SPILL IT, WALL STREET LIARS!: How To Make These CROOKS Finally Come Clean

[Segami]

It defies reason that we continue today to hear about major bank scandals, more than five years after the financial crisis. But if anything, the revelations are growing larger and more complex. Which is why I am now making a modest proposal to force them to come clean. The way that countries enveloped in patterns of interminable abuse often deal with the aftermath is through something called a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. We need one for global finance. Before I explain what that would look like, let’s look at a recent example of the problem. Right now, the Royal Bank of Scotland faces a criminal probe in England over cheating its business clients. The “Global Restructuring Group,” a division of RBS tasked with obtaining assets at bargain basement prices, forced tens of thousands of business customers who took out loans to sell their commercial property holdings at deep losses, leaving them destitute and owing millions in fees in the exchange. Author Ian Fraser rightly refers to it as financial terrorism. This systemic abuse comes from a bank that was effectively nationalized by the U.K. government at the time!



RBS and at least nine other global banks, including JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup, are also under investigation in the emerging foreign currency exchange (or forex) scandal. Much like the scandal with rigging interbank lending rates known as Libor, the banks control the information that establishes benchmark forex rates, and they could use that information to make massive trades timed just before the benchmarks went public, artificially spiking the rates. This raises costs for virtually anyone exchanging currency (a $5.3 trillion market in an average day), but creates profits for the banks. In the sleaziest detail, investigators have also found a years-long practice where currency dealers handed off money to day traders in parking lots in London, with the day traders making sure-thing forex bets on the dealers’ behalf, allowing the dealers to personally profit off their clients.




Law enforcement around the world, including the U.S. Justice Department, has promised harsh punishment for this new round of crimes. And the banks themselves have fired individual traders, claimed to revamp their operations, hired respected independent advisers to conduct internal probes, and sought discussions with policymakers on how to ensure these things never happen again. You can understand how this pattern feels like running on an endless treadmill. The financial institution gets caught committing crimes, it makes a big show of remorse, looks busy with internal investigations and changes to its compliance structure, and ultimately, after a lot of tough talk, government delivers the lightest of penalties. And then the whole cycle repeats itself. This game, at least the way it’s currently being played, benefits nobody. The victims are not compensated anywhere close to the level of harm: Even the $104 billion still expected to come out of mortgage abuses does not approach the cost of the financial crisis. Individual bankers are by and large not held accountable for the crimes. The continuation of the misconduct – both of the above-mentioned scandals post-date the financial crisis and many “tough” enforcement actions – shows that no deterrent has yet kept an ever-larger financial industry from plundering the public. And governments are sullied by the loss of trust in their regulatory and enforcement capabilities.



So let’s institute a Truth and Reconciliation Commission for global finance.


Such commissions investigate prior wrongdoing, and exchange some form of immunity for the participants for a full airing of the crimes. For those immediately recoiling at the idea of immunity for Wall Street executives, understand that we already have that in everything but name. If you want to keep reading about doomed investigations that lead to nothing of value (like the four-year probe into manipulation of the credit default swaps market, just dropped by the Justice Department), then fine. But if you want the actual misconduct to be admitted to by the people who did it, a truth and reconciliation commission, just like in South Africa after apartheid or Argentina after the time of the military junta, is one possible method. Instead of taking away the liberty of these financial titans, at least we could take away the secrets to their success.




cont'



http://www.salon.com/2013/12/04/spill_it_wall_street_liars_how_to_make_these_crooks_finally_come_clean/

[Hotler]

1. Kicking........ and...

why is that man not in prison???? Oh never mind.

[Corruption Inc]

2. Everybody who wants to know the truth already knows it

in a country where Dick Cheney proudly boasts of torturing people.

The long lists of crimes are already out there and have been for years.

[2naSalit]

3. That's a great idea

only they can't be let off the hook at the end of it all. This whole shitstorm was designed to take anything and everything from anyone not of the bankster class so that they can own it all and make everyone beholding to them, including the rooves over our heads. So what if you started a small enterprise that became fruitful, they want to take if from ou one way or another, that is what they are all about, how dare you have something they can't charge you for?

Yeah, we need one of those commissions but I also think we need to nationalize the banks and all utilities.

[AtheistCrusader]

4. You're not getting shit out of them without offering them immunity.

Just sayin'.

They can afford lawyers we can only dream of.

[L0oniX]

5. US House extortion racket rules these banks.

Contribute more to our campaigns or we will make laws you won't like.

[Enthusiast]

6. K&R

A full airing of the crimes should appear on corporate TV in prime time. As it is there has been no reporting of malfeasance on the MSM. Collusion.