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

[quote=an8150;1291751]

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Originally Posted by Stavros

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.

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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.

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?):

Wall Street Mafia Extorts Washington | Interview with Max Keiser - YouTube

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.

[quote=Stavros;1292256]

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Originally Posted by an8150

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.

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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.

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.

[quote=an8150;1298383]

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Originally Posted by Stavros

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.

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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'??

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.

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.

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Originally Posted by 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.

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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....

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

Capitalism = exclusionary Socialism

Pooling resources is pooling resources, irrespective of the designer label that's supposed to make specific thoughts on methodology into the work of the deified or the damned. The whole argument is over who gets to bark orders at everybody else. You don't have to do that if you have a better (or just good) idea to start with.

We need a complete rethink!

While we wait for that complete rethink of how we organize as societies, we still should hold corporations as accountable as we do individuals in society when they break laws and game the system to detriment of society.

Take JP Morgan for those that think HSBC's laundering of drug money is not worthy of prosecution rather than a fine, that for this bank was a speeding ticket.

JP Morgan's recent history of deception and fraud is a decade long. JP Morgan was responsible for helping Enron as far back as 2000 in defrauding Enron shareholders and most recently their CEO LIED to shareholders about the Whale transactions to keep his stock price pumped. And the Whale transactions took place after the great meltdown, removing any doubt that the bank knew that these were super risky transactions.

Why take such risk? Because there is virtually no recourse when you do. Your too big to fail, too big jail and it seems in Jamie Dimon's case, too big to fire no matter how badly you mismanage risk. And if Dimon did get fired he'd likely get a $30M parachute.

The system is broken and for all Timothy Geithner wanted no part of what he called Old Testament Justice, until some of these banksters and their institutions are held legally accountable for breaking laws they will continue to do so because there is virtually no risk and incredible reward.

[quote=Stavros;1298418]

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Originally Posted by an8150

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'??

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Just out of curiosity, how, then, do you define yourself (assuming you do so at all)?

And where have I expressed indifference to poverty? Did I not say, in one of my earliest posts that I was not dismissing such concerns, rather that I was arguing that the statist and collectivist cure is worse than the disease?

[quote=Stavros;1298418]

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Originally Posted by an8150

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'??

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And as to your response on blame by association, you're comparing apples and oranges. A blood libel (as David Irving [sometimes I like being provocative; attaboy!] would call it) is different from an allegation against co-believers, for the obvious reason that we can choose our beliefs but we cannot choose our relatives: you can dissociate yourself from the communism that killed tens of millions, you are, however, in some way related to those Britons whose acts you disapprove of.

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Originally Posted by 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.

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If your concern is for the poor and wretched of the world, then deprecating the best system yet devised for lifting them out of their benighted condition seems, to me at least, an odd thing to do. Bleed all you like about children on poverty wages (whatever that may mean), but take away those wages and you have... starvation.

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Originally Posted by Stavros

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....

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A neat reply, up till the point (not for the first time) you subtly exchange 'free market capitalist' for 'capitalist'.

I wish to be recognised as a free market capitalist. Nothing else (at least, not in the present debate).

And in our simplicity, we're not nearly as interesting all those spartacists and mensheviks and anarcho-syndicalist and wotnot. Sure, we have differences of opinion, and some are significant, but once you get on board with the non-aggression principle everything else pretty much falls into place.

"Free markets" have created some of the worst scams and economic destruction of the many for the benefit of the few through out modern history.

"Free markets" allowed Goldman-Sachs to sell toxic bundles of debt to their customers as though they were AAA bonds and then bet against those same bundles. Because it was "free" / unregulated, opaque activity investors had no idea that investment was shit, that AIG had insured so much of the shit that if it failed they could not payoff and that Goldman has invested in SCDOs that bet that the product they sold to that investor was shit.

That is typical of dark, unregulated markets. Unregulated markets will sell rancid meat as fresh, employ 10 year olds, manipulate markets and do anything they can to make a buck with as much concern for the victims as a serial killer has for his victims.

Private enterprise is good but in absence of rules it can and has historical done great harm to the masses. And few examples are greater than what the financial industry has done to the world economy through credit default swaps in an opaque unregulated market. They have injured millions of people and even nation states. They are far more dangerous and criminal than the pot smokers incarcerated through out America in privatized prisons.

[quote=an8150;1308503]

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Originally Posted by Stavros

Just out of curiosity, how, then, do you define yourself (assuming you do so at all)?

And where have I expressed indifference to poverty? Did I not say, in one of my earliest posts that I was not dismissing such concerns, rather that I was arguing that the statist and collectivist cure is worse than the disease?

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I am not like you: I am not comfortable in slots; and I don't wear badges.

