Will the US ever prosecute criminal bankers?
It was big news two weeks ago when investigators arrested Sean FitzPatrick, the former chairman of Anglo-Irish Bank, and announced new criminal charges against him. FitzPatrick has been widely cast as the man who nearly bankrupted Ireland, and his July 24 arrest adds 16 counts relating to a conspiracy to prop up the stock price of the now-defunct bank.
Didn’t hear about it? I don’t think I would’ve, either, had I not been in Ireland when it happened. The US media barely covered it.
But throughout the British Isles, it was front-page news, the headline story of TV news programs, all the talk on talk radio. A bank executive facing criminal charges!
That night, I watched the evening news in the house of my Irish friend, Mary. As I was watching all I could think was: When are we in the United States going to start indicting the financial executives who caused our economy to crash?
Just then, Mary interrupted my pie-in-the-sky thoughts by saying something about how Ireland was taking its cues from America’s get-tough stance on criminal bankers. I wish that were the case. So far, it’s just been talk. To this date, not one American bank executive has been arrested for his or her involvement in the global financial crisis.
In Ireland, the collapse of Anglo-Irish Bank cost taxpayers there $36 billion, which is about $8,000 for every man, woman, and child in Ireland. When the bank collapsed — not least because of the manipulations at issue in the many charges that FitzPatrick faces — it put Ireland’s economy into a tailspin.
Unemployment now hovers at 15 percent. The Irish are singing mournful songs again about loved ones migrating elsewhere for work. But the country has a plan to reimagine itself, and part of the plan seems to be criminalizing those responsible for gambling away other people’s money and conning poor people into taking predatory loans.
When will we follow suit?