Fallout from 'Untouchables' Documentary: Another Wall Street Whistleblower Gets Reamed

[Fire Walk With Me]

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/fallout-from-untouchables-documentary-another-wall-street-whistleblower-gets-reamed-20130304?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

A great many people around the county were rightfully shocked and horrified by the recent excellent and hard-hitting PBS documentary, The Untouchables, which looked at the problem of high-ranking Wall Street crooks going unpunished in the wake of the financial crisis. The PBS piece certainly rattled some cages, particularly in Washington, in a way that few media efforts succeed in doing. (Scroll to the end of this post to watch the full documentary.)

Now, two very interesting and upsetting footnotes to that groundbreaking documentary have emerged in the last weeks.

The first involves one of the people interviewed for the story, a former high-ranking executive from Countrywide financial who turned whistleblower named Michael Winston. You can see Michael's segment of The Untouchables at around the 4:20 mark of the piece. The story Winston told during the documentary is essentially an eyewitness account of the beginning of the financial crisis.

When I spoke to him last week, Winston was still as amazed and repulsed by what he saw at Angelo Mozilo's crooked subprime mortgage company as he was when he worked there. Winston, who had worked for years at high-level positions at companies like Motorola and Lockheed before joining Countrywide in the 2000s, described a moment in his first months at the company, when he rolled into the parking lot at the company headquarters.

(More at the link.)

[Scuba]

1. The "Untouchables" documentary can be seen here (53:41) ...

http://video.pbs.org/video/2327953844

[cantbeserious]

3. Thanks For The Link

eom

[snot]

2. K&R'd!

[WillyT]

4. HUGE K & R !!! - Thank You !!!

[MotherPetrie]

5. Eric Holder is Obama's John Mitchell

[bvar22]

6. Nobody like a snitch!

..and this rule is even MORE in force with our current administration
that it was under Bush-the-Lesser.




You will know them by their WORKS,
not by their rhetoric, promises, or excuses.
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[Unknown Beatle]

7. Everytime I hear or read

Holder's name, it pisses me off to no end. That motherfucker was bought by the banks, thus no prosecutions.

Holder is a useless AG, except for busting marijuana dispensaries.

[Fire Walk With Me]

9. Yep! And this is why marijuana sales are under attack:

The US Government owns the patent on cannabinoids as treatment for Alzheimer's and other illnesses.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=2482182

[UnrepentantLiberal]

8. They were bought and they stayed bought.

Most of the letter is just a long list of the many wondrous accomplishments the DOJ has secured under Eric Holder's watch, including felony manslaughter convictions against BP, or "fraud convictions for a board member of Goldman, Sachs," or the ongoing LIBOR investigation, or the prosecution in the Stanford Ponzi case. But the rest of the letter totally ignores the Brown/Grassley questions, particularly on the matter of which experts were and are being consulted.

On those questions, the DOJ would say only that "it is entirely appropriate for prosecutors to hear from subject matter experts at relevant regulatory authorities" and that . . .

When the Department consults with relevant regulatory authorities, or hears from companies who are targets of the Department's investigations and their counsel regarding potential collateral consequences of enforcement actions, neither those agencies nor the target companies receive any compensation from the Department.

That is one hell of a slippery piece of language. It's great that the Department of Justice is not paying, say, HSBC to consult with them on the question of whether or not HSBC should be prosecuted. What a relief! But that doesn't mean they're not paying someone else for that kind of advice.

[sabrina 1]

10. Thanks for the article. I have not yet seen the Untouchables. There are a few others

that have outlined the corruption, and named names, but to no avail. These criminals really are 'untouchable' and they have so much influence over this government. Maybe one day we will return to the rule of law. We can hope.