Courtesy of Pam Martens.
U.S. District Court Judge, Jed Rakoff, of the Southern District of New York
Last week, three Federal appellate judges with lifetime appointments, meaning they will be receiving salary and benefits for as long as they choose on the taxpayer’s dime and then a nice, fat, secure pension also courtesy of the taxpayer, ruled that the very same public that makes their own existence so cushy is not entitled to truth or facts or justice when it comes to Wall Street. Truth, facts, justice are quaint relics of a bygone American past. Today, when it comes to Wall Street, Federal judges are simply there to rubber stamp the settlements of captured regulators and then quickly re-ink the stamp for the next shady settlement.
To fully grasp what happened last week you will first need to purge your mind of everything you think you know about Federal District Court Judge, Jed Rakoff, rejecting a smelly deal fashioned between the Securities and Exchange Commission and Citigroup and getting slapped down by an impartial appeals court for doing so. Other than the fact that Rakoff did reject the deal, you’ve likely been misled on all other facets of the matter.
That’s the world we live in today: corporate-owned media and corporate-owned political appointments are producing corporate-owned reality.
For starters in the SEC v Citigroup case, Rakoff was not a lone voice in the wilderness calling out the SEC for sweetheart pacts with Wall Street that didn’t pass the smell test. Not only did 20 securities law experts around the country file amicus briefs arriving at the same conclusion as Rakoff in the matter (more on that shortly) but more than a year before Rakoff rejected the SEC v Citigroup settlement, Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle on August 16, 2010 in the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. rejected another SEC v Citigroup settlement deal that had the stench of cronyism all over it – and still does to this day.
The Huvelle case involved the SEC letting Citigroup off the hook for $75 million in settlement fines for falsely telling the public and shareholders it had $13 billion in subprime debt when it actually had over $50 billion. And instead of charging senior executives with securities fraud for lying about the bank’s financial condition, the SEC dropped its fraud charges and let two Citi executives off the hook with $100,000 and $80,000 fines, respectively.
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