Black Agenda Report
Black Agenda Report
News, commentary and analysis from the black left.

  • Home
  • Africa
  • African America
  • Education
  • Environment
  • International
  • Media and Culture
  • Political Economy
  • Radio
  • US Politics
  • War and Empire

Demonstrators Demand End of Impunity for Banks
22 May 2013
🖨️ Print Article

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by executive editor Glen Ford

Hundreds of protesters massed at the Department of Justice to demand that banks be held accountable for their multitudinous crimes. That’s like asking the Pope to convert to Islam. “If the Obama administration has been consistent on any one issue, it is the untouchability of the biggest banks.”

Demonstrators Demand End of Impunity for Banks

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by executive editor Glen Ford

“Banks have failed to pay more than half of $5.7 billion owed to homeowners from over 30 settlements since 2008.”

Attorney General Eric Holder won’t lay a hand on the cabal of banks that are “too big to fail” and far too politically powerful to jail, but DC police seemed eager to use their tasers on homeowners and anti-foreclosure demonstrators at Holder’s Justice Department, this week. Five hundred protesters from organizations around the country, including Occupy Minnesota, the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, the Home Defenders League, and Occupy Our Homes gathered to demand that banks be held accountable for the massive frauds they’ve committed against homeowners and society at large. Several dozen protesters were arrested, including a number of elderly persons, but Eric Holder and his top lieutenants didn’t even bother to acknowledge their presence.

If the Obama administration has been consistent on any one issue, it is the untouchability of the biggest banks. Attorney General Holder has acted more as the bankers’ bail bondsman than the nation’s top law enforcement official. When confronted with two Scandals of the Century – the massive robo-signing bank fraud and the Libor interest rate fixing scheme – Holder moved to protect the banks. He used the powers of his office to block state criminal prosecutions in favor of financial settlements and fines. Holder, who is relentless in his determination to enforce the letter of the law on marijuana, claims he is helpless to bring criminal charges against banking corporations and their top executives, because it might cause an economic crisis. The real economic catastrophe that Holder and his boss, President Obama, fear is that Wall Street might withdraw its campaign contributions to the Democratic Party.

“He used the powers of his office to block state criminal prosecutions.”

Not only does the Attorney General refuse to consider putting bankers in jail, whatever the crime, he allows them to defy the terms of agreed upon financial settlements. According to the Washington Post, banks have failed to pay more than half of $5.7 billion owed to homeowners from over 30 settlements since 2008. These include robo-signing frauds, subprime mortgage entrapments, discrimination in lending to the disabled – a whole universe of criminality for which, in a just world, the offending banks would be dismantled and their top executives imprisoned. Instead, they are allowed to renege on payments to their victims with impunity.

As it has turned out, many of the banksters’ victims have received only a few thousand, or even just a few hundred dollars after years of struggle.

Even as his administration fails to live up to its Constitutional responsibilities to enforce the law, as it applies to Wall Street, Obama preached personal responsibility to the graduating class of Morehouse College, in Atlanta. The President spoke of the importance of “men who refuse to be afraid.” But he and his Attorney General are scared stiff of the power of the banks, to which they are beholden as servants. If there is no law that the banks cannot break with impunity, then this is not a nation of laws.

So, let’s stop pretending.

For Black Agenda Radio, I’m Glen Ford. On the web, go to BlackAgendaReport.com.

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.



Your browser does not support the audio element.

listen
http://traffic.libsyn.com/blackagendareport/20130522_gf_DOJDemo.mp3

More Stories


  •  Latinos and the Shrinking White Majority
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
    Latinos and the Shrinking White Majority
    11 May 2021
    The Census Bureau predicts that Anglo whites will become a minority in the US by 2145 -- but, what if significant numbers of Latinos embrace whiteness, and Anglo whites welcome them into the fold?
  •  Who Cleans the Country?
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
    Who Cleans the Country?
    11 May 2021
    The Covid-19 pandemic has wrought vast changes in US lifestyles, but one aspect remains unchanged: housework is still a mostly a female domain and minorities and immigrants clean up the country, sa
  • ho steadfastly refuse to fight for what they know to be right.
    Margaret Kimberley, BAR senior columnist
    Freedom Rider: Progressives Capitulate to Biden
    06 May 2021
    There can be no more excuses made for Democratic “progressives,” who steadfastly refuse to fight for what they know to be right.
  • Lebron James in the Eye of White Supremacy's Storm
    Danny Haiphong, BAR Contributing Editor
    Lebron James in the Eye of White Supremacy’s Storm
    06 May 2021
    No one, not even Lebron James, is immune to the disciplinary process meted out by the ruling class to maintain the lie of American exceptionalism on a mass scale,
  • German Greens Crusade for US/NATO Wars
    Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
    German Greens Crusade for US/NATO Wars
    06 May 2021
    The Green Party in the U.S. is also a pro-peace party -- but that's no longer the case in Germany.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us