Last week five big international banks were found guilty of rigging international currency markets and fined $5.5 billion.
The very next day, the Securities and Exchange Commission issued the banks waivers from automatic punishment so they could continue business as usual.
SEC Commissioner Kara M. Stein did not agree with letting the banks off the hook and issued a scathing dissent. The banks UBS, Barclays, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase & Co, and the Royal Bank of Scotland had already been granted a total of 23 waivers after previous wrongdoing.
Bank traders actually met in an online chat room called “The Cartel” or “The Mafia” and conspired to rig rates. The scheme ran for years.
According to USAToday:
“It is troubling enough to consistently grant waivers for criminal misconduct,” wrote Stein. “It is an order of magnitude more troubling to refuse to enforce our own explicit requirements for such waivers.
“Further, I am concerned that the latest series of actions has effectively rendered criminal convictions of financial institutions largely symbolic,” concluded Stein. “Firms and institutions increasingly rely on the Commission’s repeated issuance of waivers to remove the consequences of a criminal conviction, consequences that may actually positively contribute to a firm’s compliance and conduct going forward.”
Why is Lovefraud posting this story? To remind you that psychopaths are everywhere. Dr. Robert Hare, author of Without Conscience, has said that if he weren’t researching psychopaths in prison, the next place he’d look for them would be the stock market.
So the legal authorities who are supposed to protect the world economy don’t put a stop to criminal behavior.
At least one woman is outraged.
SEC official blasts waivers for bad-actor banks, on USAToday.com.
Lone SEC dissenter objects to letting banks off the hook, on Philly.com.
Commissioner Kara M. Stein’s dissenting statement, on SEC.gov.
How to tell wicked sociopaths from ordinary sinners
Good for her. Where are the other adults? We still have a psychopaths gone wild economy. Nothing’s been fixed since 2008. The next crash, predicted for this year or the next, will be even worse.
I agree. A big crash is coming. The stock market is a bubble. It has not grown because of value. And the American public has NO clue about the FED. I don’t think it’s hard to understand… just read about Enron, making money from nothing but all the risk is borne by the American taxpayer, who did no sign up for the scam. And it is a scam, a Ponzi scam.
The FED, as in The Federal Reserve, which is a perfect study in what happens when we allow socio/psychopaths to control our economy. Sociopaths might make the hard decisions, but again, remember….sociopaths DO it emotionally… the dark emotions!
See more about psychopaths in positions of leadership, including in financial instutions in 2 books:
Snakes in Suits
Almost a Psychopath
Free Snakes in Suits online http://auntieimperial.tumblr.com/post/48055117399/snakesinsuits
Thanks Donna. I caught this story earlier this week about the banks representatives little corrupt cartel. Of course I immediately was taken back to the worldwide debacle of just a few years back when the worlds markets were shaken to their core. Of course almost no one understands that just a handful of uber powerful opportunistic sociopathicly inclined individuals played key roles in setting in motion the financial meltdown. If Bernanke and the Fed had not jumped in and covered things the entire financial system may have imploded. Too bad more institutions don’t pay heed to these wake up calls. I just read an article on Dr Hares website today that is geared toward how to deal with psychopathic individuals who have attained to leadership positions. I’ll see if I can find it.
I love to see someone with the actual integrity to make statements like the commissioner did here. No accountability whatsoever. Psychopathy is sadly not confined to individuals but seems to be the growing model that corporations are trending toward.
I hope it is not too late to put these crooks away for the rest of their lives and get some non-psychopaths in Government and Business. It is not political differences in the people, we are being set up against each other so these big wigs can keep committing crimes.