about what those financial institutions had been up to. so the question i really want to ask is how tough you are? how much leverage you really have in the settlements and tell me about the last few times you have taken the biggest financial institutions on wall street all the way to a trial. anybody? according to the l.a. times, since the mortgage melt jen down, they ve been offering banks a no press release clause promising the fdic will make no mention of the settlements unless it has to. the government officials charged with regulating banks decided they are not too big to fail in criminal courts but in the court of public opinion.
attorney general eric holder. i am concerned that the size of some of these institutions becomes so large that it does become difficult for us to to prosecute them, when we are hit with indications that if you do prosecute, if you do bring a criminal charge it will have a negative impact on the national economy, perhaps even the world economy. and i think that is a function of the fact that some of these institutions have become too large. the institutions, in question they are very large, large banks, one in question, doing a lot of drug laundering. and holder was not the first to express concern. a few weeks ago we showed you this. tell me a little bit about the last few times you have taken the biggest financial institutions on wall street all the way to a trial. we do not have to bring the people a trial, or
not really hiring. we re glad that you allow people to work for you, but, you know, that doesn t mean we all work for a company called comcast, and well, let s not start talking about comcast in this hour. leave that for off line. all i m saying is the profits somehow get to go to the top, but when the pain comes around that, we re going to share. the other piece of this, which we want to talk about is the defense industry. they are actually getting really dragged around on this. if the sequester takes place also, andrew, if we re talking about uncertainty here, if the sequester goes into place and kick back with retroactive package, there s still people that are hired and fired in the middle of all this that work for the defense industry. by the way, not just in the defense industry. this is going to impact so many other i was talking to a ceo of big health insurance company. they re going to they believe they may have to lay off people, in part, because if the d
put it in context, the big banks that received tarp loans have all paid them back. the government made a profit on it. admittedly, an unusual way to make a profit for the federal government and taxpayers, but a profit was made. indeed, they invested in aig. just put it all in context. going forward i think what andrew said is spot on. you have to put a regime and protocol in place that insures that risk is managed better and that rules are followed more closely and that punishment is meated out in a quicker way. one of the tragedies over the last five or six years. there are punishment. sdmroog over the last five or six years, we have seen a new set of rules and regulations, and some of the things these guys did were not against the law, so the fact that rules and laws have changed, i think, is a positive thing. heather, today we have word from the justice department that s now going to be shifting its prosecution strategy so that they re pushing now for guilty pleas rather than
it impacting the economy writ large, it will. the question is how much will it? one last point on the business leadership and their issue in this. my sense is all they really care about is a grand bargain. is there horrible economic inequality? 100%. the question is how do you address that? higher taxes. there s 100 things you can do. in this situation, though, ultimately there is going to be pain. there s going to be pain for somebody, and i think we re not willing to accept when we re willing to do that. i m not saying we should do it tomorrow. we probably shouldn t. can we come up with a peculiarage that starts with that pain in three, four, five years out? the problem, by the way, when do you that on the flip side is people are saying in three, four, five years out there will be another vote that says let s put it out another five years. speaking of pain and hostage taking, there is obviously the continuing resolution that we have coming up ahead. that s what i meant by march 2