Although President Obama, whose presidential campaigns were largely financed by Wall Street, has refused to prosecute either the crooked bankers who wrecked the economy or the Bush administration’s fiendish tortures, his Justice Department has racked up billions of dollars in fines, mostly from big banks, for criminal behavior.
The parade of corporate defendants at the bail window, and evidence of corporate lawlessness, is never-ending.
Today’s perpwalker is Alstom, a French company that’s paying the largest fine, $773 million, ever imposed by the U.S. government for bribing foreign government officials. But, once again, nobody will go to prison.
And how is Alstom dealing with this? It’s raising money to pay the fine by selling its business unit that committed these crimes to General Electric.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/102276860
Comment: My BS Meter just exploded in a shower of sparks and clouds of smoke. Fines deter no one. The criminals who pass themselves off as the world’s corporate elite these days consider fines a business expense which they pass through to their customers, or at worst, dock from their shareholders. It costs them nothing personally, so why shouldn’t they keep trying to bolster their bottom lines — and boost their bonuses and stock options in the process — by staying in the crime business?
Corporations have been allowed to acquire too much power. They’re walking all over governments, politicians, citizens, workers, and even their own customers and shareholders. The latter supposedly own these businesses, but as a practical matter, have no say in how they’re run. The corporate elite are accountable to no one. They have absolute power.
Lord Acton’s aphorism applies here: “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.” When things get as far out of control as they obviously have, it takes drastic action to prevent the “bad men” from completely taking over the world. It’s time to start prosecuting corporate criminals and sending some of them to prison.