John Ashcroft Quotes
The FBI has long been a part of the security for the nation's banks because bank robberies have been a priority.
Ashcroft, John. "Attorney General Ashcroft Outlines FBI Reorganization." U.S. Department of Justice, 29 May 2002.
Marcopolos had discovered the Bernie Madoff Ponzi Scheme Fraud 9 years before the government discovered the largest consumer fraud ($68 billion) in American financial history. He repeatedly sent warnings and explanations to the SEC investigators, most of which turned out to be exactly right. They ignored all of it I an era of deregulation, and never even investigated Madoff to see if there might be anything amiss.
At the time of this interview there had been a decade of business fraud at many different levels. The regulatory agencies supposedly responsible for the regulation had neither the staff or the political will to even enforce the laws and regulations then in existence and there were many loopholes in those. Many business interests opposed all regulation and strict enforcement as a diminution of the health of the economy. Others, like Greenspan, saw fraud as corrupting the markets themselves and therefore the usual capitalistic economic competitive forces that would control business do not operate with extensive fraud.
The President had just been reelected, and wanted an investigation of the Bank of the United States. The “hydra” was a mythical many headed animal which was difficult to kill.
Barry Bonds was a star professional baseball player whose accomplishments were aided by taking illegal drugs. He lied about his use of drugs, and the Department made a very large effort over years to finally prosecute him. However during that time there were almost no prosecutions of the thousands of bankers and financiers who had lied, cheated, forged legal documents and in the process almost permanently ruined the American economy—the Great Recession of 2008. The Justice Department claimed that white collar cases are very complex and take longer to prepare prosecutions. Critics claimed that there are so many law breakers, that the government does not want to prosecute all the felons, but just go after a few, and this is easier if time has gone by and public anger has receded or been forgotten.
She was the only major Federal Official who did not support the bailouts of the banks and their bondholders and shareholders. Not one of her insured bank depositors lost their insured funds in the financial crisis. She protected them all but would not protect the banks themselves. Other officials did that and the following year the bank executives took the bailout money and paid themselves and others in the bank huge bonuses when the banks lost billions.
In the economic meltdown of 2008 and the aftermath, there were so many criminal violations of law in the financial industry that even the Democratic administration of Barack Obama chose not to jail the violators but to levy some large token fines albeit ones which were very affordable for the institutions who had to pay them—in many cases paying them with money made as a result of profits on no-interest money they received in bailouts after the 2008 Meltdown.
John David Ashcroft is an American lawyer, lobbyist, songwriter and former politician who served as the 79th U.S. Attorney General (2001–2005), in the George W. Bush Administration. He later founded The Ashcroft Group, a Washington D.C. lobbying firm.
