP) no longer employs either.

The similarity ends there. Johnson, 54, got a compensation package worth 1,795 times the average wage and benefits of a U.S. department store worker when he was hired in November 2011, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Gonzales’s hourly wage was $8.30 that year.

Across the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index of companies, the average multiple of CEO compensation to that of rank-and-file workers is 204, up 20 percent since 2009, the data show. The numbers are based on industry-specific estimates for worker compensation.

Almost three years after Congress ordered public companies to reveal actual CEO-to-worker pay ratios under the Dodd-Frank law, the numbers remain unknown.

So how is this law being blocked? According to Bloomberg story a powerful “Washington-based non-profit called the HR Policy Association, which represents top human resources executives at about 335 large corporations” is leading the charge.

The group has brand names behind it: 17 companies on HR Policy’s board of directors have CEO pay ratios in the top 20 percent of S&P 500 corporations, Bloomberg data show. They include General Electric Co. (GE), with a ratio of 491; McDonald’s Corp. (MCD), at 351; and AT&T Inc. (T), at 339.

How did Bloomberg arrive at these multiples, even though the law is being blocked?

These multiples are based on CEO pay for either the fiscal year ending in 2011 or 2012, as disclosed in the companies’ most recent filings before noon on March 26. Because most companies don’t disclose their average workers’ pay, Bloomberg used U.S. government data on worker compensation by industry. The average ratio for the S&P 500 companies is up from 170 in 2009, when the financial crisis reduced many compensation packages. Estimates by academics and trade-union groups put the number at 20-to-1 in the 1950s, rising to 42-to-1 in 1980 and 120-to-1 by 2000.

And what is going on to block the law? Well, as mentioned above the last Chair of the agency delayed and delayed, and then left to take a high-paying job with a firm that makes its money by selling influence. (See CEO Pay And SEC Delay.) We are waiting to see if the new Chair will implement the law. From the Bloomberg story,

The SEC, which has so far written 39 of 94 rules called for under Dodd-Frank, has no deadline for completing the pay-ratio provision. In February, Commissioner Luis Aguilar suggested that companies voluntarily disclose their ratios until the agency can develop its rule.

… Bartl, at the compensation center, responded with a letter asking Aguilar to “retract” his statement.

SEC Chairman Mary Jo White, who took office this month, and the three other commissioners declined to comment.

The Bloomberg also tells the story of a low-wage JC Penny worker who was fired after being injured. Please go read.

Outgunned

In addition to regulators who sell out the public out by blocking implementation and then leaving to get huge paychecks from the lobbying firms whose mission they were assisting, Republicans in Congress are also working the case for the banks and big corporations.

Gary Rivlin at The Nation, How Wall Street Defanged Dodd-Frank describes the amazingly-funded and powerful lobbying effort against the whole Dodd-Frank law — of which the CEO-pay rule is one part — and the inability of the Obama administration to overcome them. The result,

Three years after Dodd-Frank was passed, only 148 of the 398 rules requiring action by regulators have been finalized, and draft versions have yet to be submitted for half of the remainder. Sheila Bair, head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation between 2006 and 2011, is among those outraged at that record. Bair, a lifelong Republican who was picked by President George W. Bush to head the FDIC, is unhappy that Congress wrote such an overly complex law. She also wishes that the regulators would act more boldly. But the main culprit, she says, is the resistance to reform posed by an industry with enormous firepower. “At the end of the day,” Bair says, “the regulators are outgunned.”

How are Republicans helping block regulations? From Rivlin’s story,

Wall Street’s primary beachhead for fighting Dodd-Frank has been the House Committee on Financial Services, chaired until recently by the Wall Street–friendly Spencer Bachus. “Regulators are there to serve the banks”: that’s what Bachus, an Alabama Republican, said shortly after it was announced that he would replace Barney Frank as the committee’s new chair at the start of 2011.

Examples,

And the very first bill Republicans introduced after taking over the House in the 2010 midterms—HR 1—was a measure that would have cut the CFTC’s funding by one-third. “Anything we can do to slow down, deter or impede their ability to engage in this oppressive overregulation,” Senator McConnell explained in 2011, “would be good for our country.” Congress has summoned Gensler to testify on Capitol Hill fifty-one times over the past four years—more than a visit per month since his February 2009 confirmation hearing.

Rivlin’s story goes into the wider story of efforts to block the entire Dodd-Frank law and is worth reading in its entirety.

Will New SEC Head Implement The Law?

The question everyone is asking is, will the new head of the SEC go ahead and implement the SEC’s parts of the law, or not? This is an unusual question to ask — a law is passed why would anyone ask if the law will be enforced or not? But in our corrupt times and with the corrupt history of the people who are responsible for implementing and enforcing our country’s laws, unfortunately this is a question that people do ask.

Take a look at the AFL-CIO’s Executive Paywatch.
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What does it mean to be an American? What does it mean to be an American corporation? An article in the Wall Street Journal the other day should trigger questions like these.

WSJ: Domestic-Based Multinationals Hiring Overseas,

Multinational companies based in the U.S. boosted their global work forces in 2011 almost entirely by hiring workers overseas, underscoring the slow growth in the U.S. job market.

… The paltry hiring at home reflects where multinational companies are focusing their attention. Stronger economic growth in overseas markets in Asia and Latin America is driving their expansion, reinforcing their shift toward cheaper labor or closer access to customers.

The U.S. parents of multinational firms account for about one-fifth of total private U.S. employment. Since 1999, employment by U.S. multinationals is down by 1.1 million inside the U.S., while it is up by 3.8 million overseas.

The hiring by American companies is not happening in the U.S. At the same time these companies are holding $1.7 trillion of profits outside of the country, away from their own shareholders and our economy to avoid their taxes, while pushing to dramatically lower the taxes they pay us – and even to get out of paying any taxes at all on money they make outside of the country!

Why Do We Have Corporations?

