Where’s Warren?

[Valin]

National Review:

 

Kevin D. Williamson

3/15/13

 

Where is Senator Elizabeth Warren when we need her? Senator Warren — whose main mode of political operation is grandstanding during financial-oversight hearings — recently browbeat some feckless Treasury officials over the HSBC money-laundering case. HSBC was fined just under $2 billion in the settlement, but that was not enough for the crusading Senator Warren: She wanted to see bankers led off in leg irons. “Your company pays a fine,” she said, “and you go home and sleep in your own bed at night — every single individual associated with this — and I just think that’s fundamentally wrong.”

 

I am inclined to agree with Senator Warren in the case of HSBC. Somebody over there belongs in a prison cell, and possibly in stocks. When Larry Kudlow put the question to his bipartisan panel a while back, nobody, left or right, seemed to think that Senator Warren was being unfair to the bank. It was a rare moment of bipartisan agreement.

 

So I am hoping that Senator Warren will join me in asking: Why haven’t the powers that be in the ailing state of Illinois been dragged off to the hoosegow? Or at least given a $2 billion fine, as HSBC was?

 

The state of Illinois is a criminal enterprise engaged in securities fraud. Illinois this week became only the second state in history to be charged with fraud by the Securities and Exchange Commission........(Snip)