U.S. Judge Asks: Why Haven’t The Financial Executives Been Prosecuted?

As the five-year statute of limitations approaches for the wrongdoing that bequeathed us the Great Recession, the question of why no high-level executives have been prosecuted becomes more urgent.

You won’t find a better, more incisive discussion of the question than the one by U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff of New York in the current issue of the New York Review of Books.

In his new essay, Rakoff takes particular aim at the government’s habit of prosecuting corporations, but not their executives — a trend we railed against earlier this year.

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