Is it too Impolite to Suggest some Good Old Fashioned Asset Forfeiture?

You know -- sometimes when people are arrested for drug-related crimes, they can have all their money taken away. And their cars and homes and valuables, including any solid gold nipple rings on their person, depending on the craziness of the dollar value of gold.

If you crossed a border with a trunk full of street drugs, you could have everything you ever made of your life taken away from you all at once.

If you steal, on the other hand, hundreds of millions, or many billions of dollars from everybody ...no such penalties apply.

Why would any judge not favor the same stiffness of penalty to men like Petters and Lay and Madoff that he would apply to some guy who supplied drugs to consenting adults for money? We're unlikely to find out why because such a case won't go before a judge. And the reason no billionaire kleptomaniac's assets will be forfeited any time soon is because the agency that would arrest such a person is the Secret Service, which is a branch of the US Treasury, which is Fraud CentComm.

If I'm wrong, please correct me. I haven't found anything via google about financial crimes warranting asset forfeiture, nor have I found anyone else discussing the possibility that a portion of our collective losses could be recovered by squeezing it out of the thieves who took it.

The punitive actions should not be applied only to a select group of big fish. There are many investment bankers and mortgage and hedge fund brokers and less prominent thugs who stole mere millions, or aided and abetted those who did by doing things like hyping the value of something valueless. Take it all back from them, too. They knew what they were doing, and they deserve to suffer some consequences.

The cash assets could go directly back to the unindicted public, bringing down directly the principal on every mortgage, with a highly progressive payment structure. After the principle is paid down, the loan is refinanced, making payments smaller and the term shorter. If the lower and middle classes suddenly had a substantial portion of the household monthly budget freed up for reallocation, that could inspire a meaningful opposition to the downward economic spiral.

As for the property seized from the crooks: eBay it. If the USGov had its own eBay account, and auctioned all kinds of crazy shit seized from rich crooks, and that revenue went to the right place...oh, it gives me goosebumps just to imagine the possibilities...

I wonder what the starting bid would be for a vodka-pissing ice sculpture of Michelangelo's David?