I find myself in firm agreement with Stavros regarding self definition.

[quote=Stavros;1308691]

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Originally Posted by an8150

I am not like you: I am not comfortable in slots; and I don't wear badges.

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I see. You're a moving target.

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Originally Posted by fivekatz

"Free markets" have created some of the worst scams and economic destruction of the many for the benefit of the few through out modern history.

"Free markets" allowed Goldman-Sachs to sell toxic bundles of debt to their customers as though they were AAA bonds and then bet against those same bundles. Because it was "free" / unregulated, opaque activity investors had no idea that investment was shit, that AIG had insured so much of the shit that if it failed they could not payoff and that Goldman has invested in SCDOs that bet that the product they sold to that investor was shit.

That is typical of dark, unregulated markets. Unregulated markets will sell rancid meat as fresh, employ 10 year olds, manipulate markets and do anything they can to make a buck with as much concern for the victims as a serial killer has for his victims.

Private enterprise is good but in absence of rules it can and has historical done great harm to the masses. And few examples are greater than what the financial industry has done to the world economy through credit default swaps in an opaque unregulated market. They have injured millions of people and even nation states. They are far more dangerous and criminal than the pot smokers incarcerated through out America in privatized prisons.

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And yet Goldman's name remains untarnished and it remains in business. Well, at least you and I know not to do business with it.

short and sweet:

BUSH INC had an eight year party and we got stuck with the bill

while Bush and Cheney rode out of town with only their reputations scathed.

UN -doing that damage is not so easy, Big Business is an important part of the economy, and they are calculating to make sure the recovery recovers them first. I think my Savings are going to keep earning <1%
until Hillary has her party.

Wow! Mine was blue, but that looks just like the car that won me a 1st place trophy in the Pinewood Derby, back in '59.

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Originally Posted by an8150

And yet Goldman's name remains untarnished and it remains in business. Well, at least you and I know not to do business with it.

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If it were only that easy. JP Morgan, HSBC the list goes on and on.

These are smart folks and they'd figure out how to make reasonable profits within reasonable regulatory constraint. But once you create an opaque market, historical folks have figured out how to game the system to arbitrage which is a nice word for creating excessive profit through extraordinary circumstance.

The sheer volume of scandals from the dawn of the Reagan-Thatcher movement forward is stunning. We had the S and L crisis in the US, followed illegal market manipulations by firms like Tyco and Enron and the on going banksterism with the London Whales just being the most recent exposed rip-off.

It is criminal what these people do but unregulated free markets are the moral equal of leaving the doors of a pawn shop wide open in a economic repressed neighborhood with cash pilled on the counters. Difference is the common man that roams into that shop and takes the money gets 10 years in a privatized prison with annual returns of 15% for its shareholders. Meanwhile, the bankster gets a federal bailout since the downfall of his institution would be the downfall of all. The lobbyists of these bankster then enrage Americans about the market interference, throw around words like freedom, add a few wedge issues like the President's race, gun control and abortion and collect their $25M bonuses and repeat at will.

It is about time some high level white collar criminals do some time IMHO!

To put personal face on the damage, for those who have access HBO's American Winter is a must see.

It personalizes through the lives of a few families in Oregon the impact the Great Recession has had on every day folks who work hard and play by the rules. The pain and humbling of the human spirit no longer becomes an intellectual argument but instead becomes the end result of what happens when a society prioritizes military defense over the defense of its most vulnerable citizens and allows a small group of elite plutocrats bring the modern economy to brink, while paying a fraction of their fair share of taxes, destroying housing markets and becoming all the richer for the poor behavior.

It is all very academic until you see how good people get ruined by the likes of Jamie Dimon and the Koch Brothers.

PS.

Dimon's sentence for his part in the London Whale in a perfect world would be that all his assets would be frozen and he would do 5 years as a Wal Mart greeter as his sole income. And he should be held exempt from the provisions of Obama Care and ineligible for Medicaid.

That would be justice.

I watched about 10 minutes of the Dick Cheney cable interview before I got sick to my stomach and had to turn it off, If they had a Federal Prosecutor doing the interview, now that would be a show. I think it's good that American businesses try and make all the money they can, but having Federal Regulators answer to the likes of Dick Cheney is worse than cheating at Monopoly, the only way I can swallow it is to hope it's just one more test for us to take, this nation needs glasses.

My Cub Scout car was blue with red firebolts, we did experiment with weights and special axles, the guy who won had a real ugly car.

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Originally Posted by buttslinger

I watched about 10 minutes of the Dick Cheney cable interview before I got sick to my stomach and had to turn it off, If they had a Federal Prosecutor doing the interview, now that would be a show. I think it's good that American businesses try and make all the money they can, but having Federal Regulators answer to the likes of Dick Cheney is worse than cheating at Monopoly, the only way I can swallow it is to hope it's just one more test for us to take, this nation needs glasses.

