Report Card On Former AG Eric Holder

With new U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch beginning her term this week, Peter J. Henning in the New York Times looks back at the legacy of Eric H. Holder, Jr., whose tenure was the third-longest of any AG. His failure to hold executives criminally accountable for the financial crisis—and finding the institutions they served to be “too big to jail”—will tarnish his reputation Henning writes. Though he later changed tone and message, many of the major settlements came long after the crisis was over. In the positive column, though, are Holder’s prosecutions under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery, and Enforcement Act (Firrea), and a crackdown on tax evasion that eliminated the sanctuary of a Swiss bank account.