FinCEN leak shows some of the extent to which banks need to be burned.

crimson5pheonix

It took 6 months to read my title.
Legacy
Jun 6, 2008
36,113
3,283
118

Documents from the US Financial Crimes Investigation Network have been leaked to the press showing the long list of financial crimes committed by worldwide banking companies.

Highlights include:
The UK being one of the most high risk banking countries in the world
HSBC being the preferred bank of money laundering (technically old news)
Russian oligarchs running around sanctions through Barclays
Deutsche bank wanting some of HSBC's laundering action
 

lil devils x

🐐More Lego Goats Please!🐐
Legacy
May 1, 2020
3,330
1,045
118
Country
🐐USA🐐
Gender
♀

Documents from the US Financial Crimes Investigation Network have been leaked to the press showing the long list of financial crimes committed by worldwide banking companies.

Highlights include:
The UK being one of the most high risk banking countries in the world
HSBC being the preferred bank of money laundering (technically old news)
Russian oligarchs running around sanctions through Barclays
Deutsche bank wanting some of HSBC's laundering action
What do you mean by " burned"? What do you think burning banks will accomplish, they actually do not need their physical bank buildings any longer to conduct business and anything of value is protected from fire in the vault? If you want those Banks to be regulated out of business, you would have to elect enough officials in governments globally to do so, otherwise they will still have means to hide.

The general public have been aware of much of this since the banking crisis, but what are we realistically expecting to be able to accomplish here with a GOP controlled senate and grim prospects for the future of realistically being able to elect anyone who would do anything about it? Progressives cannot even get a majority within Democrats, and democrats cannot maintain a majority in Congress and with the constant barrage of people ignorantly choosing to believe disinformation campaigns and conspiracies ever growing, we cannot expect actual progressives to ever get a foothold large enough to be able to do anything about it. Sure Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren would do something, but they very well cannot do anything as long as people keep believing the disinformation campaigns against them and others and continue to elect QAnon idiots and people like Tom Cotton and Lindsey Graham who want to keep these things in place rather than get rid of them.
 

Gordon_4

The Big Engine
Legacy
Apr 3, 2020
6,045
5,345
118
Australia
Half of Wall Street probably should have been put in federal prison after the GFC and regulators should have swarmed the place like locusts.

So none of this is news.
 
  • Like
Reactions: lil devils x

Revnak

We must imagine Sisyphus horny
Legacy
May 25, 2020
2,944
3,099
118
Country
USA
The general public have been aware of much of this since the banking crisis, but what are we realistically expecting to be able to accomplish here with a GOP controlled senate and grim prospects for the future of realistically being able to elect anyone who would do anything about it?
THE BANKING CRISIS WAS FOLLOWED BY TWO YEARS OF DEMOCRATIC TOTAL CONTROL OF GOVERNMENT DURING WHICH THEY DID ABSOLUTELY NOTHING OF ANY SIGNIFICANCE TO STOP THIS
 

lil devils x

🐐More Lego Goats Please!🐐
Legacy
May 1, 2020
3,330
1,045
118
Country
🐐USA🐐
Gender
♀
THE BANKING CRISIS WAS FOLLOWED BY TWO YEARS OF DEMOCRATIC TOTAL CONTROL OF GOVERNMENT DURING WHICH THEY DID ABSOLUTELY NOTHING OF ANY SIGNIFICANCE TO STOP THIS
Of course they didn't, the banks pretty much had a gun to their heads. That was pretty well known. They passed banking regulation that Republicans destroyed later, but for the most part they were at the mercy of the banks. The banks were holding everyone's 401k hostage. This was impacting everyone from retail minimum wage workers to school teachers, not just wealthy. What regulation they did Pass, the GOP has already nullified so it can and will happen again.
 

