The foreign exchange rigging-and-ripoff scandal is just the latest in an endless series of banking scandals that continue to fester and that never land anyone in jail. The traders, their bosses, and their bosses’ bosses, all the way up, aren’t even perpetrators. Banks – that is stockholders who had nothing to do with this – pay some fines, those actually involved get their bonuses – or in “harsh” cases, end up at another bank and collect their bonuses there – while their customers and clients get screwed, and life goes on.
So here’s an utterly frustrated banking reporter who’s just had it with this endless wrongdoing and impunity.
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Yup, @paulmasonnews well worth a follow on Twitter. He left the BBC because he felt they didn’t give him enough freedom in his reporting. One if broadcasting’s good guys.
The Regulators didn’t prevent 2008. Perhaps the real problem is that the banks are far too regulated. Remove the onus of risk discovery from governments because they obviously didn’t do their expected job prior to 2008 and since, and put the onus of regulating the banks back on the banks themselves. Put the onus back on the banks themselves to carry out proper due diligence and risk assessment against each other, and those that invest their monies with them, rather than relying on government to do it for them and therefore making them more individually accountable.
Joe,
That is my thought too. Do not regulate. Let the parties who take the risk get burnt. Simple ain’t it. Bonus -we would not need regulators. We can send the Janets and Bernankes home.
I don’t buy into this focus on “evil banks”. It is an old cry that has always risen from parts of the establishment; the self-same cry that led to the creation of the Federal Reserve. Fining banks seems to be a new category in the revenue side of the government’s budget.