While Attorney General Eric Holder maintains that the nation’s top banks are
too big to target for fraud prosecutions and other criminal behavior – “too
big to jail,” as some critics call it – the Wall Street titans are taking no
chances, choosing to dish out millions of dollars in campaign cash to Congress
over the last several years.

Holder asserted recently that the size of big banks has “an inhibiting
influence” on the Justice Department’s ability to prosecute the criminal
activity of the bank executives during the 2008-09 financial crisis.

 

“I am concerned that the size of some of these institutions becomes so large
that it does become difficult for us 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,” Holder told the Senate Judiciary Committee.

In other words, too big to fail, too big to prosecute.

The folks at Maplight.org, a government watchdog group, point out that it’s
unclear just how big a bank has to be to be considered un-prosecutable, but
HSBC’s recent settlement for enabling drug cartels and rogue states to
launder money suggests that even they — the ninth largest U.S. bank by assets
and many times smaller than the biggest banks — are too big to prosecute. By facilitating deregulation, bailing out insolvent institutions (TARP) and voting against limits on bank size, Congress has allowed
these banks to grow as big as they currently are, according to MapLight.
Inspired by Holder’s weak-kneed approach toward the banks’ criminal
activities, MapLight has analyzed campaign contributions from the political
action commitees (PACs) of the nine largest banks to members of Congress since
Jan. 1, 2003.

Here’s what they found:

  • In total,
    the PACs of the top 9 banks
    have given $17,019,505
    to current members of the 113th Congress.
  • Bank of America has given the most, at $3,381,157.
  • HSBC has given $1,141,211.
  • House member Spencer Bachus, chairman emeritus of
    the House Committee on Financial Services , received
    $399,500 from the PACs of the top 9 banks, more than
    any other current member of Congress. Bachus is also the top recipient of
    money from HSBC, with $34,000 in
    contributions.

To download a spreadsheet of this data, click here.
A link to this report can be found here.