Anyone singing the “Happy Birthday Song” over the past 66 years was forced to pay royalties to the Warner/Chappell music company, who was making an average of about $2 million each year from the royalties for the song.
The company finally admitted in court that they never owned the song and agreed to pay the artists suing them $14 million in a settlement. That’s right, they committed fraud that got them over $100 million in profits, and in the end had to only pay out around $14 million to settle the claims.
The banks, who made well over $1 trillion in profits by engaging in illegal mortgage securities fraud and thereby collapsed the US economy, which was followed up by the government bailing them out with ANOTHER trillion dollars, were forced to pay back a mere $13 billion in settlements. Goldman Sachs, who made the whole scheme work by selling the worthless loans as mortgage backed securities, had to pay back a mere $5 billion.
It seems as though companies are committing wholesale fraud and paying pennies on the dollar when they get caught. This is one of the reasons why so many people are so unhappy with our government, and I am betting it is a big reason why Sanders has such a large following.
2 Comments
SiGraybeard · February 12, 2016 at 4:51 pm
I'd only add that in addition to the bankers going to jail, I want to see the congress members who aided and abetted the bankers go to jail. Go all the way back to Jimmy Carter and the Community Reinvestment Act which mandated banks make loans to bad credit risks, go to the "Community Organizers" who protested in banks and put great social pressure on the banks to make bad loans, and go all the way forward to Dodd-Frank and the other bad laws that enable and encourage criminal behavior by the banks.
Divemedic · February 14, 2016 at 1:58 pm
It isn't just them. The old saying goes "When buying and selling is controlled by legislation, the first thing to be bought and sold are the legislators."
The way to become rich in this country is to gain favor with government officials. Then you get tax breaks, lucrative contracts, and legislation that locks out the competition. Operating a business nowadays has more to do with who you know in government than it does with how you operate.
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