Why do We the People even have laws that allow corporations and give them special benefits? The answer obviously is for our common benefit — why else would we do it? The corporate form of a business enables the company to easily obtain capital from investors, in order to accomplish large-scale projects that benefit us. To encourage this we give these entities special privileges. For example, we limit liability which means the investors are not held liable for the actions of the company – they won’t lose more than their investment if the company gets sued for some reason. We provide a system that helps them obtain financing, insurance, market liquidity and all kinds of things to help those investors get a good return on their money.

Benefit: We the People want railroads, but it takes a lot of money to build and operate a railroad. And our system wants private companies to do the work of building and operating railroads instead us just doing it ourselves. So we set up a way for a private company to gather investment from lots of people.

Why Do We Want “American” Corporations?

Why don’t we just contract with any old corporation that comes along to get things done for us? Who cares what country these entities are from? Why should we as a country want to encourage and support our American corporations? Because American corporations make money for us. That is the whole point.

Other countries see themselves as countries, and compete with us as a country, for their benefit and the benefit of their people. As much as some of us might want a world in which we all cooperate and share and have “free trade” and other ideals and dreams, the fact is that other countries understand themselves as countries. Companies and industries located in other countries are operated to benefit their people. Their governments give them special benefits to help them compete with our companies. And then they are taxed so their country can have good schools and infrastructure and all the rest of the benefits of the modern world, for them.

And if we do not respond in kind, then their people end up better off at the expense of our people.

As long as other countries operate for the benefit of their people, it is our job to keep up our end of the bargain as it exists and operate as a country for the benefit of our people. This means that we support our companies, and expect them to bring the money they make back here, and share the returns with us.

We The People Used To Understand Who Is The Boss

We the People (used to) understand that these companies exist for our common benefit and (used to) expect certain things back from these corporations. We (used to) expect them to provide high-quality products and services and not engage in fraud and trickery. We (used to) expect them to provide a safe and fair work environment with good wages and benefits. We (used to) expect them to be good citizens that benefit the communities where they operate. And our laws and enforcement (used to) make sure they operated that way – for our common benefit.

These understandings and expectations have disappeared. An Apple executive articulated the new corporate understanding to The New York Times. He said giant multinationals like Apple “don’t have an obligation to solve America’s problems.” And to prove it, American corporations are holding $1.7 trillion in profits outside the country – just sitting there – rather than bringing that money home, paying the taxes due and then paying it out to shareholders or using it to “create jobs” with new factories, research facilities and equipment.

We The People Have Forgotten

Citizens, elected officials and corporate management have forgotten why we have corporations and who they are supposed to serve. We have instead developed a system in which corporations exist for their own sake, doing anything they want to do, and doing these things only to enrich the few who own and manage them.

There is no longer an understanding and expectation that these entities – creations entirely of We, the People — are supposed to exist for the common good of We, the People. They no longer try to provide high-quality goods and services. They no longer feel they must avoid fraud and trickery – and without enforcement of rules are able to gain advantage over others that do not operate this way. They no longer provide a safe and fair work environment with good wages and benefits. They are not good citizens that benefit the communities and country where they operate.

They are no longer under the control of We the People.

Are American Multinationals Really American?

For all intents and purposes giant “American” multinational corporations have transformed into entities with completely different interests from their American workers, customers, communities, citizens and government. These corporations are no longer operating in the interest of America or any country, while claiming the benefits of being American corporations (when it suits them.)

For example, the giant American multinational corporations are now set up and structured to avoid paying taxes here, or to any country. They set countries against each other in their hunt for low-wage labor, subsidies and advantages in markets.

Some companies are even “American” when it suits them, and not “American” when it does not. The post, Unraveling The Romney/Bain Tax Story drew on a New York Times report, Offshore Tactics Helped Increase Romneys’ Wealth. From the post:

Why is part of the same company set up based in Delaware, and part in the Cayman Islands or Luxemburg or Bermuda? Because the functions of the American-based company are those functions that avoid taxes on foreign entities, and the functions of the Caymans-based part are the functions that would have to pay US taxes if it was in the US. But in reality it is the same company — except for tax purposes! Here is the explanation of the foreign-based parts, from the Times article:

Had those funds been set up in the United States, the Romneys and other American investors would probably have been subject to certain federal taxes for their ownership of “controlled foreign corporations.” Setting up the funds in the Caymans allowed them to avoid those taxes.

Here is an explanation of the American-based parts,

Another appeal of offshore funds is that they help private equity attract investment from deep-pocketed big institutions like pension funds and university endowments. While these are generally tax-exempt, they are liable for taxes on “unrelated business taxable income” if they put money in funds that use debt financing to make investments.

So why aren’t they all just foreign-based? Why do they need to have an American-based part? One reason is that making the loans that run up the debt that enables these companies to get the interest deductions (more tax avoidance) would incur income taxes if the loans came from a foreign entity,

Beyond their tax advantages, however, offshore funds controlled by American money managers can also create new tax problems. Those funds are limited in their ability to make loans without triggering corporate income taxes — an issue for Sankaty funds. Therefore, they usually have a parallel domestic fund that makes the loans, holds them for a period before selling a portion to the offshore fund, a practice known as “season and sell.”

And, of course, the American-based entities enable the low “carried interest” tax rate that hedge fund managers enjoy. The company paying Romney can’t be foreign-based,

So-called carried interest, the cut of a fund’s investment gains earned by its managers, enjoys a favorable tax treatment. But under I.R.S. rules, carried interest cannot be derived from a corporation, like the offshore blockers used by Sankaty.

The American-based entities can buy American companies without incurring “foreign-based” obligations. Then the foreign-based entities can avoid the taxes that the American-based buyers of companies would have to pay. And the foreign-based investors can be in the foreign-based parts of the company, avoiding US tax obligations. Also American entities like pension funds can avoid US taxes they would otherwise have to pay.

To put it another way, the same company can pretend it is US-based when that is what it needs to be, and foreign-based when that is what it needs to be.

What Can We Do?

First of all, we want and need corporations, for the reasons outlines above. For our common benefit, to accomplish large-scale projects, and as a result to bring shared prosperity to our citizens.

But we have to be the boss of them. We have to understand again that We the People set up this system of corporations for our common benefit. (Why else would we set up these things?) And we have to again call ourselves a country.

