'Nobody goes to jail.' This is the mantra of the financial-crisis era, one that saw virtually every major bank and financial company on Wall Street embroiled in obscene criminal scandals that impoverished millions and collectively destroyed hundreds of billions, in fact, trillions of dollars of the world's wealth - and nobody went to jail.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the inaction and lack of accountability in the financial sector during the crisis.
Matt Taibbi's statement reflects the pervasive sentiment of injustice during the financial crisis, where despite widespread corruption and malfeasance, no significant consequences were faced by the major perpetrators. This situation raises questions about the nature of accountability in elite circles and illustrates a disconnection between the rules applied to ordinary citizens and those who operate at the highest levels of finance.
In practice
In a discussion about how financial institutions navigated the crisis without penalties, this quote exemplifies the frustration felt by citizens.
You win the modern financial-regulation game by filing the most motions, attending the most hearings, giving the most money to the most politicians and, above all, by keeping at it, day after day, year after fiscal year, until stealing is legal again.
Wall Street has turned the economy into a giant asset-stripping scheme, one whose purpose is to suck the last bits of meat from the carcass of the middle class.
It's not a stretch to say the whole financial industry revolves around the compass point of the absolutely safe AAA rating. But the financial crisis happened because AAA ratings stopped being something that had to be earned and turned into something that could be paid for.
By creating an urgent crisis that can only be solved by those fluent in a language too complex for ordinary people to understand, the Wall Street crowd has turned the vast majority of Americans into non-participants in their own political future.
If she’d been born at the right time they would have burned her over in Salem.
You'll see certain Pythagorean whose belief in communism of property goes to such lengths that they pick up anything lying about unguarded, and make off with it without a qualm of conscience as if it had come to them by law.
Sometimes the story we're telling the world isn't half as endearing as the one that lives inside us.
How can He be perfect? Everything He ever makes...dies.
Extremes in nature equal ends produce; In man they join to some mysterious use.
Ten truths must you find during the day; otherwise will you seek truth during the night, and your soul will have been hungry.
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