In the article, " The Powerless Get Punished for Cheating, and the Powerful Benefit", written by Brittnay Cooper, argues that executives are not sent to jail for mortgage fraud that destroy poor neighborhoods. She argues, "Subprime lending fraud by banks like Wells Fargo and other lenders demolished African-American neighborhoods and exacerbated a crisis of black women and families being evicted from their homes yet no major executive has been punished. " The only ones suffering From the cheating are the lower-class because those causing the problems are faced with no penalties and feel as though they can continue these immoral actions. Cooper as argues," republicans are using trumped up evidence from conservative activist to press the case
The Dodd-Frank Act led to the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which is set to protect consumers from financial misconduct. Although this Act seems like an aid, some say that these sorts of agencies can lure the industries, and can lead to creating regulatory policies that are in favor of the industry and markets, not the consumers. To add on, another theory is that institutions may join in with greater risks when they aren’t held up to the consequences of their actions. To counter this, the Dodd-Frank Act designated to overlook certain financial institutions that are “systematically important” and hence get more enhanced regulations overlooking them, as a way to prevent any other occurrences or high-level risk investments that can fail. You can argue that the regulations could push for more risky behavior from the institutions as it can act like a safety net that can rebounce the failures with the help of the
Ventura suggests that the government’s bailout of the banks allowed them to continue their illegal and unethical activities without any repercussions. Ventura’s claim here is exaggerated yet still holds some truth to it. Many criticize the bailout as it did not hold banks properly accountable for their role in the financial crisis and instead gave them a way to escape consequences for their actions. According to the New York Times, the government did in fact, impose conditions on the banks that received bailout funds, these conditions were not always enforced, were later completely lifted, and there was very little oversight on how these funds were used meaning banks could have used the money for purposes not intended. Ventura says that the bailout was a way to protect the interests of the financial elite at the expense of taxpayers because bailouts were paid for by taxpayer money which many people saw as unfair and unjust.
According to Schmalleger and Smykla, (2015) supermax prison systems are designed to deal with inmates whose violent behavior makes it impossible for them to live with the general prison population. Such measures involve separating prisoners by the use of segregation or solitary confinement. The supermax housing is described as a freestanding facility, or a distinct unit within a facility, that provides management and secure control of inmates who have exhibited violent or serious disruptive behavior. Supermax prisons does not include maximum or close custody facilities that are designed to house inmates with high custody needs, inmates in disciplinary segregation or protective custody, or other inmates requiring segregation or separation
Some important facts to consider. Between 1970 and the start of the 1990’s, we saw an increase of prisoners by nearly 332%, with an increase of incarceration of 200% per 100,000 persons. When you have such an increase of prisoners in an institution, you are going to obviously have an increase in violent inmates, but you also as time goes on have courts coming down on guards and prison admin saying what they can and cannot do. Obviously the combined problems above created a need to our prisons to better manage the inmates, thus, supermax prisons started popping up. Supermax prisons just like the death penalty have those who agree with it, and those who disagree with it.
Mandatory minimum sentencing laws, which were introduced about three decades or so ago, allow judges to issue a minimum prison sentence at the discretion of the prosecutor, who determines the charges that are placed against a defendant. These laws, as outlined by the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation (n.d), limit the power of the judges to make a judgment on the punishment that can be given to a defendant. The meaning being that mandatory minimums transfer the power to give sentences from the judges to the prosecutors, a scenario that is worsened by the fact that some prosecutors misuse this power. As such, mandatory minimum sentences should be repealed, particularly for the gun and drug-based offenses. Mandatory Minimum Sentence Laws Foster Uncontrolled Prosecutorial Discretion Evils
As we look at supermax prisons they are used to house many violent offenders to mainly keep them away from all other prisoners in solitary confinement like cells for a long period of time and most of them will never be released. The main issue that Schmalleger and Smykla describe is the fact of a mental illness starting due to supermax confinement and where none previously existed in the past (2015). The issue with that is it could get them out of a supermax prison, which I believe that is completely ridiculous because they were already crazy enough to commit the crime they did to get in there. The other ways it does effect the person in prison is that it could lead to a bunch of different symptoms and possibly even suicide from being confined
To begin, “congress fell in love with mandatory minimums requiring anyone convicted of a given offense to receive a minimum penalty prescribed by legislation (Bazelon, 2).” For instance, if a person shoots someone in the leg, they are charged as if they killed that person. Oftentimes the minorities get more time than the whites. On the other hand, Alberto Gonzales reports that the mandatory minimum sentencing ensure tough and fair sentences for offenders and has nothing to do with race. People with too much power don’t know the differences between tough punishment and unfair punishment.
