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UK Regulator Shocked That Slapping Banker Wrists Achieves Nothing
Not a quarter passes without a bank announcing, as part of its earning statement, that - it just so happens - it has incurred a few hundreds million (or billion) in legal fees, expenses and charges for breaking the law and manipulating this market or that (recall that for banks "Crime Is Now An Ordinary Course Of Business"), but it's ok, because it is a one-time, non-recurring thing, so please exclude it from the EPS calculation.... Until the next quarter when everything repeats once more. But the repetition of "one-time" events is not the only constant: the other one, of course, is that nobody ever goes to jail.
The latter is also the reason why, as the WSJ reports, British regulators are "getting exasperated with banks failing to clean up their act after repeated wrongdoings."
No, really: the UK's equivalent to the SEC truly can't understand how banks, which have trillions in central bank reserves sloshoing around on their balance sheets as the replacement to trillions in taxpayer bailout funds, and which are delighted to use said reserves to pay for hundreds of billions in legal fees in order to avoid prison time for financial crimes, market manipulations and countless other legal transgressions which their executives were caught doing, refuse to stop breaking the law when the have a paid for by others - and quite literal - get out of jail card.
The FCA's so-called quandary in a nutshell: "Following the £1.1 billion ($1.7 billion) of fines it doled out to five banks over misconduct related to foreign exchange rate rigging, Tracey McDermott, head of enforcement at the Financial Conduct Authority, said: “Is our action effective at all?”
The answer, clearly, is no. But hey, maybe the next wristslap will fix everything and the New Normal criminal syndicate, i.e., bankers. will promptly fix their ways.
On Tuesday Ms. McDermott said she had recently looked though the slew of statements put out by punished banks dating back to 2002. They read like a “PR paint by numbers,” she said. The press releases all state that the wrong doing is linked to a few employees, changes have been made and that it won’t happen again.
But “lessons are not being learnt,” she said.
She was speaking at a conference in London on legal enforcement.
Here is Tracey McDermott confused that
"Lessons are not being learnt."
Surely, there were also hundreds of bankers at said conference, smiling gleefully at what the past 6 years have demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt, is unconditional banker immunity from prison time. In perpetuity.
The recent foreign exchange debacle has cause particular consternation for the regulator. In 2012 and 2013 several banks paid fines for misconduct relating to rigging interbank lending benchmarks. At the time many pledged to reform their rate setting practices more widely.
But Barclays traders manipulated gold prices the day after the bank was fined over efforts to rig interbank lending rates, according to the FCA. It is now clear that employees at some lenders, such as Royal Bank of Scotland Group RBS.LN +2.39% PLC, continued to try to rig foreign exchange markets even as these internal clean up operations were ongoing, the FCA found.
So what is the FCA's solution? Well, just like central planners, central bankers, and clueless Princetonian economists, the FCA has a brilliant idea - let's do more of the same and hope this time it's different.
Ms. McDermott said that big fines must continue to be meted out to keep bank boards focused on changing their institution’s culture. She refuted claims that the FCA’s approach to fining was “like a soviet tractor factory” — referring to accusations that the regulator was just churning out fines to appease policitians — saying that London’s reputation as a financial center was at stake.
“Enforcement should not be written off as a trip to the headmaster’s office where you take your punishment and leave,” Ms. McDermott said.
Lessons are being learnt. Slowly. The FCA hopes that banks will change in the same way that attitudes to drink driving have altered over time. Ms. McDermott said her parents’ generation didn’t drink and drive for fear of getting caught. “For my generation it was presented as a moral issue… the impact on the lives of other people.”
So according to the FCA, the one thing that should stop banker crime is concerns over the loss of their pristine reputation. Yes, for those wondering, the FCA does resides on this world, a world where bankers at least in the eyes of the FCA, still have something called a "reputation" which is "at stake."
Which also explains why said reputation will continue to get worse until even organized crime syndicates will bristle when compared to the most criminal, pardon, lucrative M&A bank or hedge fund du jour.
In the meantime, if the FCA, or SEC, or DOJ, or whoever, really wants to "fix" the rampant, criminal banker problem, here is a simple solution: throw someone in jail for a long, long time, and stop showing to the world that one can avoid prison if only one pays a large enough fee (out of other shareholders' funds).
