Why No Outrage?

The CBS Evening News on Saturday, July 19, had an important segment devoted to people who were losing their homes because they had been misled into accepting risky mortgages. Yet not once during the program was the question raised about prosecuting the crooks — for that’s what they are — who tricked them into their predicaments.
The Wall Street Journal, the same day, had a lengthy article asking Why No Outrage and pointing out how the stewards of other people’s money, from the Fed on down, had made a hash of high finance.

Yet not once in these presentations was the obvious conclusion offered. Thousands of bankers, mortgage brokers, rating companies and more have committed fraud. Why aren’t they being prosecuted? Not by ones or twos, but by the droves? And why aren’t our newspapers and broadcast outlets demanding that the laws be enforced? Each individual ripoff artist needs to be pursued. Instead, he/she gets a pass because they were just doing what everyone else did. Does that mean crooks shouldn’t be prosecuted because there are just too many of them? The question isn’t Why No Outrage? The question is Where’s the Outrage? You ought to be able to find it in the media, but you can’t.

-George Lardner Jr.

Of course the news did mention the 300 or so meat packing plant illegal aliens who will spend 6 months in jail for id fraud (which means jail rather than exile) because their employers gave them phony social security cards. (By the way, social security was deducted from their checks but they could not qualify when they got old, so who was screwing who here and committing a fraud?) All the bankers will cost taxpayers billions, but it is the immigrant who will be targeted when the crap hits the fan.

We the citizens of this country would be far safer with 300 sneaky, fraudster bankers in jail than imprisoning 300 desperate-to-work immigrants. We will need the Mexicans to show us how to live on nothing when the economy collapses.