Revnak

We must imagine Sisyphus horny
Legacy
May 25, 2020
2,944
3,099
118
Country
USA
Of course they didn't, the banks pretty much had a gun to their heads. That was pretty well known. They passed banking regulation that Republicans destroyed later, but for the most part they were at the mercy of the banks. The banks were holding everyone's 401k hostage. This was impacting everyone from retail minimum wage workers to school teachers, not just wealthy. What regulation they did Pass, the GOP has already nullified so it can and will happen again.
So electing Democrats won’t stop this? Good to know.
 

lil devils x

🐐More Lego Goats Please!🐐
Legacy
May 1, 2020
3,330
1,045
118
Country
🐐USA🐐
Gender
♀
So electing Democrats won’t stop this? Good to know.
Not going to stop the banks, at least not this time. It is too late for that because the GOP already removed the little protections they managed to put in place already. If they would pass Warren's banking regulation it would definitely help. We may not be able to " stop" it by electing Democrats, however, without giving them power, we will have no one preventing the lower and middle class from being crushed when this comes to a head again.

All you have to do is look at the COVID-19 relief bill being held up in congress right now to understand that. The big fight right now is this:

Democrats refuse to pass anything without help for the unemployed and the poor, Republicans refuse to pass anything with help for the unemployed and the poor.

That sums it up entirely. Without Democrats, we have no help for the poor at all, and it is a matter of life and death for all those at the bottom here. If you want ANY help for the unemployed and the poor, we only have ONE party willing to do that. Otherwise all of these things that the GOP is doing to inflict harm, like deregulating the banks, when they come to crush us all under their weight, at least the Democrats will fight to get help for the poor, otherwise we have none and the poor just die instead.

When our only options are :
A) Allow Republicans to be elected and let them maliciously remove all help for the poor and unemployed and people who need help that do not receive it will just die.
B) Allow Democrats to be elected and let them get what help for the poor they can manage to wrangle out. AT least we have someone trying to help and that is STILL better than no help at all, or even worse, the malicious actions Republicans are currently inflicting.

Ideally it wouldn't be a struggle between those trying to cause harm and those trying to get help, but sadly, that is what it is in the US. Hopefully if we can eventually get the current republicans out of office and remove their stranglehold acquired through mass disinformation, we will hopefully get to the point one day where we are arguing about the best way to help people rather than arguing over helping or hurting them at all. That hasn't happened yet, so it is what help we can mange to get or actively cause harm. Which is pretty much a no brainer. It takes everyone else banding together JUST to barely stop the republicans from being able to inflict harm, so if we fight amongst ourselves, the republicans get what they want and still win and still intentionally inflict harm. We have to change that power dynamic if we ever hope to change this. I was hoping it would get better once the Baby boomers were gone, but with the recent disinformation blitz going on, I am afraid they are recruiting all new generations of white nationalists to take their places.
 
Last edited:

Agema

You have no authority here, Jackie Weaver
Legacy
Mar 3, 2009
8,598
5,962
118
Highlights include:
The UK being one of the most high risk banking countries in the world
Also, I would argue, old news. London and its satellite tax havens have been known to the money-launderers' financial centre of choice for a long time.

HSBC being the preferred bank of money laundering (technically old news)
HSBC would protest that this refers to about 2012, and they have stamped on a lot of their more questionable financial activities.

Russian oligarchs running around sanctions through Barclays
Of course. Fundamentally the function of many British banks' international operations are to facilitate people shuffling money around with no questions asked. I think it's very notable that Russian ex-pat oligarchs are extremely well in with the Conservative party (although many are not friendly with the Putin regime, they have moved to the UK to escape) - but I'm sure they have a wide range of dodgy connections all the same. This perhaps shocking to the USA, but it does reflect to some extent the different attitudes of the UK, which is ultimately less interested in thinking of countries as geopolitical opponents than it is pragmatically working with them, up to an including turning a blind eye to corruption.

This also ties in with some revelations about Manafort and the Trump-Russia links. Lev Parnas, Giuliani, and various others were effectively tied to some iffy money flows coming out of Russia and Ukraine: effectively billionaire oligarchs and even Russian state money effectively bought itself right to the doorstep of the president.
 

