Thursday, December 13, 2012
It's been talked about for years
And now we have official confirmation that, indeed, at least one bank os too big to fail.
The New York Times reports this week that megabank HSBC has escaped criminal prosecution for money laundering that probably funded terrorists and narcotics traffickers. Why? Because regulators and prosecutors were petrified that an indictment would undermine the entire financial system. The Times quotes anonymous government sources who confessed fears about bringing formal charges because doing so would be a "death sentence" for the bank. So they let it off the hook.So now they get to say, Oops, we bad, and promise to never do it again; until the next time they get caught.
That’s right, HSBC is officially above the law. Too-big-to-fail has become too-big-to-prosecute.
A year-long investigation found that the British banking giant had blown right past federal laws by laundering billions of dollars from Mexican drug trafficking and processing banned transactions on behalf of Iran, Libya, Sudan and Burma. A Wednesday Times article serves up vivid passages about the shady goings-on, including HSBC officials working closely with Saudi Arabian banks linked to terrorist organizations. According to the report, "the four-count criminal information filed in the court charged HSBC with failure to maintain an effective anti-money laundering program, to conduct due diligence on its foreign correpsondent affiliates and for violating sanctions and the Trading With the Enemy Act."
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