Joseph Stiglitz, who won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2001, says the best and only way to to curb market abuses (and thus end the current economic crisis) is to put bankers in prison.
[The Barclays scandal is] a perfect example of the repellent consequences of asymmetric information.
When traders working for Barclays rigged the Libor interest rate and flogged toxic financial derivatives – using their privileged position in the financial system to make profits at the expense of their customers – they were unwittingly proving Stiglitz right.
The captive Obama Administration has continually and without fail supported the big bank and studiously not enforced existing laws. Barclays was rigging the LIBOR, one of the most important interest rates on the planet. Some of our banks were no doubt involved in this too. These same banks have also been rigging interest rates paid to municipalities on bond money they have on deposit.
Thousands of bankers went to prison during the S&L crisis in the 1980’s. Practically none have during this much worse crisis. Stiglitz is correct. Once several dozen top executives and CEOs at big banks do a perp walk, then we might begin to return to Rule of Law in this county.
The big banks are parasites and leeches. They should be broken up.
The central argument of his latest oeuvre is that the huge inequalities of income and wealth that have developed in the US and elsewhere in the West over recent decades are not only unjust in themselves but are retarding growth.
On this Independence Day we should all reflect that if our criminal banks are not broken up and their leaders imprisoned that our freedom while continue to be eroded.
Listen, if people started going to jail for jaywalking instead of just getting a ticket I’m sure less people would do it. So if we started putting bankers in jail they wouldn’t be doing such risky behavior that could actually collapse our economy completely. We need more regulation in financial markets and less on main street. Of course until such time that these bankers put their money into main street and we have a reason to regulate main street more.
People have to recognise that white collar crime is the deadliest.
They are the ones who breed poverty with selfish greed .
Poverty breeds most crime or ath the very least supplies the foot soldiers for criminals.
This has always been true.
Politics cannot allow itself to praise these thieves, unfortunately they pay the pollies fees, until the government allocates election budgets you will never have true democracy.