Jail the bankers!

What's a guy to do?  With your eye on a new truck and needing a fast buck, you decide to turn to crime.  You walk into a business, demand money, then walk out with $1000. You get caught and the judge fines you $200 and sends you on your way.  That's it.  

Hmm....at that rate you can net $800 every time you visit your local liquor store, 7-11, or Walmart.  If you need $1600, just be sure to steal $2000.  Need $3200 for your Black Friday midnight run?  Steal $4000.  The fine is just a cost of doing business.  

It's not your money....what do you care how much the fine is?  What's the downside, except for that pesky little part about eventually going straight to hell?  Sure beats working 40+ hours a week at the sawmill.

That's essentially the way our large, prestigious (?) banks do business these days.  Today's paper reported that a number of big banks have once again been fined, this time $3.3B for manipulating the foreign exchange (currency) markets while enjoying a windfall of untold billions of dollars in "profits" in the process.

In the last few years the "Too Big To Fail" banks, the ones you and I (the taxpayers) bailed out after their greed f__ked up the world's economy back in '08, have collectively paid $251B in fines for....let's just call it what it is....THEFT.  And they're still reporting record profits!  That's just a portion of what they made off their crime spree.  The rest they've already spent, some of it going to themselves as a thank-you bonus for their "hard work".

And to rub our noses in it, just know that it's the SAME banks that keep committing these crimes over and over again.  They've learned that crime DOES pay!

Wanna stop 'em in their tracks?  JAIL THE BANKERS!  Put them behind bars.  Put them on a bread and water diet.  Put them to work busting rocks in the hot sun.  Turn 'em over to that Hang 'Em High Sheriff fella in Arizona for a year or two. 

But as long as we keep electing politicians who are also profiting from this behavior (via political campaign contributions from the bankers) nothing will change.  We the sheep will still be led to slaughter. 

*this is insane*

S

Hey buddy, can you spare a coupla thousand?

Is this real or just a remake of Revenge of the Nerds?  So far cyber-attacks have been just probing jabs looking to see if the perps actually have the capability to mess us up.  Will they soon go for the jugular?

A couple of days ago cyber-attackers shut down JP Morgan Chase's (I think it was JPMC) customer accounts for a few hours, meaning customers couldn't get to their money.  A few hours is no big deal, but what if that had been for several days or even several weeks?

I rarely have enough cash on me to buy a cuppa coffee at Fourbucks.  I pay my bills online and use my debt card for purchases around town.  If my bank's computers turned turtle for more than a few hours I'd probably be on the corner with a tin cup begging for lunch money.

I think I'll pull out a few hundred bucks at least and keep it under my mattress.  That should at least buy enough kibble to keep us going a while.

Speaking of banks, it looks like the movement to break up the biggest of them is gaining momentum.  Dallas FED President Richard Fischer is rallying support from all quarters to possibly put hard caps on their size.  JP Morgan Chase might soon be three:  JP, Morgan, and Chase.

"Too big to fail" banks will soon be small enough to fail and "Too big to jail" bankers will soon be know as "Inmate 95686532".  It looks like my work here is almost done.  :)

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It seems Catholics have 'em a new Pope.  I kept waiting for the call, but it never came.  I knew I was a long shot at best, considering I'm not Catholic.  That's OK though.  No hard feelings.  In fact, it seems like this guy might be a good one.  He eschewed the traditional Cardinal's mansion in Buenos Aires and instead lived in a small apartment on the outskirts, and rode his bike or took mass transit to work every day.  Even traveling to Rome for this conclave he made the 13 hour flight in a coach airline seat.  (That's coach, not Coach.)  I find that rather refreshing.  

I'd like to see some of our high-flying TV evangelists do some of that.  Ha!  That would definitely qualify as a miracle!

Counting down to the weekend....

S

An offer they can't refuse....

Good morning world!

I heard on the Happy News this morning that men are helping out around the house more these days.  Not much more, but more than the 0% from days past.  The report said that women spend 52 minutes a day doing housework while men do 16 minutes a day, and women do 70% of the laundry, too.

Another advantage to downsizing to a much smaller place....there's less to clean.  I make up the bed 'cause I'm the last one up.  K does 90% of the cooking, while I do 90% of the clean up.  The laundry is pretty much 50-50.  A housekeeper every other week for a few hours does the heavy lifting.  We could do it ourselves, but after all these years Geneva is like family.  She stays.  

How about at your casa?

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Let's see....first there were the Castelano's, the Gambino's, and the Bonanno's, and now we have the USB's, the RBS's, the Citi's, the JPMorganChase's and a bunch more, too.  The list of mafia outfits grows every day.  HSBC just paid a $1.9B fine for money laundering.  (They helped Iran and the Mexican drug cartels.)  A dozen other banks are ratting on each other over their interest-rate-rigging scandal in the UK.  (Their defense....the others were more guilty than they were.)  

Now there are a combined TRILLION dollars in claims pending against BofA, JPMorganChase, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, and others over their fraudulent mortgage securities businesses.  The banks will probably settle for something like $400B.  (Does this mean they'll get away with the other $600B?  How is that fair?)  

The only thing missing from this organized crime drama is some executive "whacking" in broad daylight while they're eating their spaghetti dinners.  (Personally I'd classify that as "justifiable homicide".)

First we had "too big to fail".  Now we have "too big to indict".  It seems the Feds are offering plea bargains to the banks rather than indicting their ivory tower Dons because they're afraid a guilty verdict in court would scare away investors and the banks would go belly-up.  Then us taxpayers would get stuck with the clean up.

The message here....if you're gonna commit a crime, make it a BIG ONE!

Now, unless you're a banker....have a nice day.  :)

S