MacroScope

Massachusetts’ rookie Senator Elizabeth Warren was out making waves again at a Senate Banking Committee hearing on Capitol Hill today. The former Harvard law professor contrasted the legal code affecting drug prosecutions with what she depicted as cushy settlements for large Wall Street firms that committed egregious crimes.

Take Standard Chartered. They were fined $667 million by U.S. regulators for breaching sanctions related to Iran and three other countries. Yet the bank posted a tenth straight year of record profits.

If you’re caught with an ounce of cocaine, the chances are good you’re going to jail. But evidently, if you launder nearly a billion dollars for drug cartels and violate international sanctions, your company pays a fine and you go home and sleep in your own bed at night. I think that’s fundamentally wrong.

For an alternate reality where white collar criminals face the same legal system as drug dealers, see this episode of Chappelle’s show.

The American Dream distorted almost beyond recognition by mass foreclosures, women working on straight commission, men not working at all, and an alleged “higher power” who wants you to be rich beyond your wildest dreams, is the subject of the Women’s Project Theater’s production of “Bethany,” a new play by the young playwright Laura Marks.

The central character, Crystal, (played by America Ferrera, star of the “Ugly Betty” television series) is trying to regain custody of her daughter, Bethany, who has been placed in foster care because foreclosure has left her mother homeless.

Crystal is a victim of the American Dream, portrayed in this work as little more than an elaborate con game where honest, frantic people run like rats on a wheel – with firmer, secure ground hopelessly out of reach.

Barclays was fined a record $450 million last month by U.S. and UK authorities for manipulating the London Interbank Offered Rate, or Libor, the interest rate that underpins transactions worth trillions of dollars worldwide, between 2005 and 2009.  More than a dozen banks are expected to be drawn into the scandal, which is being probed by authorities in North America, Europe and Japan.

Below is the fascinating account of a former bank staff who worked alongside money market traders on just how it all went down:

Going back a step … and in many industries still today, there is this truly working concept which is my word is my bond. And that’s how the City used to function before, a long time ago, and in many things, up until very recently.