Views » March 24, 2009

Wanted: A Perp Walk For Plutocrats

By Susan J. Douglas

My husband and I were engaged in our usual dinner table rant about politics and the economy. Having made the mistake of opening my latest retirement statement and seeing that I, like millions, will now have to work until I’m 90 (or dead, whichever comes first), I proposed that we needed the financial equivalent of the Nuremberg trials for all of the greedy, unprincipled bastards who got us into this mess. My husband -older, wiser and even less forgiving than I—suggested we deal with these guys the way the Chinese dealt with the melamine scandal: by sentencing two of its perpetrators to death.

So imagine my surprise when, later that night, on “Real Time with Bill Maher,” I heard Tina Brown propose the Nuremberg trial idea and Maher propose the melamine solution.

You know, people really want some accountability here. They also want faces and names attached to “subprime mortgages,” “derivatives,” “mortgage-backed securities” and “credit default swaps.”

Now, I’m one of the lucky ones. I may one day be teetering to work with a walker, but I still have a job, a house and healthcare. But millions of people are in desperate straits, their lives ruined, jobless, broke, homeless. And yet, could we have something like the Nuremberg trials, given that most of the rapacious swine behind this mess may not have actually committed crimes, what with the absence of regulations?

I imagine we still could. Lawyers can be quite creative when they put their minds to it.

We need this kind of legal-media event because the broadcast media in particular have been dreadful in unpacking this disaster for everyday people so we can understand what the hell a credit default swap even is. Yes, the news media covered the bailout debates (with precious little depth or analysis), the Wall Street Christmas bonus scandals (a story broken by the New York Times), and the housing meltdown.

But where are the prime-time documentaries and in-depth investigative reports about all this? Some honorable exceptions aside — see “Frontline’s” terrific Inside the Meltdown, available online, or CNBC’s House of Cards, also online — we’ve mostly been left shaking our fists at the cosmos and the generic concept of “the banker.”

Certainly at the top of most people’s list for such a Nuremberg-style tribunal would be Bernie Madoff. In addition to all the people and institutions he swindled, he even bilked Elie Wiesel’s Foundation for Humanity out of $15 million. Wiesel implicitly endorsed my Nuremberg idea when he told the New York Post, “Whatever [there] is to hurt him should be invented. … He should go before a group of judges who would imagine a punishment for him.”

But there are plenty of others who should squirm in the witness stand about whom we know very little. How about Edward Liddy, CEO of AIG, currently making the PR rounds on TV trying to do damage control? In fact, AIG founder Maurice Greenberg just filed suit against the company, alleging it perpetrated securities fraud. Liddy, in turn, claims that most of the problems besetting AIG happened on Greenberg’s watch. Then there are Liddy’s predecessors, Martin Sullivan and Robert Willumstad. Who are these guys? Why not put all of them under the klieg lights?

I think we’d all welcome some tough cross-examination of former Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain, the guy who gave $3.6 billion in bonuses to top execs this past December after his company lost $25 billion in 2008. After learning about Merrill Lynch’s staggering fourth quarter losses, Thain went skiing in Vail, Colo. Tell me this wouldn’t make great TV. **

How about all the folks at Countrywide Financial who, for starters, steered low income and minority borrowers to higher-interest and subprime loans? As the kings of the subprime disaster charged with making predatory loans, let’s put these guys on the hot seat. (And, by the way, we really need former Bush Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson on there, too.)

This whole meltdown has been so mystified with jargon, taken for granted as confusing and unfathomable, that we’ve been persuaded we can’t get it. I bet we can. We deserve a big, public tribunal with perp walks, outraged and preening prosecutors, constant media coverage and revenge. This is how you get to “never again.”

**CORRECTION: A previous version of this paragraph contained two errors: It incorrectly stated that John Thain had spent $1.2 million redecorating his office during 2008. In fact, he spent that amount redecorating his office in late 2007. It also stated that John Thain was in Vail when the news broke about Merrill Lynch’s fourth-quarter losses; in fact, he went on a ski trip to Vail after learning of the losses, but before news of those losses had gone public. We regret the errors.

