And pretty much all of the perps have walked, from the streets of Pakistan to the offices of the CEO of Goldman Sachs and other financial institutions.
A lot of Americans, in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, watched as Cheney and Bush created two wars, one in Iraq (why Iraq?!) and the other closer to the home of the perps, Afghanistan. Not Pakistan but Afghanistan, Pakistan's immediate neighbor and a handy fall-guy for the ambitions of two corrupt American leaders who went on to create Guantanamo, the "Patriot Act," and a continuing internal war on civil liberties and human rights.
Those wars continue. We're still losing lives in the Middle East and Central Asia. No fully satisfactory outcome is expected.
Meanwhile, bank and political malfeasance -- both encouraged by Washington -- have brought hundreds of thousands to their knees. Not, however, the perps. The policies enabling a corrupted financial system for thirty years still hold sway, and we are said to be teetering on the edge of another meltdown.
In 9/11 and in the financial crisis -- successive administrations and members of Congress took charge of the response and our law forces -- state, federal, institutional -- kept on short leashes.
Goldman Sachs, one of the big players in the creation of the financial crisis, has shared the employees of its banking corporation with federal government for decades. Goldman has finally yielded up one perp to the "law force" within the US financial system, the Securities and Exchange Commission.
At one trading desk sat Fabrice Tourre, a midlevel 28-year-old Frenchman who was little known not just outside Goldman but even inside the firm. That changed three years later, in 2010, when he achieved the dubious distinction of becoming the only individual at Goldman and across Wall Street sued by the Securities and Exchange Commission for helping to sell a mortgage-securities investment, in one of the hundreds of mortgage deals created during the bubble years.
How Mr. Tourre alone came to be the face of mortgage-securities fraud has raised questions among former prosecutors and Congressional officials about how aggressive and thorough the government’s investigations have been into Wall Street’s role in the mortgage crisis.
Across the industry, “it’s impossible that only one person was involved with fraudulent activities in connection to the sales of these mortgage securities,” said G. Oliver Koppell, a New York attorney general in the 1990s and now a New York City councilman. ...NYTimes
One guy in a compound in Abbotabad, shot and buried at sea, and one guy in an office in a glass-and-steel compound in Manhattan sitting at a desk. Both perps were part of much larger schemes. In the case of bin Laden, the organization of which he was at least titular head is now so widespread and diffuse that it's more of a religious and political movement than an army. It has spawned similarly anti-democratic, anti-capitalist movements worldwide. In the matter of Mr. Tourre and financial malfeasance, the cooperation of government and the potency of unleashed capitalism have also become a quasi-religious movement ("free markets"!) and are so closely allied with our national legislature and electoral system as to be unpunishable.
Imagine what we'd have if the forces of law had handled the search for and punishment of the 9/11 perps. Many of us wanted international and US law forces take charge. We might still have the kids we sent to two wars as well as the financial assets and budget surplus we had in 2000 for a start.
Imagine if we'd prevented politicians -- from the 1980's to present -- from weakening the laws designed to protect our financial system. We'd still have... well, our houses, our jobs, our self-respect. Instead we have a broken Congress, a deep recession, increasingly severe poverty, and mind-boggling bonuses winding up in the pockets of bankers and, not surprisingly, "invested" in politicians who continue to enable systemic corruption of our whole political system no less than Wall Street. We have a deeply split nation. One side wants to punish the perps, the other to defend them and keep them in business.
How did a middle-man at Goldman Sachs --Fabrice Tourre -- get caught? It's quite a tale. The Times was involved.
In fall 2009, the S.E.C. issued him a Wells notice, a formal warning that he was likely to be named in a civil fraud suit for his role in the mortgage deals. Mr. Egol also received such a notice in 2010.
In their Oct. 10 response to the S.E.C., Mr. Tourre’s lawyers, including Pamela Chepiga of Allen & Overy, made an argument that they have not emphasized publicly. They contended that “singling Mr. Tourre out for criticism regarding the content of this clearly collaborative effort is unreasonable.”
These legal replies, which are not public, were provided to The New York Times by Nancy Cohen, an artist and filmmaker in New York also known as Nancy Koan, who says she found the materials in a laptop she had been given by a friend in 2006.
The friend told her he had happened upon the laptop discarded in a garbage area in a downtown apartment building. E-mail messages for Mr. Tourre continued streaming into the device, but Ms. Cohen said she had ignored them until she heard Mr. Tourre’s name in news reports about the S.E.C. case. She then provided the material to The Times.
What was the response of the Eric Holder's Department of Justice to Tourre's case?
Even as Mr. Tourre awaits trial in the civil fraud case, it seems that he will not face criminal charges. When the S.E.C. referred the case to the Justice Department, the commission’s top enforcement lawyer, Robert S. Khuzami, told his counterparts there that he did not believe it was a criminal case, according to two people briefed on the discussions.
Effectively, Mr. Tourre will be "killed" and all his connections "buried at sea."
Moving on...
