This news article is PURE PROPAGANDA assisting in covering up and shilling for CRIMINALS.

Prosecute the BANKERS within the corporation committing felonies AND THE JOURNALISTS assisting in covering up and shilling for their crimes.

You prosecute and jail the PEOPLE in the industry responsible.

There will come a day when HONEST people retake the government and make no mistake. There WILL be a reckoning. People responsible for their crimes WILL be prosecuted.

I think we THE PEOPLE should go so far as to, if it can be proven, that if JOURNALISTS such as this you are being PAID by the banks to shill and cover for their crimes, then even JOURNALISTS such as you need to be prosecuted for being ACCESSORIES AFTER THE FACT!

It is time to jail the bankers committing felonies.

It is also time to jail the JOURNALISTS covering up their crimes.

@KenG_CA,

first of all, no, it isn’t. second of all, human beings at the bank decided to break the laws and launder drug cartel money. those human beings should be prosecuted.

further: if your goal is to reduce bad behavior at banks, it stands to reason that this goal will be better achieved by instilling the fear of life-sentences for bank executives rather than the threat of fines against the bank itself—even if those fines included going after the personal holdings of the executives.

if i was a drug cartel, i would tell the executives look, we’ll put millions into a secret account for you so, worst case scenario and the govt seizes all your money, you just move to a non-extradition country and drink mai-tais on the beach for the rest of your life. when deciding whether to commit a crime, if the punishment for getting caught is a tropical vacation, then heck—why NOT do it?

fines, however heavy, are an absurd punishment for people who help enormously wealthy criminal syndicates. the criminals will just build in safety-net bonuses to those people. if fines are an acceptable punishment here, then why not for murder? if the DOJ actually got the head of a drug cartel in custody, and had reams of air-tight evidence that they ordered a bunch of murders, would it be acceptable to limit his punishment to a fine? $100M? $1B? is there any amount of money that we should accept from a murderer as his punishment? i don’t know anyone who would say yes. except, apparently, the US Department of Jusdis™ (short for “just dis once”).

but if the punishment for crooked banking execs is life in a federal prison, then that’s a strong deterrent. that’s what this entire conversation should be about. seeking “justice” against a non-human entity is merely an abstraction, and in this entire discussion, a big DIStraction.

Whilst, as sayeth Mr Bumble, the law may be an arse, the law is the law. And, for HSBC, the solution is simple: Don’t set up a bank in the United States where said law exists. HSBC had no problems buying vulture-lender Household International and provided 25% loan-share credit cards to US consumers. And those are legal! But they can’t have it both ways.

In theory – sure. But no financial institution has ever lived long enough after indictment to actually make it through a jury trial. The indictment itself means certain death. Even an indictment isn’t necessary – just being ‘black-balled’ ala Banco Delta Asia (NKorea’s pal from Macao, remember?) means a quick death.

IMO there is an argument (unconvincing to me, but reasonable none-the-less) for letting the bank survive. There is no argument IMO that plausibly justifies not prosecuting the individuals who ordered the crimes.

OBTW: The top guy at the bank – the CEO – when all the bad deeds went down – he’s still there. He hasn’t lost his job or even been fined or demoted – nothing, except fat bonuses year-after-year. Bob Diamond’s gotta be wondering if he wouldn’t have been smarter to let his traders run coke instead of a Libor fix – he’d maybe still be running Barclays’ if he had. (That guy at HSBC – he’s just gotta ‘have something’ on some very big people to have pulled this off. Anyone who knows that much seems like he knows too much to still be walkin’ around alive. Just sayin’ ….)

We definitely need someone like Eliot Spitzer or Neil Barofsky to actually prosecute & not just seek petty fines.

The US financial system has no public trust now.

The fact that DC & the Hill & White House haven’t figured that out is one of their current problems.

So if this isn’t prosecuted, what on earth would be? Why should bank directors and officers take other laws seriously, if violation this flagrant barely touches them personally? Isn’t this just an argument for letting any bank do pretty much whatever it wants?

(Also, it is by no means clear that criminal prosecution has to mean destruction of the bank, Arthur Anderson style. That has very rarely been the effect. And the gov could easily calibrate its prosecution: either pick only a few individuals, or hit the bank as a whole, but with lesser charges. So the outcome of “innocent bank teller loses job” is not required in any case.)

Wow, I really just hope you’re wording things poorly or something here. I can’t imagine this actually being any kind of a dilemma. I’m sick of the notion that banks are these sacred and hallowed organizations that need to be saved at all costs. But to put them above prosecution of the war on the Mexican cartels is downright idiotic. Felix, I’m literally done with you and your blog. This statement is just too stupid to take seriously.

If he knew this particular case was mostly about the drug money, the tone would’ve been a little different. Many of the core issues in the Standard Chartered case and this one are different, even though some do overlap.

So, yeah, he messed this one up. That happens, I guess.

Tell us something, FS – in your opinion, are being a socialite and being a serious analyst/observer mutually incompatible undertakings? Whether they are or not – which one is your personal favorite métier?

oh mate, no, this is much too glib. The Mexican cartels aren’t “Mr Nice” types stuffing a tonne of dope into the speakers of a rock band. They’re some of the worst people on earth. The laws broken are part of the Mexican government’s attempts to protect themselves against a criminal movement that leaves piles of dead bodies in town squares.