Elizabeth Warren is calling for public hearings on banks

[think]

Source: Reuters.com

REUTERS
MAY 24, 2015, 6:58 PM

NEW YORK (Reuters) - US Senator Elizabeth Warren is calling for U.S. Department of Labor hearings on whether banks accused of rigging foreign exchange markets should be allowed to manage retirement accounts, the Financial Times reported on Sunday.

"When banks plead guilty to a crime, federal agencies must do more than look the other way," Warren told the Financial Times. "The SEC has already granted waivers to each of these banks without any detailed explanation, but it is not too late for the Department of Labor to hold a public hearing before it decides that such brazen lawbreakers can be trusted managing workers' retirement accounts."

Five of the world's largest banks, including JPMorgan Chase & Co and Citigroup Inc, were fined some $5.7 billion, and four of them pleaded guilty to U.S. criminal charges over manipulation of foreign exchange rates, authorities said on May 20.

UBS AG, the fifth bank, will plead guilty to rigging benchmark interest rates, the U.S. Justice Department said.





Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/elizabeth-warren-is-calling-for-public-hearings-on-banks-2015-5

---

[msongs]

1. and an investigation into why Obama's legal eagles send no bankers to jail nt

[think]

2. Some of these banks were called repeat offenders in 2011 and still here we are again:

Promises Made, and Remade, by Firms in S.E.C. Fraud Cases
By EDWARD WYATTNOV. 7, 2011

WASHINGTON — When Citigroup agreed last month to pay $285 million to settle civil charges that it had defrauded customers during the housing bubble, the Securities and Exchange Commission wrested a typical pledge from the company: Citigroup would never violate one of the main antifraud provisions of the nation’s securities laws.

To an outsider, the vow may seem unusual. Citigroup, after all, was merely promising not to do something that the law already forbids. But that is the way the commission usually does business. It also was not the first time the firm was making that promise.

Citigroup’s main brokerage subsidiary, its predecessors or its parent company agreed not to violate the very same antifraud statute in July 2010. And in May 2006. Also as far as back as March 2005 and April 2000.

Citigroup is far from the only such repeat offender — in the eyes of the S.E.C. — on Wall Street. Nearly all of the biggest financial companies, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America among them, have settled fraud cases by promising the S.E.C. that they would never again violate an antifraud law, only to do it again in another case a few years later.

full article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/08/business/in-sec-fraud-cases-banks-make-and-break-promises.html?_r=0

[davidpdx]

11. $285 million is a drop in the bucket

I tell you what, make them sign something saying if they ever do it again they are HISTORY, GONE! The Fed would come in and close the bank and liquidate it with the stockholders getting last dibs on any money that is left. Fuck'em!

[PSPS]

3. Everyone knows why

It's called protection money a cut of the take vigorish bribery "campaign contributions." They're all on the pad.

[arcane1]

4. This is the kind of thing I want candidates to be asked if they agree with. For ANY office! n/t

[think]

5. It sure is. Should banks be held accountable for repeatedly violating antitrust laws?

It's sad that such a question would need to be asked...

[SoapBox]

6. Go Elizabeth Go!

Keep stirring the pot...eventually there is going to be calls for some action.

[markmyword]

7. Off With Their Heads!

These banks pleaded guilty, so why aren't there trials and people going to JAIL?

The CEO's or Presidents of these banks should be FIRED and held accountable for their employees who manipulated the currency markets. No bonuses, no stock options, and no golden parachutes!

Why aren't the guilty parties at ALL these banks being prosecuted?

These banks SHOULD be broken up!

Thank you Elizabeth Warren for standing up, asking the right questions and DEMANDING answers for the American people!

[Moostache]

8. My personal favorite is this:

[img][/img]

[trillion]

12. Oh man, that is awesome! I'm liking this site!

[Spitfire of ATJ]

9. The media tells the prolls they need to love Wall Street for their own retirement....

Pensions are being looted by people who feel honoring a contract is something the rich only have between themselves.

Us little people don't deserve to be so honored.

[Ichingcarpenter]

10. A criminal conspiracy on a massive scale nd the Rico Act

On Wednesday, five major international banks, including JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup, America’s largest and third-largest financial institutions, pleaded guilty to felony charges for helping to manipulate global foreign exchange markets, paying a wrist-slap fine of about $1 billion apiece.
The financial impact on JPMorgan and the other banks for pleading guilty to a felony will be effectively zero. As part of the deal, the Securities and Exchange Commission issued waivers exempting the banks from the legal repercussions arising from their status as criminal organizations, giving them continued preferential treatment in issuing debt, as well as the continued right to operate mutual funds.


