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The Political Scene | The New Yorker

Patrick Radden Keefe and Sheelah Kolhatkar on Prosecuting Financial Crimes

The Political Scene | The New Yorker

The New Yorker

President, Barack, News, Politics, Wnyc, Obama, Lizza, Washington, Wickenden

4.33.9K Ratings

🗓️ 2 October 2017

⏱️ 13 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Jesse Eisinger’s book “The Chickenshit Club” asks why the Justice Department fails to prosecute financial executives for criminal business dealings. The staff writer Patrick Radden Keefe, who has covered crime of many kinds, reviewed the book for The New Yorker. He compared notes with his fellow staff writer Sheelah Kolhatkar, who writes the magazine’s Financial Page. How, they wonder, can the government charge a bank a sixteen-billion-dollar fine for wrongdoing yet fail to prosecute any individual at that bank for a crime?

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Transcript

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0:00.0

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Things people love.

0:48.7

I'm Dorothy Wickendon.

0:50.4

On today's Politics and More podcast, New Yorker staff writers Patrick Radin Keefe and Sheila Kolhakkar

0:56.7

discussed the Justice Department's problematic record in prosecuting white-collar criminals.

1:05.4

Staff writer Sheila Kulhatkar writes frequently about Wall Street and finance.

1:10.7

Her colleague Patrick Raddenkief also

1:12.6

writes about business, but more often he covers shady business, drug trafficking and the like.

1:18.7

Patrick reviewed a book called, we're going to have to bleep this for the radio, the chicken

1:22.5

club, which argues that the Department of Justice has gotten awfully skittish about prosecuting people in finance.

1:30.2

Not long ago, Patrick and Sheila sat down to talk about why nobody seems to go to jail for financial crimes anymore and how that's impacted the country.

1:40.0

So Patrick and I met several years ago in a federal courthouse not far from here.

1:45.0

I believe it was 40 Foley Square.

1:47.1

Does that sound right to you?

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