Can we align the interests of these giant corporations with our national, American interest? If we cannot, they should be stripped of their American corporate privileges and be required to do the same things as other entities that are not wedded to the national interest. And then We the People can build and support American companies that are.

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The corporate/conservative effort to gut the country’s labor-law enforcement continues at full steam. Senate Republicans are blocking NLRB Board confirmations. Republican judges blocked the the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) from operating until the Senate confirms Board members. Today House Republicans are moving on a bill to just shut the NLRB down.

People vs Concentrated Power

Unions mean higher wages, benefits and safer working conditions for working people. This means “labor” — i.e. you (unless you own a big company) — gets a share of the benefits of our economy. This is because unions partially (only partially) balance the power difference between individuals and giant corporations.

One person against great wealth and power rarely stands a chance. That is why We, the People formed our government of, by and for the People. We, the People acting together (collectively) can used to be able to fight back against the concentrated power of great wealth.

Similarly, when individual people come up against the concentrated power of the giant corporations alone, they are at their mercy. One person saying, “Please, Sir, can I have a raise?” doesn’t cut it. But dozens or hundreds or thousands of people acting together is collective power, which balances the equation to some degree. (Except when “trade” deals enable the giant companies to ship jobs our of the country, pitting low-wage, exploited workers against American workers, and say, “Shut up or we’ll move your job out of the country, too.”)

The right to form a union, bargain collectively and engage in legitimate union activities without fear of retaliation or intimidation is the law of the land, and Wall Street and the large corporations don’t like it one bit. Not one bit at all.

NLRB And The Law

Congress enacted the National Labor Relations Act (“NLRA”) in 1935. It’s the law.

Take a look at Section 1 of the NLRA. In summary, it states that it is the position the position of We the People, (a.k.a. government,) that lack of bargaining power by workers against corporations leads to Depressions (we call them recessions now) — the result of depressed purchasing power. And it leads to strikes, which disrupt commerce. Therefore, it is the policy of the United States to encourage collective bargaining.

According to NLRB :

The NLRA protects the rights of employees to:

Form or join a union

Bargain collectively for a contract that sets wages, benefits, hours, and other working conditions

Discuss wages, working conditions or union organizing with co-workers or a union

Act with co-workers to improve working conditions by raising complaints with an employer or a government agency

Strike and picket their employer, depending on the purpose or means of the action

Choose not to join a union or engage in union activities

Organize coworkers to decertify a union
If employees choose a union as their bargaining representative, the union and employer must bargain in good faith in a genuine effort to reach a binding agreement setting out terms and conditions of employment. The union is required to fairly represent employees in bargaining and enforcing the agreement.

Employers may not:

Prohibit employees from discussing a union during non-work time, or from distributing union literature during non-work time in non-work areas, such as parking lots or break rooms

Question employees about their union support or activities in a manner that discourages them from engaging in that activity

Fire, demote, transfer, reduce hours or take other adverse action against employees who join or support a union or act with co-workers for mutual aid and protection, or who refuse to engage in such activity

Threaten to close their workplace if employees form or join a union

Promise or grant promotions, pay raises, or other benefits to discourage or encourage union support

Prohibit employees from wearing union hats, buttons, t-shirts, and pins in the workplace except under special circumstances

Spy on or videotape peaceful union activities and gatherings

Union Power Decline Means Wage Decline

Fighting labor-law enforcement so the big companies can act with impunity (and fighting for other restrictions on unions like “right-to-work” laws in the states) is about one thing and one thing only: driving down the wages and benefits that working people receive.

Trade agreements and weakening of labor laws has resulted in weakened unions. The result of weakened unions is explained in the post 40% Of Americans Now Make Less Than 1968 Minimum Wage,

The chart shows that wages used to go up as productivity went up, but in the 1970s they decoupled. Productivity kept going up but wages stagnated.

That is what happened when trade agreements broke the ability of unions to ask for a fair share of the proceeds. Businesses started moving jobs out of the country to low-wage, “business-friendly” non-democracies, and said to people who wanted raises “shut up or we’ll move your job out of the country, too.” This “decoupled” productivity increases from potential wage increases.

So the benefits of our economy started going to just a few people, instead of being spread around. The post, Is This Where The (Middle-Class) Money Went? tells that story:

Now, here’s another chart. This chart shows that financial-sector and non-financial-sector compensation used to rise together, but in the late 70′s / early 80′s they decoupled. Financial-sector compensation took off, while non-financial-sector compensation did not.

Recent Timeline

January, 2010, Republicans continue to prevent NLRB nominees from confirmation. NY Times, Labor Panel Is Stalled by Dispute on Nominee,

For two years, the board, which polices the labor laws governing unionized workers and unionization drives, has limped along with just two members, rather than its full complement of five, leaving many cases unresolved because of a 1-to-1 deadlock.

January, 2010, Republican Supreme Court says NLRB can’t rule without 3 Board members. Think Progress: Labor Board Hobbled By Senate Obstruction Has Hundreds Of Cases Invalidated By Supreme Court,

Today, in a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court invalidated more than 500 cases decided by the National Labor Relations Board. For more than two years, the five person board only had two sitting members, due to Congressional obstruction of its nominees, and the Court decided that the two-person board did not have legal authority to issue rulings.

February, 2010, Senate Republicans block NLRB nominees: U.S. Senate Filibuster Blocks Becker Nomination to NLRB.

January, 2012, Obama (finally) makes recess appointments to get NLRB functioning, Obama’s Recess Appointments: It’s Called Governing,

Republicans have been blocking confirmation of the President’s nominees to government agencies, the courts, even keeping ambassadors from being confirmed. They are not objecting to the nominees themselves, they are trying to keep the government from operating as it is supposed to. Klein calls all of this this “loophole-driven minority obstruction.” People are calling this “nullification.” “Nullification” was the pre-Civil War “states rights” practice of Southern states simply ignoring federal laws. The Republicans are again engaging in nullification, on behalf of the 1%.

