Is there anything banks havn't missold?

cepheus

Thrugelmir wrote: »

Why pick on banks? Banks after all are run by people. People are the real problem. .

It is the most pathetic excuse I have ever seen. It belongs in the hall of shame

Banks attract bad people, banks are a collective term for a disreputable industry with more than their fair share of criminals, at least in senior levels. Banks and the financial industry generally require fundamental structural changes before they will be trusted again.

It is perfectly accurate to compare banks with other collective term for people working in disreputable industries or groups. Immoral institutions and practices also bring out the worst in people.

I'm afraid if proof was needed that the financial industry hasn't changed and will shamelessly carry on as before bankrupting the economy again and again until they are properly and severely punished, this thread is it. When will people wake up?

cepheus

Incidentally Godwin's law only applies when it isn't directly true. We are not just comparing banks with the Nazis, but accusing them of collaborating with them. Yet another fail!

Many big American banks funded the Nazis.
The BBC reported in 1998:

Barclays Bank has agreed to pay $3.6m to Jews whose assets were seized from French branches of the British-based bank during World War II.
***
Chase Manhattan Bank, which has acknowledged seizing about 100 accounts held by Jews in its Paris branch during World War II ….”Recently unclassified reports from the US Treasury about the activities of Chase in Paris in the 1940s indicate that the local branch worked “in close collaboration with the German authorities” in freezing Jewish assets.

The New York Daily News noted the same year:
The relationship between Chase and the Nazis apparently was so cozy that Carlos Niedermann, the Chase branch chief in Paris, wrote his supervisor in Manhattan that the bank enjoyed “very special esteem” with top German officials and “a rapid expansion of deposits,” according to Newsweek.

Thrugelmir

cepheus wrote: »

It is the most pathetic excuse I have ever seen. It belongs in the hall of shame

Banks attract bad people, banks are a collective term for a disreputable industry with more than their fair share of criminals, at least in senior levels. Banks and the financial industry generally require fundamental structural changes before they will be trusted again.

Maxwell Publishing, Polly Peck, Enron to name a few.

What's changed?

Thrugelmir

cepheus wrote: »

Incidentally Godwin's law only applies when it isn't directly true. We are not just comparing banks with the Nazis, but accusing them of collaborating with them. Yet another fail!

This a consumer advice forum. Constant references to the Nazi's are out of order.

JohnRo

Things are changing slowly, the internet is a great forum for all sorts of ideas and exchanges, p2p lending and borrowing, crowd funding and other ideas are beginning to gain acceptance. There is also a vast marketplace for free software, meaning free from back door spying and data capture.

Imagine those things just 10 years ago and where they are now, it's remarkable.

Crypto currency is emerging, the desire for something incorruptible outside the increasingly worthless and corrupt, centralised, monopolised, banking ticket system is building. Then need for a means of direct exchange and store of value, private money, no doubt all with a rocky road ahead, and much interference from the crooks in charge, but these things aren't going away and they inspire and open up other ideas, possibilities and solutions.

People are switching on and are actively trying to make changes to the way things are done, the way people see the world, the propaganda box in the corner of peoples living rooms has lost it's monopoly, as increasingly have the "news" papers. Inertia and ignorance are, in large part, the things that have empowered and allowed the money crooks to perpetuate a crooked banking industry in step with the institutions of state that need it, to become what it has.

At some point a critical mass of people will see there is a new group who aren't blindly following instructions from on high and are going a different way. Just maybe then, they'll start to follow that like sheep and the banks, the crooks behind them and the complicit government that's beholden to them, with any luck, will simply be left behind to fester in their corrupt edifices.

Then again I might just be full of ..it. Things are very slowly changing though and that's probably no bad thing.

slinga

Massive news item yesterday about attempt to steel 1.25 million from a bank.
I expect those caught will get a big gaol sentence as a deterrent.

But the bankers mis selling and 'defrauding' over libor and London Whale etc etc don't even get bnrought to court.

Ark_Welder

cepheus wrote: »

It is the most pathetic excuse I have ever seen. It belongs in the hall of shame

I assume that your comment is being applied to your own I Don't Believe it! post given that it is impossible for anyone - including you - to agree or disagree with several articles due to the fact that the links to them do not work. The conclusion to be drawn being that you did not check on what you were posting before doing so. Probably why one of the links reads more like a party political for UKIP - I would never have guessed...;)

I was, however, interested to discover how Warren Buffett's due diligence process can be called into question, due to BH recently having bought a company previously run by alleged (an important word, one used in several of the available articles, and quite different to proof) co-conspirators trying to overthrow the democratically elected FDR. However, their half-baked beanz plot was also lost. Perhaps WB will be buying fish fingers and coffee next week to add to his collection....


[edit]

Oh, I almost forgot. Just to keep in the spirit of keeping the N-word going (no, not that one, the other one), this might be of interest, especially the intro which does sum things up quite nicely...

gadgetmind

Thrugelmir wrote: »

Maxwell Publishing, Polly Peck, Enron to name a few.

I'm sure you could also come up with a litany of "crimes" committed by the NHS, British Army, Catholic Church, Police, and probably even the Girl Guides! However, what would such rants do to advance a sensible discussion?

cepheus

UK government announces ten-year sentences for benefit fraud as banks loot billions http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/09/21/bene-s21.html …

Even where there is obvious evidence of illegality, the rich are assured that they are above the law. Only this week it was announced that JPMorgan is to be fined £557 million over efforts to conceal from investors and regulators the $6.2 billion losses in bad bets by Bruno Iksil, nicknamed the “London Whale”. This is a drop in the ocean. Two former JPMorgan traders meanwhile have been set up to take the fall so as to protect crimes reportedly sanctioned by the biggest US bank’s top executives.


Last year, the British-based HSBC, which admitted laundering billions of dollars for Mexican and Colombian drug cartels, settled with the US Justice Department for a token fine of less than $2 billion. That same year, the involvement of leading banks in the rigging of the Libor (London inter-banking lending rate) was exposed. Libor underpins trillions in loans and financial contracts, meaning that hundreds of millions of people were effectively defrauded. Once again, those involved got off with paltry fines and just a few resignations.

cepheus

Thrugelmir wrote: »

Maxwell Publishing, Polly Peck, Enron to name a few.

What's changed?

And still the banks are involved!

then there is Project Nahanni, apparently named for a Canadian national park known for the wolves that live there. In that relatively simple deal, Enron borrowed money from Citigroup to buy Treasury bills. Within days, it sold the Treasury bills and paid the money back to Citi.Why bother? Citigroup told Enron that it could report the $500 million it received from selling the bills as operating cash flow. It did just that, reassuring investors and credit rating agencies that its profits were genuine.

and if the banks have been involved with Nazis that's damn well what I will post, like it or not!