Always great to see my site linked in a story about cartels 🙂

Reuters-

The great 19th century English jurist, Sir James Fitzjames Stephens, once wrote that murderers were hung not for reasons of revenge or deterrence — but to underscore what a serious breach of the social compact had been committed.

Federal District Judge Jed S. Rakoff was making a similar point when he recently called attention to the lack of criminal prosecutions in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. Consider the 1980s Savings and Loan crisis. The losses were minuscule compared to this recent paroxysm, but they still led to hundreds of criminal convictions.

That looks highly unlikely here. The federal statute of limitations for fraud, generally five years, is rapidly running down. There are reportedly a few cases in process. But the odds are that if there are any indictments, they will be in the pattern of the indictment of Goldman Sachs banker Fabrice Tourre, who has been left holding the bag for a complex scheme to load up clients with worthless securities. Email trails leave little doubt that far more senior figures were aware of the purpose of the deal. The firm also executed other similar deals that haven’t been prosecuted.

[REUTERS]