Seanchaidh

Elite Member
Legacy
Mar 21, 2009
5,241
3,062
118
Country
United States of America
Of course they didn't, the banks pretty much had a gun to their heads.
Maybe, but not in any "the banks ceasing to function would cause unavoidably harmful consequences" kind of way. The banks are key supporters of both parties; their power over a government that was consciously hostile to them would be much more limited. They have power over the Democratic and Republican Parties specifically because both parties are absolutely unwilling to do anything that would upset liberal norms about so-called property rights, or likely even conceive of doing so-- and they've installed judges who typically think the same way. This hegemony is international in character; other countries are also infected by the same (more or less) liberal property rights virus. And of course the mainstream media reflects all this. All of that can be ignored if the politicians that compose the United States government really want to-- they just don't. Liberals and conservatives would rather dance to the tune of banks and the other various components of the ruling economic class than exercise power effectively on behalf of their voting bases. They would justify this timidity by reference to 'stability' or another adjacent concept, I'm sure.

All you need to protect everyone's 401ks, assuming you deem that worthwhile, is the information about who has one and which financial assets compose them. And then you just compensate any losses at their face value calculated at a certain point in time prior to the crisis (or do something else more creative than that; the rules are made up and the points don't matter). There's no money tree that only banks can cultivate and harvest. There's no special expertise that only a large bank can employ. The real assets behind the whole financial facade don't cease to exist just because a bank goes under. They might stop being used because of deference to the so-called property rights of the various people (and legal persons) involved and the fiction that government should limit its interventions into the economy to smothering giant corporations in cash. But those are decisions that have been made about how to organize the economy, not physical limitations or any other kind of necessity.

There's a whole range of possibilities concerning how a government can address a financial crisis. At the most extreme, you can simply disregard the legal claims of banks and, why not, also all the creditors and shareholders of all the various companies. Tell their workers to keep coming in; compensate them, and perhaps even their managers with good enough behavior, accordingly; transition the various companies into new entities that aren't in financial trouble; or remake the whole financial system from the ground up. Meanwhile, keep producing and distributing the goods and services, as that's the point of an economy. Invent whatever financial resources are necessary to easily facilitate that.

This is all within the realm of possibility. But the ruling elite would rather people lose their homes and die in misery than upset the existing order of things. And who can blame them? They're the ruling elite, after all.
 
  • Like
Reactions: crimson5pheonix

Agema

You have no authority here, Jackie Weaver
Legacy
Mar 3, 2009
8,598
5,962
118
It makes total sense that at the apotheosis of capitalism, the institutions that mediate capital flows will become obscenely powerful, and that power will spill out further to influence more and more of the state.

For instance, the average Conservative MP was a businessman (either small/medium owning or middle-upper management of a larger firm). That still is true, but it is no surprise that now a huge number are from the finance industry - and this will then likely strongly dictate the party's attitudes to the financial industry. I would also suggest that the vast increase in executive salaries and small government ethos has had a ruinous impact on the ability of government to control businesses, and especially finance. Do you want $150k a year regulating banks, or $1 million a year working for a bank to evade regulations? Staff will favour corporations. Government is increasingly unable and unwilling to employ sufficient people to oversee the financial industry without hiring from the financial industry, hence the revolving door. The result is probably dubious loyalties where staff provide government information about how banks work, and that once their stint is over, they go straight back to the companies with their knowledge of government regulations... and thus how to get round them. It's become a weird symbiosis, where both government and banks get some benefit, but I suspect banks ultimately considerably more because I suspect whilst in government the ex-finance industry staff give the finance industry too much trust and credibility.
 

