Why the S.E.C. didn't hit Goldman Sachs harder
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
Yes they were done to lower the firm's reported leverage, but again this computation conformed to regulator standards.
So not so clear cut it's "fraud" as nothing was mis-reported.
Edit: incidently this is nothing like what Enron did, which was to move assets off balance sheet by moving them to SPVs and swapping the risk back (incidently also completely legal and fairly common in structured finance). These were simple repo transactions.
I'm not alone in this analysis: "The segment, which marks the first time Vakulas has been interviewed since filing his nine-volume, 2,200-page report two years ago, claims there is sufficient evidence to prosecute officials at Lehman. According to Vakulas, Lehman Brothers was intentionally misrepresenting their financial health."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/23/lehman-brothers-inv...
The key question, to me, is whether they knowingly misrepresented the health of the company in reporting to shareholders. If it ever went to trial I think the answer would be "yes" - but of course we'll never know because no one in the US government wants to go after them.
At least the NY Attorney General went after E&Y and extracted a minor settlement (albeit one with no admission of wrongdoing):
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/16/business/dealbook/ernst-yo...
"Liberty and justice for all."
http://www.whiteoutpress.com/articles/q42012/list-of-goldman...
Sadly, that's incorrect...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC
"The United States Supreme Court held (5–4) that the First Amendment prohibited the government from restricting independent political expenditures by a nonprofit corporation. The principles articulated by the Supreme Court in the case have also been extended to for-profit corporations, labor unions and other associations. By allowing unlimited election spending by individuals and corporations, the decision has "re-shaped the political landscape" of the United States."
Contributions to candidates implicates very different concerns. The biggest difference, in my opinion, is that in Citizens United the law targets people who are not running for office. The ban on corporate contributions to candidates can be seen as a regulation on the candidate who may be required to bear such additional regulation as part of running for office.[1]
[1] That is not the orthodox explanation for the distinction. The orthodox explanation invokes Buckley v. Valeo's balancing test, and notes that the free speech concerns are less in the case of direct campaign contributions and the corruption risk is greater. I don't like balancing tests so I don't find that persuasive.
It clearly has an impact on donations to candidates, just not in an official manner. See my response to Lazare.
Consider the Koch brothers. They're expected to spend around $889 million in the current US election cycle:
http://theweek.com/speedreads/535882/koch-brothers-plan-spen...
Considering the maximum campaign contribution is $2,700 per candidate, I think it's safe to say they plan on influencing the election without relying on directly funding candidates. That does not mean that the candidates aren't responsive to these alternative funding streams.
Another example of how this money corrupts the position of politicians can be seen in the Clinton Foundation.
https://www.rt.com/usa/340480-clinton-donors-panama-papers/
"Giustra is a Canadian mining magnate who became a large donor for the Clinton Foundation 11 years ago, going on to set up the ‘Great White North’ chapter of the foundation. He currently sits on the board.
The billionaire later became an example of the foundation’s murky ties between donors and apparent political favors, due to the 2005 dinner with Giustra, Bill Clinton, and Kazakhstan president Nursultan Nazarbayev – and the deal that “stunned the mining industry, turning an unknown shell company into one of the world’s largest uranium producers in a transaction ultimately worth tens of millions of dollars to Mr Giustra,” wrote the New York Times, quoting analysts."
No. Citizens United only covered direct contributions to candidates, and while it is correct that you should look more widely to ascertain the overall workings of the American electoral system, the second you do so you are no longer evaluating the impacts of Citizens United.
> Consider the Koch brothers [...] Giustra is a Canadian mining magnate who became a large donor for the Clinton Foundation
You are now talking about independent expenditures by individuals, which ALSO was not impacted by Citizens United. Neither example you give is something which was illegal prior to Citizens United, but legal afterwards. (And in fact, one of the examples took place before Citizens United, so um...)
As a result, your post just underscores how unimportant (and overhyped) Citizens United was, once you "look more broadly than just direct contributions to candidates".
The concept of a nation-state depends upon closed-source sovereignty. Anonymous money could be coming from anyone or any foreign nation-state, thus usurping and subverting the sovereignty nation state.
However, this is a problem that already exists because it is easy enough for a foreign entity to use a third party shell to do this (i.e. AIPAC).
