Amy Goodman: “Senator Grassley said the files include “important cases such as the investigation of [Bernard] Madoff, Goldman Sachs trading in AIG credit default swaps in 2009, financial fraud at Wells Fargo and Bank of America in 2007 and 2008, and insider trading investigations at Deutsche Bank, Lehman Brothers, [and] SAC Capital.”
It is glaringly clear that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the government agency charged with policing Wall Street malfeasance, has a deeply corrupt agency culture. According to Matt Taibbi, the SEC is made up of two basic factions: the career investigators–”they’re more like cops,” says Taibbi. “And the guys on the upper level are more like political appointees who come from all these high-priced Wall Street banks, and they’re rejecting a lot of these important cases.”
After a brave SEC whistleblower named Darcy Flynn came forward with the evidence destruction charge, the SEC has apparently ended the practice, but the Wall Street sympathizers who now head the SEC are still in charge. How can the SEC be trusted to police the same forces that caused the ’08 collapse when their sympathizers are running the show?
