Martha Stewart and the Financial Meltdown

A few years ago, Martha Stewart did a few months of Federal time after her conviction for conspiracy, obstruction of an investigation and lying to investigators. (Note that she was not convicted of insider trading. She had dumped her shares of ImClone stock to avoid losing $45 grand.)

The Feds went after Stewart hammer and tong. I am not arguing that they shouldn't have.

What I am angry about, however, is that the Feds locked up Stewart, but I have not seen the legions of bankers and stock manipulators going off to prison over the financial melt-down that has cost the American people trillions of dollars. If you have an IRA or a 401K that is in anything other than cash, you have lost money, and it is not too hard for you to have lost far more than the amount that Stewart avoided losing.

So I want to know this: Where are the investigations of the people who dreamed up this shady shit of mortgage-based securities and credit default swaps? Where are the trials of the bankers who willfully originated the "liar loans?" Where are the imprisoned mortgage brokers who rigged the loan paperwork, the appraisers who inflated property values, the lawyers who knowingly failed to advise their clients of the risks involved? There should be so many people in prison over this that the Bureau of Prisons should have to take over old Army bases to hold them all.

And as for the corrupt legislators who changed the laws so all this could happen and the Federal regulators who were willfully asleep at the switch while this was going on? We should rent Devil's Island from the French and send them there.

None of this was rocket science at the time. Some of it was foreseeable, especially the risks of the adjustable rate mortgages. A lot of people participated in this massive fraud, from brokers to the bankers to the hedge-fund guys; they turned their heads, grabbed all the cash they could with both hands, and left us, the American people, hell, the working people of the entire planet, holding the bag.

Stewart went to prison for four months over $42,000, the financial equivalent of spitting on the sidewalk. The fuckers behind the mortgage meltdown should be thrown into cells until Hell freezes over.