Markell v. Biden
As I read this it sounds like Biden is saying that criminals need to face justice and Markell is saying “C’mon now. Boys will be boys.”
“To get our nation’s economy moving again, we need a strong and vibrant financial services industry that responsibly provides credit and capital, and that is properly and fairly regulated,” Markell said. “As long as these lawsuits continue to drag out, they will continue to drag down our economy.”
Biden said in a written statement late Friday that his duty was to “protect homeowners, investors and all Delawareans affected by the abuses of the mortgage industry that created this economic crisis.”
“I do not settle matters that have not been investigated, and there remains a lot of work to be done in understanding the scope of the mortgage industry’s bad conduct that has hurt so many,” Biden said. “Our economy works the best when everyone plays by the rules, and we must hold those who brought our financial system to the brink of collapse to account.”
Perhaps my take on Jack’s position is jaundiced by my sense that President Obama is absolutely dedicated to a policy of holding all banking malefactors harmless, and I’m pretty sick of Democrats comforting the comfortable.
jaundiced? maybe. 100% correct? definitely.
Beau Biden has the high ground here.
I wasn’t too pleased with Markell last month when he killed his first inmate.
Jason has it right. It is obvious with this positioning that Markell is standing up to anything that he perceives will decimate jobs or not increase jobs. Jobs shouldn’t be ahead in line before putting away the criminal bankers and providing that justice is met and served.
Jobs is all that Markell can see? Hence the embarrassing tampering with the Board that didn’t vote his way on the Middletown rehab and the way his new DelDOT chief has been opening up doors for development that wasn’t necessarily making good sense as far as state investment in road improvements (Governor’s Square and US 301) and the whole DNREC promises that DP&L buying Bloom Energy is really and truly appropriately part of our goal for 20% sustainable energy thingie. I guess I could go on.
Lord knows I’m not a Beau booster, but, by god, I like how he’s sticking to his guns on this one.
He may turn me yet.
One reason companies incorporate in Delaware is the strength and reputation of Delaware’s business laws and the Chancery Court. Markell’s lobbying for covering-up and ignoring the crimes and violations of Delaware law by the bankers and the financial industry threatens to destroy that reputation, and bring a two-tiered system of justice to Delaware where one set of laws doesn’t apply to the rich and powerful and politically connected but does apply to everybody else.
You mean we don’t have a two-tiered system of justice now?
Which reminds me. Until and unless Beaudhisattva investigates rather than covers up the actions of Tony DeLuca and his enablers, I’m not on his bandwagon.
Having said that, Markell’s Business Uber Alles approach alarms me.
Had he been Governor after WW II, would he have allowed a VW plant run by ex-Nazis to have opened in Delaware? Based on what I’ve seen here, it’s impossible to say ‘no’ with any certainty.
Believe me, I KNOW I’m gonna get hammered for that, and I freely admit that it’s over-the-top hyperbole, but just how criminal an enterprise does a business have to be for Markell to say no to it? And/or for Markell to say no to tax breaks and other incentives to keep the criminal enterprise in full flower?
The Markell Theorem: Too big to fail=Too big to go to jail.
I am not arguing that a two-tiered system of justice doesn’t already exist. I just don’t recall a Delaware Governor brazenly and publicly lobbying for stopping an investigation and/or prosecution of clear criminal behavior. Do you?
I think the key to your question resides in the word ‘publicly’. In that case, my answer would be ‘no’.
Do I have any doubt that other governors have brazenly sought to ‘stop…an investigation and/or prosecution of clear criminal behavior’? Also ‘no’. They just used the Delaware Way to put the kibosh on said investigations. At least in Markell’s case, there’s no indication of direct links between the Governor and the malefactors. It’s just that ‘jobsjobsjobs’ mantra.
We’ve reached the point in America where our plausibly-elected “leaders” can openly say “well, lets not prosecute those crimes because…” and then use reasons ranging from Obama’s meaningless “we don’t want to look backwards” to Markell now stating that even just investigating criminal behavior would hurt “our recovery.”
He doesn’t say, of course, how prosecuting criminal bankers and fraudsters would hurt “our recovery.” If the “recovery” he is talking about is the corrupt bankers and fraudsters recovering from their worry of being prosecuted, he is probably correct. If he is talking about recovering from the epidemic of greed, corruption, and malfeasance that lead to our economic collapse and recession, then he could not be more wrong.
Leaving blatant criminality un-prosecuted and unpunished is a guarantee of repeat offenses. As the head of Delaware’s executive branch, you would think he would understand this.
Basically agree with everything you said. The (phony) Markell rationale is “Let’s just get this unpleasantness behind us so that the banks can start lending again.”
I can’t begin to count the ways that that’s intellectually dishonest.
It’s just that ‘jobsjobsjobs’ mantra.
Which suggests that someone got to him and made that argument. There’s no reason for Markell to come to that conclusion on his own, unless he’s an idiot – and he isn’t that. So which poor persecuted bank or mortgage company gave him the most campaign cash? That’d be a place to start.
TNJ won’t even consider that angle. The editors at the top love Jackie Boy to death. You guys are going to be on your own.
As Geezer has pointed out, the entire Delaware delegation has been in thrall to the banks since the Financial Center Development Act.
At the federal and state level, our elected officials have worked feverishly to protect even the most criminal of these enterprises, regardless of the cost to the non-zillionaires among us.
Nobody has to ‘get to’ Markell. The banks own him, they own our congressional delegation, and they own us.
The only thing I can come up with is some bigshot investors in Delaware believe the Federal deal was not fair to their bank, and asked Beau to intervene. But that doesn’t explain why Markell would object, unless he and Beau are aligned with different interests within the banking industry. That kind of politics would be over my head.