Article: How Wall Street’s Bankers Stayed Out of Jail

The probes into bank fraud leading up to the financial industry’s crash have been quietly closed. Is this justice?

by William D. Cohan

Any narrative of how we got to this point has to start with the so-called Holder Doctrine, a June 1999 memorandum written by the then–deputy attorney general warning of the dangers of prosecuting big banks—a variant of the “too big to fail” argument that has since become so familiar.

. . .extracting large settlements paid with shareholders’ money is not the same as bringing alleged wrongdoers to justice.