In the wake of the bank rate-rigging scandal, Bob Diamond, Barclays chief executive, announced his resignation from the post with immediate effect, on Tuesday.
The first step to fixing the financial system is to be brutally honest about exactly how widespread and condoned the corruption has been and remains today. The time for politely dancing around the truth is long gone.
Following the systemic fraud of the tech wreck evident in high profile bust-ups like Enron, Tyco, Worldcom et. al, the US tried to bring financial accountability to American corporate executives via the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (called the Public Company Accounting Reform and Investor Protection Act’ (in the Senate) and ‘Corporate and Auditing Accountability and Responsibility Act’ (in the House). London, England declined to enact any reciprocal legislation and indeed British politicians openly courted corporate felons, attracting them to London with the promise of lax legislation. Many rats fled America and swarmed to the “business friendly” climate of London where they have been able to operate ever since nearly completely unfettered and unchecked. This is the very reason that London has, over the past few years, become the largest financial center in the world.
We can either admit facts, prosecute those who have committed fraud and criminal acts, sue those who have failed in their duty of care, and rout out the core of this insipid status quo or…we can continue to pretend and extend undue privilege and tax breaks to corrupt franchises and their leaders while continuing to suffer through an endless global economic malaise. The choice is ours to make. Here is a direct link.
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I suspect it has been an “open secret” for many years. Investors and traders always talk about London’s financial district with double quotation marks. I suspect they all have blessings from their Godfathers. Now, under public pressure. Few are picked as scapegoats. I am more concerned with the timing of the event. Why now? By choice or just bad lucks? JW, Langley BC
We live in a time of almost complete lack of ethics. Evident in corporations, government and society at large. It seems that fascism is running unchecked while world sleeps.
GSK has openly targeted children and those with chronic illness for outsized profits .
A 3 $Billion fine is a start but when are the criminals going to jail ?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yl4Rj-mxN0
It is wishful thinking that SarOx did eliminate fraud in corporate America.
At best it eliminated one kind of fraud.
By definition, however, contemporary banking is fraudulent.
The idea that banks are allowed to counterfeit the currency is preposterous.
The notions that any party, even our Glorified Home Association – the Government, is allowed to monopolized the medium of exchange, mandate it, counterfeit it, dilute it, and take limitless debt on it – are all preposterous.
If there is some action which you would not allow your home association, then obviously it should not be granted to the mega-home-association called Government.
For example, do we allow our home association to take unlimited debt?
May a home association confiscate our property arbitrarily (this is called tax)?
Do we allow favored residents to lobby the home association for ever more twisted rules that benefit only their interests on the expense of the others? [I’m afraid that sometimes things like this indeed happen]
Do we allow our home association to wage war in faraway lands?