LOL. yes.
While public radio and TV are the pet of the ruling elites of NYC...
they also - as a news source - function to provide cues to the leadership of leftist causes, i.e., the radical leftist intelligentsia, young upcoming intellectual radicals, community organizers, professors, pundits, etc.
These folks can all thus get their cues on how they are supposed to think about a given issue, without them having to have meetings with the elites of capitalism in their New York offices.
I took a second look; this story is quite enlightening, if you’ll humor me:
A) In the past few months there have been some posting/rantings here on FR about this story, which pointed to postings/rantings elsewhere. Mentioned in the same breath were drugs, money laundering, CIA, major banks, financial elites.
B) This of course is a hole that needs to be plugged so the sheeple don’t realize what’s going on. The response is thus broadcast on NPR and kept out of the mainstream news; don’t want make ma and pa sheeple aware of the story !
C) The “upshots” I see in this story’s messaging:
1) business is inherently evil (can always use that old standard)
2) there’s nothing we can do to stop crime and illegal drugs (implying why bother, man)
3) it’s not just HSBC there are many others (so get off HSBCs back, man) (hmmm... radical college professor thinks if they’re laundering drug money, they’re my kinda people!)
4) banks are presented as the victims (”Banks Still Vulnerable”)
5) government is presented as shocked itself, and overwhelmed
6) make sure to acknowledge the stinging accusation (in those rants mentioned above) that the fine is a pittance (hey man, big business always gets off easy, workers of the world need to unite !)
7) Then immediately broaden focus after that acknowledgement to say that HSBC also was faulted for transactions with Iran and the leftist intelligentsia’s romantic darling Cuba (hey man, leave Cuba alone).
8) Broadening the focus diffuses the significance of a laserlike focus on drug money laundering, i.e., “now we also have to look for other prohibited transactions - wow, this is a regulatory burden.”
We’ve done some yappy-yap, we diffused, confused, pushed our same old leftist lines, having dealt with the subject we can put it to bed and move on.
HSBC can thus be left alone to try to figure out how to carry on as best they can.
I like the way you understand things.