That would make it an unaccountable black box, though. That would not be good in the interest of transparency. On the other hand, there are plenty of unaccountable black boxes already.
The candidate who would be most likely to make sure they keep their jobs and are not prosecuted for fraud.
>Goldman, the company, is not allowed to contribute to candidates. What OpenSecrets means when it says that is Goldman employees contributed.
This is a null distinction. "Goldman Sachs" is not a person, it is a brand name: words on a piece of paper or on the front of a building. Though I understand how this could be confusing as the law (once again, words on paper) says that articles of incorporation (words on paper) are literally people.
When someone says "Goldman" they are of course referring to the persons who work or invest together under the banner name "Goldman Sachs". Like when someone says "the US did x" they are of course referring to citizens, and not the flag.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Lew
Tim Geithner is also reasonably described as having a career in public service:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Geithner
Don't despair! He has shadowy connections to the Kissinger Group (a brief stint early in his career).
Henry Paulson did in fact lead Goldman Sachs:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Paulson
John Snow was a railroad tycoon:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_W._Snow
Paul O'Neill was an industrial magnate that did a stint leading the mysterious RAND Corporation:
List isn't looking good. That's without considering Kissinger or RAND connections. No speculation needed with results like this. ;)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture
Which is a result found in Public Choice analysis:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_choice
The SEC is specifically mentioned in the first article.
As I said elsewhere, what is surprising here is not that Goldman got a wrist slap, but that intelligent people expect some other result.
An example is recent election. People are citing what each candidate says or promises despite admiting the whole game is to lie for votes then do what they're paid to do by their contributors. So, you look at voting history and prior business activity to determine both likely action and character. Got Hillary and Trump filtered out almost instantaneiusly for me whereas they rise to the top for the masses. "But he/she said..." (Sighs)
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-goldmansachs-abacus-factbo...
Looks around carefully. I spent some time contracting in DC, and the conclusion I came to is that there are three main types of people around the government and financial centers of power.
1) Those who are aware of the coming shitstorm and the complete corruption and subversion, and are just trying to "get theirs". This usually ends up in a "I got mine, fuck you" attitude. They don't push back because they know they would get punished for it, so they instead use their knowledge to further their career at the expense of their duty, and principles. They know, but don't care (enough to risk anything) about the status quo.
2) Those who know about the situation, and agree with it. These are usually indoctrinated extremists on either side of the spectrum, neocon, ultra-lib, the kind of people who now think capatalism in it's current form is the best gift from god and they speak of peace while selling massive amounts of weapons to dictators they setup all around the world. They know, and they care (for the wrong things), and actually perpetrate many of the abuses of the system.
3) Those who are too ignorant or stupid to know, or the slightly modified, those who have an idea about how bad it is but would rather stick their head in the sand and pretend reality doesn't exist. They don't know and don't care.
Don't tell me where all the true patriots went. I have told my friends, that "I know not one brave soul, not one." (keep in mind I'm not talking about media figures, like Snowden, Manning, Drake, Binney, Tice, Edmonds, all of whom I do consider brave souls) To me, that is the real problem I faced when I had my Descartes reset, in that I started to realize that while I still believe in the power of an oath, and the duties that come with them, the majority of the people around me and in positions of real power pay tons of lip service to principles, but never actually do them. Personally, I think this is causing a kind of mass cognitive dissonance and compartmentalization that we have yet to realize the full impact of.
When I think about the leadership traits I learned in the Corps, and how little of them I see in our leaders, I fear for the future of my country.
(in case anyone is wondering, they are: Justice, Judgement, Dependability, Initiative, Decisiveness, Tact, Integrity, Enthusiasm, Bearing, Unselfishness, Courage, Knowledge, Loyalty, and Endurance.)
Just because you don't recognize them doesn't mean they're not there.
Sometimes when you're "behind enemy lines" or consciously trapped in extreme group think, being tactful means being subtle, delicate, or unnoticeable.
I don't know what's causing it. Actually, I have a few hypothesis, but I'll get hammered for even mentioning them.
I used to look at people's actions in society, with the expectation that the average guy would be one of the 65% who delivered the legal 450v sting in the Milgram experiment. That left 35% who would do The Right Thing.