My Cub Scout car was blue with red firebolts, we did experiment with weights and special axles, the guy who won had a real ugly car.

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I thought that the World According to Dick Cheney was pretty wonderful because RJ Cutler did not press Cheney too much. In the process Cheney demonstrated not just a lack of remorse but a lack of self reflection that was stunning.

In one of the most stunning moments Cheney defends torture by saying "are you going to stand on honor..."

He got more than his share of free passes like his and Bush's connections to Enron and the California electricity heist and all those no bid contracts to Halliburton. Like to one to do laundry because no bid assumes no other providers could provide and everybody knows that only Halliburton can wash uniforms in the desert. Or his involvement in writing regulations where Halliburton does not have disclose what leathal chemicals are used in its fraking solutions and can't be held liable for any damages they may cause.

While points like these and greater picture of Cheney as war criminal were glossed over in Cutler's work, I doubt if he had tried to "nail" Cheney that the documentary ever could have come together.

As it was it gave a portrait of a cold, immoral man, who was not just comfortable in his lies and participation in a deceptive war, but defiantly proud of that role and man who can see no faults in spite of his many flaws.

I thought Cutler did a brilliant job of standing back and letting Cheney be the DICK he is in front of an unbiased lens.

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My Cub Scout car was blue with red firebolts, we did experiment with weights and special axles, the guy who won had a real ugly car.

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Mine was bright blue with black (magic marker) grill & pipes. Managed to have the weight at exactly 5 oz @ race time (2 washers if memory serves), but the real trick was getting the axles (nails) lined up precisely.

By the way: The head of the driver on the trophy made a perfect night time chewing gum resting place for years. Mom hated it of course, but the job of pre-teens is to give their parents gray hair. I was a journeyman @ the craft, without need of apprenticeship.

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Originally Posted by an8150

And yet Goldman's name remains untarnished and it remains in business. Well, at least you and I know not to do business with it.

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They did have to pay a 500+ million dollar fine to the SEC, yet they paid it on the condition that they did not have to reveal exactly what the fine was for. I can tell you that it was not for stealing bicycles. The names of convicted bicycles are published in some of our local papers.

Some of GS's actions, along with others, resulted in people losing a majority of their life savings for retirement. Yet many consider gay marriage to be a bigger sign of the world's moral decline. I know someone who was directly affected by the financial crisis. Meanwhile gay couple's relationships, have absolutely none.

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Originally Posted by yodajazz

They did have to pay a 500+ million dollar fine to the SEC, yet they paid it on the condition that they did not have to reveal exactly what the fine was for. I can tell you that it was not for stealing bicycles. The names of convicted bicycles are published in some of our local papers.

Some of GS's actions, along with others, resulted in people losing a majority of their life savings for retirement. Yet many consider gay marriage to be a bigger sign of the world's moral decline. I know someone who was directly affected by the financial crisis. Meanwhile gay couple's relationships, have absolutely none.

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THe point of needless laws governing the behavior of thers that has no adverse impact on society.

The fines and no contest continuum that industry goes through with government is joke on so many levels.

Using the Goldman example the fine itself was far lower than the profit from the default swaps that were backed by the government since AIG was going down.

The fines are simply a cost of doing business, a game with a complicated chessboard of deny, delay to cost the AG tons of hours. Then when the AG wears out you cut you best deal, you stock takes a hit for a day and you move on, profit in hand.

For the corporation one of the most important judical understanding/interpertation is that corporations are people. And corporations use this when it best serves them, liability for corporate actions being the key. When it doesn't fit like the 2005 Bankruptcy Laws, corporations become exempt, so in essence they get to be person under the law when it suits them.

It is sad to say but all indictions are that markets will not police themselves as Greenspan naively thought they would. We have gone from the S and L crisis, to a partner of pumping stock/ giving false q reports and insider trading in the for of Tyco and Enro, And then the CDOs etc nearly took down the world and caused huge pain to millions of human beings around the world.

It is time to take a criminal corporation all the way through the justice system and name as many key individuals as possible.

This is where IMHO Timothy Geithner blew was he saw holding banksters accountable would hurt the markets and he saw it as Old Testament Justice.

It is simply the moral hazard of a system with banks too big to fail. Corporations get broken up into pieces (often good for shareholders) and a handful of executives that have so much greed, hubris and disregard for others peoples money that they break the law for profit should spend 3-5 years of incarceration.

That would make the next head of Goldman-Sachs think twice about having your organization sell CDOs as being as good as bonds w/ 8% return, while calling AGI to bet against what they sold their customer via a credit default swap.

But a $500M parking ticket?