The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap

by Matt Taibbi

This, ultimately, is the obvious flaw in the “systemic importance” argument. The Justice Department could rationally make that argument exactly once. If it let an HSBC or UBS skate on systemic importance grounds, but then allowed that same company to retain its dangerously outsize systemic importance, it would simply be inviting more violations.

It’s a particular feature of modern American government officials, particularly Democratic Party types, that they often expect the press and the public to give them credit for their unspoken excuses. They’ll vote yea on the Iraq war and the Patriot Act and nay for a public option or an end to torture or a bill to break up the banks. Then they’ll cozy up to you privately and whisper that of course they’re with you in spirit on those issues, but politically it just wasn’t possible to vote that way. And then they start giving you their reasons.

“Low-class people,” he said, “do low-class things.”