In particular, Republicans were blocking nominations to the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in order to prevent these agencies from doing their job enforcing laws protecting people from scams and exploitation in exchange for a cut of the take from the scams and exploitation.

January, 2013, Republican judges rule that recess appointments are unconstitutional,

President Obama’s recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board violated the Constitution, a federal court of appeals ruled today, also raising questions about Obama’s pick for head of the Consumer Financial Protection Board.

The court called the appointment of three members to the National Labor Relations Board in January 2012 “an unconstitutional act,” because it took place when the Senate was in an “intrasession” recess, rather than an “intersession” recess.

Now:

Politico: Obama tries to fill out NLRB,

President Obama named three nominees to the National Labor Relations Board on Tuesday in an effort to fill out the five-member, bipartisan board that has become the center of a dispute over recess appointments.

… “With these nominations there will be five nominees to the NLRB, both Republicans and Democrats, awaiting Senate confirmation,” Obama said in a statement. “I urge the Senate to confirm them swiftly so that this bipartisan board can continue its important work on behalf of the American people.”

Reuters, House committee debates bill to pause NLRB,

The Republican-controlled House of Representatives is considering a bill that would stop the board from taking official action until either the Supreme Court rules on the D.C. Circuit’s decision or the Senate confirms a quorum of the NLRB.

WaPo, Obama nominates new NLRB members as House threatens to halt board actions,

The status of the board has been in limbo since a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled unanimously in January that Obama exceeded his constitutional authority by appointing three of its members while lawmakers were on break in January 2012, thus bypassing the usual Senate confirmation process.

The House is expected to vote on legislation this week that would prohibit the board from issuing decisions until the fate of Obama’s so-called recess appointments is known.

So this battle continues. Republicans, working for the giant corporations, are trying to nullify US labor law in order to keep our wages and benefits down. They are filibustering nominees to the NLRB and their “judges” are acting in unison to keep the NLRB from operating. We are all living the results. Our economy is living the results. Will we let them succeed?
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Congressional Republicans came to Silicon Valley this week to raise money from CEOs and their companies. They were offering a flat-out quid pro quo: give us money and in exchange we will cut your taxes, block taxes on profits made from moving jobs out of the country, cut government oversight of various schemes you try, and let you import more lower-wage tech-workers from outside the country.

The story is in the SF Chronicle, GOP Rep. Kevin McCarthy in Silicon Valley: Cut regs and corporate taxes,

[Rep McCarthy] spoke the Valley’s language: Nonpartisan. (Didn’t blame Dems or wave the GOP rally flag — CEOs hate that stuff. Just show them the money/tax breaks.) More important, he’s all about lowering regulations and cutting the corporate tax — which even President Obama gave a shout-out to Tuesday in his State of the Union.

Also, Politico: Republicans make another try to woo Silicon Valley,

In a trip this week to California, Rep. Kevin McCarthy, the No. 3 House Republican, is leading a half-dozen colleagues on a tour of its star technology companies, including Google and Facebook, in the hope the tech giants will become partners in upcoming fights over issues including tax reform, cybersecurity and immigration.

At the same time, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Minority Whip John Cornyn will headline several Bay Area fundraisers, including a TechNet, Google PAC and Oracle PAC fundraiser at the Stanford Park Hotel in Menlo Park on Thursday.

What are Republicans offering the CEOs in exchange for the corporate cash?

Tech companies have built up their Washington lobbying offices in recent years to help them sway Congress on a host of issues. But on tap in coming months are some of their most important priorities.

They are furious that American universities educate foreign students and send them home, and they want an immigration bill to expand the H-1B visa program to help keep those students in the U.S. Another focus is repatriation to encourage corporations to bring money back to the U.S. at a lower tax rate.

[. . .] Republicans are also looking to talk cybersecurity and the so-called Volcker rule, which they say stifles startup companies’ ability to raise capital. Patent reform is also sure to be on the docket for Silicon Valley businesses — especially startups.

What this translates to:

• The H1-B visa game is that Silicon Valley is notorious for only hiring younger workers and laying off anyone that reaches the ripe age of 40 because they cost more. Since this means there are not enough tech workers, they use H1-B visas to bring in younger, lower-cost foreign tech workers. See here, here, here… and seriously read this one.
• Tax “reform” has two parts. First, just lowering the corporate tax rate so the CEOs and investor class gets more and the schools and all the things We the People do to make our lives better are starved.
• Part II of the “tax-reform” game is the money being kept out of the country for tax avoidance. Companies have moved jobs, factories and profit centers out of the country. (Google made the majority of its profits in Bermuda!) They pretend they don’t owe their taxes on the profits until they “bring the money into the country.” They are holding $1.7 trillion out of the country away from their own shareholders and the US economy, trying to find enough members of Congress to pay to let them just bring it back without paying the taxes due.
• Patent reform. Everyone knows that the patent system is ridiculous and is holding back innovation by rewarding monopolists and rentiers. But how will “reform” shake out? Monopolists and rentiers are willing to cough up good cash to have any changes go their way.

By the way, though this was billed as a trip to “talk with” Silicon Valley the Republicans only met with 1%’ers, CEOs and top executives. They were not interested in discussing the concerns and needs of regular workers here. And the open fundraiser was $10,400 for four tickets.

Same As GOP/Wall Street Corrupt Bargain

This is reminiscent of the post-crash GOP “wooing” of Wall Street cash in exchange for blocking regulations that would have reigned in the big banks.

Feb. 2010, WSJ, GOP Chases Wall Street Donors,

In discussions with Wall Street executives, Republicans are striving to make the case that they are banks’ best hope of preventing President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats from cracking down on Wall Street.

… Last week, House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio made a pitch to Democratic contributor James Dimon, the chairman and chief executive of J.P. Morgan, over drinks at a Capitol Hill restaurant, according to people familiar with the matter.

Mr. Boehner told Mr. Dimon congressional Republicans had stood up to Mr. Obama’s efforts to curb pay and impose new regulations. The Republican leader also said he was disappointed many on Wall Street continue to donate their money to Democrats, according to the people familiar with the matter.

