Spitzer: Wall Street will not be ‘too big to indict’ in 2013

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In a commentary posted on his show’s website on Friday, Current TV host Eliot Spitzer predicted more Wall Street heavy hitters would be held accountable for their misdeeds next year.

“Every major institution, just about, has been wrapped up in some significant scandal,” Spitzer said. “Let’s recognize two things: that they are too big to manage and they are not too big to indict. [If] we agree on those two principles, then maybe we can begin to make them smaller, manage them better.”

Even if the financial sector didn’t want to admit it, Spitzer said, developments like the recent scandal involving the London Interbank Offered Rate (Libor) — which led to a mammoth plea bargain by the Swedish bank UBS — and the lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase indicated that law enforcement had finally “turned a corner” in its approach to financial mismanagement.

“I think the Justice Department finally has awakened to the reality that simple money damages and money penalties aren’t enough,” the Viewpoint host and former governor of New York said. “And there are going to a lot more criminal cases brought against institutions.”

An increase in prosecutions, he said, would shake senior management into pleading guilty, if only at the corporate level.

“Indict the bad actors, things will change,” Spitzer said. “Capitalism is good, it works. I’m a huge fan of it. But you’ve gotta live within the boundaries of playing straight.”

Watch Spitzer’s commentary, posted Friday at Current TV, below.