09.18.12
Cybercrime, Wall Street shoeshine, financial crime
Wall Street was responsible for the economic collapse in 2008-2009. That collapse inflicted more damage on the American middle class in lost income and jobs than any amount of cybercrime.
I’ve long argued all newspaper stories in which “experts” show up to maintain Wall Street needs to be protected from “cybercrime,” that the nation is at risk from a calamity-causing attack on the financial system, are shoeshine for the 1 percent.
It’s a covering tactic, one with almost no basis in reality, trotted out when there is legislation on the table that would increase business to arms manufacturers and computer security firms.
Global cybercrime is very real. But it is not one of the primary problems threatening the existence, even the day-to-day well being, of what’s left of the middle class in the US.
So if you took an honest poll and asked people if they wanted the US financial system to be protected from digital Pearl Harbor or to simply be protected from the US financial system, themselves, I bet you’d get many more for the latter.
At Rolling Stone magazine, Matt Taibbi briefly discusses an insider book which purports to explain why the US government would not take on Wall Street over the economic collapse.
There is a quote near the end, one in which Taibbi mentions cybercrime. And it’s pure shoeshine:
Again, those interested in understanding the mindset of the people who should be leading the anti-corruption charge ought to read this book. It’s the weird lack of concern that shines through, like Khuzami’s comment that he’s “not losing sleep” over judges reprimanding his soft-touch settlements with banks, or then Southern District of New York U.S. Attorney Ray Lohier’s comment that the thing that most concerned him – this is the period of 2008-2009, the middle of a historic crimewave on Wall Street – was “cyber crime.”