It’s clear the victims of the Jeffrey Epstein child sex scandal will not get any justice in the US. The Trump administration, its Justice Department, jurisdiction of importantly placed corrupt judges, and an inert FBI, and corrupt US Attorneys, all point in the same direction: Too much time has passed, the victims cannot produce evidence, and Trump can’t be prosecuted because he is too rich and powerful.
Americans cannot accept this. “Truth, justice, and the American Way” was seen by kids every day on cereal boxes and TV. Superman was a force against bad guys. Now, the bad guys are very rich and running the county.
Corruption is as American as apple pie, and just as prevalent. Based on Trump’s example, MAGA supporters are now preparing to fudge their taxes, hide profits in crypto, go to cash payments, and open foreign bank accounts. If it works for billionaires in Manhattan, and Trump has fired all the Inspector Generals and thousands of tax agents, the coast is clear for the greatest tax evasion in history.
This won’t make the media, since no one will know how much the Treasury was cheated out of. This is the new normal.
This could easily be a new TV show, “American Greed on Main Street.” Dismal, but it’s coming to a town near you.
So, when did widespread, global corruption start? Pick an event and time.
Did it start with the doping scandal of bicycle champion Lance Armstrong and his entire team? Armstrong had won the Tour de France seven times (1999–2005). After repeatedly denying using drugs, Lance Armstrong was finally outed by a teammate, Floyd Landis, who sent an e-mail to USA Cycling officials in April 2010 charging that Armstrong was using illegal drugs in competition. The walls closed in when the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency alleged that Armstrong and five of his associates—three doctors, a manager, and a trainer—had been part of a decade-long doping conspiracy beginning in the late 1990s.
Armstrong then had to admit on the Oprah Winfrey show that he used blood transfusions and the EPO drug to win the Tour de France, considered the hardest event in sports. This was a record no normal human should ever be able to do. But by doping, he became the biggest cheat in sports history. He was then stripped of all his medals.
But the Armstrong scandal also showed that the international cycling federation and its anti-doping inspectors were part of the fraud.
Are Reporters Too Accepting of Systemic Criminality?
From the early 2000s to the mid-2000s, another fraud scandal rocked global financial markets. It was news that the world’s largest commodity and financial instrument indexes—LIBOR, gold, silver, and even the largest world market, foreign exchange—have been manipulated by global banks and their traders who help set these benchmarks and then secretly benefit from them.
The details of these gargantuan index-rigging scandals make excellent reading for anyone interested in how to pull off a successful global crime affecting millions of unsuspecting borrowers worldwide. But what’s more interesting is the weak response from professional financial reporters who cover these markets and banks daily.
One great example came from Bloomberg News, in a December 8, 2016, interview with reporter Michael Moore (not the movie director) and Bloomberg anchor Julie Hymen. In the report, Bloomberg reported that Deutsche Bank AG employees “may have manipulated internal indexes as part of an allegedly fraudulent scheme to help Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena SpA conceal losses, according to an audit commissioned by German regulators.”
The Bloomberg News report said an audit “shows banker abuse of [the silver] benchmarks may have gone beyond the rigging of industry measures such as the London interbank offered rate, or Libor, that has already triggered probes and fines for global lenders. Deutsche Bank last year paid $2.5 billion to settle claims of interest-rate manipulation — more than any other lender — amid accusations of a widespread effort to rig rates for financial gain.”
The report was written by Michael Moore, a finance reporter for Bloomberg News who covers Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and the largest U.S. and European investment banks, according to his LinkedIn profile. 
Moore made an objective, thorough report on this complex scam, but what should catch the attention of viewers is that Moore said the silver rigging scam “certainly doesn’t look great for the industry.” Quite an understatement.
As a former reporter myself, I know he had to say this on live TV, but this type of thinking should not become the norm among financial journalists. It is normal for any experienced reporter to become jaded about the beat they cover. It happens in every industry, from fashion and entertainment to covering city hall and the police.
But the huge and pervasive index rigging scams worldwide should ratchet up the awareness level of anyone in financial journalism who is not a blind neoconservative advocate that the world banking system has interests that are blatantly self-promoting and criminal.
The Blind Acceptance of Free-Market Capitalism
It is impossible for Moore to say this on TV, but other anchors at the time, such as Stephanie Ruhle, Maria Bartaroma, Lou Dobbs, the rabid Trump supporter and neocon economist Larry Kudlow, Stuart Varney, Neil Cavutto, Joe Kernen, Steve Liesman, and Rick Santelli and the vast majority at CNBC, FOX and CNN, had all adopted the neocon belief in the elevation of the corporation and “free markets” over everything else.
To many of these economic and financial commentators, the free markets are sacrosanct and unimpeachable. Monopoly capitalism means that free markets are not that free, but since there is no anti-trust activity, corporate consolidation, the elimination of Inspector Generals in federal agencies, and the firing of thousands of IRS investigators and auditors, free markets can easily become criminal markets.
