Attorney General Eric Holder has announced a deadline for those in the US Department of Justice to file charges against the Wall Street banks that caused the 2008 financial crisis, reported TruthOut.
“I don’t know if I’m making news now or not, but I asked the US Attorneys who made those cases and who are still involved in these RMBS (residential mortgage backed securities) cases over the next 90 days to look at their cases and to try and develop cases against individuals, and to report back in 90 days with regard to whether or not they think they will be able to successfully bring criminal or civil cases against those individuals,” said Holder this Tuesday.
He’s given his employees a 90-day deadline. Eric Holder has waited years to order something that supposedly takes 90 days? It’s uncertain whether this is a result of laziness, incompetence, or both. Holder seems to have timed it so as to have the incoming nominee AG, Loretta Lynch, deal with the issue. However, it’s unlikely she would do anything necessary because she used to be an attorney for the big banks.
TruthOut reported that Holder said they at least “tried” to prosecute Wall Street banksters in the past.
“These are the kinds of cases that people come to the Justice Department to make,” he said. “Young people who want to be assistant US Attorneys in the Southern District of New York, and Eastern District of Virginia and San Francisco live for these cases. The inability to make them, at least at this point, has not been a result of a lack of effort.”
Considering Holder himself is now calling for charges within 90 days negates the logic that there’s been an “inability to make them” and no “lack of effort.” He could have done this in the first place.
Holder’s vapid tenure as the United States Attorney General has left nothing noteworthy, nor has it reflected the change that President Obama promised of Holder’s nomination. Holder has been the USAG since 2009 with nothing to show for his six years in office. The only semblance of change is Holder’s “Smart on Crime” program that was announced in 2013.
That’s good and all, but Wall Street banks are America’s biggest criminals yet they remain untouched. Sure, they paid billions of dollars in fines, but those penalties hardly deter banks from engaging in future criminal behavior. We’re looking at just more of the same.