As, I've aged, I see a number much greater than >65%. I'm seeing way too many people doing immoral legal acts. Acts that are highly immoral, but legal.
I used to just take ethics for granted.
I am now Shocked when I run across a person with ethics.
I've gotten so jaded when someone is being honest/genuinely helpful--I look for the catch I missed. So, basically I look at most people, especially the financially successfully with extreme caution.
In Ireland, I was told they look at successful people differently than we so I the United States. They look at that person, and wonder, "Who did they screw over, or step on in order to get there." I overheard this. It might be wrong. I haven't got there, but it's getting close.
I'm not even talking about blatant criminals. I'm talking about the guys in ties. The guys with licenses. The guys with power. The guys who bend the rules in order to get ahead. The guys who exploit poor and uninformed just because they are easy marks.
The question that the revolving door complaint raises is whether these people can competently perform in these regulatory positions without bias.
The solution isn't picking different people, it's transparency and enforcing the checks and balances. Articles like this are important, because the SEC is notoriously bad at being transparent (getting a D- on FOIA) and it exists as an independent agency in the executive branch.
Edit: immediately after posting this it occurred to me how terrible if not impossible this would be with the spaghetti code that is the tax and compliance legal code. So that would ideally have to be reformed, or rewritten and consolidated which is quite a big proposition
If the financial industry is doing things so complicated that they cannot be policed, then they should be made to define their actions so that they CAN be policed, or their actions should be illegal.
"People like [the Democratic appointees] Rubin, Summers, Patterson, and Gensler shuffle back and forth between the public and private sectors, taking turns as needed with their GOP counterparts. When in government, they ensure that laws and regulations are written to redound directly to the benefit of a handful of Wall Street firms, abolishing most regulatory safeguards that keep those behemoths in check. When the electoral tide turns against them, they return to those very firms and collect millions upon millions of dollars, profits made possible by the laws and regulations they implemented (or failed to implement) when they were in charge. Then, when their party returns to power, back they go into government, where they use their influence to ensure that the cycle keeps on going."
And if you don't care for a 9–5 back at your old bank, or your party holds the presidency for too long and you're kinda strapped for dineros, you just ask for a reassignment with a short period of unemployment. During the sabbatical, you visit your Wall Street office for a few hours, collect a "speaking fee"[1], and take a holiday. When you come back, infused with vitamin D and liquidity, your lesser-minded colleagues may think you never left or (gosh!) took a bribe.
[1] http://americablog.com/2013/07/tim-geithner-speaking-fees-go...
But I can never get a discussion deep enough going on about how the rule of law is implemented there.
"In our conversations, Kidney reflected on why that might be. The oft-cited explanations—campaign contributions and the allure of private-sector jobs to low-paid government lawyers—have certainly played a role. But to Kidney, the driving force was something subtler. Over the course of three decades, the concept of the government as an active player had been tarnished in the minds of the public and the civil servants working inside the agency. In his view, regulatory capture is a psychological process in which officials become increasingly gun shy in the face of criticism from their bosses, Congress, and the industry the agency is supposed to oversee. Leads aren’t pursued. Cases are never opened. Wall Street executives are not forced to explain their actions."
Basically, regulators don't have the balls to go after the big guys.
That's a little harsh. Everybody loses their balls quickly if they aren't backed up by their bosses.
"Get big government out of my business!" "These regulations are killing my business!" "People are going to go overseas and do the same thing!"
It's not just congressmen too. Even the public can be turned against the regulators with a steady drip of anti-regulation rhetoric from the newsmedia.
This is a corollary of "it's twice as hard to debug something as it was to write in the first place."
If you're a peon, "doing your duty" is a great way to put a target on your back.
It seems like one of the hardest problems to solve in our society because it seems to be so tied to our nature. I can recall doing things in grade school I knew was wrong but felt obligated to do because my peers and those I looked up to do too. While that isn't the same exact situation, the dynamics at play are the same. What can be done to combat this innate in-group/out-group behavior more effectively in our organizations and society?
Side comment: The GS head of technology recently left there to go to an at-best-mediocre options brokerage recently, which I recently left. Not gonna lie, that makes my suspicio-meter go off after seeing the shenanigans they did there.
