David Letterman Quotes
When Martha gets out she'll be under house arrest in her big $40 million mansion in Bedford. Boy, that'll teach her. She's only allowed out of the house for doctors visits, grocery shopping, or to dump more stock.
Letterman, David. Late Show with David Letterman. CBS, 4 Mar. 2005.
The Boston Globe had just reported that the President’s brother Teddy had cheated on an examination in college.
Barry Bonds was a star professional baseball player whose accomplishments were aided by taking illegal drugs. He lied about his use of drugs, and the Department made a very large effort over years to finally prosecute him. However during that time there were almost no prosecutions of the thousands of bankers and financiers who had lied, cheated, forged legal documents and in the process almost permanently ruined the American economy—the Great Recession of 2008. The Justice Department claimed that white collar cases are very complex and take longer to prepare prosecutions. Critics claimed that there are so many law breakers, that the government does not want to prosecute all the felons, but just go after a few, and this is easier if time has gone by and public anger has receded or been forgotten.
In the Savings & Loan crises there were under 1000 bankers and others who had committed crimes, In the Meltdown of 2008, there were tens of thousands of criminals. Almost everyone connected with home mortgages broke the law, and all of the major banks in America had officers at the highest levels who committed perjury and fraud regarding foreclosure of mortgages. The biggest fish were involved as well as many thousands of others. Wall Street and the financial industry spend many millions in lobbying and campaign donations to be sure that there would be very few prosecutions and even then no major financial leaders would be called to account in a criminal court. The FBI had identified MILLIONS of cases of perjury and fraud in bank forclosures alone.
In the economic meltdown of 2008 and the aftermath, there were so many criminal violations of law in the financial industry that even the Democratic administration of Barack Obama chose not to jail the violators but to levy some large token fines albeit ones which were very affordable for the institutions who had to pay them—in many cases paying them with money made as a result of profits on no-interest money they received in bailouts after the 2008 Meltdown.
The Senator asked Justice Department officials if the reason that there had been no prosecutions of any major financial figures associated with the Meltdown of 2008 and the Great Recession is that they were “too big to jail.” This appears to be the first public official to use this phrase. See {637991} for the Attorney General’s sad but truthful reply.
As this quotation demonstrates, this problem has plagued America for a long time. In terms of crimes committed, for example, General Electric Corporation has committed more crimes than any other criminal enterprise, but it thrives despite this and the penalties are seen as just a slap on the wrist when they do get caught but they do not even get prosecuted for many of their crimes like most large corporations and rich individuals who commit crimes. The people who go to jail are usually the lower level or middle level criminals and the kingpins, the ones with the control and the money, rarely even get prosecuted. In the Great Recession, the largest banks in America committed tens of thousands of serious crimes by forging signatures and making false claims on legal documents. Not a single executive ever went to jail or was even given a suspended sentence. The banks paid small fines.
David Michael Letterman is an American television host, comedian, writer, and producer. He hosted late night television talk shows for 33 years, beginning with the February 1, 1982, debut of Late Night with David Letterman on NBC, and ending with the May 20, 2015, broadcast of Late Show with David Letterman on CBS. In total, Letterman hosted 6,080 episodes of Late Night and Late Show, surpassing his friend and mentor Johnny Carson as the longest-serving late night talk show host in American television history. In 1996, Letterman was ranked 45th on TV Guide's 50 Greatest TV Stars of All Time. In 2002, The Late Show with David Letterman was ranked seventh on TV Guide's 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time.