Goldman Sachs” discusses the evidence found against Goldman Sachs that should make them stand trial. Carl Levin investigated and created a report about the bubble that Goldman Sachs created and the frauds involved in it. In response to the report that Carl Levin publishes, Goldman Sachs misled Congress and then claimed that the bank was just really good at making money. Taibbi then explains that the reason that Goldman Sachs was able to get away with fraud and other crimes was in part due to investment banks convincing the government to allow them to voluntary regulate. These banks claimed that they could regulate themselves because they wanted to weed out corruption and fraud; however, investment banks like Goldman Sachs still participated in those very practices.
No major player in the “Great Mortgage Bubble of the 2000s” has gone to jail for their crimes. And as the Stock Market continues to rise, and the Big Banks get bigger and bigger, the shadow of the Savings and Loan Crisis looms larger each and every day. By throwing the Savings and Loan bankers in jail, our government sent a message: If you rip people off, you pay for it, and it gave that message extra weight by stripping the bankers and their investors of their assets, by nationalizing those assets, and then reselling them to the public, using a special agency that the Reagan Administration set up, called the Resolution Trust Corporation. In the wake of the Savings and Loan Meltdown, our government did exactly what governments should do after a banking crisis. They treated the Savings and Loan Crisis as a criminal matter and managed to punish the people responsible for the crimes in
Sentencing Sentencing occurs after a defendant has been convicted of a crime. During the sentencing process, the court issues a punishment that involves a fine, imprisonment, capital punishment, or some other penalty. In some states, juries may be entitled to determine a sentence. However, sentencing in most states and federal courts are issued by a judge. To fully understand the sentencing phase of criminal court proceedings, it is important to examine how sentencing affects the state and federal prison systems, learn the meanings of determinate and indeterminate sentencing, and understand the impact Proposition 57 has had on sentencing in California.
Executive Summary Lehman Brothers were an investment bank involved in transactions worth billions of dollars and one of the most powerful investment banks in the world. Lehman Brothers collapsed in 2008 following bad investment in the sub-prime mortgage market and used bad accounting practices called Repo 105 transactions to try and cover up the bad assets. This report sets out the use of the fraud triangle when describing the actions which led to the collapse. The pressure applied on the bank, the opportunity due to the lack of regulation to carry out the actions and the ability of the bank to rationalise their decision making.
The Big Short, it seems as if almost nobody has any ethics at all. Firstly, the banks hugely increased the market for synthetic CDO’s. This is borderline illegal and should be illegal but isn’t. These were a huge contribution to why the housing market collapsed.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The Libor scandal has left many financial markets reeling and one called into question the ethics of the banking industry. What does Libor mean? And why are banks in so much trouble for manipulating? The assignment is regarded to what Libor is and what were the victims and how these victims were affected by the Libor scandal.
1.1 Introduction ”Too Big to Fail”(TBTF), is a well known and widely accepted phenomenon used even by people who are not well-informed in economics and banking. Many people and economists has the opinion that ”Big” in financial institutions is bad. Different in opinions have been shared in the last decade about banks since the inception of financial crisis in 2008. When a big bank encounters some financial distress it generate fear because if it goes bankrupt, its resulting consequences will endanger more financial institutions and hence cause a catastrophe to entire economy. Regulators and some institutions are expected to aid banks to prevent them from indulging in careless and reckless practices.
