Why Aren’t Any Bankers in Prison for Causing the Financial Crisis?

responsibility-diffusion mechanisms

Im stealing that...works for every company I have ever worked for.

Here was a scenario for defense (and they are all at it).

Company in bed with politicians make a deal with the Saudis, billions of pounds. Company makes a little slush fund for Saudi as they expect it, all countries and companies dealing with the Sauds do it.

Company gets caught, makes every employee undergo yearly training to prevent anyone from being invited out by a supplier or customer and sign a contract threatening their dismissal.

Like its our problem you are creating million dollar slush funds...

a reply to: SentientCentenarian

Just change the name to 'Coliseum', add lions and undesirables and be done with the 'it's all just a game' charade.

I like where this is going, so long as we keep our football we can do the lions and undesirables during the spring and summer months.

Because they are the Government.

a reply to: WanderingNomadd

Exactly. As long as they control the people who write laws, nothing can be done.

The Insurance Industry is TPTBs hamstring.......and yet another victim of WCB Canadas SOP disentitlement con-job welcomes you to this knowledge......the laundering of trillions of dollars of fiat money.

You wipe the civil litigation processes completely,you wipe the criminal prosecutorial processes,you jail the Bankers AND their owners.

The Titanic....9-11 ....and many more .

Shipping
Energy
Insurance
Big Pharma
Monsanto
Prison business
Organised Religon

And many more.

Anywhere grossly large volumes of money or transactions of power and impacts are exchanged.

a reply to: Astyanax

The banking system owns the government as long as they fill the coffers of the corruption that we have for politicians they will do as they wish and go unpunished.

That is what America has become, is a separation of class, those at the top that pay to keep themselves out of trouble because they manipulate the economy, those in the middle that are to pay for their mistakes, those in the bottom that take the scraps that are given to them to keep them quiet and a special elite that as long as they legislate in the favors of the ones in the top they are also immune well pay for the time being, until the fall out of grace and the elite eliminates them.

a reply to: Astyanax

The simple answer is they are not in prison or even held to account for there crimes against humanity because the banking cartels and houses run the show we call reality.

Why?.

Because he who has the most money, even if that money is ill gotten, will win the case by securing the best legal defense or paying off the ones filing complaints.

The system as it is does not tend to devour or sacrifice it's own very often.

Would anyone like to discuss what was actually in the article?

The law may never be used to take the banksters down, but eventually the people will.

Hell, they know this:

I see pitchforks.

At the same time that people like you and me are thriving beyond the dreams of any plutocrats in history, the rest of the country—the 99.99 percent—is lagging far behind. The divide between the haves and have-nots is getting worse really, really fast. In 1980, the top 1 percent controlled about 8 percent of U.S. national income. The bottom 50 percent shared about 18 percent. Today the top 1 percent share about 20 percent; the bottom 50 percent, just 12 percent.

...

Here’s what I say to you: You’re living in a dream world. What everyone wants to believe is that when things reach a tipping point and go from being merely crappy for the masses to dangerous and socially destabilizing, that we’re somehow going to know about that shift ahead of time. Any student of history knows that’s not the way it happens. Revolutions, like bankruptcies, come gradually, and then suddenly. One day, somebody sets himself on fire, then thousands of people are in the streets, and before you know it, the country is burning. And then there’s no time for us to get to the airport and jump on our Gulfstream Vs and fly to New Zealand. That’s the way it always happens. If inequality keeps rising as it has been, eventually it will happen. We will not be able to predict when, and it will be terrible—for everybody. But especially for us.

Politico

This guy at least is aware, and it would seem as though his fellow plutocrats are (or were as of the writing of the linked article) treating him like Chicken Little.

This article is years old and the gap is wider even than it was at that time so I would hazard a guess that his fellows did not listen to him and instead have kept on the same course.

Torches, ropes, pitchforks, and goon boots will come eventually. The question is how much longer before we reach that point?

originally posted by: WanderingNomadd
a reply to: pl3bscheese

And 5 years after that it would be changed back. Corps control enough of governments to influence law making so we the people have less power than them to influence our "democracy" politically. regardless of where you live.

This is what you wrote, in response to someone saying that both corporate and international law needs to be truly assessed and untwisted.

You have no solution, you just claim that mine is "believing in the system" and some how yours, ever so vague, is better and not "believing in the system".

I said you are defeatist because someone presented you with an actual solution, and instead of trying to contribute to it you shut it down with an absurdly uncritical reply.

I don't "believe in the system" whatever the hell that's supposed to mean, but if you think we need to burn the system down to the ground, well that's because you're just a kid. I don't need a belief to realize that when people organize in sufficient quantities, a system of governance will be required for them to adequately partake in all the great things their society can afford.

You don't throw away millenia of progress because of a current corrupt state of affairs, you unphuck the system and keep going. If you disagree, then I challenge you to provide a plan of action. Give me something real, something concrete, and something that leads to a better world by not "believing in the system".

If you reply with some sort of anarchist bullcrap then I know you are the ignorant one and just need another 10-20 years to get a clue.

All I get from the article are excuses and whining about how complex it is to prosecute individuals in white collar crime cases.

But, is it really so difficult?
Cumulatively, how many million "offenders" have been jailed for drug crimes? I am guessing the answer is quite a few, yet the big banks, when shown to have been laundering hundreds of $Billions in drug money still get the Deferred Prosecution Agreement treatment, a slap on the wrist and no jail time for anyone.

You also have the revolving door between these same banks and big corporations and the government agencies that are supposed to be there to regulate and prosecute transgressors. How can that ever work when those committing the crimes also get to regulate? It is a complete joke an affront to justice.

