Why isn’t the United States punishing American banks for the Libor scandal? Although charges have been brought against foreign banks, and American financial institutions have had involvement proven as well, the United States still has not filed charges stating as such. Libor, or the London interbank offered rate, is based on numbers given by the largest banks in the world about their borrowing costs. This information is used to set the rates for trillions of dollars in transactions and contracts, on everything from mortgages to derivatives, and the banks were illegally doctoring numbers and setting rates for years.

Bloomberg reports,

Yet it isn’t just a matter of domestic banks not being charged right now; as Bloomberg goes on to report, there are examples of the United States purposefully evading charging domestic banks with involvement:

Will the feds go after any U.S. banks? Last week’s criminal charges in the U.K. against Tom Hayes, a former derivatives trader at UBS and Citigroup Inc. (C), only add to the curiosity. They came six months after U.S. prosecutors filed their own criminal complaint against Hayes and another former UBS trader. A comparison of the allegations in the two cases yields some noteworthy differences. The eight criminal counts filed by U.K. prosecutors include the period of time that Hayes worked for Citigroup in late 2009 and into 2010, as well as the three years he worked at UBS before then. U.K. officials said he conspired with employees of at least five other banks and three interdealer brokers to manipulate yen Libor rates. The U.K. court documents identified all the companies allegedly involved, including JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) (Hayes, 33, appeared in a London court last week and hasn’t indicated how he will plead.) In the U.S., by comparison, the complaint against Hayes listed three criminal counts, the timeline for which ended in September 2009, when Hayes left UBS. The complaint cited UBS by name but not Citigroup or other companies.

That means he was charged by the UK for his time at both banks during the ongoing scandal. Alternatively, the US only charged him for his time at UBS, the foreign bank.

In reality, the question is not whether the United States federal government is giving preference to domestic banks in criminal cases. They are. The question is “why,” and how can we turn it around? “Too big too fail” has become “too big to prosecute,” and we are giving the financial kingpins and professional gamblers on Wall Street complete freedom to do whatever they wish, no matter the costs. Crash the US economy? No problem. Participate in a years-long scandal, and purposefully evade regulatory forces? Sure, go right ahead.

The worst part is that we’re letting it happen, helpless to stop it. As the government has steadily eroded our right to vote, bastardizing our democracy with legal corruption and bribes in the form of campaign donations, we have grown ever more powerless to stop the march of the elite. The American middle class is destroyed, the economy is sluggishly recovering from the shambles the Bush years left it in, and we continue to let those that are causing those problems to reign over us with complete impunity and no regard for the law. We must demand change.