Fraud of all types is at an all-time high, while prosecutions and convictions are going the other direction. This is a jubilation period for fraudsters. Every time I ask a credit card representative, “Who pays for all the fraudulent charges on a credit card?” they pause and say that the answer comes from another department. Maybe it’s why credit card companies charge 22% for new offers to around 21% for existing accounts.
The flip side is that the credit card industry is a virtually unregulated gold mine. “Credit card industry profits are among the highest of any industry in the economy. Visa reported fiscal year 2025 profits of 50.3% and had quarterly profits of nearly 57% last summer. Mastercard hasn’t reported fiscal-year earnings yet, but it posted 45.3% profit growth in its most recent quarter. By contrast, net profits for merchants average about 3%, with Visa’s profits sometimes nearly 20 times that amount,” according to the Merchant Payments Coalition.
Average consumers, meanwhile, are slaves to the credit rating agencies, which determine their scores every few weeks. Credit scores determine how much people pay in interest on car loans, home loans, and business loans, as well as on insurance.
AI could use these credit card scores, a risk indicator, to determine everything from longevity to where people will retire, and even their diets.
Back To the Capitalist Prejudice of Reporters
One great example of covering the LIBOR index-fixing scandal was how reporters framed the event. Larry Kudlow, on CNBC, intentionally misrepresented, saying there were no victims in the LIBOR price-fixing scandal. This ridiculous statement from an economist smacks of deliberate misinformation. This may explain why he is a Trump economic advisor.
And another from Bloomberg TV anchorwoman Stephanie Ruhle (now at MSN) said, “America is not ready for a socialist president,” referring to Democratic presidential contender Senator Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.). After she made the statement, she said something to the effect, “Yes, I just said that,” as if to emphasize her point, state some universal truth, or to say on-air that that is what she and others in her network think about a socialist candidate for president.
No wonder the November 2025 election of the Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani panicked Manhattan. You would not know this from watching CNN, MSN, or FOX, but there are more Democratic Socialists in Congress now than at any time since 1912. Based on data from January 2024, the Democratic Socialists of America claimed “over 200 elected officials spanning every level of government.”
As a result, criminal financial activities conducted by politicians and the world’s largest banks don’t get the coverage they deserve on these neocon cable networks. This happens despite the fact that exorbitant credit card interest rates today affect mortgages, car loans, and other loan benchmarks for millions of unsuspecting corporations and individuals worldwide.
The Lance Armstrong doping scandal showed that cycling regulators will cover up scandals that threaten their livelihoods. The LIBOR index manipulation scheme was the biggest financial fraud in history. It involved more money and impacted more individuals, businesses, and corporations worldwide than any other man-made crime. “Reputational damage” used to mean something. Today, it is an antiquated concept.
On the old Wall Street, even the appearance of impropriety could get you fired without ever committing an actual social mishap or crime.
But this no longer applies.
Consider the 2020 scandal that involved the wife of the president of the New York Stock Exchange, former Georgia Senator Kelly Loeffler, and her husband, Jeff Sprecher, the chairman of the New York Stock Exchange and CEO of the Intercontinental Exchange.
Both were involved in an insider trading scandal in 2020. At that time, Loeffler was accused of trading on information she received in a confidential briefing about the impact of the COVID-19 virus. She and her financial advisors then sold stocks they believed would be
hurt by the virus. After an investigation, Loeffler and Sprecher were not charged in the insider trading case. Loeffler was also mentioned in the Georgia vote-counting fraud scandal organized by Trump.
None of these events resulted in a public reprimand from the NYSE Board, which some consider the centerpiece of American capitalism. It also never rippled through the markets that the chairman of the NYSE was named in an insider trading scandal, even though no charges were ever filed and no one was convicted. So much for “the appearance of proprietary” standard.
Time to Adopt New Practices When Reporting on Monopolies?
Maybe it’s time for financial journalists to include systemic criminal activities in their reporting. This era of monopoly capitalism requires new practices because monopolistic corporations are essentially impervious to regulation, given the vivisection of regulators, inspector generals, and consumer protection agencies at all levels of government.
Journalists are not supposed to be activists, but they should not turn a blind eye to a political-economic philosophy (social democrats) that conflicts with their free-market capitalism indoctrination.
Any story on crypto should include a running tally of crypto frauds that have occurred so far this year. Bank earnings stories about a specific bank should include how often it has been fined. They should also include the total amount of fines from state and federal regulators. Stories about the Trump family and Trump often include how much he made from private deals. This should also be applied on a wider scale for corporations.
Years ago, Moore and Bloomberg News deserved much credit for covering the commodity and index rigging scandals. Bloomberg is by far the best daily source of financial journalism.
However, they should also lead daily reporting on crime in banking, crypto, private equity, real estate, and hedge funds. These crimes are growing more common, harming investors worldwide.
