1. misleading the American public into going to a series of costly wars through lies about WMDs -> not punishable
2. Weakening Glass-Stegal and encouraging questionable and irresponsible risk-taking at major banking institutions -> not punishable
3. Fraudulent evaluation of risk-ratings by trusted agencies for the sake of profit leading to worst financial disaster since great depression -> not punishable, actually, rewarded with billions in bail-out by tax payers
4. setting up and running a website to host underground drug trade with bitcoins -> punishable by life-sentence
Not that what Ulbricht did was right or that he shouldn't be punished... but his biggest problem was that his business didn't generate enough profit at the expense of the public. Justice might be blind, but even she can still smell money.
2. Glass Stegal wouldn't have prevented shit. In fact the combination banks Glass Stegal would have prevented--BoA and Chase--were the banks who were strong enough to absorb the shitty failed banks--merill and lehman--that were often just investment banks.
Taking irresponsible risks isn't a crime either.
3) No evidence of fraud. These agencies trusted the financial models and those models didn't work.
Fuckups aren't punished in our society the way intentional law breaking is.
Should be guillotine every founder whose company fails?
Debatable. The justice system hasn't found that, no charges have been filed within the justice system over them.
> Weakening Glass-Stegal and encouraging questionable and irresponsible risk-taking at major banking institutions -> not punishable
While again this is untested directly, the legislative privilege in the Constitution makes this pretty clearly not punishable through the justice system. The punishment that can be dealt out for this is at the ballot box, not through the justice system.
Guillotine, probably not, but I'm okay with punishing every "founder" of a "company" that errantly spends billions of tax dollars on weaponry and uses it to kill tens of thousands of innocent people.
5. Apples are red
6. Oranges are orange
You're comparing facts: "Ulbricht ran The Silk Road," with your own conjecture: "Banks encouraged 'questionable' risk taking." You're making a lot of extraordinary claims that are very very difficult to prove with no evidence to back them up.
And you're using this conjecture as evidence of... something? You don't really make a point. You just repeat popular internet tropes.
... even though it was well know torture does not produce useful intelligence
... and having ratified (in 1994) the Convention Against torture which includes a duty to prosecute or extradite
... and 18 U.S. Code § 2340A being amended by the "PATRIOT Act" - before the torture occured - to include clause (c) which allows charges and all punishments (except death) to include anyone who conspires to comit torture
-> not even an attempt to prosecute
/* is there a clearer, more obvious way to demonstrate how the US no longer cares about the "rule of law"? perhaps, but I can't think of anything that would top what the CIA has already done /
/* before anybody replies with idiotic claims that somehow it is ok to torture foreigners with claims relating to jurisdictional boundaries, I suggest actually read 18 U.S. Code § 2340A (b) */
Not meaning to go off on a political tangent, but it seems to me like there was a conscious effort not to ask such questions in an official capacity.
Imagine an alternate universe where we had Watergate-style hearings when Pelosi/Reid took over in 2007, or when the Obama administration started in 2009. In some circles, some people wanted that, and I think rightly or wrongly politicians decided it was not worth it. Easy to forget now, but it was certainly in political discourse 6 to 9 years ago.
When people that have clearly violated the law - like certain people in the CIA, for example - are not even prosecuted, it is hard agree with people that think it is "just" to give someone life in prison for allegedly committing as far lesser crime.
At worst, Ross Ulbricht is accused of an attempted conspiracy of murder. People in the CIA actually killed people, in ways that are always illegal.
A lot of people were defrauded. The economy is still trying to recover. I don't think people who lost homes or are struggling to find work and make ends meet would consider any of this to be an internet trope.