The Chickenshit Club Quotes

“In the mid-1980s, Congress authorized the creation of the US Sentencing Commission to examine prison terms and codify norms to correct the arbitrary punishments meted out by unaccountable judges. First, in 1989 the commission’s guidelines for individuals went into effect, establishing a point system for how many years of prison a convicted criminal might get, based on the seriousness of the misconduct and a person’s criminal history. In 1991, amid public and congressional outrage that sentences for white-collar criminals were too light and fines and sanctions for corporations too lenient, the Sentencing Commission expanded the concept to cover organizations. It formalized the Sporkin-era regime of offering leniency in exchange for cooperation and reform. The new rules delineated factors that could earn a culprit mercy. In levying a fine, the court should consider, the sentencing guidelines said, “any collateral consequences of conviction.” 1 “Collateral consequences” was, and remains, an ill-defined concept. How worried should the government be if a punishment causes a company to go out of business? Should regulators worry about the cashiering of innocent employees? What about customers, suppliers, or competitors? Should they fret about financial crises? From this rather innocuous mention, the little notion of collateral consequences would blossom into the great strangling vine that came to be known after the financial crisis of 2008 by its shorthand: “too big to jail.” Prosecutors and regulators were crippled by the idea that the government could not criminally sanction some companies—particularly giant banks—for fear that they would collapse, causing serious problems for financial markets or the economy.”
― Jesse Eisinger, The Chickenshit Club: Why the Justice Department Fails to Prosecute Executives

“Today’s Department of Justice has lost the will and indeed the ability to go after the highest-ranking corporate wrongdoers.”
― Jesse Eisinger, The Chickenshit Club: Why the Justice Department Fails to Prosecute Executives

“White wasn’t enthusiastic, but she couldn’t see any other option. She approved the deferred prosecution agreement, the first with a large company. In late October 1994 the Department of Justice filed criminal charges against Prudential Securities but then held off on pressing them on the condition that the firm adhere to reforming itself. The Department of Justice made the company put $ 330 million into a fund for the investors, doubling the fund that the SEC had set up the previous year. White said that she and her office made the decision not to indict formally out of fear for what would happen to Prudential’s eighteen thousand employees and to its clients.”
― Jesse Eisinger, The Chickenshit Club: Why the Justice Department Fails to Prosecute Executives

“You’re totally wrong!” Rakoff cried. He explained that the rule against split infinitives was just a bizarre invention by some pedants in the late nineteenth century to have English mimic Latin, in which infinitives are one word. All the great authors—Shakespeare! Faulkner!—split the infinitive.”
― Jesse Eisinger, The Chickenshit Club: Why the Justice Department Fails to Prosecute Executives