Quid pro quo: give us money and we will block this effort to reign you in.

Feb, 2010, NYTimes, In a Message to Democrats, Wall St. Sends Cash to G.O.P.,

Republicans are rushing to capitalize on what they call Wall Street’s “buyer’s remorse” with the Democrats. And industry executives and lobbyists are warning Democrats that if Mr. Obama keeps attacking Wall Street “fat cats,” they may fight back by withholding their cash.

Both “sides” play this corruption game, by the way,

Wall Street lobbyists say the financial industry’s big Democratic donors help ensure that their arguments reach the ears of the president and Congress. White House visitors’ logs show dozens of meetings with big Wall Street fund-raisers, including Gary D. Cohn, a president of Goldman Sachs; Mr. Dimon of JPMorgan Chase; and Robert Wolf, the chief of the American division of the Swiss bank UBS, who has also played golf, had lunch and watched July 4 fireworks with the president.

Lobbyists say they routinely brief top executives on policy talking points before they meet with the president or others in the administration. Mr. Wolf, in particular, also serves on the Presidential Economic Recovery Advisory Board led by the former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul A. Volcker.

Quid pro quo:

The Hill, Republicans block Wall Street reform bill,

Senate Republicans held ranks on Monday and blocked a Democratic effort to overhaul the financial system and crack down on Wall Street.

In a 57-41 vote, Democrats fell short of the 60 votes necessary to proceed to the Wall Street bill.

“Fell short of the 60 votes necessary” is media-speak to mask that the filibustered the bill. The public hates filibusters, but you can filibuster anyway if the public doesn’t fund out.

After the bills passed, Republicans earned their cash: Republicans Fight To Dilute Wall Street Regulations,

Congressional Republicans are greeting the one-year anniversary of President Barack Obama’s financial overhaul law by trying to weaken it, nibble by nibble.

Wary of attempting to dismantle the entire statute and being portrayed as Wall Street’s allies – banks are among the nation’s most unpopular institutions – GOP lawmakers are attacking corners of it.

… Another House panel voted to slice $200 million from Obama’s $1.4 billion budget request for the SEC, which has a major enforcement role.

Meanwhile, Senate Republicans are continuing a procedural blockade that has helped prevent Obama from putting Elizabeth Warren or anyone else in charge of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which opens its doors in two weeks.

So there it is. We have opened the door to bribery, and bribery rules the day. If you can gain from corruption you gain an advantage that drives honest players out of business. In the end the ones with the most money buy up all the advantages and keep competitors and innovators down. They deliver the minimum they can get away with, while draining the economy. Which describes what we have as an economic system now.

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A JPMorgan Chase employee stepped onstage at a black-tie gala on Wall Street last week to accept a “best crisis management” award given by an investor relations magazine. The bank, which was recently the subject of a U.S. Senate investigative hearing and an ongoing FBI probe into $6.2 billion in trading losses known as the “London Whale” fiasco, is not the subject of ridicule — but praise – from its cronies on Wall Street.

Kathy Hu, from JPMorgan’s investor relations department, accepted the award and quipped: “Crisis? What crisis?”

That’s the kind of jokester you get to be when you work for a “too big to jail” bank, which repeatedly misled the public, investors and regulators about the ballooning crisis in its Chief Investment Office. The firm’s lies are detailed in a 301-page report and 597 pages of exhibits prepared by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations chaired by Senator Carl Levin, only a portion of the 90,000 documents the committee gathered.

The committee’s report details how America’s largest bank and the largest derivatives trader in the world used “excess” deposits, including some that were federally insured, to construct a $157 billion portfolio of synthetic credit derivatives to engage in high-risk, complex, short term trading strategies. These are of the type that was supposed to be prevented by the “Volcker Rule,” which was included in the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform bill to limit proprietary trading by firms (the rule still has not been implemented).

As Senator John McCain so aptly put it: “These excess deposits should have been used to provide loans for main-street businesses. Instead, JPMorgan used the money to bet on catastrophic risk.”

The Senate committee has done its job, now will New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman finally hold JPMorgan executives accountable?

Securities Fraud

It is against federal law and New York’s powerful Martin Act for issuers of securities to make untrue statements or omissions of material fact in connection with the sale or purchase of securities.

On April 5, 2012, Bloomberg New broke the story that JPMorgan Chase was the mystery bank behind massive, distorting trades that were roiling world markets. The French-born London trader and JP Morgan employee Bruno Iksil was dubbed “Voldemort” and “London Whale” long before his identity was disclosed.

On April 13, 2012, JPMorgan hosted a regular earnings call and prepped talking points for participants. On that call, JPMorgan Chief Financial Officer Douglas Braunstein reassured investors, analysts, and the public that the activities of the Synthetic Credit Portfolio (SCP) were made on a long-term basis, were transparent to regulators, had been approved by the bank’s risk managers, and served a hedging function that lowered risk and would ultimately be permitted under the Volcker Rule whose regulations were still being developed. Meanwhile, CEO Jamie Dimon dismissed the media reports as “a tempest in a teapot.”

None of these statements were true. Below we quote liberally from the Senate report:

More than a Tempest in a Teapot. In response to a question, CEO Jamie Dimon dismissed media reports about the SCP as a “tempest in a teapot.” While he later apologized for the comment, “the evidence indicates Dimon was already in possession of information about the SCP’s complex and sizable portfolio, its sustained losses for three straight months, the exponential increase in those losses during March, and the difficulty of exiting the SCP’s positions.”

Omitting Risk Model Change. Near the end of January, the bank approved use of a new Value-at-Risk (VaR) model that cut in half the purported risk profile of the portfolio, but failed to disclose VaR model changes on numerous occasions. The change in the VaR methodology effectively masked significant changes in the portfolio. Dimon personally approved changes to the VaR model as seen in an email below and on page 363 of the exhibits.

