Today, January 25th, is the third anniversary of a brutal killing at the hands of EEI's CEO George Anderson. The event took place on Water Street at the side of the Goldman, Sachs headquarters building in Manhattan.
Everybody covered it: the Post, the Times, the local papers and television stations. However, the aftermath indicated that New York's financial managers had taken complete control of the city and of the State of New York.
Financial crimes had not been prosecuted. We saw that with the second round of Dot.com frauds 1998-2001. Now, is Wall Street prosecution-free for everything ? Does the criminal law apply for our Ruling Class ?
Charges: vehicular manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide, felony DUI, and leaving the scene. The charges were admitted. The DUI was proved with a hospital blood test. Video cameras clocked the SUV at 60 m.p.h. flying up Water Street, then weaving around a bend in the road before slamming into the 59-year old Ms. Cioffi.
She was thrown 120 feet. The SUV took off, leaving the scene of the accident. The action was captured by at least three surveillance video cameras. What followed as the charges wended through the system makes one wonder about our form of capitalism... whether it is good, now, for anything but bribery and theft ?
Eventually in a new ADA was chosen. Someone pliable. ADA David Hammer, "(Cioffi) probably stepped out from between two parked cars" - feigning ignorance of the multiple surveillance videos. In fact, eye witness accounts had her trying to hail a cab.
Eventually the charges are dismissed or reduced to misdemeanors. ADA David Hammer pushed through "a rich man's sentence" 16 days and a $350 fine.
So that is the price of a life.
Go to a Rangers hockey game, get drunk, drive recklessly at twice the going speed limit, plow down an ordinary office worker. Render no assistance. The system will take care of you.
Apparently this lawlessness spans everything from fraud to vehicular homicide.
Dickens had it right more than a century ago. Failure to prosecute Wall Street royalty -- a terrible disease. Indeed, this echos the carriage scene from "A Tale of Two Cities.
The complaint had sometimes made itself audible, even in that deaf city and dumb age, that, in the narrow streets without footways, the fierce patrician custom of hard driving endangered and maimed the mere vulgar in a barbarous manner. But, few cared enough for that to think of it a second time, and, in this matter, as in all others, the common wretches were left to get out of their difficulties as they could.
With a wild rattle and clatter, and an inhuman abandonment of consideration not easy to be understood in these days, the carriage dashed through streets and swept round corners, with women screaming before it, and men clutching each other and clutching children out of its way. At last, swooping at a street corner by a fountain, one of its wheels came to a sickening little jolt, and there was a loud cry from a number of voices, and the horses reared and plunged.
But for the latter inconvenience, the carriage probably would not have stopped; carriages were often known to drive on, and leave their wounded behind, and why not? But the frightened valet had got down in a hurry, and there were twenty hands at the horses' bridles.
"What has gone wrong?" said Monsieur, calmly looking out.
A tall man in a nightcap had caught up a bundle from among the feet of the horses, and had laid it on the basement of the fountain, and was down in the mud and wet, howling over it like a wild animal.
"Pardon, Monsieur the Marquis!" said a ragged and submissive man, "it is a child."
"Why does he make that abominable noise? Is it his child?"
"Excuse me, Monsieur the Marquis -- it is a pity -- yes."
The fountain was a little removed; for the street opened, where it was, into a space some ten or twelve yards square. As the tall man suddenly got up from the ground, and came running at the carriage, Monsieur the Marquis clapped his hand for an instant on his sword-hilt.
"Killed!" shrieked the man, in wild desperation, extending both arms at their length above his head, and staring at him. "Dead!"
The people closed round, and looked at Monsieur the Marquis. There was nothing revealed by the many eyes that looked at him but watchfulness and eagerness; there was no visible menacing or anger. Neither did the people say anything; after the first cry, they had been silent, and they remained so. The voice of the submissive man who had spoken, was flat and tame in its extreme submission. Monsieur the Marquis ran his eyes over them all, as if they had been mere rats come out of their holes.
He took out his purse.
"It is extraordinary to me," said he, "that you people cannot take care of yourselves and your children. One or the other of you is for ever in the way. How do I know what injury you have done my horses. See! Give him that."
He threw out a gold coin for the valet to pick up, and all the heads craned forward that all the eyes might look down at it as it fell. The tall man called out again with a most unearthly cry, "Dead!"
He was arrested by the quick arrival of another man, for whom the rest made way. On seeing him, the miserable creature fell upon his shoulder, sobbing and crying, and pointing to the fountain, where some women were stooping over the motionless bundle, and moving gently about it. They were as silent, however, as the men.
"I know all, I know all," said the last comer. "Be a brave man, my Gaspard! It is better for the poor little plaything to die so, than to live.
We knew that a fiction had been created in their behalf where the New York Stock Exchange voids (by its "rules") the basic Common Law and statutory crimes related to fraud and theft. Goldman, Sachs and their rival "sell-side" houses can sell registered stocks that they do not own, as though they owned them. Truly. These "naked short" fraud-sales are a crime everywhere else in the world, yet allowed and protected for New York's Ruling Class.
What is law ?
Does the concept exist in our reality ?
They can kill us. They can walk away. They move markets by selling what they do not own.