Despite the claims by Justice Department officials of a criminal conspiracy "on a massive scale," carried out with "breathtaking flagrancy," there was no talk of breaking up JPMorgan or any other bank, let alone bringing criminal charges against any of their executives.


The rigging of global foreign exchange rates is only the latest in the string of crimes, frauds and criminal conspiracies for which JPMorgan has been fined by US and international regulators.

* In January 2013, JPMorgan, together with 10 other banks, agreed to pay a combined $8.5 billion to settle charges that they forged documents to foreclose homes more quickly.

* In November 2013, the bank agreed to pay $13 billion to settle charges that it defrauded investors by selling fraudulent mortgage-backed securities in the run-up to the housing bubble collapse in 2007 and 2008.

* That same month, JPMorgan paid $4.5 billion to settle charges that it defrauded pension funds and other institutional investors to whom it sold mortgage bonds.

* In December 2013, JPMorgan and eight other banks were fined $2.3 billion for manipulating the London Interbank Offered Rate (Libor), the global benchmark interest rate on which the values of trillions of dollars in securities are based.
* In January 2014, JPMorgan paid $2 billion in fines and penalties to settle charges that it profited from and helped operate Bernard L. Madoff’s Ponzi scheme.

As a result of the crimes perpetrated by JPMorgan and other banks over the past decade, millions of people have had their homes foreclosed, and millions more have lost their jobs, while countless university endowments, pension plans, and municipalities have been swindled out of billions of dollars.

Based on this partial list of only the latest and largest crimes carried out by JPMorgan, it is no exaggeration to conclude that America's largest bank is a criminal organization. Why then is it impossible to prosecute, much less jail, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, the mastermind of all of these crimes and conspiracies?

The answer to this question lies in the vast retrogression in social relations that has taken place in America amid the enormous growth of social inequality. Behind the increasingly threadbare outwards trappings of democracy,

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/05/22/pers-m22.html


Under RICO, a person who has committed "at least two acts of racketeering activity" drawn from a list of 35 crimes—27 federal crimes and 8 state crimes—within a 10-year period can be charged with racketeering if such acts are related in one of four specified ways to an "enterprise". Those found guilty of racketeering can be fined up to $25,000 and sentenced to 20 years in prison per racketeering count. In addition, the racketeer must forfeit all ill-gotten gains and interest in any business gained through a pattern of "racketeering activity."


Although its primary intent was to deal with organized crime, Blakey said that Congress never intended it to merely apply to the Mob. He once told Time, "We don't want one set of rules for people whose collars are blue or whose names end in vowels, and another set for those whose collars are white and have Ivy League diplomas."





G. Robert Blakey, an adviser to the United States Senate Government Operations Committee, drafted the law under the close supervision of the committee's chairman, Senator John Little McClellan. It was enacted as Title IX of the Organized Crime Control Act of 1970, and signed into law by Richard M. Nixon. While its original use in the 1970s was to prosecute the Mafia as well as others who were actively engaged in organized crime, its later application has been more widespread.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racketeer_Influenced_and_Corrupt_Organizations_Act#cite_note-Time-2


Tell me that these criminal crimes are not racketeering.
A racket is a service that is fraudulently offered to solve a problem, such as for a problem that does not actually exist, that will not be put into effect, or that would not otherwise exist if the racket did not exist. Conducting a racket is racketeering.

S.Rep. No. 617, 91st Cong., 1st Sess. 76 (1968). However, the statute is sufficiently broad to encompass illegal activities relating to any enterprise affecting interstate or foreign commerce.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racket_(crime)


Well I know that I'm right and also know why too big to jail, to big to fail Holder never did shit about the law.

other examples of criminal behavior.


In March 2010, Wachovia Bank, revealed it had ‘laundered’ $378.4 billion dollars for the Sinaloa Cartel, through a network of exchange houses, or casas de cambio, between 2004 and 2007.

Wachovia, now part of Wells Fargo Bank, avoided prosecution by paying $160 million; a very small sum considering the laundered amount corresponds to one-third of Mexico’s Gross Domestic Product for one year.




This financial oligarchy controls all the levers of power in contemporary society. The media, courts, politicians and so-called financial regulators are all under the thumb of the Wall Street mafiosos. Far from seeking to restrain Wall Street’s criminality, the government functions to facilitate and cover up for its crimes.


