Do We Need to Bribe Bankers to Rat Each Other Out?

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http://www.alternet.org/story/156359/do_we_need_to_bribe_bankers_to_rat_each_other_out_/

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Bankers love to recount the fabled story of the invisible hand. In their version, the superhero Invisible Hand effectively controls the market, thoroughly trust-busting and fraud-forestalling. Everyone lives happily ever after.

Truth be told, however, the tale of the invisible hand is a horror story. The invisible hand fails miserably to constrain bankster racketeering. It didn’t prevent the market crash in 2008. The ending to that sad saga is recession.

Expecting an invisible hand to control the market is believing in fantasy. It is depending on the ethereal digits of Casper the Friendly Ghost to stop bid-rigging, price-fixing, self-dealing banksters. Casper’s airy little fist packed no wallop when it came to impeding high-risk betting on Wall Street, the LIBOR lending rate manipulation or the disappearance of client money at MF Global. There’s a much better way than Casper to catch a bankster: pay them to turn each other in.

Like delinquent children, bankers chafed under the restraints placed on them after the Stock Market Crash of 1929. Their lobbying chipped away at the regulations until 1999 when they achieved repeal of the most important one, the Glass-Steagall Act.

Within a decade, the market crashed again. Investigators discovered banks had packaged bad loans into securities and pawned them off to unwitting investors. That’s one of the same practices uncovered by a Depression-era inquiry into the 1929 Crash.

[Bosso 63]

1. carrot and sticks

Considering the damage they can do, I'd be O.K. with offering money to the rats. After all, there is no honor among thieves.
On the flip side, despite my opposition to the death penalty in general, I think "putting down" a few of these S.O.B.s would really help "get their full attention".

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2. +1