lil devils x

🐐More Lego Goats Please!🐐
Legacy
May 1, 2020
3,330
1,045
118
Country
🐐USA🐐
Gender
♀
Maybe, but not in any "the banks ceasing to function would cause unavoidably harmful consequences" kind of way. The banks are key supporters of both parties; their power over a government that was consciously hostile to them would be much more limited. They have power over the Democratic and Republican Parties specifically because both parties are absolutely unwilling to do anything that would upset liberal norms about so-called property rights, or likely even conceive of doing so-- and they've installed judges who typically think the same way. This hegemony is international in character; other countries are also infected by the same (more or less) liberal property rights virus. And of course the mainstream media reflects all this. All of that can be ignored if the politicians that compose the United States government really want to-- they just don't. Liberals and conservatives would rather dance to the tune of banks and the other various components of the ruling economic class than exercise power effectively on behalf of their voting bases. They would justify this timidity by reference to 'stability' or another adjacent concept, I'm sure.

All you need to protect everyone's 401ks, assuming you deem that worthwhile, is the information about who has one and which financial assets compose them. And then you just compensate any losses at their face value calculated at a certain point in time prior to the crisis (or do something else more creative than that; the rules are made up and the points don't matter). There's no money tree that only banks can cultivate and harvest. There's no special expertise that only a large bank can employ. The real assets behind the whole financial facade don't cease to exist just because a bank goes under. They might stop being used because of deference to the so-called property rights of the various people (and legal persons) involved and the fiction that government should limit its interventions into the economy to smothering giant corporations in cash. But those are decisions that have been made about how to organize the economy, not physical limitations or any other kind of necessity.

There's a whole range of possibilities concerning how a government can address a financial crisis. At the most extreme, you can simply disregard the legal claims of banks and, why not, also all the creditors and shareholders of all the various companies. Tell their workers to keep coming in; compensate them, and perhaps even their managers with good enough behavior, accordingly; transition the various companies into new entities that aren't in financial trouble; or remake the whole financial system from the ground up. Meanwhile, keep producing and distributing the goods and services, as that's the point of an economy. Invent whatever financial resources are necessary to easily facilitate that.

This is all within the realm of possibility. But the ruling elite would rather people lose their homes and die in misery than upset the existing order of things. And who can blame them? They're the ruling elite, after all.
From my understanding it was exactly in "the banks ceasing to function would cause unavoidably harmful consequences" kind of way and that was the problem. Everything was intertwined, loans, mortgages, savings, payroll, retirement funds.. They were gambling with other peoples money and you can be damn sure the wealthy would make sure they got theirs before those at the bottom had a chance to access anything. The banks pretty much had it set up so if they went down they were taking everything with them and they did it intentionally as a form of security for themselves. Not just in the US, but they were going to take the global economy with them. It was like a high risk game of musical chairs and who was " holding" the real assets when the music stopped? As much as I hate the banks, I do not see that congress had a choice to be able to stop it from happening in time unless congress and other world governments cooperated. They weren't really given an alternative that would be able to prevent the dominos from all going down before they could stop it otherwise.

You have to understand that if we " disrupt" the ruling elite like that without a plan in place, they have it currently designed to where the poor and middle class are the first to be crushed. We have to actually prop up the middle and lower class BEFORE we take on the ruling elite. Failing to do so will necessarily result widespread mass suffering and millions of deaths. It is all about the plan to get from point A to Point B that matters. The details are what is important here. Right now the lower and middle classes do not have the savings or any ability to even survive a crisis. They are tapped out. Many cannot even go a week without income. Our food banks are empty. Our shelters are overflowing and we are in the process of a mass eviction crisis. Unless we get footing now, people will unnecessarily die. We don't have to do it this way, this is what happens when you fly by your ass without a plan. We have to have a step by step plan as to how transition AND keep everyone alive in the process or everything goes to shit fast when people become desperate and start doing whatever it takes to try and survive.

You want to avoid that scenario at all costs, as hopes of recovery to be able to obtain things like Universal healthcare, ending homelessness, and UBI become impossible of reaching any time soon once it devolves into chaos, desperation and despair. Without detailed plans, back up plans and backup to your backup plans, all you do is make everything worse, not better in the end and eliminate the possibility of it even being able to get better.
 

