Outrageous HSBC Settlement Proves the Drug War is a Joke

[phantom power]

Worth reading the whole thing.

If you've ever been arrested on a drug charge, if you've ever spent even a day in jail for having a stem of marijuana in your pocket or "drug paraphernalia" in your gym bag, Assistant Attorney General and longtime Bill Clinton pal Lanny Breuer has a message for you: Bite me.

Breuer this week signed off on a settlement deal with the British banking giant HSBC that is the ultimate insult to every ordinary person who's ever had his life altered by a narcotics charge. Despite the fact that HSBC admitted to laundering billions of dollars for Colombian and Mexican drug cartels (among others) and violating a host of important banking laws (from the Bank Secrecy Act to the Trading With the Enemy Act), Breuer and his Justice Department elected not to pursue criminal prosecutions of the bank, opting instead for a "record" financial settlement of $1.9 billion, which as one analyst noted is about five weeks of income for the bank.

...

They're now saying that if you're not an important cog in the global financial system, you can't get away with anything, not even simple possession. You will be jailed and whatever cash they find on you they'll seize on the spot, and convert into new cruisers or toys for your local SWAT team, which will be deployed to kick in the doors of houses where more such inessential economic cogs as you live. If you don't have a systemically important job, in other words, the government's position is that your assets may be used to finance your own political disenfranchisement.

On the other hand, if you are an important person, and you work for a big international bank, you won't be prosecuted even if you launder nine billion dollars. Even if you actively collude with the people at the very top of the international narcotics trade, your punishment will be far smaller than that of the person at the very bottom of the world drug pyramid. You will be treated with more deference and sympathy than a junkie passing out on a subway car in Manhattan (using two seats of a subway car is a common prosecutable offense in this city). An international drug trafficker is a criminal and usually a murderer; the drug addict walking the street is one of his victims. But thanks to Breuer, we're now in the business, officially, of jailing the victims and enabling the criminals.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/outrageous-hsbc-settlement-proves-the-drug-war-is-a-joke-20121213

[The Magistrate]

1. Cold Truth, Sir

If they were serious, the bankers would be in stir for life: they are essential to the trade....

[RKP5637]

2. If you have enough $$$$$ you do what you damn well please, just pay for the cost of

doing business and all will be fine. Yet enough example that only $$$$$ counts and "we the people," well, not so much. We see this over and over again.

[niyad]

3. does this surprise any of us?

[phantom power]

4. It kind of surprises me, in a raising-the-bar sort of way...

I mean, they aren't just changing the laws to make unethical things legal. And they aren't just breaking financial laws. No, now they're actually actively colluding with drug lords. And for this, they get a fine. Which, once again, relegates it to cost-of-doing-business.

It's pretty bold.

[woo me with science]

5. K&R We are bought and sold.

[Wilms]

6. ^

[Warren DeMontague]

7. We need those prison cells for all the cancer grannies caught smoking a joint.

Cant put money laundering bankers in there, o no.