There have been fewer corporate criminal prosecutions under the Obama administration than there were under the George W. Bush administration. That is absolutely intolerable.
The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) reviewed hundred of thousands of records from the Department of Justice and found that corporate criminal prosecutions decreased by 30 percent from 2004 to 2014. There were 335 and 237 prosecutions for each year, respectively.
Considering that Obama took office after the largest financial meltdown since the Great Depression, caused by Wall Street criminals, corporate criminal prosecutions should have spiked during the Obama administration. However, this lax approach to prosecuting corporate criminals started at the end of the last Bush administration.
In 2008, Deputy Attorney General Mark Filip told federal prosecutors to “take into account the possible substantial consequences to a corporation’s employees, investors, pensioners, and customers” when considering prosecuting a corporation.
Corporate executives know now that they can commit heinous crimes because they can hide behind their investors, employees, and customers. Because the feds are so easy on white collar crime, they only have to pay a fine.
For more on this story, visit AllGov.com “Prosecution of Corporations Drops under Obama”
Ring of Fire‘s Farron Cousins discussed the problem of the government’s weak approach to prosecuting Wall Street crime.
