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

[Stavros]

[quote=an8150;1291751]

Well you learn something new every day. I had no idea that the privateers and freebooters of the early modern Spanish kings, much less Victorian gringo imperialists, were in fact righteous practitioners of the libertarian non-aggression principle.

On the other hand, I'd thought you were right with your earlier observation, that in fact people like me have never been in a position from which to slaughter millions. I'd go further, and observe that it would be anathema to libertarian feeling. Omelettes and eggs form no part of our moral compass.

I liked your idea that Stalin and Mao killing millions people is also down to free market capitalists. That took balls and, I should imagine, a straight face. It's the sort of claim that'll get half way round the world before the truth gets its boots on, so well done (btw, I refer you to your earlier comments directed at what you perceived to be my refusal to see that the world is closer than I imagine to the way I might wish; physician heal thyself, if your claim is that Soviet Russia or Maoist China weren't really communist).

The notion of 'market failure', incidentally, is in my view a disingenuous name for economic egalitarianism.

As usual you avoid addressing the point, so that when I linked the early experience of empire to capitalism you replied:
I had no idea that the privateers and freebooters of the early modern Spanish kings, much less Victorian gringo imperialists, were in fact righteous practitioners of the libertarian non-aggression principle -the what principle? In the pre-Victorian phase of capitalism, I don't think libertarian ideas were that common; the Victorians did give is Amritsar, I suppose, if you want to start selecting your massacres.
Capitalism was not invented by Hoppe or Rothbard, its not my fault if you occupy one fringe of it and don't want to acknowledge the capitalist element in imperialism, Spanish, Dutch, British and so on. If people take the view that the USSR operated a form of state capitalism, then it does lodge that political cuckoo in your nest as well, its up to you to debate with people to show that the free market capitalism of your age is different from the earlier versions, just as there are Marxists who deny any responsibility for what they call the perversion of their ideas for political purposes. I did not equate Mao and Stalin with free market capitalists, but people do make a relationship between Soviet and Chinese communism and 'state capitalism', it was a sophisticated argument. There was a time when the English Kings used to murder their opponents, when the Catholic Church slaughtered over a million Cathars, and so on, and so on. You can preen your feathers in your isolated nest, but for me the uncomfortable reality of history is that very few innocents were ever abroad, but as I also said in another post, it is also unhelpful to try and measure the worth of one or the other through statistics.

This sentence:
The notion of 'market failure', incidentally, is in my view a disingenuous name for economic egalitarianism
Is an excellent summary of a core idea in free market capitalism, and one of the reasons why we can only hope that society avoids it...like the plague...it is also a perverse definition of equality.

[Ben]

It isn't just HSBC, it's the whole criminal [big] banking system... as Abby Martin and Max Keiser discuss (and, too, we ARE STILL bailing them out... and what does that have do with with unfettered markets?):

[fivekatz]

If the government in either the US or UK (two of the greatest business havens for Banksters) was willing to attack them as they have other forms of organized crime some big names within those corporations would fall fast.

What I mean is that if you work a bottoms up prosecution (start with middle managers) and squeeze them hard like law enforcement would a "wise guy" and offer immunity they would crack, until you get to the desk of a guy like Jamie Dimon.

The government then stops shareholder and market panic by arranging and overseeing the logical break-up and equity market sale of the units of the criminal bank.

If the government had the nerve to do this once, the fear of too big jail would go away, there would be one less bank that was too big fail, the world would discover that parts of any bank broken up and sold are worth more than the sum total of a super bank and there would be true moral hazard for reckless gambling with others money. And perhaps most important for the ruling elite of these institutions that break laws to pump up personal bonuses and stock prices to further their own enrichment that there are real consequences for immoral and illegal behavior.

This would be so much better than what currently happens which is the institutions these banksters lead pay off government fines which are nothing more than a DUI ticket would be to a working class citizen and move forward knowing that undue risk has few downsides with a safety net and the possibility of getting even wealthier is the upside.

The GOP is right about the problem is takers, they just aren't looking in the right place because there are too many political contributions coming from there.

[an8150]

[quote=Stavros;1292256]

As usual you avoid addressing the point, so that when I linked the early experience of empire to capitalism you replied:
I had no idea that the privateers and freebooters of the early modern Spanish kings, much less Victorian gringo imperialists, were in fact righteous practitioners of the libertarian non-aggression principle -the what principle? In the pre-Victorian phase of capitalism, I don't think libertarian ideas were that common; the Victorians did give is Amritsar, I suppose, if you want to start selecting your massacres.
Capitalism was not invented by Hoppe or Rothbard, its not my fault if you occupy one fringe of it and don't want to acknowledge the capitalist element in imperialism, Spanish, Dutch, British and so on. If people take the view that the USSR operated a form of state capitalism, then it does lodge that political cuckoo in your nest as well, its up to you to debate with people to show that the free market capitalism of your age is different from the earlier versions, just as there are Marxists who deny any responsibility for what they call the perversion of their ideas for political purposes. I did not equate Mao and Stalin with free market capitalists, but people do make a relationship between Soviet and Chinese communism and 'state capitalism', it was a sophisticated argument. There was a time when the English Kings used to murder their opponents, when the Catholic Church slaughtered over a million Cathars, and so on, and so on. You can preen your feathers in your isolated nest, but for me the uncomfortable reality of history is that very few innocents were ever abroad, but as I also said in another post, it is also unhelpful to try and measure the worth of one or the other through statistics.

This sentence:
The notion of 'market failure', incidentally, is in my view a disingenuous name for economic egalitarianism
Is an excellent summary of a core idea in free market capitalism, and one of the reasons why we can only hope that society avoids it...like the plague...it is also a perverse definition of equality.

Stavros, as to what the point is, isn't it this: you're a communist (not, as I previously supposed, a social democrat) not unnaturally embarrassed by the body count racked up over the last century by other communists. You say, "Ah, but they weren't real communists, and anyway, they only killed millions because anti-communists forced them to do so. Moreover you, an8150, as a libertarian are tainted by association in the same way because pirates and imperialists were driven to make money in the same way as free market libertarians are". Yet you also, and quite rightly, concede that free market libertarians like me have never been in a position to kill millions.

And the fact remains, that you could not implement your world-view without imposing it by force (which is the real reason why communists have killed so many), whereas my world-view requires only free men freely associating with one another within the rule of criminal law, so no force is required. Indeed, quite the opposite. In my world-view, you would be free to live as a communist, refusing to deal in money and property should you so wish.

As to whether it is unhelpful to try to measure the worth of one [system?] or another through statistics, you, the communist whose namesakes have killed millions in the name of communism, have a vested interest in denying the value of such comparisons, just as I have a vested interest in making them. And it's not as if you are immune to the value of such calculus, since you seek to damn free market capitalism by association with, say, imperialism on precisely the same basis.

Lots of people being killed by a political system is a pretty good reason for rejecting that system.

[Prospero]

In my view the catastrophe of communism, which you rightly say led to the death of millions was inspired by a desire and impulse to make the world a better place. That it failed was a disaster - in part one whose integuments reach into our modern age. The death of a profound form of idealism and hope.

The free market's victims, and those of capitalism, are less visible or easily numbered. They suffer not in labour camps or behind barbed wire, but in sweat shops and factories around the world where capital finds way to employ children and others on poverty wages. They suffer where those in need, the old, the sick and the unemployed, are forced out of any social safety nets because free market capitalism demands all social services and things such as the NHS come under the sway of business rather than the state.

So lots of people being killed is, indeed, a good reason to reject a system, but so too should we reject a philosophy that leads to an increase in the poor and wretched of the world, and a callous creed that makes profit and money the prime and central totem of its vision - along with the so-called freedoms of the free market philosophy.

[Stavros]

[quote=an8150;1298383]

Stavros, as to what the point is, isn't it this: you're a communist (not, as I previously supposed, a social democrat) not unnaturally embarrassed by the body count racked up over the last century by other communists. You say, "Ah, but they weren't real communists, and anyway, they only killed millions because anti-communists forced them to do so. Moreover you, an8150, as a libertarian are tainted by association in the same way because pirates and imperialists were driven to make money in the same way as free market libertarians are". Yet you also, and quite rightly, concede that free market libertarians like me have never been in a position to kill millions.

And the fact remains, that you could not implement your world-view without imposing it by force (which is the real reason why communists have killed so many), whereas my world-view requires only free men freely associating with one another within the rule of criminal law, so no force is required. Indeed, quite the opposite. In my world-view, you would be free to live as a communist, refusing to deal in money and property should you so wish.

As to whether it is unhelpful to try to measure the worth of one [system?] or another through statistics, you, the communist whose namesakes have killed millions in the name of communism, have a vested interest in denying the value of such comparisons, just as I have a vested interest in making them. And it's not as if you are immune to the value of such calculus, since you seek to damn free market capitalism by association with, say, imperialism on precisely the same basis.

Lots of people being killed by a political system is a pretty good reason for rejecting that system.

a) I am not a Communist;
b) blame by association is a difficult one, you disavow a connection to the worst excesses of capitalism, yet you think you can attach blame to me for the excesses of the Russian Revolution, the mass murder in the Ukraine in the 1930s, Pol Pot, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and presumably the 'Troubles' in Northern Ireland; name your atrocity. To the extent that we did not completely detach ourselves from the UK in the last 50 years or so, how innocent and guilty are we of the deaths that occurred -in Northern Ireland, in Iraq, Afghanistan? I didn't vote for Thatcher, so am I free of blame for the atrocities committed by British soldiers against Argentinians captured in the Falklands in 1982? There were many Germans who fought against the Nazis throughout the Third Reich, yet German responsibility cannot be undone by the heroics of a few, it is the fact that Germans have had to reconcile themselves to; otherwise an adherence to Adorno's judgement would be collective and permanent silence:
After Auschwitz, all European culture is garbage.
c) Truth and Reconciliation -the painful process of admitting the facts that hurt, in the hope of moving on. I supported some causes in the 1980s I regret now, but I did it and I am the one who has to live with that memory.
d) your indifference to the impact of poverty on those who fail is frankly unworthy of a civilised society.
e) and there was an extreme nationalism in the ideology of both the USSR and the People's Republic of China, incompatible with international socialism -you surely must have heard of the risible concept of 'Socialism in one country'??

[hippifried]

What's goin' on here? The resident commies are calling each other commies while denying that they're commies? Well get this straight. Unless you fall into the Reaganesque supply side interventionist camp, you don't even qualify as commies.

[fivekatz]

To me the funny part is that perhaps the most successful "capitalist" country today is China and for all the Western world feared that communism would infect their societies and destroy the capital elite through nationalization, once the Soviet Empire fell, the capitalists were tripping over themselves to use cheap Chinese labor, import their products, when allowed sell in their markets and borrow their money.

No doubt their less freedom of speech in China but their government even if it is paying the issue lip service seems more focused on closing the income inequity gap than the US government is.

[Stavros]

What's goin' on here? The resident commies are calling each other commies while denying that they're commies? Well get this straight. Unless you fall into the Reaganesque supply side interventionist camp, you don't even qualify as commies.

It is like one of those doctrinal disputes that split the Communist movement in the USA about whether not Cuba is communist (hence the emergence of the Sparts), or whether or not America is capitalist. My past associations with the 'left' makes me culpable for every death since the Russian Revolution, if not before that; and it doesn't matter what I say. For his part, an8150 wants to be recognised as a 'free market capitalist' which means being of such an elite band of misunderstood visionaries, he is thereby exempt from all the associations with mass murder linked to the spread of capitalism since 1400 -which is why with such intrusive government and taxes, the USA, with or without Reagan, is not a capitalist country....

[Prospero]

Did you shoot the Czar and his family too then, Stavros?