Need I say more than this?
I defined the suppliers of corruption services way back in 2007 as:
1. Those governments who supply the secrecy spaces in which corruption can take place, which include (but by no means exclusively) the recognised tax havens;
2. Those who supply the services that allows such corruption to happen including the bankers, lawyers, accountants and trust companies who set up and operate such arrangements;
3. Those who undertake illicit transactions related to capital flight and tax abuse;
4. Those who ignore such transactions in the course of their duties.
Goldman Sachs has pleaded guilty to facilitating massive corruption. They fit fair and square into my category 2. Of course, they may also fit into 3 and 4 as well, but let's leave it at 2, because that is enough.
Now to ask the obvious question, which is why has to still got a licence to operate? The usual punishment for a crime of this scale is the denial of freedom. Why has it kept it?
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By any moral measure, GS should have been wound up in 2008.
Presumably because it continues to do God’s work, if that means separating the naive or stupid from their money.
Too big to jail.
Nothing really, saw this just before going on to the blog:
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/oct/22/rishi-sunaks-ex-goldman-sachs-boss-emerges-as-next-possible-bbc-chair
I tweeted on that last night
It is worth remembering that through the ten years following the Financial Crash in the UK, fining the financial private sector institutions for egregious breaches of financial regulation quickly became regularised. For the public looking at eye-watering penalties from the outside, it looked severe; to the wider financial sector within the system, it just became a routine cost of doing business.
Only the little people go to prison.
As an aside, I think fraud is one area where trial by judges rather than jury makes sense. Their findings and argument are published so that the case is clearly on the record. It won’t be perfect but better than long drawn out jury trials.
Bankers have immunity, probably because they know too much.
As a humble Government bond trader I was shocked when this story broke a while ago. Indeed, I really though that it would mark the end of Goldman Sachs as an independent firm.
In the past this is what would have happened – Bankers Trust, Salomon Brothers and Refco are examples of firms that could not survive scandals. Why did they fail? Clients stopped doing business with them.
Goldman survives because their clients still do business…….. and that says a lot about the broader industry, I am afraid.
Very true indeed.
Worth looking at where ex-Goldman execs are now. Mnuchin, Bannon, Paulson, Rubin, Mario Draghi, Carney, Malcolm Turnbull etc. https://www.investopedia.com/news/26-goldman-sachs-alumni-who-run-world-gs/
Not that they would have any influence of course.
‘ Goldman Sachs and its Malaysian subsidiary were criminally charged yesterday by the Justice Department, they admit to the charges, and its stock closed up on the day by $2.49. ‘
https://wallstreetonparade.com/2020/10/goldman-sachs-criminally-charged-by-justice-department-and-its-stock-closes-up-2-49/
The answer to your question lies here, I think.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/oct/22/rishi-sunaks-ex-goldman-sachs-boss-emerges-as-next-possible-bbc-chair
I’ve just finished Belton’s ‘Putin’s People’ and there is no doubt in my mind that contemporary Russian capitalism (as corrupt as it is) is simply a nationalist reaction to the perceived hypocrisy and lack of principles of Western capitalism.
In fact, after reading this book, it amplifies the fact for me at least that capitalism in today’s world is most definitely in crisis.
We can have capitalism that is good – one that uses money to solve problems for the wider society – allocates resources fairly.
But instead we have a capitalism in the West that worships the resource (money) and pays less heed to the objectives/problems more fairer distribution of money could address.
So what we get is mass hoarding of the resource for self enrichment and power by a few powerful institutions and people instead that can challenge even State sovereignty .
No wonder either important things don’t get done or things don’t seem to improve.
And I don’t see a willingness to tackle any of this anywhere at the moment.