Side note again: Another thing that pushes my supsicio-meter pretty far is seeing secret service, Harry Reid and a very well known name in HFT walk into an office and talk to each other for an hour.
I don't want to come to any direct conclusions, but "People are shitty" comes close.
Speeding often has surprisingly low fines. Get caught doing 115 in a 65 mph area in Florida. That's ~1,000$ for a first offence. Second time they revoke your license for a year and more than double the fine, next they revoke it for 10 years and charge you 5k.
But, first time around it's kind of meh, IMO. Of course you will probably also get reckless driving which is stiffer. http://www.leg.state.fl.us/Statutes/index.cfm?App_mode=Displ...
Considering the high risk of killing someone you would think the could come up with a better deterrent.
The funny thing is, he never got so much as a jay walking ticket after that, so the punishment definitely straightened him out.
I think it's a lot easier to play off speeding as a youthful indiscretion than drunk driving, as well.
- Canadian raised in the US, spent a fair amount of time in Canada
Going 50km over is an instant roadside suspension and a $2,000 - $10,000 fine.
That's still below the legal speed limit on some German roads. But it's above the highest recommended speed of 130 km/h (~ 80 mph).
The governor is merely a gentlemen's agreement between the big car manufacturers, and any garage will take it out no questions asked.
Speed limits on interstate class roads seem pretty dangerous to me - you can watch people thinking "but I'll get a ticket" and backing off at bad times. Of course, I guess of there were no signs with numbers on them they'd drive 115 and kill themselves.
You probably couldn't use that in court to get out of a ticket, but as a matter of enforcement a massive amount of speeding is routinely tolerated.
Targeted or not, they like to do insanely stupid things like park their cruisers on the shoulder of a bridge, inches from the lane of travel, lights off, at night, trying to "ambush" people.
I drive from Mercer Island to Spokane every weekend, and I commute from Puyallup to Mercer Island every day for work.
Going to work I'll see anywhere from two to five WSP, but usually traffic isn't moving fast enough for them to ticket. (Although, most mornings they have one or two people pulled over in the bend just in I-5, just a couple minutes north of the Tacoma Dome.)
Driving across the state I've only been pulled over once (near Ritzville). I won't say how fast I was going, but it was fast enough that right when I saw the headlights on her patrol car I immediately pulled over and waited for her to give me a ticket. (Which she did, and she knocked it down to something a bit more reasonable, money wise.)
Now when I drive across the state I just throw my cruise control on at ~83 MPH (the extra three because it helps me get ahead of those cars whose speed "drifts" from 75-85 and back again, which is very annoying). Usually I'll drive past two or three officers who just sit there and watch me fly by at thirteen over.
IMHO the worst are the county sheriffs near the Chelan area. Those guys will ticket you for 51 in a 50.
Unrelated: are you from Poulsbo?
Eastern WA is just so much less populated.. maybe they stand out more, but they're not as common IMO. Granted, your speed will be higher when you DO get busted, and there are definite speed trap downs like Ritzville and Colfax, but I never found it to be anywhere near as bad as the metro areas.
And yeah, they can just fire all those assholes. They're absolutely terrible and do nothing to promote road safety -- it's the exact opposite.
You probably won't "see it" until it happens to you. Highway patrol is managed for revenue generation rather than public safety.
If most drivers are "automatically" adding 9-10 MPH to the speed limit, it means the speed limit is too low.
This is whitewashing. In all the ways you can apply it.
when you don't run within the majority culture you are always making mistakes in their interpretation
and then you have law officers who choose to make examples every now and then.
guess who gets booked?
PS : one of the advantages of privilege
"The oft-cited explanations—campaign contributions and the allure of private-sector jobs to low-paid government lawyers—have certainly played a role."
Emphasis on "have certainly played a role." The moment I hear that, I ask why the hell we aren't focusing the conversation there and keeping it there. Guarantee a lot of the "lack of balls" has to do with worrying about future security in the form of campaign contributions and private-sector jobs.
How about we solve for that problem first and see if they still lack balls when they are no longer worried about their financial future being directly tied to those they are supposed to police.
* If regulators hurt the industry they're regulating, it means fewer jobs will be available for them when they switch to the private sector.
