Former Chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve Ben Bernanke believes that more Wall Street executives should have ended up in prison for their actions that led to the financial crisis of 2008.
In an interview with USA Today, Bernanke stated on Sunday that the U.S. Department of Justice and other agencies responsible for criminal acts focused more on investigations and charges against financial companies.
– But I would have focused more on investigating the actions of individuals, given that everything that went wrong or was illegally done was committed by individuals, not some abstract company, Bernanke said.
Bernanke, who was Fed Chairman during the financial crisis of 2008, which he considers the worst since the Great Depression of the 1930s, says it was not up to him to decide whether to prosecute individual executives.
– The Fed is not responsible for that. The Department of Justice and other authorities are responsible for that, and much effort has been directed at prosecuting financial companies. A financial company is, of course, a legal fiction, not a person. You cannot send a company to prison, Bernanke said.
Bernanke, who retired last year after eight years as Fed Chairman, says that the financial crisis of 2008 was extremely dangerous and that he still believes the Fed did the right thing by saving banks from failure.
– I think it was very likely that we would slide into a depression similar to that of the 1930s, Bernanke said, who is releasing his memoirs this week.
