Punish Corporate Gangsters with Extreme Prejudice
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford
"When Wall Street's investment bankers destroyed the entire financial system through wild gambling and systematic looting, Congress and the president rewarded them."
America is a place where moral values prevail, we are told. Often, it seems this purported moral rectitude translates as an urge to kill everyone that disturbs the social order. But of course, not everyone. In reality, only the poor and the powerless bear the full brunt of America's justice system. For example, growing numbers of young women - especially women of color - are serving time in federal prison because their boyfriends were dealing drugs - and the women were aware of it. It's a crime not to snitch on your significant other. That is, unless you're Mrs. Bernard Madoff, wife of the accused $50 billion dollar rip-off artist. Ruth and Bernie have been inseparable throughout nearly fifty years of marriage. According to a New York Times profile of the couple, Ruth and Bernie worked together, dined together, and traveled together. Ruth is a director of her husband's company. Madoff's whole family - his two sons, brother, niece and nephew - lived high on the hog from the patriarch's alleged Ponzi scheme. If the Madoff's were African Americans or had vowels at the ends of their names, they'd be considered a crime family. But nobody is calling Ruth Madoff a Ponzi Queen, or threatening to charge her with criminal conspiracy. For the time being, Ruth and Bernie remain inseparable in their $7 million Manhattan apartment. In the United States, wealth brings impunity, no matter how you got rich.
In China, quotations from Chairman Mao's Little Red Book have been replaced by slogans like, "It is good to be rich." When high officials in the Communist Party talk that way, lower officials listen, and behave accordingly. China doesn't allow gambling, except in the former Portuguese colony of Macao, the largest gaming center in the world, with revenues exceeding Las Vegas and Atlantic City, combined. In the spirit of "it's good to be rich," Chinese Communist Party officials and heads of state enterprises have been losing hundreds of millions of dollars of the people's money in Macoa's betting places - nobody knows for sure how much.
"If the Madoff's were African Americans or had vowels at the ends of their names, they'd be considered a crime family."
Executives of Chinese state-owned companies don't bring home the fabulous salaries and bonuses lavished on their American counterparts, so when one of them loses $2 million at the blackjack table, it's obvious he stole the money. One government official is said to have embezzled $24 million dollars in state funds, then lost half it at a casino. In such cases, when the house wins, the Chinese people as a whole lose. The Chinese apparently remain sufficiently socialist to consider theft of the people's resources a serious matter. At least fifteen of the gambler-thieves have been executed.
Now, that sends a message. American law-and-order types are always talking about sending criminals a message, but the message never seems to reach places like Park Avenue, where Ruth and Bernie Madoff live. Indeed, nowadays the U.S. government is sending out a completely different kind of message to corporate thieves. When Wall Street's investment bankers destroyed the entire financial system through wild gambling and systematic looting, Congress and the president rewarded them with trillions of dollars of the people's money - in effect, saying "Here's some more of the current and future wealth of the nation for you to play with. Good luck."
In the United States, it's not only good to be rich - it's great to be a crook.
For Black Agenda Radio, I'm Glen Ford. On the web, check us out at http://www.blackagendareport.com/.
BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.
The U.S. extradition request for Fergie Chambers is an attempt to use Spanish courts to extend a domestic repression campaign against political opposition.
The demand to call out alleged crimes in Iran or Cuba while those countries face annihilation from the U.S. and Israel is a refusal to see those people as human beings worthy of protection.
Red Scares are a recurring feature of the U.S. political tradition aimed at criminalizing anticapitalist politics through accusations of foreign infiltration and conspiracy. The NSPM-7 and the report…
For several years, three landlocked West African states have undergone political transformations designed to turn the page on French neo-colonialism.
The U.S. is considering drone strikes and sanctions against the Alliance of Sahel States under the guise of counterterrorism, but the real objective is to regain neo-colonial control over African…
