Banks and Persons

[xchrom]

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/12/22-1

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christopher-brauchli/three-strikes-and-youre-i_b_252473.html

It was just an unfortunate coincidence that the reports were almost juxtaposed-the reports of the punishment given Stephanie George and that given HSBC and UBS. Stephanie, of course, was not the first.

William James Rummel has been imprisoned since the late 1970s and will be there for the rest of his life. That is because he was convicted of three crimes. He used a credit card to obtain $80 worth of goods and services, a crime for which he served 3 years in jail. When he got out he passed a forged check in the amount of $23.86 which bought him 4 years in jail. He ended his career as an air conditioning repairman, charging a customer $120.75 for a repair with which the customer was not satisfied. He refused to return the money and was convicted of obtaining money under false pretenses. Since that was his third conviction he was sentenced to life in prison. In reviewing his sentence the U.S. Supreme Court said his life sentence did not constitute cruel and unusual punishment. Commenting on the Court’s finding Justice Rehnquist said: “We all of course, would like to think that we are ‘moving down the road toward human decency. . . .’ Within the confines of this judicial proceeding, however, we have no way of knowing in which direction that road lies.” Some legal cartographers could probably have helped the Justice out.

On December 12, 2012 the New York Times described the plight of Stephanie George. Her boyfriend stashed a lockbox with a half-kilogram of cocaine in her attic and when the police found it she was charged with its possession even though she claimed not to have known of its presence in her house. The judge said he thought the sentence unreasonable but he was compelled by governing statutes to sentence Ms. George to life in prison. In contemplating their fates Ms. George and Mr. Rummel (and many others) may well wonder how things could have come out differently for them. The answer is, they should have been banks. Banks don’t go to jail even though they are persons and even when their offenses involve billions of dollars.

On the same day that Ms. George’s plight was described, HSBC agreed to pay $1.92 billion for worse things than failing to properly repair an air conditioning unit or store a bit of coke. According to the Senate Subcommittee on Investigations in a report issued in July 2012, the bank “exposed the U.S. financial system to a wide array of money laundering, drug trafficking, and terrorist financing risks due to poor anti-money laundering controls.” The banks’ conduct enabled Mexican drug cartels to launder tainted money through the American financial system, and the bank worked closely with Saudi Arabian banks linked to terrorists.

[onethatcares]

1. and that bank

got to walk without any admitting of wrongdoing.

the entire system is fucked and since most of our representatives are already purchased
we can expect the beatings to continue. Forget about morale rising.

If they agreed to pay a fine of 1.92 billion, they must have gotten away with at least 10 billion easy.

[woo me with science]

4. Fined 2 billion, profited 22 billion

per Octafish's link:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=2053412



Just like the guys who sold the poisoned bird seed, calculating that the fines would be less than the profit. This is corporate morality/ethics/justice at work. And we, in most cases, are the birds.

[marmar]

2. k/r

[lastlib]

3. I hope Elizabeth Warren can do something to change this,...

...but as long as Repuglicans hold seats in the Congress, I'm doubtful.