Revnak

We must imagine Sisyphus horny
Legacy
May 25, 2020
2,944
3,099
118
Country
USA
From my understanding it was exactly in "the banks ceasing to function would cause unavoidably harmful consequences" kind of way and that was the problem. Everything was intertwined, loans, mortgages, savings, payroll, retirement funds.. They were gambling with other peoples money and you can be damn sure the wealthy would make sure they got theirs before those at the bottom had a chance to access anything. The banks pretty much had it set up so if they went down they were taking everything with them and they did it intentionally as a form of security for themselves. Not just in the US, but they were going to take the global economy with them. It was like a high risk game of musical chairs and who was " holding" the real assets when the music stopped? As much as I hate the banks, I do not see that congress had a choice to be able to stop it from happening in time unless congress and other world governments cooperated. They weren't really given an alternative that would be able to prevent the dominos from all going down before they could stop it otherwise.

You have to understand that if we " disrupt" the ruling elite like that without a plan in place, they have it currently designed to where the poor and middle class are the first to be crushed. We have to actually prop up the middle and lower class BEFORE we take on the ruling elite. Failing to do so will necessarily result widespread mass suffering and millions of deaths. It is all about the plan to get from point A to Point B that matters. The details are what is important here. Right now the lower and middle classes do not have the savings or any ability to even survive a crisis. They are tapped out. Many cannot even go a week without income. Our food banks are empty. Our shelters are overflowing and we are in the process of a mass eviction crisis. Unless we get footing now, people will unnecessarily die. We don't have to do it this way, this is what happens when you fly by your ass without a plan. We have to have a step by step plan as to how transition AND keep everyone alive in the process or everything goes to shit fast when people become desperate and start doing whatever it takes to try and survive.

You want to avoid that scenario at all costs, as hopes of recovery to be able to obtain things like Universal healthcare, ending homelessness, and UBI become impossible of reaching any time soon once it devolves into chaos, desperation and despair. Without detailed plans, back up plans and backup to your backup plans, all you do is make everything worse, not better in the end and eliminate the possibility of it even being able to get better.
Bull. The workers hold the power. If the fragile system of gambling and treachery came crashing down, the people who do things, make things, would survive better than the ones who own things, as they wouldn’t own much for long presuming they tried to fight back. It is delusional to say that we must preserve the current system of financial fuckery for the sake of the lower classes.
 
  • Like
Reactions: crimson5pheonix

Thaluikhain

Elite Member
Legacy
Jan 16, 2010
18,578
3,535
118
Bull. The workers hold the power. If the fragile system of gambling and treachery came crashing down, the people who do things, make things, would survive better than the ones who own things, as they wouldn’t own much for long presuming they tried to fight back. It is delusional to say that we must preserve the current system of financial fuckery for the sake of the lower classes.
Long term, sure. In theory, short term, sure.

But in practice, lots of people living on the edge as it is are likely to die if there was any sudden change to the system.
 
  • Like
Reactions: lil devils x

Revnak

We must imagine Sisyphus horny
Legacy
May 25, 2020
2,944
3,099
118
Country
USA
Long term, sure. In theory, short term, sure.

But in practice, lots of people living on the edge as it is are likely to die if there was any sudden change to the system.
They’re likely to die by the system anyway.
 
  • Like
Reactions: crimson5pheonix

lil devils x

🐐More Lego Goats Please!🐐
Legacy
May 1, 2020
3,330
1,045
118
Country
🐐USA🐐
Gender
♀
Bull. The workers hold the power. If the fragile system of gambling and treachery came crashing down, the people who do things, make things, would survive better than the ones who own things, as they wouldn’t own much for long presuming they tried to fight back. It is delusional to say that we must preserve the current system of financial fuckery for the sake of the lower classes.
What power? The workers have no savings. The workers have no accumulated wealth. The workers are "replaceable" as far as the wealthy are concerned. Hell these days, they are often not needed at all as they shift to automation. There are far too many people needing jobs than there will ever exist again so the many workers are fighting each other tooth and nail for the few jobs we have available. The wealthy do not even need the workers anymore. The workers cannot go very long at all without fresh income and we are finding that out the hard way right now during this pandemic as the food banks run empty and the charities are begging for money. The wealthy are fine, they have everything, including their own private armies if need be.
DO you realize what this means?

