Letters: Banks filled with criminals
February 5, 2013 9:08PM
Updated: March 7, 2013 6:10AM
There is an interesting show on PBS, “The Untouchables,” about the mortgage meltdown, financial fraud, our economic crisis and recession. Apparently, no one has been criminally convicted of financial wrongdoing, even though the parties have been sued in civil court for damages and loss.
It’s as if there has been a shooting — there are dead bodies everywhere and everyone has a smoking gun in their hand — but no one has seen anything. The bank has been robbed and all the suspects have money in their pockets. Now you see why Wall Street and the 1 percenters have a bad name.
Now if this was an armed robbery, just being an accessory to the crime would get you thrown in jail. But not if you’re a white-collar criminal with an army of highly paid lawyers and lobbyists. The laws should be rewritten at the very least and the prosecutors take another stab at the suspects and even charge the banks with running a criminal enterprise.
Thomas Cechner
Lockport
Compensation inadequate
I’m in complete agreement with this paper’s recent editorial (“What price freedom in Illinois?”, Jan. 27) on the poor compensation given to wrongfully convicted inmates of Illinois prisons.
Demanding that a convict prove that his conviction was the result of police conspiracy, and that he serve more than 14 years before being eligible for any compensation, is grossly unfair.
Given the masterful inactivity with which the state of Illinois dispatches its obligations, it would not be unfair to liken its treatment of the wrongfully convicted to that of the members of its pension funds!
Louis Lagger
Joliet
