Judge Stands up to Wall Street, again

I found similar postings, but they were either about past citigroup stuff, or the recent BofA case. This is, once again, Citigroup...

Federal judge Jed Rakoff, a former prosecutor with the U.S. Attorney’s office here in New York, is fast becoming a sort of legal hero of our time. He showed that again yesterday when he shat all over the SEC’s latest dirty settlement with serial fraud offender Citigroup, refusing to let the captured regulatory agency sweep yet another case of high-level criminal malfeasance under the rug.

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Good, we need more good people in the corrupted legal system.

Apparently, this Judge is a no games man. He's had the "audacity" to criticize the SEC numerous times and doesn't look like he plans on backing down. I wonder if he skips through Zucotti Park on his way home....

Thanks for posting that article.
This sentence in it stands out to me:

In this current case, this particular unit at Citi had already been slapped with two different SEC cease-and-desist orders barring it from violating certain securities laws.

Call me crazy, but shouldn't breaking the law, erm... i don't know... be enough to carry some sort of penalty?

why aren't these companies being fined heavily like the judge suggests. the first $10 billion dollar fine, and wallstreet will change over night.

the only language they understand is money. if this settlement went thru it'll be like a green light to do it over again. they would have actually made a profit.

instead they got bailed out to a tune of $700 billion for committing blatant fraud. a felony in the united states in which no one was charged.

i guess it doesn't look good to put handcuffs on people with suits and families. holding up a sign, though, that's enough to get your head cracked open with a baton or a rubber bullet in the face.

I think that's exactly this judge's point. He's got a reputation for hearing the "BS" the SEC offers in some settlement, and then says "I don't think so" and lists the homework HE did. Sadly, he knew MORE about the case (it seems anyway) than the SEC did.

Rakoff quite correctly took issue with all of this. From Jonathan Weil’s Bloomberg piece: “What does the SEC do to maintain compliance?” Additionally, [Rakoff] asked: “How many contempt proceedings against large financial entities has the SEC brought in the past decade as a result of violations of prior consent judgments?” We’ll see if the SEC finds any.

reply to post by pyrael


The SEC needs to be dismantled, and it's top overseers charged with being co-conspirators in the fraud.

I agree. i think this Judge is a breath of fresh air though. It appears he sees the problem and is not afraid to call them on it.