Sanders Campaign Press Release - Wall Street CEOs Not 'Too Big to Jail'

WASHINGTON – Sen. Bernie Sanders on Tuesday agreed with Former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke that corporate executives should have gone to jail for the illegal behavior which caused the financial crisis in 2008.

"Everything that went wrong or was illegal was done by some individual, not by an abstract firm," the former Fed chief told USA Today. "[T]here should have been more accountability at the individual level."

Sanders agreed.

"It is an outrage that not one major Wall Street executive has gone to jail for causing the near collapse of the economy. The failure to prosecute the crooks on Wall Street for their illegal and reckless behavior is a clear indictment of our broken criminal justice system," Sanders said.

"It is an obscenity that people in this country are getting arrested at near record rates for smoking marijuana, but not one Wall Street CEO has been prosecuted for triggering the Great Recession in 2008.

"Millions of Americans lost their jobs, homes, life savings and ability to send their kids to college because of the greed on Wall Street. We can no longer tolerate a criminal justice system that treats Wall Street executives as too big to jail when their actions have ruined the lives of so many Americans.

"I wish Ben Bernanke would have understood that when he was chairman of the Federal Reserve."

To read about Bernanke's comments, click here and here.