I'm Bill Moyers. It's good to have your ear.

The criminologist Bill Black lays bare how Washington and Wall Street are joined in a culture of corruption.

It's an obscenity, and no one can claim with a straight face that if we prosecuted bankers, as opposed to banks, or sued

bankers to get back their bonuses, that it would have any negative effect. It would have

huge positive effects in sending the right message of accountability and the right message of deterrence.

And, of course, whichever president did it would be vastly more popular with the American people.

Thanks for joining us.

As you've heard, Eric Holder has announced that he's resigning as Attorney General.

You will leave behind a mixed scorecard,

A for civil rights, C for civil liberties, and F for failing to prosecute the banking executives

who brought about the financial calamity of 2008. Holder let the bankers off the hook individually

as he negotiated civil settlements with their institutions

for issuing mortgage-backed securities tied to faulty subprime loans. The billions of dollars

in penalties the banks are paying will largely be borne by shareholders and by taxpayers

as the banks write off the fines as the cost of doing business. The executives

get off scot-free. But hold on. Don't close the file yet. As Michael Hilsick wrote in the

Los Angeles Times last week, given the government's failure to bring criminal cases against

bankers and other Wall Street figures for collapsing the U.S. economy in 2008,

it's been left to the little guy to strike back.

And the little guy did just that in a case in Sacramento,

where a federal jury acquitted four mortgage holders charged with fraud

after hearing testimony that bank executives had pulled out all the stops to seduce them into

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