from the well-they-would-wouldn't-they? dept.
City AM's front page headline this morning read "Enough is enough: HSBC chief bites back over mega-fines and regulation."
HSBC's chairman launched an unprecedented attack yesterday on what he sees as a wave of conflicting and poorly designed regulations sweeping the world's banking sector.
Douglas Flint's remarks are the latest sign of a growing frustration in the City over the sustained political pressure on the industry.
Flint said that new red tape is undermining banks' basic function of taking risks to fund businesses and households. And he warned that banks are pumping enormous resources into meeting uncertain and varied rules, distracting them from their day to day business.
[...]
And [sic] monster fines from America are even under pressure from the French and German governments, who are arguing that the US regulators have too much influence. Both countries want the issue to be on the agenda at the next G20 meeting. French giant BNP Paribas was fined $8.9bn (£5.3bn) in June for breaking US sanctions.
The article goes on to state that recently passed banking regulations from around the world are uncoordinated and obstruct the day-to-day risk-taking that banks rely on to operate, that the increased legal burden and associated costs of compliance is hindering lending in developing markets, and that the recent legal judgements that banks inter-jurisdictional natures have exposed them to are unfair and disproportionate.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 05 2014, @07:15PM
wah wah wah all the way home
(Score: 5, Funny) by Jeremiah Cornelius on Tuesday August 05 2014, @07:28PM
Usury, Predation and Piracy will be solved by market forces, not regulation!
Any attempt to impose restriction on the free trade of debt-enslavement and leveraged theft will be tantamount to tongue-kissing Karl Marx.
Now, stop your penalization. This caused a .001% reduction in our realization of capital for 2014, and we were forced to lay-off 2 MPs and a US Senator to recover our balance sheet.
You're betting on the pantomime horse...
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 05 2014, @08:40PM
G. K. Chesterton said something like:
"The poor object to being governed badly. The rich object to being governed at all."
(it's in one of his Father Brown stories)
Seems true enough.
(Score: 2) by davester666 on Wednesday August 06 2014, @02:03AM
No, they would never do that. Instead they laid off 2000 employees and closed 200 branches.
(Score: 2) by Jeremiah Cornelius on Friday August 08 2014, @09:34PM
And foreclose your mortgage for 3 15-day-late payments over the last 36-month period. Cos? Hey! You abandoned your equity!
You're betting on the pantomime horse...
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 05 2014, @07:26PM
> Flint said that new red tape is undermining banks' basic function of taking risks to fund businesses and households
We could skip the fines and start putting C-level employees in prison instead.
I would totally be on board with that.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Tuesday August 05 2014, @07:36PM
The same kind of prisons reserved for violent felons.
Perhaps getting the shit beat out of them or being forcibly raped up the ass, or even just taunted and threatened daily, would give the sociopath banking pigs some kind of empathy for the common man.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by frojack on Tuesday August 05 2014, @08:02PM
Frankly, I think that is a much better solution to getting bankers to do what your country wants them to do.
After all, the bank gets a fine, they pay it out of fees they add on to subsequent loans, and the borrowers pay the fine, and bank management sees no consequences at all. Doing jail time brings the point into sharp focus.
That will either work, or drive the bank out of your country. Or both.
That said, just like with information regulations, it would seem easy enough for countries passing a bunch of conflicting and predatory laws to put the banks in positions they can't possibly avoid breaking one countries laws to avoid punishment in another county. They are then simply choosing the country with the smallest legal penalty and thumb their nose at those laws.
We all bemoan the fact the internet is being slowly walled off by states obstructing the free flow of information.
We all realize that neither the net nor information can survive being single country entities.
But we are quick to assume that the Royal Bank of Agartha could stand alone and doesn't need any ties to The National Bank of Atlantis. Half the people on SN would ban multinational banks overnight if given a chance. Another quarter would ban multinational corporations all together, and yet others would simply ban corporations outright.
I'm not sure we can have a world economy with provincial banking regulations. We aren't an agrarian society anymore.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by VLM on Tuesday August 05 2014, @08:11PM
"I'm not sure we can have a world economy with provincial banking regulations. We aren't an agrarian society anymore."
Maybe we shouldn't then. Would save a lot of resources that are running out anyway, and globalism never helped anyone in the USA who isn't in the 1%.
And we have an entire political party of geezers dedicated to re-enacting feudalism and theocracy and the middle ages, and the other one wants to re-enact a weird combo of Genghis Khan's invasion using illegals and Pol Pot style urban renewal to save the environment.
At least that's the dismal situation in the USA.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Tuesday August 05 2014, @08:05PM
If you fed them in slowly they'd get ground into hamburger which is OK, but if you dumped too many intelligent successful sociopaths into prison at about the same time, they'd likely take over the existing orgs.
You think MS-13 is bad now, imagine them being an operating division of HSBC, ain't seen nothing yet.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Wednesday August 06 2014, @02:33AM
The only reason that would happen is because they have tons of money. I know a few people who did hard time in federal prison; drugs, armed robbery, grand larceny, etc. It is a nightmare inside a prison. The soft fleshy banker who doesn't even wash his own clothes isn't going to have an easy time. He will be on the bottom of the pyramid. And if they know he is a banker they could try to extort him for money making his life hell.
