Meet Mary Jo White: The Next SEC Chief and a Guaranteed Wall Street Patsy

Obama’s nominee to head the SEC, Mary Jo White, is just another gatekeeper appointed to make sure no one ever goes after the Wall Street crime syndicate.  As I have written about many times in the past, Obama does not nominate anyone to a high position of power in government who will not behave like a good little lapdog for Wall Street.

Despite Obama’s propagandist statement about how “you don’t want to mess with Mary Jo,” her background implies she will function as a useful servant to the financial oligarchs.  Forget for a second about that fact at her recent firm Debevoise & Plimpton LLP her clients included the usual suspects such as such as JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), Morgan Stanley (MS), and UBS AG, but she is actually known as the prosecutor who popularized the “slap Wall Street on the wrist” approach.  From Bloomberg:

As Manhattan’s top federal prosecutor during the 1990s, Mary Jo White could have sought the corporate equivalent of the death penalty: indicting Prudential Securities Inc. for fraudulently marketing $8 billion in ruinous energy partnerships to small investors.

Instead, Prudential’s attorneys pressed White, who had earned notice as an aggressive litigator in terrorism and organized crime cases, to consider something less punitive. She ultimately accepted, agreeing to a $330 million fine and placing Prudential on probation, allowing it to avoid criminal charges.

White’s record on white-collar cases reveals a more practical streak. Her invention of corporate probation, or deferred prosecution, in the Prudential matter was later copied by scores of U.S. attorneys seeking punishment for a company without going to trial.

“Practical” means having no balls and laying down to Wall Street crimes.

Since stepping down as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York in 2002 and returning to practice as a Wall Street defense lawyer, White, 65, has spoken out against what she called a “feeding frenzy” of enforcement after financial scandals.

“Feeding frenzy” means protecting the public from the Wall Street crime syndicate.

At Debevoise, which counts former Attorney General Michael Mukasey as a partner, her clients have included Wall Street banks such as JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), Morgan Stanley (MS), and UBS AG. She also represented former Bank of America Corp. Chief Executive Officer Ken Lewis during an SEC probe of bonuses paid to Merrill Lynch & Co.’s executives before Bank of America bought the brokerage.

There you have it folks.  Any questions?

Full article here.

In Liberty,
Mike

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14 thoughts on “Meet Mary Jo White: The Next SEC Chief and a Guaranteed Wall Street Patsy”

  1. Your idea for covering great American’s going for “solutions” and throwing their lives at the problems is great. Equally great would be a comprehensive tab for all the scumbags that are nothing more than enablers and cogs of our Fascist (merger of corporate and stae) country.I used to keep a file folder of all the evil thugs: guys like Angelo Mozilo and little girls like Blythe Masters that should never be forgotten for their roles.

    There is a lot of coverage on these people–but in a day and age where the infomation comes and goes just as fast, these evil Americans are easily lost among the crowd. There should be a one source stop to find and look at the profile of all the truly rotten little thugs. Just an idea.

    Reply
    • Right, right: they are finite in number, do multiple duties, showing up again and again, board after board, appointment after appointment.
      When the “turn” comes, it’ll be useful to know who to shun and why, before they can memory hole their past actions, involvements and associations.
      …BUT whoever undertakes such a task, please situate the data on a FOREIGN server, for crying out loud! And mirror it a couple other tough-to-bully locations.

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