By Andre Damon
Five major international banks are expected to plead guilty as soon as next
week to criminal charges in the US related to their deliberate manipulation of
global foreign exchange markets, which allowed them to rake in billions of
dollars at the expense of retirees, university endowments and
municipalities. Citigroup, JPMorgan
Chase, Royal Bank of Scotland Group, Barclays and UBS are expected to plead
guilty to felony fraud and antitrust charges. ……The effect of the guilty pleas
will be essentially zero, beyond the immediate costs of the fines levied on the
institutions. As the Times put it, “life will go on, probably without much of a
hiccup.”……The investigation charges also had a criminal component…..Despite the
unprecedented character of the pleas, the actual impact of the admissions of
criminal wrongdoing by the banks is expected to be next to nothing….. for the
biggest corporations, being convicted of a felony is increasingly becoming
legally irrelevant…….. the fines levied by financial regulators remain a cost
of doing business, and pale in comparison with the billions of dollars made by
the major banks every year through criminal activities……In exchange for their
services, top financial regulators are almost universally provided with
high-paying positions in Wall Street after their stints with the government……To
this day, not a single executive at any major bank has been criminally
prosecuted for helping to cause the financial crisis, or any of the crimes that
followed…..To Read More…..
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