Well this certainly explains plenty...

[Cain]

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/is-the-sec-covering-up-wall-street-crimes-20110817

Imagine a world in which a man who is repeatedly investigated for a string of serious crimes, but never prosecuted, has his slate wiped clean every time the cops fail to make a case. No more Lifetime channel specials where the murderer is unveiled after police stumble upon past intrigues in some old file – "Hey, chief, didja know this guy had two wives die falling down the stairs?" No more burglary sprees cracked when some sharp cop sees the same name pop up in one too many witness statements. This is a different world, one far friendlier to lawbreakers, where even the suspicion of wrongdoing gets wiped from the record.

That, it now appears, is exactly how the Securities and Exchange Commission has been treating the Wall Street criminals who cratered the global economy a few years back. For the past two decades, according to a whistle-blower at the SEC who recently came forward to Congress, the agency has been systematically destroying records of its preliminary investigations once they are closed. By whitewashing the files of some of the nation's worst financial criminals, the SEC has kept an entire generation of federal investigators in the dark about past inquiries into insider trading, fraud and market manipulation against companies like Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank and AIG. With a few strokes of the keyboard, the evidence gathered during thousands of investigations – "18,000 ... including Madoff," as one high-ranking SEC official put it during a panicked meeting about the destruction – has apparently disappeared forever into the wormhole of history.

Under a deal the SEC worked out with the National Archives and Records Administration, all of the agency's records – "including case files relating to preliminary investigations" – are supposed to be maintained for at least 25 years. But the SEC, using history-altering practices that for once actually deserve the overused and usually hysterical term "Orwellian," devised an elaborate and possibly illegal system under which staffers were directed to dispose of the documents from any preliminary inquiry that did not receive approval from senior staff to become a full-blown, formal investigation. Amazingly, the wholesale destruction of the cases – known as MUIs, or "Matters Under Inquiry" – was not something done on the sly, in secret. The enforcement division of the SEC even spelled out the procedure in writing, on the commission's internal website. "After you have closed a MUI that has not become an investigation," the site advised staffers, "you should dispose of any documents obtained in connection with the MUI."

Many of the destroyed files involved companies and individuals who would later play prominent roles in the economic meltdown of 2008. Two MUIs involving con artist Bernie Madoff vanished. So did a 2002 inquiry into financial fraud at Lehman Brothers, as well as a 2005 case of insider trading at the same soon-to-be-bankrupt bank. A 2009 preliminary investigation of insider trading by Goldman Sachs was deleted, along with records for at least three cases involving the infamous hedge fund SAC Capital.

So when the next crash happens (when and not if) we wont even have enough evidence to convict the fuckers responsible then.

[Disco Pickle]

Holy shit.

If there was ever going to be a time to bring back heads on pikes, this would be it.

[Adios]

Fuck. The question in my mind is, why isn't the DOJ putting a stop to this crap?

[Doktor Howl]

Who's going to need a conviction?

All I need is some A1 Sauce.

[P3nT4gR4m]

Who gives a shit? When the economy finally collapses none of these imaginary numbers are going to mean shit anyway. I'll be competing with overweight, soft as shite billionaires for the same scraps of food. Lets see if their enormous bank balances save them when they have nothing to offer their bodyguards and I'm staring down 200lbs of quality cooking fat that wants my cheeseburger 

[Triple Zero]

Goddamnit, I sort of entertained a tiny shred of hope that in the end, some of them, would not get away with it.

[LMNO]

Could this be considered an actual, bona fide conspiracy?

[The Wizard Joseph]

Isn't part of the problem with "conspiracy" that it can be hard to tell the difference between treason and incompetence?
I imagine these MUI thingies are confidential internal documents, so they probably can't use the excuse that it could damage the reputation of our holy and venerable institutions.
In this case it would seem that the only other explanation than conspiracy would be a lack of storage space for the files.

Steal $500 at gunpoint and you get hard prison time.
Steal the livelihoods of 1000's of families with a pen-point and you get a soft handshake.
Maybe we need to make the punishments better fit the crimes.
The gov could put people in the stocks in a public market for financial fraud, and maybe the gibbet for corrupt officials.

I could build a whole franchise around selling rotten produce to throw! 

[Rumckle]

Isn't part of the problem with "conspiracy" that it can be hard to tell the difference between treason and incompetence?

