M2RB: Todd Rundgren
Pretending to care about me
When all the time
You're just wishing I'd fade away
You just can't bring yourself to
By Charles Gasparino
Among the many falsehoods pushed at last week’s Democratic Convention
is that this is the party of the people, unafraid to hold Corporate
America responsible for its many ills.
Judging by the records of
the last two Democratic administrations, just the opposite appears to be
true. Certainly, President Obama and, to some extent, Bill Clinton like
to talk a good game in terms of class warfare, but under both men, real
corporate crime-fighting has been at best a side issue — despite the
immense amounts of white-collar fraud their administrations faced.
Corzine: Well-connected Democrat is facing no charges despite losing
$1.6 billion — whereas Bush team jailed Republican fat cats.
In fact, neither Obama nor Clinton can hold a candle to the corporate crime-fighting record of George W. Bush, that supposed lapdog for large corporate interests.
Consider: As we near the four-year
anniversary of the financial crisis, not a single Wall Street fat cat
has been charged with violations of securities laws in connection with
the 2008 collapse.
Then we have the outlandish case of MF Global,
the brokerage firm run into the ground nearly a year ago by Obama’s pal
and campaign-cash bundler, Jon Corzine. It isn’t just that the former
Goldman Sachs CEO and New Jersey governor took outsized trading risks
that destroyed the firm; his firm appears to have misused and lost $1.6
billion in customer funds in the process.
Goldman Sachs Will Not Face Criminal Charges: Justice Department
Under securities laws,
those customer funds were supposed to be kept sacrosanct — yet not a
single MF Global employee, much less Corzine, has been charged in the
matter by the Obama Justice Department or the Securities and Exchange
Commission.
For obvious reasons, Clinton’s putrid record on corporate crime went unmentioned as he rewrote history during his speech.
(It wasn’t all
that got left out as he tried to make people believe they’re doing just
fine after four years of Obamanomics. He also skipped over the fact
that the ’90s economy only got strong after he turned right by cutting deals with the Republicans to cut taxes and spending and to reform welfare.)
Simply
put: The law-enforcement agencies under Clinton turned a blind eye to
one of modern history’s biggest corporate crime waves.
Forget
insider trading, where traders are basically ripping off each other.
During the Clinton years, big Wall Street firms came up with new and
imaginative ways to screw the average investor — who for the first time
was turning to the stock market to save for retirement. Yet there wasn’t
much of a peep from Bubba’s Justice Department or the corporate
watchdogs at his Securities and Exchange Commission.
One such
rip-off involved feeding small investors fraudulent research reports so
they’d buy overvalued (and overhyped) Internet stocks — but there were
many more, most of which came to light after the tech bubble burst in
March 2000 and small investors lost countless billions in savings.
Those research scandals were
initially uncovered by a Democrat — New York then-Attorney General
Eliot Spitzer. But the Bush SEC shared in the enforcement of the cases.
Obama Donations
The Bush Justice Department and SEC also started the investigations
that have led to Obama’s one arguable area of success on Wall Street
crime — insider-trading prosecutions. But the victims of insider trading
are mostly other traders, not the average Joe — this isn’t the sort of
corporate crime that ruins Main Street.
Anyway, lots else got
prosecuted under Bush. The accounting fraud at Enron, a Houston-based
energy company with ties to the Republican Party, brought immediate
indictments against individuals like Bush friend Ken Lay. One major
firm, accounting giant Arthur Andersen, was forced out of business.
The same thing with Worldcom, another accounting fraud prosecuted in the Bush era that landed its CEO in jail.
As
it happens, the last major financial firm to be run out of business
after being hit with criminal charges (prior to Arthur Andersen) was
Drexel Burnham Lambert — and that was accomplished by President Ronald
Reagan’s US attorney for Manhattan, a guy named Rudy Giuliani.
Of
course, Bush’s record of corporate crime fighting was far from perfect.
Much of the risk-taking that led to the 2008 collapse occurred under the
nose of his regulators — but these practices started to explode during
the Clinton years.
The bigger point here is that, if you’re really
keeping a score card on who’s going after corporate America’s bad guys,
the Democrats may talk a good game but have very little to show for it.
Keep that in mind the next time President Obama says how much he detests the Wall Street fat cats.
Charles Gasparino is a Fox Business Network senior correspondent.
Pretending to Care - Todd Rundgren
Today I am your chariot horse
Tomorrow I'm your albatross
Suspended by the finest thread
No one could ever see
And when there's breathing in your ear
You put your faith in all you hear
But just how deep those feelings go
I have no way to know
I'll never know
If I was blind
Would you still be my eyes
Or hide everything you see
Pretending to care about me
When all the time
You're just wishing I'd fade away
You just can't bring yourself to
Say out loud the reasons why
You won't admit you realize
The promise you've been living by
Is just an empty shell
You'll come to bear it like a cross
Then start to tear it like frayed gauze
Though I'm ashamed to be afraid
I just can't help myself
Can't help myself
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