Does Our Justice System Reinforce “Too-Big-to-Jail”?

Discussions on whether certain banks remain “too-big-to-fail” now include whether these banks (and executives responsible for their actions) have also become “too-big-to-jail.”

In a recent Bloomberg article Simon Johnson, a member of the CFA Institute-co-sponsored Systemic Risk Council discusses an approach within the U.S. Department of Justice that sheds troubling light on how decisions to prosecute are made.

The Justice Department’s approach to sanctioning is not new. As noted in earlier blog posts on penalties for UBS and RBS, the Libor-rigging scandal has resulted in mostly modest fines and public outrage, rather than prosecuting those at the core of the scandal.

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