White Collar Crime

I can't post the clip (thank you, Viacom), but there was a great episode of the Chappelle Show where they contrasted the treatment of blue collar criminals with white collar criminals, except in the sketch, they were flipped. The ponzi-scheme mastermind had his home invaded by machine gun toting police, his dog was shot, his wife and kid dragged out of bed, and he was badly beaten before being thrown in central lockup in his underwear. The drug runner (played by Chappelle) was hauled before a Senate subcommittee, asked questions (very courteously) by the senators, and he took the fifth, or in Chappelled case, "I take the fif."

Well, white collar crime does a hell of a lot of damage to this country. Look at the huge mess in the financial world, much of which was caused by blatantly illegal acts. Here are a few episodes of white collar crime that stick out.

Lawyers are "Life Support" for organized crime. Related:
Defense Lawyer Charged With Witness Tampering. More lawyers should see the inside of prison, and I don't mean visiting clients...

Joe Cassano peers out his spider-hole. Looks like the Feds are homing in on the dude that was chronicled in Matt Taibbi's piece. Exiled suggests he have his teeth removed, so they're not punched out for him in prison (I'll leave it to your imagination to figure out why).

Papers Show Wachovia Knew of Thefts - New York Times. Wachovia aids telemarketing fraudsters because of lucrative fees... Related (?): 24 indicted for mortgage fraud ring. Wouldn't be surprised if it turns out the banks didn't check these mortgage applications as closely as they were required to, because they the bank got to bundle up the fraudulent mortgages into a mortgage-backed security and make a boatload of money selling it to pension funds, Chinese investors, etc. Suckers! More related: "Very clever."

Morgan Stanley's 13% Payout Offer To Short Ford Stock. MS using taxpayer funds to short Ford, the only domestic automaker still hanging on strong (at least for now).

How helpful are your bankers? Well, try banking with UBS. Their so helpful, they'll even smuggle diamonds in toothpaste past the TSA for you. Now, many UBS clients are facing huge IRS fines and possibly even jail time for willful acts of tax evasion on a massive scale. Some of the tax evaders are crying their eyes out to their lawyers. Bo-hoo. Fuck 'em.