HuffPo's "Too Big to Jail"

HuffPo has a solid story about the lack of high-level criminal prosecutions in the mortgage meltdown.

The financial crisis has spawned hundreds of criminal prosecutions for alleged fraud. Yet so far, defendants have been mostly minor players such as real-estate agents, mortgage brokers, borrowers and a few low-level bank employees. No senior executives at large financial institutions face criminal charges.

That’s in stark contrast to prosecutions during the savings and loan scandal two decades ago, when the government’s strategy targeted and snagged some of banking's most powerful players. The approach back then succeeded in sending scores of S&L executives to prison, as well as junk-bond king Michael Milken and business tycoon Charles Keating Jr.

I mean, sure, we got Madoff and Stanford - but those were guys whose Ponzi schemes had imploded - there was hardly any alternative to locking them up.

Good on them for reminding us that white collar criminals have gone to jail in the past (Savings and Loans, Enron, anyone?)

There's video, too:



(H/t CJR)