I think it is pretty clear when:

In at least one case, according to Flynn, investigators at the SEC found their desire to bring a case against an influential bank thwarted by senior officials in the enforcement division – whose director turned around and accepted a lucrative job from the very same bank they had been prevented from investigating.

[Kai]

AHAHA HAAAA A HA HAA HAA

No fucking shit. Seriously? 

THERE, LADERPS AND GENTLEHERPS, IS YOUR FREE MARKET! BASK, IN IT'S MAGNIFICENT IDIOCY!! BASK DAMN YOU!1! 

[Disco Pickle]

AHAHA HAAAA A HA HAA HAA

No fucking shit. Seriously? 

THERE, LADERPS AND GENTLEHERPS, IS YOUR FREE MARKET! BASK, IN IT'S MAGNIFICENT IDIOCY!! BASK DAMN YOU!1! 

Except, you know, if there was an actual free market system, this would likely have been caught by the people who stood to lose money through fraud and the people involved in the fraud would have been prosecuted.  Instead we put our trust in the SEC.  They must know best.  I mean, right? 

Instead the system in place protects these sorts of people.

And really, it doesn't matter whether they think there's a "Free Market^TM" or not. 

It does matter that YOU do. 

And that you bitch about it on the internet. 

That's important.

[Kai]

AHAHA HAAAA A HA HAA HAA

No fucking shit. Seriously? 

THERE, LADERPS AND GENTLEHERPS, IS YOUR FREE MARKET! BASK, IN IT'S MAGNIFICENT IDIOCY!! BASK DAMN YOU!1! 

Except, you know, if there was an actual free market system, this would likely have been caught by the people who stood to lose money through fraud and the people involved in the fraud would have been prosecuted.  Instead we put our trust in the SEC.  They must know best.  I mean, right? 

Instead the system in place protects these sorts of people.

And really, it doesn't matter whether they think there's a "Free Market^TM" or not. 

It does matter that YOU do. 

And that you bitch about it on the internet. 

That's important.

No, they wouldn't be caught, because people who might have caught them would have been paid off /in exactly the same way/. If they wouldn't have benefited from it, they wouldn't have lobbied for the "regulation" in the first place. There is no REAL regulation. People just do whatever the hell they want if they have enough cash to pay for it, and someone isn't pointing a gun at their head. Thus the Free Market.

[Disco Pickle]

AHAHA HAAAA A HA HAA HAA

No fucking shit. Seriously? 

THERE, LADERPS AND GENTLEHERPS, IS YOUR FREE MARKET! BASK, IN IT'S MAGNIFICENT IDIOCY!! BASK DAMN YOU!1! 

Except, you know, if there was an actual free market system, this would likely have been caught by the people who stood to lose money through fraud and the people involved in the fraud would have been prosecuted.  Instead we put our trust in the SEC.  They must know best.  I mean, right? 

Instead the system in place protects these sorts of people.

And really, it doesn't matter whether they think there's a "Free Market^TM" or not. 

It does matter that YOU do. 

And that you bitch about it on the internet. 

That's important.

No, they wouldn't be caught, because people who might have caught them would have been paid off /in exactly the same way/. If they wouldn't have benefited from it, they wouldn't have lobbied for the "regulation" in the first place. There is no REAL regulation. People just do whatever the hell they want if they have enough cash to pay for it, and someone isn't pointing a gun at their head. Thus the Free Market.

But there was no "regulation" lobbied for.  They used existing rules, albiet very bastardized, that were already on the books. 

Go ahead and keep perpetuating the "Free Market" meme all you like, there isn't one.

What exists is called a "Privileged Market" the same way there is "privileged law"

Neither you, nor you parents, nor your grandparents have ever experienced a "Free Market"

Feel free to keep blaming it on THAT and not the people responsible for upholding the regulations.

It's doing wonders for the fuckers involved in "Operation Fast and Furious"

[Kai]

People just do whatever the hell they want if they have enough cash to pay for it, and someone isn't pointing a gun at their head. Thus the Free Market.

[Doktor Howl]

Except, you know, if there was an actual free market system, this would likely have been caught by the people who stood to lose money through fraud and the people involved in the fraud would have been prosecuted. 

Um, yeah.  Because AIG just lets any old fucknozzle with a couple of shares look at the real books.