Tag: Charles Ferguson

America’s Financial Sector, Infested with Criminals?

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics

Charles Ferguson: How Financial Criminalization Crashed the Economy, and the Culprits Got Off Scot-Free

It is no exaggeration to say that since the 1980s, much of the American (and global) financial sector has become criminalized, creating an industry culture that tolerates or even encourages systematic fraud. The behavior that caused the mortgage bubble and financial crisis was a natural outcome and continuation of this pattern, rather than some kind of economic accident.

It is important to understand that this behavior really is seriously criminal. We are not talking about neglecting some bureaucratic formality. We are talking about deliberate concealment of financial transactions that aided terrorism, nuclear weapons proliferation, and large-scale tax evasion; assisting in concealment of criminal assets and activities by others; and directly committing frauds that substantially worsened the worst financial bubbles and crises since the Depression.

Charles Ferguson: How Financial Criminalization Crashed the Economy, and the Culprits Got Off Scot-Free

I agree with Charles Ferguson. I’ve been following our financial disasters over the last five years and they are in many ways criminal enterprises, not that the Obama Administration seems to care.

We live in a nation with two standards of justice, one for the little people and one for a privileged elite.

I do not think I need to tell you of the horrible effects of injustice. The criminals will break the law again. The criminals will gain in power. The criminals will become even richer.

That is quite the lesson for our children and the larger society. Don’t work. Don’t labor. Steal. That’s the way of American Investment banking.

James Pilant

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“Inside Job” The Director Speaks

On By southwerkIn business ethics, Capitalism, ethics, Government Failure, Philosophy of Business, Teaching, White Collar Crime3 Comments

Charles Ferguson directed the documentary “Inside Job.” He writes about his thoughts and conclusions from creating the documentary.

One of the things he found puzzling (as do I), doesn’t doing serious long term damage to the nation’s infrastructure like roads, bridges and education become a concern for the financial elites since over time it damages their American investments?

Here’s the answer.  (from the article) –

The financial services industry and the most successful American multinational firms now obtain rapidly increasing fractions, often already the majority, of their investment, employees, and revenues from (a) other wealthy individuals and corporations and/or (b) outside the United States. Over the last two decades their political interests, contributions, and lobbying have gradually followed these larger trends. As a result, the political duopoly has overseen a massive disinvestment in the future of the United States and the American people, and a massive transfer of wealth from the bottom 90% of the population to the top 1%. Taxes on dividends, high incomes, capital gains, and estates have sharply declined, while tuition at public universities, hours worked per family, household debt, and government deficits have all increased.

They have no interest in the long term future of the nation. This nation is similar to the Wild West idea of Robbers’ Roost.

Robbers’ Roost is a town hidden in the hills where the outlaws go to hang out. There is no law there. They do what they feel like. They are safe from the sheriff and all those people they took stuff from.

The United States is going to be a great big friendly place for people with lots of money and few morals. One law for them. One law for us.

James Pilant

The trailer –