One week ago we took delight [6]in one particular headline in which Fed vice-chair Stanley Fischer was quoted as saying that bankers "should be punished for financial crimes."
[7]
We doubt we need to explain the virtually infinite circularity of irony contained in this quote, suffice to say that for the Fed to admit that the US judicial system is broken and that not a single banker has gone to prison following years of abuse, nearly a third of a trillion in legal settlements and charges by US commercial banks many of which have been now found to criminally manipulate markets (of which none more so than JPMorgan, whose CEO Jamie Dimon is now a billionaire as a result [8]), and that the Fed has enabled and encouraged all of this with its policies, is... well, frankly we don't even have the right word for it.
Today, the irony goes a notch higher when another central banker, this time former Goldman partner and current Bank of England head, Mark Carney doubled down on Fischer's commentary.
Moments ago Carney said [9]that prison sentences for market manipulating traders and bankers should be extended from 7 to 10 years. He added that so-called "rolling bad apples" or individuals who are fired from financial firms would no longer be able to move to another job without their new employer knowing about their history.
The punchline: "Carney said real markets were essential to guarantee prosperity."
"Not markets that collapse when there is a shock from abroad. Not markets where transactions occur in chat rooms. Not markets where no one appears accountable for anything," he said.
So... not markets which are artificially rigged by $22 trillion in central bank liquidity and which collapse every time the "threat" that any of this preciously liquidity may be taken away?
And as for cracking down on criminal market rigging banks, perhaps Mark Carney can start with Martin "The Hammer" Mallett, the former chief currencies dealer at the Bank of England, whose role in the FX rigging scandal was revealed early on and who was fired for "serious misconduct" just as promptly before too many questions emerged.
Recall [10]:
At a July 4, 2006, meeting led by BOE chief dealer Martin Mallett, attendees discussed “evidence of attempts to move the market around popular fixing times by players that had no particular interest in that fix,” according to the minutes. “It was noted that ‘fixing business’ generally was becoming increasingly fraught due to this behavior.”
Not only that but as the WSJ reported [11], the BOE's Mallett "received emails that were part of an alleged campaign to rig benchmark interest rates, according to evidence presented in a London trial Wednesday."
Mallett's Bank ogf England email addres: hammer@bankofengland.co.uk [12] (.com also works)
Because we know Mr. Carney is very sincere and quite serious with his gratuitous and wanton statement, he eagerly await for Scotland Yard to show up on Mr. Mallett's doorstep and to throw him in the prison cell next to Navinder Sarao.
As for bankers going to prison for 10 years instead of 7, let's start will less lofty ambitions: how about some banker, anywhere, and not one who was trading out of his mother's basement, going to prison for 10 minutes first.
