On Wednesday, a handful of Wall Street banks pleaded guilty to criminal charges and agreed to pay a combined $5.8 billion in fines for their roles in the LIBOR interest rate and currency rigging scandal.
The market barely reacted.
As Bloomberg's Hugh Son and Elizabeth Dexheimer put it, investors responded to the news with a resounding "meh."
The New York Times' Peter Henning noted that, at this point, the fines and the guilty pleas kind of just feel like the cost of doing business.
No individual traders from the banks, which include Barclays, Citi, JPMorgan, RBS, and UBS, have been held criminally accountable. But the banks themselves, having admitted to criminal activity, are literally felons.
So why do none of them seem to care?
Because, days before Wednesday's guilty pleas and criminal charges, all five banks obtained waiver fees from the SEC to allow them to carry on with business as usual. Here's UBS' request for a waiver.
Bloomberg reports that the waivers will allow the banks to carry on managing funds and raising capital. There's even rumor that the reason the DOJ settlements were pushed back by a week was in order to give the banks more time to secure the SEC waivers.
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3 comments:
Why waste taxpayers' money "investigating" then "prosecuting" the banks, if they can just write off any fines they can't get waived, and continue doing business as usual?
The brick and mortar building, the computers, the vaults and safes, none of those defrauded anyone or committed a crime. The people at the top, the executives and account managers did. Yet none are being held accountable?
If a person is convicted of a serious crime, they are labeled as a felon, and many rights and privileges are taken away, usually permanently. They can't vote, hold certain public office, hold certain trade and business licenses, work in a number of industries, or submit a contract for certain government agencies, among other things.
If a "bank" (or any company) is found guilty of a "felony" without a single involved employee being found responsible, then that company should be subject to similar, and equally as harsh sanctions. That should be quite a deterrent to some of the financial dirty dealing going on...almost as much as if the guilty individuals were sent to prison and/or fined.
Or if nothing else, those directly involved in committing the illegal financial transactions, should carry on their shoulders the onus of being branded a felon along with the bank, for the rest of their lives.
Felons aren't allowed to trade on Wall street. Licenses revoked. Therefore these banks should be banned from trading. But just like here on the shore.... All about who you know , blow and the money you can pay!
Two sets of laws.
Keep cheering.
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