I just don't think the narrative about regulators going easy because they're hoping for a sweet gig at Goldman is consistent with what happens or even a theoretical analysis of peoples' incentives.
Ultimately, it's politics. Bill Clinton implemented massive deregulation in the financial industry. Regulation is seen as an illegitimate intrusion into the market's operation. So long as that is the case, regulators will avoid being aggressive for fear of provoking a political backlash.
Does losing money hurt an industry?
Can overregulation hurt an industry?
> SEC lawyers generally don't go to banks--they go into private practice law firms. Those firms make money when banks get in trouble.
Yes, they make money from banks when banks get in trouble.
> Yes, they make money from banks when banks get in trouble.
Sure, but in an environment of weak enforcement where banks never get into trouble, there isn't any money to make.
Maybe you live in a different reality, but in ours, the massive reputation hit the bank would suffer from having its employees go to jail would be tremendously more costly than meager fines that they can just shrug off.
[0]https://www.propublica.org/article/carmen-segarras-secret-re...
[1]http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/536/t...
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-06-26/strict-regu...
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2016-04-12/mortgage-de...
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2016-04-14/argentine-b...
If regulators really are harsh so banks hire them "to get them of their backs", presumably banks have an expectation that this works, causing in the long run, softer regulation.
The alternative theory that regulators are incentivised to be diligent and fair so banks will hire them on that basis is... not compatible with most people's understanding of the financial sector's culture.
Bernie would change that if given the opportunity.
Even if all he does is make Hillary very nervous before losing the primary to her, I would hope that would still get the SEC's attention as well as hers.
Bernie has a history favoring weapon makers from his own state as well as going after people using his logo, so we can be pretty sure that given the opportunity it will not all be as wonderful as he promises.
And who knows what they have collected about him in the meantime. There must have been a reason why Obama turned 180 so suddenly, as soon as he was in office.
However, I really don't understand how Goldman would have profited from aiding Paulson & co. Goldman set up a security that let people bet for or against the housing market. It's similar to Vegas letting people bet on a sports match. Why would Vegas fix the game that other people were betting on? It's not like Goldman made more money because Abacus paid out to Paulson vs. the Germans.
"Nor had they questioned top bankers in Goldman’s mortgage businesses or any of the bank’s senior executives. Even more surprising to Kidney, the agency had not taken testimony from John Paulson, the key figure at his eponymous hedge fund."
An investigator that doesn't ask questions will have a hard time finding evidence.
My point is tjs Goldman is the house and made money from the deal not the outcome.
But there's no evidence anywhere. Sorry. Right.
This is the one case where regulators would have massive popular support, specially in an election year when two very popular candidates (well, three if you believe Hillary's latest statements) are calling for stronger measures against the people responsible for the "Great Recession".
For instance, could we pay the regulators enough for it to become attractive? Over time, maybe being a regulator will become the end goal of new grads.
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-06-26/strict-regu...
"Here are some possible theories of the financial-regulatory revolving door:
...
2. Regulators want to get higher-paying jobs at banks, so they try to be diligent, fair, competent and zealous, so that the banks are impressed by them and hire them.
3. Regulators want to get higher-paying jobs at banks, so they are hard on banks in ways that force the banks to hire lots of ex-regulators -- to understand complicated rules, say, or to work as monitors for regulatory settlements.
4. Regulators want to get higher-paying jobs at banks, so they are hard on banks in general, hoping that the banks will hire them to just shut them up."
Also, a bank would prefer to reward the boss or co-workers who fires an over-zealous regulator to rewarding an over zealous regulator.
The whole absurdity you quote reads like something someone else hoping to be hired by a bank would write...
I'm usually pretty skeptical, but reading an article on "how hard regulators are on banks" from someone who worked at Goldman Sachs in the 2007-2011 period, I had to chuckle.
The other component to this, is that regulatory compliance becomes a significant barrier to entry for new firms. Incumbents end up gaining even more organizational power as market power increases, and competition on price and service quality decreases.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Wheeler#Net_neutrality
Panama papers is not a "leak" it was a hack by the NSA and only released a bunch of info on Panama based shell companies that are largely BRIC nations, none the US - and that it is a PSYOP to get a bit of anger against specifically others to protect US financial hegemony...