Mischaracterizing Involvement of Firm-wide Risk Managers. Braunstein stated that “all of those positions are put on pursuant to the risk management at the firm-wide level.” The evidence indicates, however, that in 2012, JPMorgan’s firm-wide risk managers knew little about the SCP and had no role in putting on its positions

Mischaracterizing the Portfolio as “Fully Transparent to the Regulators.” Braunstein said that the SCP positions were “fully transparent to the regulators,” who “get information on those positions on a regular and recurring basis as part of our normalized reporting.” In fact, according to the Senate investigation, the SCP positions had never been disclosed to bank regulators in any regular bank report. (Dimon also played a role in the withholding of regular profit and loss reports from federal regulators).

Mischaracterizing Portfolio Decisions as “Made on a Very Long-Term Basis.” Braunstein also stated that with regard to “managing” the stress loss positions of the portfolio “[a]ll of the decisions are made on a very long-term basis.” In fact, credit traders engaged in daily derivatives trading. “His description was inaccurate at best and deceptive at worst,” concluded Senate investigators.

Mischaracterizing “Whale” Trades as Providing “Stress Loss Protection.” Braunstein indicated that the portfolio was intended to provide “stress loss protection” to the bank in the event of a credit crisis, essentially presenting the portfolio designed to lower rather than increase bank risk. But the statement was contradicted by others at the firm.

Asserting Trades Were Consistent with the Volcker Rule. Braunstein concluded with: “[W]e believe all of this is consistent with what we believe the ultimate outcome will be related to Volcker.” But the bank had earlier written to regulators expressing concern that the derivatives trading would be “prohibited” by the Volcker Rule.

Two-Tier Justice

JPMorgan borrowed some $68 billion from U.S. taxpayers and the Federal Reserve at the height of the 2008 financial crisis. It has been forced to pay out some $8.5 billion in settlements related to its role in the crisis (12 percent of its net income in recent years) and more lawsuits are in the works, yet no high level executive at JPMorgan (or indeed any American mega bank) has been brought to justice for these legal breaches.

The only people more corrupted than “the too big to fail” banks, and the U.S. Department of Justice which has decided to give them a pass, are Members of Congress who eagerly curry their campaign contributions and hand them the tools to create more havoc. Last week, the House Agriculture Committee held a markup on seven bills related to derivatives trading. The bills would grant a Congressional blessing to almost every reckless and illegal action JPMorgan Chase took in the London whale fiasco, argues David Dayen in Salon.

Schneiderman, who ran for office with the support of the liberal establishment in New York, was supposed to usher in a new era of accountability on Wall Street. With the U.S. Department of Justice immunizing the big banks by embracing a two-tier system of justice, it is time for Schneiderman to step up to the plate. The Martin Act and the proximity of Wall Street give his office ample jurisdiction. In 2012, Schneiderman was appointed by President Obama to co-chair a federal task force to root out corruption at the big banks, but the task force was seemingly all for show, and Schneiderman has taken up too few cases independently. Now departing Senator Carl Levin has handed him a gift, with a big fat ribbon.

By putting participants under oath and gathering reams of documents, taped phone calls, emails and online chats, Senate investigators engaged in a major public service. Imagine how much more could be learned if the same participants were called to testify in a New York criminal investigation.

There is a lesson from the Cyprus situation: If you are a large depositor you need to watch your back bank. You can’t just assume someone will bail out the banks — and you. The big banks have been able to keep governments from reigning them in, while getting governments to bail them out. That game is over.

From now on you have to take a look at the bank’s books and business practices and decide for yourself if your money is safe.

Right now it looks like large depositors in Cyprus’ banks are going to take a 30-40% “haircut” – meaning when the banks reopen 30-40% of their money will be gone. This is the “bailout” alternative to the banks failing and all of the money going away.

The Cyprus lesson is that deregulation and “keeping government from meddling with business” means it’s all on you now, on your own, by yourself, to watch out for your own interests. And that’s expensive. Really, really expensive.

It’s the libertarian dream, home to roost.

Not Greece

Cyprus is not like Greece. The government didn’t borrow a lot of money. What happened is that their banks failed. Cyprus’ banks seven-or-eight times the size of Cyprus’ economy when the EU average was three times, in-part because they offered tax-haven status to depositors around the world. In particular they attracted wealthy Russian and British tax-evaders. If the banks fail they will lose their money. And they were doing what big banks do with depositors’ funds — bad loan, speculation, investing in Greek bonds… It turned out that when something is unsustainable it can’t be sustained, and this time it wasn’t. The banks failed.

But it wasn’t just wealthy Russians and Brits on the line here … Cyprus’ businesses also have their money in Cyprus’ banks. So here’s the thing: If the banks just fail it would mean that every business in Cyprus would lose their money too, and be unable to make their payrolls, pay their creditors, even pay their rent.

When Banks Fail You Lose Your Money

Here is something that most people don’t understand: When banks fail every depositor loses their money. In the depression banks failed and depositors lost their money. Regular people around the country lost their savings. This is what causes bank runs – people trying to get their money out in time. The ones who don’t get there in time lose everything.

Since the depression American banks are insured up to a certain amount by the Federal Depository Insurance C-something (FDIC), and this has prevented these bank runs. When bank fails the FDIC steps in (usually on a Friday evening), closes the bank and arranges for another bank to take over the insured accounts (usually by Monday morning) and regular depositors hardly even notice the change.

European depositors with $100,000 Euros or less are also insured, so these Cypriot depositors will be repaid at some point. Amounts over that will have to wait for the banks to be liquidated, and might or might not get some pennies on the Euro.

On top of that, when banks fail you can’t get normal financing. It becomes difficult to borrow to meet the next payroll even though you have more than that due from receivables, or to get financing to upgrade your equipment even though your cash flow can handle the payments…

So governments have to step in when there is a systemic banking-system failure. If they don’t the entire economy in that country basically just shuts down.

The Cyprus Deal Means You Have To Watch Your Bank

So Cyprus needs to bail out its big banks or lose everything, and the government is making a deal with the International Monetary Fund and German and other banks for a loan to keep things going. It looks like the Cyprus bank bailout deal means depositors with amounts over the insured level are “taking a haircut” and losing 40% of their money.

Before this happened in Cyprus you usually large depositors could stick their money in a generic “bank” and if something happened a government would step in and get you most, if not all, of your money. Banks were generic banks, they held you money and when you needed it you could just get it.

