Hacker News Reader

Comment by late2part | Hacker News Reader

This should be a larger fine. People need to go to jail. These people corrupted of the primary substrates of the financial system. This shows how endemic the corruption is and how little our system punishes people for cheating. Either the populace really doesn't care, or else the system is corrupt and the financial people have undue influence on the government. Either way, it is bad and it needs to change.

View on HN

13 people charged here: http://www.sfo.gov.uk/press-room/latest-press-releases/press...

two more here: http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/two-former-rabobank-traders-in...

These are outliers though. Aside from insider trading cases, the norm is institution pays $X to settle and everything goes away (tax-deductible btw).

Replace 'institution' with 'shareholders'. That's why banks like DB trade for a price to book of < 1 (0.6 today).

These settlements are a direct transfer from people's 401k to the pocket of politicians.

> More than $5 billion has flowed into New York’s state and city accounts this year from settlements with BNP Paribas SA over sanctions violations and Credit Suisse Group AG for helping Americans evade taxes. In the city, the bounty has already funded a $160 million program to outfit police with tablet computers and a $35 million initiative to prosecute rapists. The New York governor plans to use a big portion to rebuild Rochester, Syracuse and other upstate cities far removed from the banks and their crimes. [0]

[0] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-12-04/new-york-o...

Looks like the trial is underway or so [1]

Still, only 13 people charged in what as institutionalized corruption. I believe the leaders of these companies were knowledgeable about what happened, or should have been.

[1] http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/03/20/rabobank-libor-all...

It would probably be difficult to prove that senior leadership knew about it unless there is an email trail.

This is not corruption. Fraud rather.

Should have been, yes. Actually knowledgable - not in a million years. Those who sit on the Group Executive Committee are extremely far removed from the day to day goings on. Running a 100k+ person bank with 4 completely different divisions is totally different from running a desk. The odds that someone on the GEC even knows the name of a person on a desk lower than MD or D is slim to none, unless that person is an absolute rockstar.

I think it's time to think about sending companies to "jail". If you are in medical devices the FDA can suspend all your sales for a while. Obviously shutting down a bank for half a year will be pretty complicated to do without hurting their customers but I think it's something to think about.

Many people have gone to jail for this and more will be. Still in progress.

The merits of the actual impact of this and completely out of wack use of fines as revenue raising is another matter

They have? Can you cite sources?

The only mention of anyone possibly going to jail I can find (rather than just the general idea that someone might go to jail) is [0] (and another mention in RT). No names; no final sentencing. As if it never happened.

[0] http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/oct/07/banker-plead...

welcome to the western world - where no one goes to jail for white collared crimes!!!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com