Money Laundering HSBC Fined $1.9 Billion: HSBC Profited $22 Billion in 2011

[Octafish]

A slap on the wrist! Are you kidding me? People get their lives ruined for bouncing a check and banksters get away, scot-free.

Slap on the wrist for drug dealer's bank

Justice Department outlines HSBC transactions with drug traffickers

By Peter Finn and Sari Horwitz
Washington Post, Tuesday, December 11, 6:18 PM

Mexico’s fearsome Sinaloa Cartel was so practiced at laundering millions of dollars in drug profits at the Mexican branches of the global bank HSBC that it packed bulk cash in boxes that were measured to slide neatly under the teller windows.

The Justice Department’s record $1.9 billion settlement Tuesday with HSBC exposed the continuing ability of drug cartels, rogue nations and terrorist financiers to move billions of dollars through the international and U.S. banking systems.

SNIP...

But a string of august names in global banking — Credit Suisse, Lloyds Bank, ABN Amro, ING Bank N.V. and now HSBC — have reached settlements in the last couple of years with the U.S. government for billions of dollars in tainted transactions. These investigations have revealed that weaknesses in the financial system lay not with the so-called hawala brokers of Karachi, Pakistan, but the bespoke bankers of London, Amsterdam and Geneva, and their American affiliates.

SNIP...

One of the world’s largest banks, HSBC has its headquarters in London and $2.5 trillion in assets. It earned nearly $22 billion in profits in 2011.

CONTINUED...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/justice-department-outlines-hsbc-transactions-with-drug-traffickers/2012/12/11/1b8130c4-43bf-11e2-8061-253bccfc7532_story.html

Gee, Mr. Holder. You'd think someone would be going to jail or losing a business or their reputation. But, no. "Time to move on."



Cass Sunstein would approve.

[valerief]

1. When you buy the lawmakers and courts...nt

[Octafish]

2. That really is the take-away.

Neil Barofsky agrees with us, valerief.

Neil Barofsky Gave Us The Best Explanation For Washington's Dysfunction We've Ever Heard

Linette Lopez
Business Insider, Aug. 1, 2012, 2:57 PM

Neil Barofsky was the Inspector General for TARP, and just wrote a book about his time in D.C. called Bailout: An Insider Account of How Washington Abandoned Main Street While Rescuing Wall Street.

SNIP...

Bottom line: Barofsky said the incentive structure in our nation's capitol is all wrong. There's a revolving door between bureaucrats in Washington and Wall Street banks, and politicians just want to keep their jobs.

For regulators it's something like this:

[font size="3"][font color="green"]"You can play ball and good things can happen to you get a big pot of gold at the end of the Wall Street rainbow or you can do your job be aggressive and face personal ruin...We really need to rethink how we govern and how regulate," Barofsky said.[/font color][/font size]

CONTINUED... http://www.businessinsider.com/neil-barofsky-2012-8

"Integrity is for paupers." -- traditional saying, ABCNNBCBSFixedNoiseNutworks

[Octafish]

3. What Catherine Austin Fitts found, way back when...

A big shot in Poppy's crew, Fitts got fed up with the corruption at the highest levels of government, business and finance. She's doing all she can to document corruption on Wall Street and Washington and helping those who give a damn do something about it. Her Narcodollars for Beginners deserves a Pulitzer.

Integrity is an alien concept to the plutonomy. Same for the police state.