But now there is a lesson: banks can fail and government might not step in and bail everyone out. You can lose your money.

You can lose your money.

This means you have to pay attention to which bank you are putting your money in. You need to look at the particular bank you are putting your money into and understand if they are playing games, speculating, hiding things from their books, making bets with a “London Whale,” using fantasy valuations or “repos” to make their books look better, laundering money for drug dealers or terrorists, etc.

It’s on you, because government’s aren’t doing it. Whether it is due to deregulation or “regulatory capture,” the banks are doing what they want, when they want and to whom they want. And no one is holding them accountable. You can lose your money.

Government is no longer functioning when it comes to big banks, so you have to do the work yourself. You can lose your money so you have to know if your bank is on the level. Good luck with that.

Anti-government types, you got what you wanted. Government is not “meddling” with businesses – at least not with the big banks. So sit back and enjoy the ride.

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When you think European financial crisis, you think Greece, or Spain, or Italy. But economic trouble in the small island nation of Cyprus is causing a serious panic throughout Europe. Because of Cyprus banks’ exposure to the financial troubles in neighboring Greece, the island nation’s banks need a bailout.

In exchange for the $13 billion dollar bailout, representatives from the European Central Bank and IMF, along with finance ministers from European countries, have proposed a radical plan to impose a one-time tax on bank depositors. The plan calls for a 6.75% tax on all bank deposits up to 100,000 euros, and a 9.9% tax on deposits over that amount.

As residents learned of the proposal, people rushed to banks and ATMs to withdraw their savings to avoid the tax. The policy is causing panic in Cyprus, and that government has halted electronic bank transfers through Tuesday, in an effort to prevent a run on banks throughout that nation.

Residents in other European nations are watching closely to see if similar plans are proposed for their countries. If leaders are not careful, this policy could bring down the banking system in Cyprus, and possibly throughout all of Europe. Let’s hope they make the right decisions, and stop this financial disaster before it’s too late. Stay tuned

Originally published on ThomHartmann.Com.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp is supposed to insure deposits and regulate banks, but the agency has helped the banksters avoid trial for their crimes since the 2008 financial meltdown. The LA Times reports that the very agency responsible for investigating and prosecuting bank procedures that crashed our economy has been quietly settling charges out of court – and out of the view of the American public.

Since 2007, the agency has settled numerous charges of bankster wrongdoing, but agreed to a “no press release” clause in the settlement agreements, so the big banks have avoided public scrutiny. A spokesman for the FDIC said they only announce the settlements “when damage payments are large and media interest [is] intense.” However, the FDIC didn’t announce a $54 million settlement with Deutsche Bank for causing the collapse of of The Independent National Mortgage Corporation, known as IndyMac.

And that settlement is just part of the $787 million the FDIC has recovered since 2008. The “no-disclosure” clause may have allowed the FDIC to avoid the expense of taking on the big banks in court, but the practice also allowed banksters to get away with alleged crimes, like money laundering, foreclosure fraud, and mortgage fraud. The settlements simply become a cost of doing business for the banks.

It’s time to hold the banksters accountable. If too-big-to-fail means too-big-to-jail, then break up the banks and charge the banksters for their crimes.

As Robert Borosage wrote, “Too Big Too Fail” has become “Too Big To Jail.” According to attorney general, our big banks have gotten so big that bringing criminal charges against them for blatantly criminal acts “will have a negative impact on the national economy, perhaps even the world economy.” (Click here to tell Attorney General Eric Holder that no bank should be “Too Big To Jail,” and no bank should be above the law.) is ”Too Big To Jail” a license to kill? Does that mean big banks can get away with murder — or at least negligent homicide?

It sounds like Wells Fargo may have gotten away with murder or some lesser charge in the case of Larry Delassus, innocent victim of “death by typo” c/o Wells Fargo. [Via Digby.]

On the morning of Dec. 19, 2012, in a Torrance courtroom, Larry Delassus‘ heart stopped as he watched his attorney argue his negligence and discrimination case against banking behemoth Wells Fargo.

His death came more than two years after Wells Fargo mistakenly mixed up his Hermosa Beachaddress with that of a neighbor in the same condo complex. The bank’s typo led Wells Fargo to demand that Delassus pay $13,361.90 ­— two years of late property taxes the bank said it had paid on his behalf in order to keep his Wells Fargo mortgage afloat.

But Delassus, a quiet man who suffered from the rare blood-clot disorder Budd-Chiari syndrome and was often hospitalized, didn’t owe a penny in taxes.

One of his neighbors, whose condo “parcel number” was two digits different from Delassus’, owed the back taxes.

In a series of painfully tragic events, Wells Fargo relied on its typographical error to double Delassus’ mortgage — from $1,237.69 to $2,429.13 — as its way of recouping the $13,361.90 in taxes Delassus didn’t owe. Delassus, a retiree living on a $1,655 check, couldn’t meet the mysteriously increased mortgage. He stopped paying, and soon was far behind on his mortgage.

Delassus and his attorney did not discover until May 2010 that a mis-entered number had dragged Delassus into this spiral. As court documents obtained by L.A. Weeklyshow, after admitting its error, Wells Fargo foreclosed on Delassus anyway and sold his condo.

Delassus had to move to a tiny apartment in an assisted-living home in Carson.

Friends say he didn’t die of heart disease that day in court, as the coroner found. He was, they believe, killed by a system so inhumane that it could not undo a devastating piece of red tape the system itself created.

According to the LA Weekly piece, Wells Fargo later acknowledged its error, but by then Delassus — a disabled veteran who suffered from Budd-Chiari syndrome —had stopped paying his mortgage after Wells Fargo doubled his payments, leading the bank to foreclose. (Strangely, there was an unexplained $2,861 discrepancy between the $13,361 Wells Fargo said it paid in property taxes on Delassus’ behalf, and the $10,500 the bank admitted in court documents was mistakenly charged to Delassus.) Not only that, but the bank refused to let Delassus resume his regular mortgage payments in the $1,237 installments he paid before the bank mistakenly jacked-up his payments.

