Roy Oppenheim on HuffPost Live ‘If I Was a Benevolent Dictator’

Interviewer: If you were a dictator for a day, what would you do to try to solve the crisis?

Roy: That’s a wonderful question. If I was a benevolent dictator I would want to make sure that the judges, in fact, throughout this country, would apply the law equally, both to the large banking institutions, as well as to the individuals who appear before them, usually without a counsel.

One of the things that we saw in the robo-signing crisis, and the $25 billion settlement that the attorney generals had entered into, is that, to a large extent, we saw two sets of laws. One set of laws was for the people who control the gold, meaning the banks, and Wall street, and a set of rules and laws that the rest of us have to follow. If I was a benevolent dictator, and I was king for a day, I’d make sure that the playing field was level, and that every law apply to everyone equally.

The idea that certain people go to jail for stealing a container of milk from a 7/11, and yet someone can walk into a bank, and steal billions and billions of dollar by cheating on LIBOR rates, or by cheating on they way the sell securitized trusts to teachers and policemen around the world for their pensions, and to allow them to walk free, yet have someone who stole that container of milk be treated differently, I find to be ironically and systemically unfair.

Interviewer: Oh, I mean it’s a complete moral outrage, but it doesn’t…