The executives of these criminal banks and mega-corporations are fully aware of what is going on, after all, they are the ones in charge and should be held fully responsible when it's time to account for wrongdoing, the same as any individual is for a criminal act. How hard is that to understand?
Our governments, by allowing them to skip prosecution, and even subverting or suspending the rule of law to protect them (as happens all the time) should, in reality, lose their mandate to govern entirely.
Unfortunately, those in power would never bow to transparency or impartial oversight. For that we get political appointees beholden to those who put them there. Nothing short of a revolution and executions will ever change the current situation.... and they have all the big guns!

Honestly, I'm all for 'burning it down'- in the sense of torches and pitchforks, taking down the banks and goobers alike...
but only because it would only take a couple of weeks to roll back the clock on government operation by a hundred years if we did it that way.
To try and disassemble and rework the moving pieces of the government as it sits would take decades- assuming they didn't push back, which they would. As it stands, you can't rework the government- it's a big mechanism that decades of blatant corruption has turned into a self serving corruption conga line.
Even if we took out the top fifty players, we wouldn't be able to undo the harm done. It needs a hard reset- a boot to the head, if you will.

Wipe the books- all of the laws. All of the corporations. All of the money. It all would have to go, and we'd have to start over, with a well thought out set of rules.

Perhaps if we, as a people, started an open source style government plan... where we could, over the course of the next years build this idea, eventually we'd come up with a series of rules and regulations that actually make sense... but to put it in place of the existing system would be considered treason- since treason is going against the us *government* these days, NOT going against the american people.
If treason were actually going against the people, the government would be considered openly treasonous for at least the last twenty years that I've seen.

a reply to: AmericanRealist

But he is a complete stranger, you know his face and can read his book, and watch the fired show if you want.

He has no track record yet your willing to make him president, why? Because HE told you what a great president he will make. As I said on another thread, Politicians should be voted into presidency as veterans, When an offical with a 20 year long history of fighting against the banks tells you he is going to shut their power down for good, There is actually a clear cut reason to believe him.

Political elections are performances. Flashing lights and pretty words. No substance, No honesty, No integrity, No decency just greed and power, lies and deceit, corruption and blackmail. All the while laughing as they behave like kings why we live like peasants. All they had to do was tell us we are free, we believed it, now they are the ones actually free to do as they please while we follow lives comparable to free range chickens.

a reply to: lordcomac

It will be a violent revolution when or if the time comes. It will start peaceful, numbers will grow, they will have to take notice, they will passify everyone with promises of change, nothing will happen, another protest, sorry we are trying, Passified again, Then they release some bull#, watered down version of what people were going for, Passified again, Years later another protest when they realise it didnt actually change anything due to vague wording and loopholes. Another peaceful protest lol......And so on. Peaceful protest can be ignored because people will believe these officals when they tell them they will change it. Just look at history of the modern age to see how easy it is to control and manipulate people even blatantly.

originally posted by: Astyanax
Would anyone like to discuss what was actually in the article?

The article seems to focus on the questionable sales of mortgage backed securities.

Lehman 2005 seen in 2008

Why didn't some government agency foresee that the banks were going to be in this position in 2004?

Putting myself on the jury I would have a hard time finger pointing.
What about the current state of affairs with the global bankers using negative interest rates to prop up the banks?
Isn't "too big to fail" just common sense triage for a world full of stagnant derailed economies?
Maybe we just need to give up on the idea of bond markets as safe investments?

a reply to: Britguy

it's still no protection from being rounded up and hung from the nearest lamppost!

We can only dream. Unfortunatly the general public think justice exists. Ask them 2 questions

1. Do you think legal systems favour the rich and people in positions of power? Yeah definately
2. Should we round up the bankers and politicians who are obviously engaged in criminal activity? No because they have'nt been convicted of anything....

in the uk the blame now lays at the feet of immigrants and the poor.
the tory party still kinda blame gordon brown for the collapse of the icelandic banks somehow, which exposed it all.
it appears hillary blames the middle classes while trump blames mexico, obama meanwhile being pretty quiet.

the fact that the bankers stopped giving themselves bonuses for six months, is hardly a deterrent, meaning it will happen again.

a reply to: Britguy

But, is it really so difficult?
Cumulatively, how many million "offenders" have been jailed for drug crimes? I am guessing the answer is quite a few, yet the big banks, when shown to have been laundering hundreds of $Billions in drug money still get the Deferred Prosecution Agreement treatment, a slap on the wrist and no jail time for anyone.m

A drug crime is usually a lot easier to prove than a financial crime. And sharp practice, repellent as it may be, is not actually crime.

You also have the revolving door between these same banks and big corporations and the government agencies that are supposed to be there to regulate and prosecute transgressors. How can that ever work when those committing the crimes also get to regulate? It is a complete joke an affront to justice.

What sort of regulators would, in your view, be more effective than those who understand the industry and how it can be gamed?

they are the ones in charge and should be held fully responsible when it's time to account for wrongdoing, the same as any individual is for a criminal act. How hard is that to understand?

Easy enough. But they have to break the law first.

a reply to: Cauliflower

Why didn't some government agency foresee that the banks were going to be in this position in 2004?

Because, I guess, foresight can't be 20/20. It is always easy to be wise after the fact.

Isn't "too big to fail" just common sense triage for a world full of stagnant derailed economies?

Would it really be better for everyone if they failed? For you? For me?

Maybe we just need to give up on the idea of bond markets as safe investments?

When were banks ever safe investments?

Answer: only since they got too big to fail and governments became obliged to prop them up.

Hmm.