The only country to prosecute bankers/Wall Street - the PM resigned after he got caught doing the same thing.
It's revenge and a pre-emotive attack - but one that kind of lost control.
Watch the Panama papers doc to see how In The 2013 doc PBS' "the warning" the DOJ literally stonewalls against all questions regarding going after Wall Street.
The whole system is absolutely a corrupt greed ponzu scheme.
What happened those three vids, please, and give me your opinion.
Enron was probably the last big corporate take-down by the government.
From an interview http://www.democracynow.org/2014/4/15/who_goes_to_jail_matt_...
But at the bottom of it, there was this thing that he [Eric Holder]
laid out called the "collateral consequences doctrine."
And what "collateral consequences" meant was that if
you’re a prosecutor and you’re targeting one of these big
corporate offenders and you’re worried that you may
affect innocent victims, that shareholders or innocent
executives may lose their jobs, you may consider other
alternatives, other remedies besides criminal
prosecutions—in other words, fines, nonprosecution
agreements, deferred prosecution agreements.
And again, at the time, it was a completely sensible
thing to lay out. Of course it makes sense to not always
destroy a company if you can avoid it. But what they’ve
done is they’ve conflated that sometimes-sensible policy
with a policy of not going after any individuals for any
crimes. And that’s just totally unacceptable.
Too big to fail; too big to jailEnron's accounting gymnastics were precisely to defraud their shareholders. How is that negligence on the part of the shareholder? It's not - it's criminal on the part of the executives.
It's also the case that I was thinking more about the companies that are fined and keep operating with all the same officers in place than I was thinking about companies that implode. For example, shareholders of JP Morgan apparently aren't real sad with Jamie Dimon.
So if this kind of behavior is prosecuted and severely punished (e.g. lifetime prison sentences) - shareholders would be less likely to be defrauded.
The protect-the-shareholders attitude is entirely oxymoronic here, since it just means that those exploiting the share-holders and the corporation know they are unlikely to face significant consequences and this encourages others to do likewise.
Of course it is. Because in that case the perpetrators are the corporate officers and the victims are the shareholders. The shareholders were partially responsible for not choosing better officers, but for that they can only blame themselves.
But there are times when officers choose to harm third parties in furtherance of the interest of the shareholders. They do something illegal because it's profitable. And in that case losing their money is exactly what shareholders deserve for choosing officers with no scruples.
>>> shareholders or innocent executives may lose their jobs
Shareholders are unlikely to be affected to a large extent because their holdings in Enron would probably make up a small portion of their net worth.
Executives are paid large salaries and so can deal with the effects anyway.
I'd be much more concerned with the rank and file.
Nice. And this then becomes a brinksmanship game. The act of flauting the law is now coin of the realm.
Enron was taken down by ... the running dogs of CALPERS. "My fund can beat up your fund" so to speak. This is why we can't have affordable housing - the spall from Enron painted the whole state of Texas.
As far as regulators go, there is not much more fear and respect and obedience they can get.
So why make an example of anyone when day-to-day regulators are the big I ams
A sort of reverse Regulatory capture has been achieved. The regulators are calling the shots, but don't see the need to dig deeper.
The best analogy I can give is if Lord Ventinari from disc world were running 30's Chicago - Al Capone has been tamed, does not rock the boat and only kills his "own kind". Why should cleaning up the city and arresting Capone be a priority - he is under control.
I like discworld novels but I am not sure I want to live innsuchba compromised society
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_choice
What's interesting to me is that quite smart people would expect the SEC to act otherwise.
Did we learn nothing from "Point Break?" :)
The only "subtler" thing is that corrupt actors of this sort need to manufacture vague and appealing alternatives to plain-old-corruption in order to look themselves in the mirror.
Wouldn't you? The regulators receive direct or indirect instructions. They can see what happens when they choose not to listen. So why bother playing hero? Real life is not hollywood. You can always make the opposite argument no matter how flawed might be e.g. "hey! this guy is killing corporate America whilst the entire world is the midst of a crisis! It's crazy right?", you know how many bellow 50k/year households will buy that argument? It's crazy ;-)
This is a government policy, whether is good or bad depends on which side of the fence you stand. It's bad for the majority and for the rule of law, but who cares.
they are inept and impotent.