Click amount to donate direct to CounterPunch
  • $25
  • $50
  • $100
  • $500
  • $other
  • use PayPal
Support Our Annual Fund Drive! We only ask one time of year, but when we do, we mean it. Without your support we can’t continue to bring you the very best material, day-in and day-out. CounterPunch is one of the last common spaces on the Internet. Help make sure it stays that way.
FacebookTwitterGoogle+RedditEmail

Wells Fargo and the Library of Congress’ National Book Festival

by

I went to the Library of Congress National Book Festival Saturday at the Washington, D.C. Convention.

There were more than 100 authors there, speaking about their books and signing them — including the wildly popular children’s book Ghosts by Raina Telgemeier.

More than 100,000 people attended the one day event.

But not one of the books dealt with corporate power, corporate control over the society, corporate crime and violence.

There have been so many great books written in recent months about the topic.

Matt Taibbi’s The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap.

Bradley Birkenfeld’s Lucifer’s Banker: The Untold Story of How I Destroyed Swiss Bank Secrecy.

Why Not Jail?: Industrial Catastrophes, Corporate Malfeasance, and Government Inaction by Rena Steinzer.

Why They Do It: Inside the Mind of the White-Collar Criminal by Eugene Soltes.

Too Big to Jail: How Prosecutors Compromise with Corporations by Brandon Garrett.

Capital Offenses: Business Crime and Punishment in America’s Corporate Age by Samuel Buell.

Breaking Through Power: It’s Easier Than We Think by Ralph Nader.

The list goes on.

I’m walking through the giant DC Convention center, asking myself — why?

Why not one book on corporate power, corporate crime and corporate control?

I go downstairs to the massive ground level where the authors go to sign books.

And there, I see the answer.

It’s the children book’s area.

There, scores of children are sitting on the floor next to stuffed horses, listening to authors read books like Froggy Plays Soccer, Nellie Saves the Day and Too Many Tamales.

Behind them, a giant replica of a Wells Fargo bank.

Next to that — the famed Wells Fargo Stagecoach.

Wells Fargo being one of the main corporate sponsors of the Library of Congress National Book Festival.

Wells Fargo — the bank that pressured thousands of its employees to meet aggressive sales targets.

And a result, those employees went out and opened as many as two million unauthorized accounts, in some cases forging signatures — and were subsequently dismissed.

As Senator Elizabeth Warren put it this week to Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf — “If one of your tellers took a handful of $20 bills out of the cash drawer, they probably would be looking at criminal charges for theft.”

“They could end up in prison,” Warren said. “But you squeezed your employees to the breaking point so they would cheat customers and you could drive up the value of your stock and put hundreds of millions of dollars in your own pocket. And when it all blew up, you kept your job, you kept your multimillion dollar bonuses and you went on television to blame thousands of $12 an hour employees who were just trying to meet cross-sell quotas that made you rich. This is about accountability. You should resign. You should give back the money that you took while this scam was going on and you should be criminally investigated by both the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission. This just isn’t right.”

No books on corporate crime and corporate power at the Library of Congress Book Festival?

Maybe because Wells Fargo is sponsoring the event?

Maybe because Wells Fargo is reading books to children at the event?

The Library of Congress might say — hey, all this just went public after we set everything up with Wells Fargo.

Not so.

While the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau went public with its case against Wells Fargo on September 8, 2016, the Los Angeles Times ran an expose reporting the problem three years ago in December 2013.

Corporate crime.

Corporate power.

Corporate control.

Off the table.

Russell Mokhiber is the editor of the Corporate Crime Reporter..

More articles by:

2016 Fund Drive
Smart. Fierce. Uncompromised. Support CounterPunch Now!

  • cp-store
  • donate paypal

CounterPunch Magazine

minimag-edit

September 27, 2016
Louisa Willcox
The Tribal Fight for Nature: From the Grizzly to the Black Snake of the Dakota Pipeline
Jeffrey St. Clair
Idiot Winds at Hofstra: Notes on the Not-So-Great Debate
Mark Harris
Clinton, Trump, and the Death of Idealism
Mike Whitney
Putin Ups the Ante: Ceasefire Sabotage Triggers Major Offensive in Aleppo
Anthony DiMaggio
The Debates as Democratic Façade: Voter “Rationality” in American Elections
Binoy Kampmark
Punishing the Punished: the Torments of Chelsea Manning
Paul Buhle
Why “Snowden” is Important (or How Kafka Foresaw the Juggernaut State)
Jack Rasmus
Hillary’s Ghosts
Brian Cloughley
Billions Down the Afghan Drain
Lawrence Davidson
True Believers and the U.S. Election
Matt Peppe
Taking a Knee: Resisting Enforced Patriotism
James McEnteer
Eugene, Oregon and the Rising Cost of Cool
Norman Pollack
The Great Debate: Proto-Fascism vs. the Real Thing
Michael Winship
The Tracks of John Boehner’s Tears
John Steppling
Fear Level Trump
Lawrence Wittner
Where Is That Wasteful Government Spending?
James Russell
Beyond Debate: Interview Styles of the Rich and Famous
September 26, 2016
Diana Johnstone
The Hillary Clinton Presidency has Already Begun as Lame Ducks Promote Her War
Gary Leupp
Hillary Clinton’s Campaign Against Russia
Dave Lindorff
Parking While Black: When Police Shoot as First Resort
Robert Crawford
The Political Rhetoric of Perpetual War
Howard Lisnoff
The Case of One Homeless Person
Michael Howard
The New York Times Endorses Hillary, Scorns the World
Russell Mokhiber
Wells Fargo and the Library of Congress’ National Book Festival
Chad Nelson
The Crime of Going Vegan: the Latest Attack on Angela Davis
Colin Todhunter
A System of Food Production for Human Need, Not Corporate Greed
Brian Cloughley
The United States Wants to Put Russia in a Corner
Guillermo R. Gil
The Clevenger Effect: Exposing Racism in Pro Sports
David Swanson
Turn the Pentagon into a Hospital
Ralph Nader
Are You Ready for Democracy?
Chris Martenson
Hell to Pay
Doug Johnson Hatlem
Debate Night: Undecided is Everything, Advantage Trump
Frank X Murphy
Power & Struggle: the Detroit Literacy Case
Chris Knight
The Tom and Noam Show: a Review of Tom Wolfe’s “The Kingdom of Speech”
Weekend Edition
September 23, 2016
Friday - Sunday
Andrew Levine
The Meaning of the Trump Surge
Jeffrey St. Clair
Roaming Charges: More Pricks Than Kicks
Mike Whitney
Oh, Say Can You See the Carnage? Why Stand for a Country That Can Gun You Down in Cold Blood?
Chris Welzenbach
The Diminution of Chris Hayes
Vincent Emanuele
The Riots Will Continue
Rob Urie
A Scam Too Far
Pepe Escobar
Les Deplorables
Patrick Cockburn
Airstrikes, Obfuscation and Propaganda in Syria
Timothy Braatz
The Quarterback and the Propaganda
Sheldon Richman
Obama Rewards Israel’s Bad Behavior
Libby Lunstrum - Patrick Bond
Militarizing Game Parks and Marketing Wildlife are Unsustainable Strategies
FacebookTwitterGoogle+RedditEmail