Better yet, take a clue from Iran:
"A billionaire businessman at the heart of a $2.6 billion state bank scam in Iran, the largest fraud case since the country's 1979 Islamic Revolution, was executed Saturday, state television reported.... A total of 39 defendants were convicted in the case. Four received death sentences, two got life sentences and the rest received sentences of up to 25 years in prison."
And guess what: nobody in Tehran has rigged the USDJPY, ramped the E-mini, or banged the close in gold in years.
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Try capital punishment for banksters instead... guaranteed they will never re offend, and the remainder of the banksters will think twice before they rip off widows and orphans.
Proof the Romans beat their fore fathers with ugly sticks and tortured them with teeth benders.
That's too good for the banksters,. Why not barbed anal probes up their rears? They enjoy screwing us, so let's return the favor.
That bitch is fucking ugly. Probably can bribe with some cheap meat and two veg (or Clinton Carpet).
Fucking bureaucrats and pols are some of the fugliest, stupidest people on earth.
She has to go....
Nail gun
Hot tub
Tall building
Shower
Staircase
Lefthanded gunshot
Sex video
Ect
Sex video? - your job!
"The FCA hopes that banks will change in the same way that attitudes to drink driving have altered over time."
Nobody is that stupid naturally. That's a well-manicured, artfully crafted (and well paid for) level of stupidity right there.
I assume she's a former Goldman employee per the usual?
And yes, she is not an attractive woman. Take solace that beauty is only skin deep. But take wisdow knowing that ugly goes to the bone.
And it is not generally understood that Banksters don't even suffer any financial penalty for their crimes. When penalties are applied to Banks, they are paid for from earnings, which otherwise belong to shareholders. So the proceeds of criminal activity go the criminals via higher bonuses and the cost of penalties gets picked up by shareholders. Nice work if you can get it......
We ripped off some folks.
Theives
Liars
When it comes to banksters, don't both choices apply?
[Austin Powers]That's not a woman, that's a man, man.[/Austin Powers]
You must be talking about Michelle/Michael/Wookie Obama.
The only solution is breaking them into pieces. Ya, I know the odds. Just sayin.
RBS Bankers Guilty of £3m Fraud Walk Free, Judge Says They’ve ‘Suffered’ EnoughTwo RBS bankers found guilty of a property fraud worth £3m are walking away without jail time because the judge believes they have already “suffered” as they were “embarrassed” by the incident.
Despite pulling in salaries of over £100,000 a year each, the two RBS bankers decided they’d treat the RBS mortgage portfolio like their own personal piggy bank. Raymond Pask and Andrew Ratnage set up a string of fake companies in the names of Pask’s relatives, which they used to apply for mortgages. The pair would use the money to buy and renovate homes in order to sell them for a profit. Over a period of five years, they swindled more than £3 million – buying properties in London, Essex and Kent.
The case has taken four years to come to court, giving the men time to payback their loans. Judge Rebecca Poulet QC said, along with the embarrassment they have expressed, this is punishment enough:
http://www.scriptonitedaily.com/2014/12/02/rbs-bankers-guilty-of-3m-frau...
I would recommend waterboarding, but the USSA tells us that this is not torure.
Do Raymond Pask and Andrew Ratnage keep their jobs, no criminal record? The embarrassment is enough? So, it was merely a show trial. Shameful.
Pask had his pension pot reduced to £120,000 – he claims this makes him “financially ruined”.
The courts, and the police dept. should have at least taken his wallet, emptied out any loose change, then give him his empty wallet back. Then, the police dept. and courts do not have to tax honest people, for the illusion of justice.
Lampposts and meathooks.
Too good.
A blowtorch and pliers.
A speculum and starving rats.
Bamboo shoots and Peruvian Death peppers.
A cheesegrater and salt.
Tweezers and urethral hair placement.
Tracheotomies and tear gas.
And finally, chained to a rotting body.
An excellent start.
"Free guillotine ride! Banksters have first dibs."
An American, not US subject.
"If a guillotine kills a bankster and no one is there to watch, how many tickets could have been sold?"
If a guillotine kills a bankster and no one is there to watch, you deprived a lot of people the chance to see justice done.
