The Secret Goldman Sachs Tapes. Probably most people would agree that the people paid by the U.S. government to regulate Wall Street have had their difficulties.
Most people would probably also agree on two reasons those difficulties seem only to be growing: an ever-more complex financial system that regulators must have explained to them by the financiers who create it, and the ever-more common practice among regulators of leaving their government jobs for much higher paying jobs at the very banks they were once meant to regulate. Wall Street's regulators are people who are paid by Wall Street to accept Wall Street's explanations of itself, and who have little ability to defend themselves from those explanations. Our financial regulatory system is obviously dysfunctional. Condamnations record pour 3 banques aux Etats-Unis, dont la BNP. Depuis peu aux Etats-Unis, lorsqu’elles font de grosses bêtises ou sont hors-la-loi, les banques peuvent être condamnées.
C’est assez rassurant, puisque suite à la crise des subprimes, certaines banques étaient passées du statut de «to big to fail » (trop grosses pour faire faillite) à « to big to jail ». Cette expression, signifiant « trop grosse pour être condamnées » a été employée par Eric Holder, procureur général des États-Unis, devant le Sénat. Un aveu d’impuissance très douloureux pour l’Etat et la justice, face aux banques.