Pay to Play, Buying Insurance, or a Protection Racket for Wall Street Gains a 20-Year Low in Financial Fraud Prosecutions

Is Chuck Schumer’s former lawyer, now federal prosecutor for the Southern District of NY, still working to aid contributors to Schumer and his political funds?

Schumer is #3 Democrat in Senate and his committees include:

Committee on Finance
Subcommittee on Taxation and IRS Oversight
Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs
Subcommittee on Financial Institutions
Subcommittee on Securities, Insurance and Investment
Committee on the Judiciary
Subcommittee on Administrative Oversight and the Courts
Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights
Subcommittee on Crime and Drugs
Committee on Rules and Administration (Chairman)
Joint Economic Committee (Vice Chair)
International Narcotics Control Caucus

Schumer used his Senate Committees to have a veto power over appointment of Federal Judges in New York and at the Second Circuit Court of Appeals since 1998. Schumer picked Mukasey as Bush’s Attorney General.  Schumer picked Paulson, when Bush asked him who to make Treasury Secretary. Paulson, as Bush’s Treasury Secretary, engineered TARP which was blamed on Bush and Republicans.

Schumer is the king of cash from the financial sector, taking in $2.2 million in contributions from commercial banks, the securities and investment industry and the finance and credit card industry from 2009 to this month, according to the campaign finance watchdog Center for Responsive Politics. During the past five years, some of the biggest contributions to the vice chairman of the Democratic Conference and chairman of the Rules Committee have come from groups connected to hedge fund Paulson & Co., banking giant Credit Suisse and the investment firm Blackstone Group.

Meanwhile, Gillibrand, New York’s junior senator, aka Schumer’s Hand Puppet, has taken in roughly $1 million from the financial sector since 2009. Her biggest contributors in recent years have included political action committees and employees from JPMorgan Chase, Deutsche Bank and Morgan Stanley.

The Times goes on to describe Schumer’s prodigious pecuniary abilities with a strikingly provocative term:  An exceptional fund raiser — a “jackhammer,” someone who knows him says, for whom “ ‘no’ is the first step to ‘yes,’ ” — Mr. Schumer led the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee for the last four years, raising a record $240 million while increasing donations from Wall Street by 50 percent. That money helped the Democrats gain power in Congress, elevated Mr. Schumer’s standing in his party and increased the industry’s clout in the capital

Connecting some dots: Bharara worked for Schumer. Raymond Lohier was the head of Bharara’s securities fraud unit. Lohier now sits as appointed judge [recommended by Schumer] on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. Bharara explains why he can’t prosecute bank fraud here.

Who supervises Bharara? Well, it’s Eric Holder, Attorney General, and Lenny Breuer, Head of Criminal Prosecutions at the Justice Department. As described in my prior post they’re connected with outside lawyers and ought remove themselves from overseeing prosecutions on Wall Street. But, the lawyers, like the devil, always want to get their due.   In the Spirit of ” Never let a good shakedown go away unused,” Obama [is] still flush with cash from financial sector despite frosty relations.

So in summary, what would a wise Wall Streeter do?  Contribute to Schumer and Obama, hire the connected law firms and feel safe or risk much more in court battles?   Is this a classic shakedown of honest businessmen or protection racket for crooks?  Were you expecting that the Federal District Court Judges or the Federal financial overseers to independently protect the people or you?  Was the 20 year low in financial-fraud prosecutions and Justice purchased under Obama, Eric Holder and Schumer?