Gregg Fields from Harvard’s Lab writes on the prosecution of Goldman Sachs’ Fabrice Tourre. When the housing bubble burst, many lost a lot and few earned obscenely much through a security called ABACUS 2007-AC1 which Tourre helped engineer. At the time, he was a mere foot soldier and senior management had to and did approve everything. Fields asks, why the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) keeps going after the little fish and lets their fishmasters get of the hook rather easily.
An unrelated article over at Techdirt asks what happened to Obamas election campaign promise to protect whistlblowers. The interesting bit from Obama’s ethics agenda read
Protect Whistleblowers: Often the best source of information about waste, fraud, and abuse in government is an existing government employee committed to public integrity and willing to speak out. Such acts of courage and patriotism, which can sometimes save lives and often save taxpayer dollars, should be encouraged rather than stifled. We need to empower federal employees as watchdogs of wrongdoing and partners in performance. Barack Obama will strengthen whistleblower laws to protect federal workers who expose waste, fraud, and abuse of authority in government. Obama will ensure that federal agencies expedite the process for reviewing whistleblower claims and whistleblowers have full access to courts and due process.
Funny, innit?
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