Ritholtz Article on Wall Street Crime

Barry Ritholtz has written a Bloomberg View opinion piece which I think hits home. 

He uses the latest settlement between the government and SAC Capital Advisors as an example of how the government has gone soft on Wall Street.

Some excerpts:

The rules have changed, and so have the penalties. The lessons of the post-crisis era are clear:

• Laws are made to be broken
  
• Steal Big or don’t bother.
  
• Always reserve 10 percent of your criminal proceeds for your newest partner, Uncle Sam, to settle all claims, both civil and criminal.

In another excerpt:

 By all appearances, the once-fierce visage of the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Justice Department has altered radically. Formely ther scourge of white-collar criminals, the prosecutorial apparatus has now morphed into a supersized meter-maid. The goal is no longer discouraging reprehensible behavior or stopping criminal activities; nor is it encouraging confidence in the markets. Rather, the former enforcers of the law have become a giant revenue collecting organization -- Rule of Law be damned.

And finally:

 The greatest innovation of the financial sector is not the ATM machine or interest-bearing checking accounts or securitization: It was convincing the powers that be that prosecuting them for their actual crimes would (once again) bring the economy to the edge of the abyss.

Sad but true.