Accountability For Goldman Sachs? Don't Hold Your Breath Says Simon Johnson

This past week, the SEC filed civil charges against Goldman Sachs. The AP reported:

WASHINGTON – The government on Friday accused Wall Street's most powerful firm of fraud, saying Goldman Sachs & Co. sold mortgage investments without telling the buyers that the securities were crafted with input from a client who was betting on them to fail.

And fail they did. The securities cost investors close to $1 billion while helping Goldman client Paulson & Co., a hedge fund, capitalize on the housing bust. The Goldman executive accused of shepherding the deal allegedly boasted about the "exotic trades" he created "without necessarily understanding all of the implications of those monstrosities!!!"

The civil charges filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission are the government's most significant legal action related to the mortgage meltdown that ignited the financial crisis and helped plunge the country into recession.

But economist Simon Johnson says the government's case against the company is without meat. Accountability for Goldman Sachs and Wall St. fraud is not currently on the agenda of the two parties. In his article "Goldman Sachs: Too Big To Obey The Law" Johnson writes:

These huge banks will behave better only when and if their executives face credible criminal penalties. This simply cannot happen while these banks are anywhere near their current size.

Currently, the American people are being terrorized by Wall St. Godzillas like Goldman Sachs, who are stomping their feet around the country, knocking down business and buildings left and right. Journalist David DeGraw reports that the economic pain hasn't even begun. In "The Financial Terrorists Who Destroyed Our Economy Will Pay Zero in Taxes -- and Get $33 Billion in Refunds" DeGraw says:

The inequality of wealth in the United States between the economic top 0.5% and the remaining 99.5% of the population is now at an all-time high. The economic top 1% of the population now controls a record 70% of all financial assets. The point here is that while the economic crisis has been devastating for 99% of America, the Wall Street elite are awash in record breaking profits. The most profitable firm in Wall Street history, Goldman Sachs, just had their most profitable quarter in their 140-year history and Wall Street firms issued an all-time record breaking amount in bonuses.

The painful reality that banks and other powerful interests groups control the politics of Washington D.C. as opposed to the people is slowly being accepted by everybody who is not benefiting, or part, of the criminal one percent class that is politically connected with Wall St. DeGraw calls for the 99% movement, a bottom-up grassroots non-violent revolution to take back the country from the dirty apes on Wall St. who have had their fists in the public purse for the last couple of decades. If the American people had listened to the author of the Declaration of Independence, and the third American president, Thomas Jefferson, they wouldn't find themselves in this difficult situation. Jefferson warned:

"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs."