Laundering $800 Mil in Drug $, How Did HSBC Execs Avoid Jail?

[Ben]

Matt Taibbi: After Laundering $800 Million in Drug Money, How Did HSBC Execs Avoid Jail?

[beandip]

....same as Citigroup did in the 1980's! Pay for the politicians.

Jail is for the serfs. You should know that.

[nysprod]

Matt Taibbi: After Laundering $800 Million in Drug Money, How Did HSBC Execs Avoid Jail?

They're too big to jail

[sexyasianescorts]

Money and Good Lawyers.

Money does not buy you happiness only power and influence. (would love to be able to test that one lol)

[fivekatz]

They're too big to jail

The line of the week!

[buttslinger]

Imagine the stuff going on you don't hear about....

[Ben]

Money and Good Lawyers.

Money does not buy you happiness only power and influence. (would love to be able to test that one lol)

It doesn't buy happiness. That's fairly understood. But, you're right, it does bring power and influence....
An interesting book about the corrupting nature of our political system is called the Golden Rule by Tom Ferguson. (And, too, it goes back to the Powell Memo where Lewis Powell pointed out how the corporate class should and need to control the political system. As meaningful democracy diminishes the power of the, well, masters of the universe.)

[Ben]

Investment Theory of Politics

[fivekatz]

Corporate power in US knows few boundaries. The corporations budget for the fines they will receive as a cost of doing business and count on the fact that just like a casino even though they may lose a few, the odds are such that they are the house and house always wins.

These guys lobby the hell out of government at every level to get favorable judge appointments and laws that will favor them. They also create complex contracts with consumers that establish extraordinary limitations of liability and mandatory arbitration in front of arbitrators of the corporations choosing.

The reform movement of the early 1900's and the great depression of the 1930's somewhat leveled the playing field and the 1% in the US have been working ever since to reverse as much as they can of the gains of equity that were created by TR and FDR.

It has gone so far in the US that Ronald Reagan based on policy stance could not win a republican primary and that Barack Obama may just be a little to right of Richard M Nixon.

What is most scary is that if a catastrophic series of events demonstrating corporate governance gone amuck like we had first Enron-Tyco-etc and then the hole toxic assets crisis did not force serious shifts in power and oversight, just how bad will it have to get to reign in the corporate greed. And for what it is worth, by their very charters corporations are doing pretty much exactly what they are supposed to which is earning consistent profits for their shareholders with no regard for how it impacts anyone who is not a shareholder.

[robertlouis]

The HSBC guys are just the latest in a long and utterly dishonourable list. Our prisons all over the planet should be full of these rapacious bastards, who have learned nothing from the chaos and pain they have created and continue to be rewarded for it with increasingly big bucks.

The present financial crisis is without doubt the occasion on which capitalism finally jumped the shark.