The Irony of the United States’ Prosecution of FIFA’s Money Grubbers — Is Inadvertently Summed in a Quote from Attorney General Loretta Lynch

© 2015 Peter Free

 

02 June 2015

 

 

The irony

 

Attorney General Loretta Lynch explained the US Justice Department indictment of a handful of FIFA heads this way:

 

 

They were expected to uphold the rules that keep soccer honest and protect the integrity of the game.

 

Instead, they corrupted the business of worldwide soccer to serve their interests and enrich themselves.

 

© Bloomberg, The FIFA Scandal, Bloomberg Business (31 May 2015) (Lynch quote begins at 06:54 into the video clip)

 

 

Those two sentences aptly define American capitalism, as well as its self-interested capture of supposedly democratic institutions.

 

 

Consider the pertinent historical context

 

The American Justice Department did nothing of prosecutorial substance after financial institutions criminally brought the world economy down in 2008.

 

The US Congress has done nothing of effective regulatory substance since.

 

The only people who suffered (and continue to suffer) consequences of the meltdown are ordinary folks. In contrast, fat cat financial corporations traipse on in accumulating power and influence, and everyone in government continues to pretend that all is well.

 

Yet — probably because some American corporations wanted their own spoils and influenced the Obama Administration to do something about it — a handful of folks at FIFA — who are playing their own self-enrichment game in a less damaging way than the worlds’ largest financial institutions do — earned the Justice Department’s Fist of Wrath.

 

 

The moral? — Little in governance is as it seems

 

The FIFA indictments are an entertaining diversion that camouflages government inaction on much more important fronts.

 

With good legal fortune, Loretta Lynch will ride this contextually trivial, but resource-consuming prosecution to international prominence — without stepping on any important American plutocrats’ toes.

 

I can understand why Russian President Putin took a dim view of the goings on. Even an unapologetic totalitarian can see when something allegedly democratic and liberty-enhancing is not working the way advertised.