In exchange, politicians are provided with millions of dollars in campaign contributions and "speaking fees," while top financial regulators are invariably assured high-paying positions on Wall Street after their stints with the government.

[Mnemosyne]

13. Thought headline said 'public hangings'. nt

[Octafish]

14. Hey, Jamie! Bring the cufflinks.

Hey, Gen. Lynch! Bring the handcuffs.

[think]

18. Some first class bling there. Just where does one get a pair of those?

[MannyGoldstein]

15. A new Pecora Commission would be nice.

There are no real consequences for these @#$%ers, no real change.

[think]

17. My lack of historical knowledge forces me once again to use the Google thing.

Amazing that one name from that investigation is still in the thick of things under it's new name.

Pecora Commission

The Pecora Investigation was an inquiry begun on March 4, 1932 by the United States Senate Committee on Banking and Currency to investigate the causes of the Wall Street Crash of 1929. The name refers to the fourth and final chief counsel for the investigation, Ferdinand Pecora.

The investigation was launched by a majority-Republican Senate, under the Banking Committee's chairman, Senator Peter Norbeck. Hearings began on April 11, 1932, but were criticized by Democratic Party members and their supporters as being little more than an attempt by the Republicans to appease the growing demands of an angry American public suffering through the Great Depression. Two chief counsels were fired for ineffectiveness, and a third resigned after the committee refused to give him broad subpoena power. In January 1933, Ferdinand Pecora, an assistant district attorney for New York County was hired to write the final report. Discovering that the investigation was incomplete, Pecora requested permission to hold an additional month of hearings. His exposé of the National City Bank (now Citibank) made banner headlines and caused the bank's president to resign. Democrats had won the majority in the Senate, and the new President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, urged the new Democratic chairman of the Banking Committee, Senator Duncan U. Fletcher, to let Pecora continue the probe. So actively did Pecora pursue the investigation that his name became publicly identified with it, rather than the committee's chairman.

Following the 1929 Wall Street Crash, the U.S. economy had gone into a depression, and a large number of banks failed. The Pecora Investigation sought to uncover the causes of the financial collapse. As chief counsel, Ferdinand Pecora personally examined many high-profile witnesses, who included some of the nation's most influential bankers and stockbrokers. Among these witnesses were Richard Whitney, president of the New York Stock Exchange, investment bankers Otto H. Kahn, Charles E. Mitchell, Thomas W. Lamont, and Albert H. Wiggin, plus celebrated commodity market speculators such as Arthur W. Cutten. Given wide media coverage, the testimony of the powerful banker J.P. Morgan, Jr. caused a public outcry after he admitted under examination that he and many of his partners had not paid any income taxes in 1931 and 1932.

~Snip~

In 1939 Ferdinand Pecora published a memoir that recounted details of the investigations, Wall Street Under Oath. Pecora wrote: "Bitterly hostile was Wall Street to the enactment of the regulatory legislation." As to disclosure rules, he stated that "Had there been full disclosure of what was being done in furtherance of these schemes, they could not long have survived the fierce light of publicity and criticism. Legal chicanery and pitch darkness were the banker's stoutest allies."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pecora_Commission

[erronis]

16. Reading about these banks in The Big Short (Lewis) - same crooksters as in the last decade

I understand that prosecuting the whole bank is hard because you probably need to lock up all the money (deposits, etc.). This is the Too Big To Fail.

However, I think all corporate officers should be criminally prosecuted. Holding companies, in-the-loop subsidiaries, Board Of Directors. Don't they have a duty to direct their minions?

If this is only fiduciary then sue them for the losses and make the future contracts require criminal actions in addition to civil.

If we get some of the non-violent drug offenders out of the CCA labor camps there would be plenty of room for the top brass at hundreds of the banks, trading companies, funds, and all the entities that are essentially betting against the regular investor.

[LiberalLovinLug]

19. What is wrong with this statement?

"whether banks accused of rigging foreign exchange markets should be allowed to manage retirement accounts"

Just because they are "too big to fail" this statement is actually a question. For any other smaller company or individual there would be no question.

[chev52]

20. corporate screwups

The same thing could be said for corporations that screw up big time. After the Exxon Valdez incident and the gulf of mexico disaster, why should BP be allowed to drill oil anywhere? Nobody seems to get jail time for these major oil disasters on land or sea.