And they'll be assholes. It's called justice fuckers.
From Matt Taibbi:
Finally, A Judge Stands up to Wall Street.The amazing thing about the wave of corruption that has overtaken the financial services industry is that most of it couldn’t happen without virtually every player at every level signing off on these deals. From the ratings agencies to the law firms to the accounting firms to the regulators to the bank executives themselves, everybody had to be on board in order for a lot of these fraud schemes to work.
Judges are a part of that picture, and too often, members of the bench sign off on dirty deals made between banks and regulators when the law says that such settlements must be “fair, reasonable, adequate and in the public interest.”
It’s great that Rakoff is behaving as any decent human being would and rejecting these disgusting settlements. But equally disturbing is the fact that more judges haven’t done the same thing. Are people with backbones really that rare?
To those who still ask "WHY IS OCCUPY WALL STREET PROTESTING?"
Well, in simple terms I would say they want justice. Economic justice perhaps? Judge Rakoff understands that banks and financial firms are not above the law merely because they control vast sums of wealth, and through it, wield disproportionate amounts of political and social power. The people at the various Occupy Everywhere protests understand this as well and are tired of it. Their demand is economic justice, not handouts. Props to them and props to those like Rakoff who do the right thing.
