John Lanchester · Are we having fun yet?: The Biggest Scandal of All · LRB 4 July 2013. As anyone who’s been there recently can testify, the blame in Spain falls mainly on the banks – as it does in Ireland, in Greece, in the US, and pretty much everywhere else too.
Here in the UK, feelings were nicely summed up by the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards, which reported on 19 June that ‘the public have a sense that advantage has been taken of them, that bankers have received huge rewards, that some of those rewards have not been properly earned, and in some cases have been obtained through dishonesty, and that these huge rewards are excessive, bearing little or no relation to the work done.’ Let Us Now Shed Crocodile Tears for Jon Corzine. With Hurricane Sandy dominating the news, quite a few business stories from early in the week got only cursory notice.
In some ways, that’s not a bad thing. The Wall Street Journal had a bizarre sequence of reports on Jon Corzine. Are Big Banks Criminal Enterprises? Guest Post: Fraud Finally Being Discussed in Polite Company … Now Where Are the Prosecutions? → Washington’s Blog As I have repeatedly pointed out, the economy cannot stabilize unless the fraud which led to the crisis (see this, this, this and this) is openly discussed.
Bill Black: Krugman Now Sees the Perversity of Economics’ “Culture of Fraud” Wow, is Black fast.
I had just seen the Krugman post decrying how the three academic authors of Romney’s white paper on economics – Glenn Hubbard, Greg Mankiw, and John Taylor – repeatedly and aggressively misrepresented research they cited in support of their positions, and wanted to say something. As much as it’s good to see Krugman call this sort of thing out, it nevertheless raises a basic question: where has he been?
He was soft on his colleagues when the movie Inside Job came out, which discussed corruption in academic economics, focusing on Frederic Mishkin, Larry Summers, Laura Tyson, and….Glenn Hubbard::
Prosecuting the financial crisis: Just who should we be blaming anyway? Durable change a long way off for UK’s scandal-ridden banking system. By Prem Sikka, University of Essex July 8th, 2012 The role of Barclays bank in manipulating the London Interbank Offered Rate (Libor) continues to dominate international financial media. The bank has already attracted fines from regulators in the UK and theUSA. But further revelations are likely as US Senate Committees are flexing their muscles, the UK parliament has launched an inquiry and the UK’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO) has announced a criminal investigation. The temptation will be to look for scapegoats and prevent consideration of the systemic factors.
Barclays has a dark history. In February 2012, the UK government introduced retrospective legislation to halt two tax avoidance schemes that would have enabled Barclays to avoid around £500 million in corporate taxes. How Wall Street Scams Counties Into Bankruptcy. Lord knows we’ve had more than enough scandals ginned up by Wall Street over the years, and the message that banking executives proclaim after each is: “Don’t worry, we’ve learned that lesson, and it will never happen again.”
Which is how we got to the recent spectacle of Jamie Dimon, the chief executive officer of JPMorgan Chase & Co., testifying twice before Congress that although the bank’s chief investment office was taking huge proprietary risks with some $350 billion of its depositors' money -- and lost $3 billion (and counting) by making a bunch of risky bets on an obscure, thinly traded derivatives contract -- everything is now fine and dandy because the unjustifiable gambling has been stopped dead in its tracks.
We are told repeatedly that when Wall Street’s deeply flawed incentive system leads to one bad outcome after another, year after year, it will never happen again. Yet it does. Minor Penalties.
Financial product Misselling. "Fraud as a Business Model" Predatory Lending Practices... Underwriting fraud. Mortgage Fraud. Subprime Securitization Fraud. Foreclosure Fraud. Control Fraud. Counterparties: 2012 — The year of bank fraud. Welcome to the Counterparties email.
The sign-up page is here, it’s just a matter of checking a box if you’re already registered on the Reuters website. Send suggestions, story tips and complaints to Counterparties.Reuters@gmail.com. Let's end this rotten culture that only rewards rogues. Investment banking is an organised scam masquerading as a business.
It is defined by endemic conflicts of interest, systemic amoral behaviour and extreme avarice. Many of its senior figures should be serving prison sentences or disgraced – and would have been if British regulators had been weaned off the doctrine of " light touch" regulation earlier and if the Serious Fraud Office's budget had not been emasculated by Mr Osborne. It is a tax on wealth generation and an enemy of honest endeavour – the beast that is devouring British capitalism. The £290m fine on Barclays for rigging the interest rates in the inter-bank market is a defining moment. Britain ignores this epidemic of financial crime at its peril. August 1st, 2012 (minor revisions September 4th 2012)
LIBOR / EURIBOR manipulation. "Too Big to Fail" Financial sector fraud - curators...