{"id":61313,"date":"2022-01-05T19:44:56","date_gmt":"2022-01-06T00:44:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=61313"},"modified":"2022-01-05T19:44:56","modified_gmt":"2022-01-06T00:44:56","slug":"meet-jed-rakoff-the-judge-who-exposed-the-rigged-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=61313","title":{"rendered":"Meet Jed Rakoff, the Judge Who Exposed the “Rigged Game”"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Meet Jed Rakoff, the Judge Who Exposed the “Rigged Game”<\/a><\/h3>\n

\u201cWe have mass incarceration for the poor, and it\u2019s totally hands-off for the rich, and that\u2019s pretty hard to stomach.\u201d Justice Jed Rakoff on his new book, and his famous challenge to the system<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Jed Rakoff<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

On November 27, 2011, a federal judge named Jed Rakoff\u00a0threw out a $285 million regulatory settlement<\/a>\u00a0between Citigroup and the Securities and Exchange Commission, blasting it as \u201cneither fair, nor reasonable, nor adequate, nor in the public interest.\u201d The S.E.C. and Citigroup were stunned. Expecting to see their malodorous deal wrapped up, the parties were instead directed \u201cto be ready to try this case\u201d the following summer.<\/p>\n

Try a case? Was the judge kidding? A pattern had long ago been established in which mega-companies like Citigroup that were implicated in serious offenses would be let off with slaps on the wrist, by soft-touch regulators who expected judges to play ball. These officials in many cases were private sector hotshots doing temporary tours as regulators, denizens of the revolving door biding time before parachuting back into lucrative corporate defense jobs. A judge who refused to sign the settlements such folks engineered was derailing everyone\u2019s gravy train.<\/p>\n

Citigroup had replicated a scheme employed by numerous big banks of the era, helping construct a \u201cborn to lose\u201d portfolio of rotten mortgage securities to be unloaded on customer-dupes, who were unaware the bank intended to bet against them. A similar case involving a Goldman, Sachs deal called \u201cAbacus\u201d had\u00a0concluded the previous year<\/a>\u00a0with a hefty fine, but, infamously, no admission of wrongdoing.<\/p>\n

In the Citigroup version, the bank earned $160 million in profits, customers lost $700 million, and the S.E.C. wanted to impose a $285 million fine…<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Meet Jed Rakoff, the Judge Who Exposed the “Rigged Game” \u201cWe have mass incarceration for the poor, and it\u2019s totally hands-off for the rich, and that\u2019s pretty hard to stomach.\u201d Justice Jed Rakoff on his new book, and his famous challenge to the system Jed Rakoff On November 27, 2011, a federal judge named Jed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[2384,32399,32400,927,3733,1669],"class_list":["post-61313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-elite","tag-jed-rakoff","tag-justice-system","tag-manipulation","tag-matt-taibbi","tag-wall-street-banks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=61313"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61313\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61314,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61313\/revisions\/61314"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=61313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=61313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=61313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}