

Six Banks Pay $5.8B, Five Plead Guilty to Market Rigging - themartorana
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-20/six-banks-pay-5-8-billion-five-plead-guilty-to-market-rigging

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themartorana
No jail time for anyone. Less than $1B fine each.

At best, this is a bit of theater to try to convince the world that these
banks are not more powerful than governments, but let's be honest... They are.

When you can manipulate the entire world's market via a _chat room_ and this
is the best a government can do, you know no one holds sway over you.

Not to mention, this is blatant collusion.

Comcast must be pissed. We're worried about a Comcast/TW monopoly - in the
meantime banks are acting like a single entity, manipulating global markets
for their own gain, and I haven't heard a single peep about breaking them up.
Not from the U.S., not from the EU, who are busying themselves being worried
about Google...

How can I be anything but pessimistic about the future global oligarchy?

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ChuckMcM
I have been thinking about this, and don't think jailing bankers will be any
more effective than jailing drug dealers in terms of "fixing" the banking
problem.

However since banking is regulated, it might be possible to "ban" people from
the game, which is to say take an individual out of the bank, forfeit a years
wages and bonuses, and ban them from working in any financial institution in
the future.

The reasoning behind that sort of penalty is as follows, most "rich" bankers
have a fairly high cash burn rate, forfieting a year of wages & bonuses would
not bankrupt them but it would force them to stop for a period of time and
recover their budgeting. Banning them from financial institutions would take
them out of the game with respect to recreating the bad thing they did before,
and ideally force them to find a different way to make money. Finally, by not
actually putting them in jail you save the taxpayers a ton of money.

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themartorana
Ya know, I think that's a pretty decent solution for deterrent, although the
game might become, make as much as possible before being benched.

As for prison, I'm not worried about the deterrent - I want the punishment
dealt out. The number of lives hurt by these games are huge. We jail people
for things that are so infinitesimally small by comparison. On the individual
level (and call it vengeance if you must, I call it justice) I want these
people to pay for their crimes, just as I would have to pay.

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paulbeattie
It's simply not enough. The penalties for such behaviour should be steep, such
behaviour should not be tolerated from any organisation let alone those
trusted with money.

Makes you wonder how in bed they are with the DoJ!

