But of course there will be no criminal prosecutions. Gasp, that would be bad for the markets. So, it’ll be a a slap-on-the-wrist fine for HSBC and little will change.
This is what happened with Western Union, Wells Fargo and Bank of America too. Those banks were accused of laundering money for the drug cartels, paid a fine, yet no one went to prison.
If this happened in Mexico, we’d just say their system was totally corrupt, right?
From the Wells Fargo story
Indicting a big bank could trigger a mad dash by investors to dump shares and cause panic in financial markets, says Jack Blum, a U.S. Senate investigator for 14 years and a consultant to international banks and brokerage firms on money laundering.
The theory is like a get-out-of-jail-free card for big banks, Blum says.
“There’s no capacity to regulate or punish them because they’re too big to be threatened with failure,” Blum says.
The fix is in. But the feds do have the capacity to regulate and punish. However, they are choosing not to. In this the Obama Administration is no different from the Bush Administration.
During the savings and loan debacle of the 1980’s, thousands of bank executives went to prison. Yet I am unaware of a single criminal prosecution of a high-level bank official today in either the subprime collapse or the now multiple instances of banks laundering drug money. This is a perversion of democracy and justice.