There is a wave coming towards all of us. Be prepared.

The political pressure on enforcement bureaucracies is growing. People are mad. They want their government officials to crack down on corruption. The problem is that it will not be politically acceptable to go after people who have political clout. So what traditionally happens is that enforcement actions against people who do not have political clout increase in number. Too often, those targeted are innocent or their infractions are relatively harmless and unimportant.

The message unfortunately is simple: “You want us to crack down on ourselves? Well, we will crack down on you.”

To make matters worse, the pressure on government budgets is rising. So that means enforcement bureaucracies are under pressure to generate fees from fines, civil and criminal money penalties, forfeitures and seizures and various forms of audits and investigations. One agency Inspector General office with which I was familiar used to audit people and tell them they would “go away” for a settlement payment that was less than the cost of their continued time and money. It was simply a form of racketeering.

Not to mention, we keep passing more and more laws and regulations. No one can afford to keep up with them all let alone comply. We are criminalizing everything except what large corporations can afford to manage.

Can you imagine a world where investors can lose $60 billion on the Madoff scheme and no one can figure out where the money went, and the largest bankers can get $12-14 trillion with no explanation of where the money went but St Cecilia’s church outside of Pittsburgh is not allowed to include Mary Pratte’s coconut-creme pie in their fish fry dinner?

I can. It is all on the front page of the Wall Street Journal.

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