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• Reader Comments

  This is the first time you and I have hit upon a point of agreement. My solution to expressed to my wife was, “You only have to shoot the first one.”

  I noticed, however you’re missing a major category of participant and cause of this outrageous situation — those who supposedly have our nation and citizenry’s interests at heart.

  A large number of those in the U.S. Congress worked diligently over a couple of decades to set the stage. Eliminating the Glass-Steagal Act under Sec. of Treasury Robert Ruben), raising the banks margins from around 15:1 to 40:1 (Henry Paulson), allowing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac execs and board members to be paid a percentage of loans issued (Barney Frank), the AIG and other bonuses (Chris Dodd and others in office), the lack of regulating (SEC, S&P, Moodys)...

  The real outrage is seeing these guys acting the role of “Bad Cop” on C-SPAN.

  Obama doing his road show routine and abrogating his balance of power duties while Pelosi runs the country into the poor house. Then his outright demand for unconstitutional imposition of taxes on AIG bonuses as a bad “solution” to an already stupid gift. (Article 1, Section 8) And he has a law degree?

  Not the kind of Change I can Believe In!

  Posted by whattheheck on Mar 24, 2009 at 5:45 PM

  I am most normally inclined to be forgiving to a fault some might say. So be it! In these times (no pun intended please) I am of a mind that the magnitude of the atrocities perpetrated willfully and maliciously by people whose only motivation was making huge piles of money for themselves at the expense of the economies of this country and many others around the globe simultaneously demand appropriate punishment when found guilty of these crimes by juries who will not be bought or swayed by these hugely corrupt and powerful criminals.

  Ms. Douglas and her spouse seem to be echoing much of the same sentiments I hear expressed by those with whom I come into contact daily. They know that amoral and hugely self absorbed people have participated in a modern-day Ponzi scheme of gargantuan proportion. There needs to a reckoning. There must be severe consequences for the hubris and boundless greed of these criminals. Yes, I said criminals and I mean it in the simplest terms you can envision.

  “In Ancient Greece, the voting public would write or scratch the name of a person in the shard of pottery. When the decision at hand was to banish or exile a certain member of society, citizen peers would cast their vote by writing the name of the person on the piece of pottery; the vote was counted and if unfavorable the person was put out of the city, thus giving rise to the term ostracism”. ( from Wikipedia the free encyclopedia). I cannot imagine a more appropriate response to the horrific criminal acts of the executives of these financial firms that have been visited upon our nation and the world at large. Why not use a modern form of the ostracon to tell these people that they are no longer welcome to live among us until they have paid a suitable penance.

  As Ms. Douglas rightly observes “They also want faces and names attached to “subprime mortgages,” “derivatives,” “mortgage-backed securities” and “credit default swaps.” These folks are now for the greatest part murky, shadowy figures without form or substance hiding from retribution and judgment in the anonymity that is afforded them by their money, power and influence.

  Where indeed are the media that are supposed to monitor this kind of anti-social behavior? I can tell you where. Most are employed now by giant corporations who have their own agendas so, if a story might end up showing that their own parent company is up to its neck in the financial miasma in some manner that resulted in this economic meltdown there will be no investigative journalist sent to do that story. Oh, and have you lost one or more of your local newspapers? Who is bringing the local news?

  Once these persons have confessed their guilt, repented of their crimes and made amends, where at all possible, then - and ONLY then - perhaps they might be readmitted to civil society. Once again - or perhaps for the very first time - there must be a price to pay for those who have so damaged our society. There must be justice and it must be severe and publicly administered. Forgiveness should be available but repentance and a price to be paid must come first.

  Posted by Rev. Michael Weaver-Robbins on Mar 26, 2009 at 4:05 PM

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