Ask those who have followed the investment banking scandals that have rocked Wall Street. The recent rounds of scandals have made many of us even more cynical than we were before. This latest proof that the USA's system of wealth distribution is rigged and harmful to many investors was hardly needed but these things keep happening. The investment bankers were fined 1.4 billion dollars, wasn't justice done? Lets see, they got away without admitting that their tactic of paying analysts outside of their firms to give rosy analyses of the prospects of companies was fraud. Intentional deceit used to pump the prices of shares of companies who were paying them large investment banking fees, hmm it sounds like fraud to me.

Of course the investment bankers held shares in those companies, which were most often mysteriously sold at the top of the market. A false top created by research reports generated by shills. "Analysts" paid by the investment banking firm to set values for the stock in question at a level chosen by the investment banking firm. Always paid by the firm that had the most to gain from those artificially high prices. Yep that sounds like fraud, clear intent to deceive the investor with considerable malice and aforethought spent in developing these schemes. It's fraud all right! So why were they not punished for their fraudulent acts, not just fined, but put in jail?

Well the hard part of dealing with the law is to understand the matrix in which justice is meted out. The chummy relationships that often develop between lawyers and the judges that sit on the bench are only part of the human factor in that matrix. Nobody should underestimate the effect of those factors but here we are talking about money, really, really, really big money. The amount of money passing through Wall Street and thus the hands of investment bankers boggles the imagination of anyone examining it for the first time. We are talking about trillions of dollars a year flowing through the hands of these fraudulent thieves. What is 1.4 billion in fines in this kind of marketplace? It is far, far less than a slap on the wrist. Not worse than the cost of a traffic fine to the average poor person in this nation. In fact the humiliation of being called to account is all they really paid, and the jokes passing through their boardrooms will take care of that little burst of humility. How many attorney generals does it take to screw in a light bulb on Wall Street? Only one but he can't get the light to come on because the switch is rigged so he gives up and goes home.

As bad as that is the rest of the truth about our system of justice involves the different standard of law that applies to the poor or to men and women. Poor men go to jail, more of them every year. Worse if you are poor you have a far larger chance of being the victim of a crime that goes undetected than even the investors in Wall Street Securities. Poor men who commit nonviolent crimes like drug abuse will go to jail far more often than the man in the suburbs that gets high on Coke and beats his wife. Which act is more reprehensible? Who is really poor in this nation? The person who can't afford justice even when he/she is physically abused or killed certainly qualifies as poor.

Does the death of Lacy Peterson affect you more than the death of a young black woman in Brooklyn? You bet it does! Lacy has been given press recognition. Do the deaths of thousands of poorer women at the hands of violent men who prey on them affect you? No because they are poor and thus invisible to most of us and to our system of justice. The prospect of such murders being solved depends on the early connection of the victim with the perpetrator and their subsequent arrest. That seldom happens unless the identity of the murderer is obvious.

Violence does not always end in murder, beating after beating goes unpunished in the poorer areas of town, and even in the homes of the wealthy women have little protection against a violent man. Women and children make up a far larger number of the impoverished part of this society than men. For them there is seldom even a semblance of justice. But for the rich men on Wall Street there is always freedom followed by the consolation of the next deal. Optionally that is followed by the sipping of the thousand dollar a bottle brandy with fellow thieves. In a world of such injustice can we expect to keep our civil society civil? It seems unlikely, the people who make the rules, our legislators and judges, have little respect for the dignity of the poor. The judges see the poor every day in all of their degraded states of pain and self-destructive behavior. The hard working poor seldom come to their attention. That is possibly why they have far more respect for the cleverness of the thieves on Wall Street. It will remain an unjust world until more of us care enough to do something about it. This is after all the land in which the people make the rules, isn't it? God bless and keep you, our troops, our protestors and our poor safe in these trying times. Our Wall Street bankers will have to use their wealth to keep them safe, it will probably suffice.