Eric Holder | PROBABLE CAUSE

According to the Center for Economic and Policy Research, the U.S. has the highest incarceration rate in the world. Using the most recent data available, in the U.S. 753 of every 100, 000 people are in prison or jail. This rate is 20% higher than Russia, the second place country and more than 25% higher than Rwanda, the third place country. The U.S. rate is over seven times higher than the median rate for the OECD countries and about 17 times higher than the rate in Iceland, the country with the lowest incarceration rate.

With the high incarceration rate comes additional problems. The U.S. prison system costs taxpayers over $75 billion, a figure that is larger than the GDP of 133 nations. Our prison population has grown by 800% since 1980. Seventy percent of the prison population is black or Hispanic and half of those imprisoned today were sentenced for drug infractions.

Given our exploding prison population and its unsustainable costs, it was welcome news to hear that Attorney General Eric Holder plans to allow thousands of prisoners to apply for reduced sentences. The Justice Department also will expand the pool of eligibility for presidential clemency for non-violent drug offenders serving long sentences due, primarily, to mandatory federal drug laws.

In 2010, President Obama signed the Fair Sentencing Act reducing unfair disparities in sentences imposed on people for offenses involving different forms of cocaine. But there’s still far too many people in federal prison who were sentenced under the previous administration and who, as a result, will have to spend far more time in prison than they would if sentenced today for exactly the same crime.

As more states legalize small amounts of pot, it makes sense both economically and morally to review the cases of those currently incarcerated for drug offenses. There is no justifiable reason that our prison population should be so significantly higher than Russia or third world countries like Rwanda, or that the system should be filled with so many non-violent drug offenders.

The six largest banks in the country, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, are fighting Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown’s SAFE legislation that would finally place limits on the amount of debt that a single financial institution could have relative to GDP.

The long overdue legislation comes on the heels of the financial meltdown and numerous continuing bank scandals, including LIBOR manipulation, money laundering, robo-signing, and the “London Whale.” It’s clear that the megabanks are continuing to gamble recklessly with investor’s money and lying to Congress about it. To compound the problem, the big six have little reason to fear prosecution after Attorney General Eric Holder admitted last week that they were too big to prosecute.

Under Senator Brown’s proposed legislation, no bank could have non-deposit liabilities valued greater than two percent of U.S. GDP, and no investment bank could have non-deposit liabilities exceeding three percent of GDP. Only the six largest megabanks would be affected, and they would be given three years to comply by drawing up their own proposals to meet the goal.

The six megabanks would be reduced from their current size of about 64 percent of U.S. GDP to about 34 percent of GDP, as they were in 2001. Finally, their funding would come from more stable sources, with about $3 of deposits for every $1 in volatile non-deposit funding.

The megabanks are giving millions of lobbying dollars to Congress to defeat the legislation, as they did in trying to defeat President Obama and Senators Elizabeth Warren and Sherrod Brown. That didn’t work out so well. And now, Brown has some Republican allies, including Senator David Vitter of Louisiana. Given their dysfunction and campaign contributions from Wall Street bankers, it’s hard to believe that Brown can get his legislation past a filibuster, let alone enough votes for senate passage. Good luck getting Boehner to bring it up for a vote in the House.

But if the megabanks are allowed to continue with their reckless, unsupervised gambling and Ponzi schemes, the next inevitable banking crash could take down the world economy and plunge this nation into a depression that would take years––if not decades––to recover from. A crash of that magnitude would most certainly end Boehner’s political career and send him weeping to the exits.

I know it’s a lot to ask, but let’s hope for once that common sense prevails in Congress, and that Sherrod Brown’s sensible legislation soon becomes law.