Financial Crooks Face Zero Risk of Jail Time

Late last week, word leaked out that Angelo Mozilo, who had co-founded Countrywide Financial in 1969 — and, for nearly 40 years, presided over its astonishing rise and its equally astonishing fall — would not be prosecuted by the Justice Department. Not for insider trading. Not for failing to disclose to investors his private worries about subprime loans. Not for helping to create a culture at Countrywide in which mortgage originators were rewarded for pushing fraudulent loans on borrowers.

In its article about the Justice Department’s decision, The Los Angeles Times said prosecutors had concluded that Mr. Mozilo’s actions “did not amount to criminal wrongdoing.”

The Justice Department also let Joe Cassano of AIG and Richard Fuld of Lehman Brother's fame completely off the hook in order that they continue to enjoy bathing in the hundreds of millions of dollars they were justly given for their roles in ruining the economy.

Most of the other Wall Street bigwigs whose firms took unconscionable risks — risks that nearly brought the global financial system to its knees — aren’t even on Justice’s radar screen. Nor has there been a single indictment against any top executive at a subprime lender.

The moral of the story is that crime pays, and pays astonishingly well, for our beloved financial crooks.