It means they have everything, including the power to crush every single person to the left of them on that chart. They don't need you, me or anyone else to get what they want anymore because we already gave them everything we had. In your imaginary scenario they don't have their foot on your throat. In reality they already do. People will not survive without income coming in and are in no way in a position to be able to transition to anything else without mass poverty, suffering and death of millions.
 

lil devils x

🐐More Lego Goats Please!🐐
Legacy
May 1, 2020
3,330
1,045
118
Country
🐐USA🐐
Gender
♀
They’re likely to die by the system anyway.
No, right now the system is the ONLY thing keeping them alive, you have to have an actual plan here rather than fly by your ass or all you propose is worse death than we have already. Your plan is no better if it only results in longer term suffering and more death than the existing plan. You see people cannot even start their own businesses or work for themselves when everyone around them is too poor and desperate to buy anything as well. You have to build a foundation for any of that to work and we haven't done that yet.
 

Thaluikhain

Elite Member
Legacy
Jan 16, 2010
18,578
3,535
118
They’re likely to die by the system anyway.
Certainly, but I'd want to sit down and work out how many and how likely are going to die under the current system, compared to how many and how likely would die if it was removed. Not to mention the odds of getting something better, and if people are going to die even so.

Hating the status quo doesn't preclude being wary of disrupting it.
 

Revnak

We must imagine Sisyphus horny
Legacy
May 25, 2020
2,944
3,099
118
Country
USA
What power? The workers have no savings. The workers have no accumulated wealth. The workers are "replaceable" as far as the wealthy are concerned. Hell these days, they are often not needed at all as they shift to automation. There are far too many people needing jobs than there will ever exist again so the many workers are fighting each other tooth and nail for the few jobs we have available. The wealthy do not even need the workers anymore. The workers cannot go very long at all without fresh income and we are finding that out the hard way right now during this pandemic as the food banks run empty and the charities are begging for money. The wealthy are fine, they have everything, including their own private armies if need be.
DO you realize what this means?

It means they have everything, including the power to crush every single person to the left of them on that chart. They don't need you, me or anyone else to get what they want anymore because we already gave them everything we had. In your imaginary scenario they don't have their foot on your throat. In reality they already do. People will not survive without income coming in and are in no way in a position to be able to transition to anything else without mass poverty, suffering and death of millions.
Property you’ve no power to hold isn’t your property, and the current fuckery is what grants the wealthy the power to hold that property. Without it, their wealth is as illusory as their right to it. When this all falls apart, when we’re choking on the dust that used to be our rivers, it is the people who will have the power to loot their mansions and drag them down to live and suffer among us. Their wealth and power over us is through and by the financial institutions and state around us. Without that, they die as easy as any of us.
 
  • Like
Reactions: crimson5pheonix

lil devils x

🐐More Lego Goats Please!🐐
Legacy
May 1, 2020
3,330
1,045
118
Country
🐐USA🐐
Gender
♀
Certainly, but I'd want to sit down and work out how many and how likely are going to die under the current system, compared to how many and how likely would die if it was removed. Not to mention the odds of getting something better, and if people are going to die even so.

Hating the status quo doesn't preclude being wary of disrupting it.
Especially when there is no real plan here for any of it and people are just dreaming for a better way. In reality that usually turns out to only be people like Zetas take over everything and now everything is just worse than it was before. There isn't even a viable " path to power" in this proposed scenario. It is just day dreaming and is about as real as me finding a unicorn when I open my front door today.