Instead the bank demanded that he pay a sizable “reinstatement cost,” which is usually the past due amount plus fees. The bank never told Delassus how much his reinstatement cost would be. Instead, Wells Fargo demanded full payment on the condo, payment due within 24 hours. Delassus sued Wells Fargo for negligence and discrimination against a disabled person. To add insult to injury, in May 2011 the bank sold Delassus’ condo one day after he’d been released from the hospital after a bout of illness.

According to friends, Delassus still had enough faith in our system of justice to honestly believe that he would return to his home of 16 years. He was in court, listening to his attorney argue his case when he slumped over and died.

Here was a guy who received a notice out of nowhere from Wells Fargo, demanding that he repay the bank for property taxes he didn’t even owe. The bank then proceeded to double his mortgage payments even as Delassus was probably still trying to figure out what the hell happened.

It’s not surprising that Delassus stopped payment on his mortgage while he and his attorney tried to sort things out. It’s unlikely that the bank would have accepted a partial payment, and might have returned the check, charged him a late fee, and maybe even foreclosed on him anyway. Given the complexities of finance law, making the payments might have been interpreted as legally acknowledging the alleged debt.

Wells Fargo, even after admitting its error, foreclosed on Delassus for failing to make mortgage the payments he would have made had it not been for Wells Fargo’s initial error. The stress of it all might nearly have killed someone in excellent health.

 None of this is surprising given Wells Fargo’s record.

• Wells Fargo has foreclosed on homeowners who were trying to make good on they mortgage payments. 
• Wells Fargo sent a crew to foreclosed on a home that didn’t even have a mortgage, and dragged its feet about returning the homeowners (broken, damaged) belongings after the banks crew broke in and hauled everything away. 
• Wells Fargo forcibly evicted a cancer patient despite a court order posted on the front door, and then claimed it wasn’t to blame. 
• Wells Fargo offered homeowners deceptive mortgage modifications, and then foreclosed even when the homeowners made good on their “modified” mortgage payments.
• Wells Fargo was slapped with a $1.3 million fine for mishandling a New Orleans man’s mortgage, and improperly charging him $24,000 in fees.
• Wells Fargo paid $175 million to settle a lawsuit that the bank’s discriminatory lending practices caused more than 34,000 African-American and Hispanic homeowners in 36 states to pay higher loan rates solely because their race. 

The coroner later reported heart disease was the cause of death. But I tend to agree with his friends, that Delassus was killed by a system not only “so inhumane that it could not undo a devastating piece of red tape the system itself created,” but so nearly sadistic that it continued punishing Delassus for an error of its own making. 

Delassus isn’t the only homeowner on Wells Fargo’s body count. In fact, Delassus’ story brings to mind what happened to Norman Rousseau when Wells Fargo made a mistake with his mortgage.

The quick version of this terrible story is that Norman and Oriane Rousseau of Newbury Park, California were scammed into a predatory mortgage. But they made their payments anyway, always paying with a cashier’s check in person at the same branch. Then one day the bank misapplied their payment and said they still owed the money. This started a long, nasty process that led to the bank evicting the Rousseaus from their home.

Here’s the shocker: right at the start the Rousseaus came up with proof that the bank had received the payment and had cashed the check. But the bank continued to claim it had missed the payment, gave the Rousseaus the runaround, started applying fees, and used it as an excuse to foreclose on the house anyway.

The Rousseaus fought back, the bank dragged it out for so long and pulled so many tricks, getting its way every step of the process, until this last Sunday Norman Rousseau finally gave up and shot himself in despair – two days before the scheduled eviction, Tuesday, May 15. (The Rousseau’s lawyer just said he was able to win a 2-week delay.)

First-degree murder charges might be asking too much, but negligent homicide — defined as allowing others to die through criminal negligence. 

What’s to be expected of a bank that engaged “robo-signing,” committed massive foreclosure fraud, and even laundered drug money for Mexican cartels?

4. Wells Fargo

They illegally laundered drug money for the Mexican cartels – and nobody went to jail.

Here’s a suggestion: Read stories “War Torn Mexico: A Population in Terror,” which begins: “Massacres, beheadings, YouTube videos featuring cartel torture sessions and even car bombs are becoming commonplace in Juarez.” Study the statistics on the violent murders – which include Federal agents, children, and “penniless immigrants” – and then remind yourself: These are Wells Fargo’s business partners.

Rap Sheet: Mexican drug cartels. It makes the brain reel, doesn’t it? 

Shameless quotes: “We’re more of a Main Street bank than a Wall Street bank.” “”Of all the decisions I’ve had to make, few have been as difficult as cutting the dividend.” (Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf)

Here’s the thing. If we can’t get a bank like Wells Fargo for committing massive foreclosure fraud, or laundering money for Mexican drug cartels, what can we get them for? Iran hangs bankers for far less. And Wells Fargo is just one part of Wall Street’s “Foreclosure Fraud Machine.” How is it that our government, our justice system can’t even bring charges against criminal enterprises masquerading as banks because doing so “will have a negative impact on the national economy? Talk to Larry Delassus, Norman Rousseau and the other homeowners above about “negative impacts.”  

Well, as Digby noted, at least Delassus and Rosseau suffered at the hands of the private sector, rather than some “faceless, uncaring Government bureaucrats who make too much money.”

They had to do what they had to do. Because moral hazard.

Obviously, this is just one many thousands of similar stories across the nation during the past few years. And it’s still happening. But I’m pretty sure that if we can just cut Social Security and Medicare and get millionaires to fork over the money they lose between their couch cushions it will all be good.

The truth is, Wells Fargo will get away with what it did to Larry Delassus, like it’s gotten away with everything above. At most, it will pay a few fines and settlements that amount to chump change compared to its record $4.94 billion in profits reported at the end of 2012.

If you or I, or any other person perpetrated even half of the crimes Wells Fargo committed as a “corporate person,” we wouldn’t have a hope of getting away with it. Banks, no matter how big they are, shouldn’t be able to get away with it either.