The banker could try to buy protection. But as for gaining power in a gang, I somehow doubt that. Though, it is possible they might attract the attention of very wealthy and influential "business men" south of the border. Perhaps a deal to help move money around in exchange for not letting him become the prisons pin cushion.
But a better point: if we were to actually be able to throw these megalomaniacs in jail I think our legal system would have a real fucking nasty set of teeth. And that right there would force them to keep their pretty little noses clean. Once a few million or billionaires are in a federal pen getting torn to shreds by violent inmates the others will fall in line. Until then it is a nice fantasy.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday August 06 2014, @12:07PM
"Perhaps a deal to help move money around"
Perhaps? That was their specialty.
"Soooo I heard your wife and kids were having financial trouble because you're in this cell block with me, and your higher ups want either $50K or the $50K worth of product which you got busted with that got you in here or they'll take it out of your hide, or or wife and kids hide. Yeah that sucks, don't it. I could make all those problems go away with a wave of my hand, and even get your smart little cousin an awesome job in NYC, but only if I'm treated like a king in here..."
Repeat about 20 times until enough people owe favors, and you're pretty much literally taken over and can start playing guys off against each other and basically running their business for them.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Wednesday August 06 2014, @02:16PM
FYI: Dealers don't care about product lost to law enforcement. It is part of the risk involved. As long as the mule keeps his or her mouth shut then the loss is written off as the cost of doing business. IF the mule rips off the dealer then that is when the dealers retaliate. I know a guy who did a few years after getting caught with 5 keys in his trunk. That is over 100 grand worth of product. Since it was his colombian girlfriends drug dealing family who put him up to it, they also paid for really good lawyers. He only spent 2 years in the can and never owed anyone anything. All he had to do was keep his mouth shut and let the lawyers talk. Besides, the cost of getting a key from the source is only a few grand far, far less than street value.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 05 2014, @07:35PM
http://ur1.ca/hwzow [ur1.ca]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 05 2014, @08:05PM
Risks? What risks? If the worst that could happen is keeping your job and the bank getting bailed out, that ain't a risk.
The banking business gambled big not so long ago, and now they're reaping what they sowed.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Tuesday August 05 2014, @09:59PM
As I understand it all the bailed out banks replayed their loans, with interest, rather quickly.
(Score: 2) by redneckmother on Wednesday August 06 2014, @03:39AM
Guess who paid the interest?
Mas cerveza por favor.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Wednesday August 06 2014, @04:34AM
The banks. As I understand it. From ft.com
The Treasury invested $245bn from the Troubled asset repurchase program (Tarp) in more than 700 banks and has so far recovered more than $270bn. The bulk of the money – most of it invested in the form of preferred stock with a fixed dividend of 5 per cent and additional warrants allowing the government to buy common stock – was returned within months.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 06 2014, @08:38AM
And where did the banks get that money from? Almost certainly not from the funds of those responsible - the executives.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 06 2014, @08:47AM
Exactly. They fucked the global economy, got bailed out, and made out like, well, bankers. I'm guessing the executives didn't repay that loan out of their own pockets, which means the money ultimately came from their customers (aka the people who they already fucked to create the mess in the first place).
However, what they also sowed with their arrogance and unaccountability was a global public anti-banking sentiment. Now they are reaping the international legislative mess triggered by democratic governments reacting to that public sentiment.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by AsteroidMining on Tuesday August 05 2014, @09:05PM
Somewhere, a very tiny violin is playing, but I cannot hear it.
The "too-big-to-fail" banks now-a-days do not take risks, they socialize risks (i.e., pass them on to the taxpayers). They should be all be nationalized IMHO.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by present_arms on Tuesday August 05 2014, @09:11PM
TL;DR version, Fuck the bankers.
http://trinity.mypclinuxos.com/
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 05 2014, @09:29PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMehSfTmnbY [youtube.com]
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday August 05 2014, @09:40PM
They decided to skip the charade of fines levied on the banks, which the banks write off or pass along to their customers, or simple jail time in white-collar country club prisons for criminal bankers. They execute them instead. [washingtonpost.com] Jail time, as another poster pointed out, will only increase the financial sophistication of criminal syndicates that operate out of prisons. Capital punishment, though, is a significant deterrent to the most hardened psychopath.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by PinkyGigglebrain on Tuesday August 05 2014, @10:08PM
Slight correction;
for a "hardened psychopath" it does not occur to them that they are doing anything wrong. Even if someone points out that what they are doing is wrong they will proceed anyway, because they do not believe they will get caught, that the laws do not apply to them, and that they are smarter than everyone else and will get away with it anyway.
Agree with the rest of your idea though, it would deter everyone else quite well.
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 2) by hoochiecoochieman on Wednesday August 06 2014, @11:18AM
Sociopaths are perfectly aware that what they do is wrong, the point is they don't care.
(Score: 2, Informative) by arslan on Tuesday August 05 2014, @10:25PM
Seriously, I work in IT in the banking sector. I couldn't more welcome the regulations and fines. First off as far as regulations are concerned, it actually forces all these banks to properly invest in their IT systems - specifically their middle to back office systems, or at least invest more to fix the system problems even if it is not a complete overhaul.
The GFC was a joke, the first to get cut were all the cost center projects and the first people to go were all the cost center people, IT folks, back office staff, etc. so the bankers get to keep their bonus.
As for fines, if these bankers do nothing wrong they should have absolutely nothing to worry about even if the fine is gazillion dollars and a million years in jail.