WASHINGTON — HSBC might have faced the largest anti-money-laundering fine in history, totally $1.9 billion, but that was not enough for Rolling Stone columnist Matt Taibbi and former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer.
"I've been waiting all day to ask what you think," Taibbi, who had posted a
"I think people on Wall Street were blown away by the result of this," Taibbi continued. "The decision to not prosecute in this instance belies everything that the government has ever done with regard to drug prosecutions everywhere. When you think about the way they behave towards ordinary people who get caught up in drug cases where they seize all of your property and they use absolutely the maximum sentence that they could possible avail themselves of. In this case they catch a bank that launders billions of dollars for Columbian and Mexican drug cartels … and terrorists for years on end and they can't find something to charge these people with?"
Spitzer sounded just as angry.
"It's no longer that" banks are "too big to fail, which we already know," Spitzer said. "They're too big to indict, too big to prosecute. They're so big that all they do is write a check and all their grotesque criminal conduct is washed away."
The segment was perhaps best summed up by Taibbi's wife. On his blog, the journalist wrote, "When I came home after the show, my wife laughed. 'It's like you guys were fighting over who was more pissed off,' she said."
