Courtesy of Pam Martens.
Eric Holder, U.S. Attorney General
It appears that U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder would like to change the subject from “stock market’s rigged” by our own U.S. stock exchanges and U.S. banks as asserted by bestselling author Michael Lewis on 60 Minutes on March 30 to a different subject involving “tax evasion” by Swiss and other foreign banks.
In a clear sign that the Department of Justice and Holder plan to launch a public relations offensive with a trail of crumbs leading away from U.S. banks, yesterday the DOJ released a video of Holder asserting that no bank is too big to jail. That comes on the heels in the past few days of multiple media outlets reporting that Holder may be close to a guilty plea and more than a $1 billion fine against the large Swiss bank, Credit Suisse, over facilitating tax evasion by Americans.
That Holder might be willing to hold foreign banks to a higher standard of “justice” than U.S. banks has apparently entered the mind of Switzerland’s Finance Minister Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf. According to Bloomberg News, Widmer-Schlumpf traveled to the U.S. last week and met with Holder to ensure that Swiss banks are going to receive even-handed treatment by the Justice Department.
More than a few global finance ministers, along with Wall Street On Parade, have noticed that when it comes to meting out justice, as in the case of the Libor interest-rate rigging prosecutions, for example, the long arm of the law seems to lose its grip when it comes to Wall Street banks. Thus far, the Justice Department has yet to prosecute a U.S. bank over Libor, despite email evidence of serious wrongdoing. It has, however, charged multiple foreign banks.
Since 2012, Wall Street On Parade has been drawing focus to the revolving door between the top criminal posts at the Department of Justice and the law firm of Covington & Burling. On September 20, 2012 we called attention to the history of that law firm, writing:
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