Because
people forget, and because recent history and its crimes go down a hole
where they sit in the dark and decay without consequences, I bring back
some of my earlier articles. Here is one, from 2012:
Aside
from their normal duties, banks serve as a social construct. They
assure the population that money is in the right place. Vaults,
accounts. Banks are where the money goes.
Of course, that idea has broken down in recent years, as people have become aware that banks do bad things.
Still, people maintain a certain amount of faith in these archons of money.
There
is one thing, though, that must not happen. It would register too high a
psychic shock for the population: bankers going to jail. Not just one
or two of them, but a whole gaggle. All sorts of bankers being led off
in chains would shatter public confidence. The people might realize
that:
Bankland is gangland.
So, in order to maintain some semblance of public confidence in banks, a legal wrinkle is introduced.
You
launder billions in drug money and terrorist money, and when you get
caught, you say you're sorry and you go free. It's paradise.
There's an official DOJ name for the apology. It's called “deferred prosecution.”
The
guilty-as-sin bankers a) say they're sorry, b) swear they won't do it
again, and c) pay a fine, which always turns out to be a minor fraction
of the proceeds of the criminal enterprise.
WND
reports: Stuart Gulliver, chief honcho at banking behemoth HSBC, which
was found guilty of massive money laundering, said the bank accepts
responsibility “for past mistakes...we have said we are profoundly sorry
for them, and we do so again.”
And poof. Gulliver walks.
Whereas,
the last time I looked, if you're moving cocaine in New York, rather
than laundering the cocaine profits, “I'm sorry” doesn't quite cut it
when you're busted.
By
the way, the meaning of the word “defer” is “postpone” or “put off”
until later. But with bankers, deferred prosecution is a cover for
absolutely no criminal prosecution at any time and no prison sentences
ever. I guess they didn't want to call it “making prosecution vanish.”
Also,
Mr. Gulliver of HSBC, if you noticed, was apologizing for
“mistakes.” Laundering billions of dollars was evidently a series of
accidental and unintended happenings, much like adding columns of
numbers incorrectly. These people know how to twist meanings.
In bankland, the only thing keeping a CEO from sleeping at night is the inability to stop laughing.
John
Cruz, the whistleblower who helped take HSBC down, had a slightly
different take on the bank's “mistakes.” He called the government's $1.9
billion fine “a joke.” He said, “This bank is organized crime.” He
asserted that HSBC has laundered trillions of dollars.
Cruz
gave the DOJ tapes of bank employees discussing their crimes, but
apparently deferred prosecution won the day. No jail for anyone.
Bill Conroy, one of the best drug-war reporters around, writing at NarcoNews,
names the following banks who have been accused of major laundering
and, instead of criminal trials, have been granted deferred prosecution:
Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase, Wachovia (bought by Wells Fargo), ING, Standard Chartered, American Express International.
A nice group. A high-toned group.
“What did you do at the office today, Daddy?”
“I laundered four hundred million dollars for the Sinaloa Cartel, Jimmy.”
Sidebar:
When you live in bankland, and you end up on the short end of your own
criminal scam pushing mortgage-backed derivatives, you win “deferred
prosecution plus.” No apology necessary, and you can lay your hands on a
few hundred billion from the government, as part of a bailout. This is
even easier than washing drug dollars.
The
government will tell you their bank regulators are stretched thin,
overworked, and underpaid. But correct me if I'm wrong, isn't the whole
point of laundering money turning monstrous amounts of raw cash into
digitized entries in bank accounts?
And if so, aren't there places in the pipeline where giant containers full of money actually arrive at back doors?
Aren't
those back doors, in whatever countries they exist, rather easy to
spot? Don't the CIA and numerous other intelligence agencies have time
to find those doors...if they want to?
Actually, in bankland, you have powerful intelligence agencies standing by to grease your rails and watch your back.
And life keeps getting better.
Do
you seriously think these alphabet government agencies handle guard
duty, year after year, decade after decade, watching the back doors and
taking their little piece of the cartels' action, while the privileged
residents of bankland rake in the more serious money?
No, no. The agencies want and get full partnerships. In the whole enterprise.
In the cologne-scented atmosphere of bankland, consequences are deferred.
You
go to an Ivy League school, you get your degree, you move to New York,
you go to work for a bank, and after a while you wash billions of
dollars for the Sinaloa. You take the train back to Scarsdale every
night and ride home in a taxi. You vote Republican or Democrat. You
occasionally explain to yourself why you have to do what you do.
You
know all the best people. You look at them and they look at you, and a
silent understanding passes between you. A recognition that you're both
in the same basic kind of business.
You've
long since decided that, in this world, there are the strong and the
weak. If on many street corners, in many cities around the world,
addicts are showing up to get their next jolt, that's their problem. You
have no problems. You live in bankland.
Oh the stories you could tell. But you don't.
Your
bank loves that liquid cash. And all that money finds its way into the
legitimate economies of many countries, and isn't it a good thing? It's
alchemical. You're turning the bad into good.
Surely you are.
If
Occupy Wall Street had started out with gigantic signs featuring names
of prominent banks above the phrase, WASHING BILLIONS IN DRUG MONEY, do
you think network television cameras would have been down at Battery
Park every day, and do you think moron news anchors and the White House
would have been praising those fearless youths in the Park?
Do you really think so?
~~~
(The link to this article posted on my blog is here.)
(Follow me on Substack, Twitter, and Gab at @jonrappoport)
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