Matt Taibbi: Bush far tougher than Obama on corporate America

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last updated 8 January 2015

Journalist Matt Taibbi was on Democracy Now today promoting his new book The Divide, and Amy Goodman asked him which of the last two presidents has been harder on corporate crime:

Goodman: Who was tougher on corporate America, President Obama or President Bush?

Taibbi: Oh, Bush, hands down. And this is an important point to make, because if you go back to the early 2000s, think about all these high-profile cases: Adelphia, Enron, Tyco, WorldCom, Arthur Andersen. All of these companies were swept up by the Bush Justice Department. And what's interesting about this is that you can see a progression. If you go back to the savings and loan crisis in the late '80s... we put about 800 people in jail during — in the aftermath of that crisis. You fast forward 10 or 15 years to the accounting scandals, like Enron and Adelphia and Tyco, we went after the heads of some of those companies. It wasn't as vigorous as the S&L prosecutions, but we at least did it. At least George Bush recognized the symbolic importance of showing ordinary Americans that justice is blind, right?

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Ryan Cooper is a national correspondent at TheWeek.com. His work has appeared in the Washington Monthly, The New Republic, and the Washington Post.

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