Robert Khuzami thinks settling with cheats and frauds is a great idea. Why bother with all that silly trial stuff? He must be right, he’s on the short list for SEC Chair.

Bull by the Horns is the story of financial calamity seen from the perspective of this public servant, rendered from detailed notes. We learn with whom she met, what was said, what decisions taken, and how things turned out. She begins with the battles over deregulation of the banks (Basel II), with the gathering sub-prime storm, and proceeds through the disaster: WaMu, Wachovia, Citigroup, Bank of America, AIG, Citigroup again. And then the battles of the aftermath, over among other things Dodd-Frank, Basel III and the robosigning frauds. This is a book for aficionados of infuriating detail.

A year ago this week, the original Occupy Wall Street camp in Zuccotti Park was evicted. The camps served as a focal point for a vibrant protest movement that shook up the country, but they galvanized the anger and fear of working people around the country, struggling to make it through the Great Recession.

The mainstream press often did its best to portray the movement as simply a bunch of unwashed kids without a message, without demands. Yet if one ever doubted that the movement’s message got through, the collection of letters in The Trouble is the Banks, from Occupy the Boardroom and n+1 serves as proof.

Business fraud isn’t really a crime, not if the political hacks on the Supreme Court and the Federalist Society lower court judges can help it.

How can we protect ourselves from Oligarchy when every institution has been perverted to serve only their interests?

As Dave Dayen wrote, “The schools in the lowest-income areas have no air conditioning. Roofs leak. The cafeteria is full of roaches. Mold sits in the ventilation systems. Kids don’t get textbooks for weeks. Administrators pack classrooms with 40 and 50 students at a time.”

The city of Chicago did set aside money to make these repairs, but Mayor Rahm Emanual rerouted it to his cronies. And yet, somehow, Rahm is still the Honorary Chairman of the The Boys and Girls Club of Chicago, an organization with a mission “to enable all young people, especially those who need us most, to reach their full potential as productive, responsible and caring citizens.”

Tell the Board of Directors to remove Rahm Emanual as Honorary Chair of the Boys and Girls Club of Chicago.

Carl Levin is at it again. His Senate Subcommittee on Permanent Investigations, perhaps the best investigatory panel in Congress, particularly on financial matters, has honed in on JPMorgan Chase and the Fail Whale trades.

The Democratic Platform seems to have missed the central point of the banking mess: the Obama administration did not investigate the disaster, and didn’t indict anyone for the crimes that led to the Great Crash. In fact, the administration specifically refused to follow up on criminal referrals from the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission regarding one of the Goldman Sachs mortgage deals, saying as it always does, that it stinks, but isn’t a crime.

Like everyone else but two members of the House, Paul Ryan voted for the STOCK Act, a watered-down version of a bill that would ban insider trading among members of Congress. Before he did that, however, Ryan spent 2008 wheeling and dealing his bank stock portfolio to match his knowledge gained as a member of Congress during the financial crisis.

The prosecutors, the rich, the politicians: all buddies in the rarefied atmosphere of wealth and power. How could one of them possibly be a cheat? And if there is a slip-up, they cover up.