Brouillet Slams Eshoo for Applauding Fat Cat Impunity

Press Release

Carol Brouillet, Green Party candidate for Congress in California's 18th district, says corporate officers must be held accountable for their fraudulent activities that caused the financial meltdown. States Ms. Brouillet: "The banking executives have destroyed our neighborhoods, swindled our pensions, and sunk the global economy through massive fraud and bribery. Instead of prosecuting the bankers, our public officials continue to guard the banking executives' rights to pillage and steal. "

At a 2009 presidential briefing, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner reported: "The confidence in the system is so fragile still... a disclosure of a fraud... could result in a run, just like Lehman." Those sentiments − that a governmental policy of acknowledging fraudulent acts, which would necessitate criminal prosecutions of the large criminal banks, cannot be pursued because they would trigger a financial collapse -- remains the operating policy of the Obama Justice Department. Rather than putting bankers behind bars, like the 1,000 banking executives who were convicted for the Savings & Loans Crisis between 1990 and 1993, the Obama Administration has not criminally pursued a single banking executive. Instead, the Obama Justice Department has sought civil court litigation, and "self-policing, self-reporting" banking initiatives. Carol Brouillet considers the Obama Justice Department's actions, "indistinguishable from what a syndicate-entangled law firm would do on behalf of its clients."

Instead of challenging the Obama Administration to press for criminal charges against those lenders who defrauded millions in California, Congresswoman Anna Eshoo announced her delight at the news of the October 2011 $25 billion settlement between state Attorneys General and the big banks, calling it "a fair outcome." Ms. Brouillet retorts, "Of the hundreds of billions of dollars in mortgage fraud plunder, most remains in the vaults of the fraudulent banks, not in the hands of the millions of victims and their families, who continue to struggle years later. Fining the banks what amounts to a mere speeding ticket for the largest runaway crime in our history is not a "fair outcome.' There must be a thorough cleansing of the financial sector of criminals and frauds by our Justice Department if we want an economy built upon truth, trust and cooperation."

Professor Jeffrey Sachs noted that "…not a single financial leader has faced jail, [perhaps, in part, due to the fact that] companies are the major funders of political campaigns in…the US." Ms. Brouillet concurs: "The corporations--especially banks and Wall Street firms--are major contributors to political campaigns. Is it is any wonder they are not held accountable to the laws that apply to everybody else?"

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