The banks run by executives now in prison for crimes related to the financial crisis had a combined $30 billion in assets. That is just one-tenth the size of the largest bank failure in U.S. history, the 2008 seizure of Washington Mutual Inc.’s banking operations. The gap is a sign of prosecutorial ineffectiveness to critics such as William Black, a regulator during the savings-and-loan crisis who now teaches economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.

The Wall Street Journal >>