'bout time you got back to your signature subject. You have had far too many posts lately where you forgot the guillotines. This MUST be corrected to at least every other post...
I felt that the "guillotine" shtick was distracting from my main messages, not that anyone really cares.
But then, it is so much fun, and I can't resist.
An American, not US subject.
Guillotine tip# 23: Rain-X applied to the drip and "trip" (For the head's trip to the basket.) troughs will make clean up much easier at the end of a long guillotining day.
Give this guy a listen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2oWZ6Z3Pks
It's coming. Big time.
Piano wire and a low stool.
I wonder if mean frogs like to have sex.
Bankster Was executed Saturday
You listening Blankfein and Dimon.
A hoodlum breaks into a store, slugs the owner with a lead pipe and runs out with the contents of the till. In the street he meets PC McDermott who grabs his collar. Hoodlum hands her 10 pounds, she lets him go convinced he has learned his lesson.
How many times would this have to happen before PC McDermott figured out something wasn't working?
Or maybe it is.
Send them to China, Iran or Alaska - where they really punish your corrupt banksters.
Those 'doing god's work' will find themselves rotting corpses along with the other low life tash of the world.
Bring the Hot Blade to the USA and its myriad of corrupt banksters and Congressment, and corrupt judicial and regulators....oh wait, there is nobody to prosecute, find guilty or punish corruption in the USA. OK if you wait long enough they will start eating each other.
Looks like there is more justice in Iran than in UK.
Someone please find 'it' a real job.
Never send a woman to do a man's job. The last men that were dispatched to contact bankers have left a trail of bodies a mile deep. (ie. Thrown in front of train, thrown off building, knifed on bicycle, shot by nail gun, etc.)
Without dead skin in the game, nothing changes....
Getting away with whatever the HSBC they like whilst giving the taxpayer one up the RBS is part of the fictional reserve business model.
If you're suprised, Tracey McHideous, it's because you're too stupid to understand - which is probably why you got the job.
this ties in with Daniel Hannan's speech in the EU Parliament regarding the uselessness of fines, aka "slap on the wrist". he calls for criminal indictment
ZH article and my comment here on the fact that he calls for it in the wrong parliament, perhaps on purpose
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-12-02/daniel-hannan-summarizes-europe...
What Tracey McDermott fails to mention is "why" her FCA organisation does not progress prosecution of these criminal banksters who keep on defrauding people and manipulating markets.
The answer is quite simple: the FCA and Met Police need permission from the government (The Business Secretary who can usually be overruled by The Chancellor) before any criminal prosecution can go ahead against an important financial institution in The City. This includes all the major banks.
Whether we talk about the days when Gordoom Brown was PM or nowadays with the empty suit Cameron in No.10, government itself thru the Bank of England and Treasury are up to their necks in bankster criminality. They have too much to hide, so prosecutions are not allowed for fear the criminal banksters spill the beans.
Example: does anybody really believe that the Bank of England under SIR Mervyn King was unaware of Libor rigging?? No way. It's very likely the BoE was orchestrating the rigging from its basement or at the very least was giving a nod & wink to it. It was directly implicated.
If banksters were prosecuted, the whole financial edifice of The City of London would collapse like a house of cards.
I heard that the profession of banker had been invented because prisons were already full.
No wonder they are never convicted.
I suggest she take a good hard look at Pavlov's experiment to find out why ...
That's because bankers are Communists
http://newworldorderg20.wordpress.com/2014/12/03/communist-e-u-and-america-gorge-on-taxes-and-want-laws-to-make-lower-taxes-illegal/
http://newworldorderg20.wordpress.com/2014/11/01/germanys-minister-of-finance-wolfgang-schauble-promotes-globalist-tax-collection-for-e-u/
http://newworldorderg20.wordpress.com/2014/11/01/fed-pushes-banks-to-govern-data-preperation-for-global-tax-collection/
and more....http://newworldorderg20.wordpress.com
At least Bruce Wild's relentless blog ads put the figleaf up over the paperhanging. He re-posts old reposts of misspelled post snippets. You just throw a headline up, and get to business.
Nice to see the Tylers spreading their legs like this.
Matt Taibbi on why Wall St. banksters are not in jail http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/why-isnt-wall-street-in-jail-20110216?page=6