Posted on 05/23/2015 9:43:13 AM PDT by NRx
As of this week, Citicorp, JPMorgan Chase, Barclays and Royal Bank of Scotland are felons, having pleaded guilty on Wednesday to criminal charges of conspiring to rig the value of the world’s currencies. According to the Justice Department, the lengthy and lucrative conspiracy enabled the banks to pad their profits without regard to fairness, the law or the public good.
Besides the criminal label, however, nothing much has changed for the banks. And that means nothing much has changed for the public. There is no meaningful accountability in the plea deals and, by extension, no meaningful deterrence from future wrongdoing. In a memo to employees this week, the chief executive of Citi, Michael Corbat, called the criminal behavior “an embarrassment” — not the word most people would use to describe a felony but an apt one in light of the fact that the plea deals are essentially a spanking, nothing more.
As a rule, a felony plea carries more painful consequences. For example, a publicly traded company that is guilty of a crime is supposed to lose privileges granted by the Securities and Exchange Commission to quickly raise and trade money in the capital markets. But in this instance, the plea deals were not completed until the S.E.C. gave official assurance that the banks could keep operating the same as always, despite their criminal misconduct. (One S.E.C. commissioner, Kara Stein, issued a scathing dissent from the agency’s decision to excuse the banks.)
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
“Slavish subservience to wall street” happens on both sides of the aisle, and don’t think Dems aren’t better at the shakedown than the pubs. Obama didn’t raise 2 billion to run two presidential campaigns from pot-smoking, health-food store employees in Birkenstocks.
These banks didn’t commit the crimes, individuals did. Prosecute them to the full extent of the law and allow civil suits by anyone and everyone against the individuals and the banks.
Now then, NYT, if you want to go after banks, why don't you go after them to come clean on why they let the Clinton Foundation and the Clintons get away with international money laundering?
*bureaucrat (ib4 spelling nazis).
These banks didn’t commit the crimes, individuals did.
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And what they did was encouraged and approved from the very top on down... but proving it is impossible with the SEC enforcers and DOJ actively encouraging settlements with no criminality attached and with gifts of forgiveness for all wrongs added in...
This goes straight to the top ,, same as with the Border Patrol orders .. to the oval office.
I’m sure you’re right but the first step is to put pressure on the individuals that you can convict.
Hear! Hear! The criminals are the top managers who colluded to manipulate the forex markets. Instead of them being punished, the U.S. and U.K. have decided to punish the shareholders for whom the crooks were nominally working.
What about their gun rights?
So the banks supposedly manipulated currency, according to the GOVERNMENT?
This is pure baloney. No one has more power to manipulate currency than the governments of the world: after all, they print the stuff; they “stimulate” the economies with it, and very few governments in the entire world have acted responsibly.
So they blame the banks!!
This is like Ali Baba being tried by the Forty Thieves.
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