HSBC – 

Banking Around The World

Little did we know that the HSBC slogan, “Bank as easily around the world as you do at home” was to be taken literally. That terrorists, drug cartels, even ordinary crooks and other slimy types could take advantage of the HSBC operations in the United States to convert their holdings to spanking new American dollar bills for use anywhere that currency is accepted – like everywhere!

Al Rajhi Bank in Saudi Arabia, reportedly a favorite of various terrorists, has also been a favorite of HSBC. Al Rajhi is said to have been the bank of choice for some of the 9/11 hijackers. This bank also handles funds for the International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO) considered a funder of terrorist activities and a source of support for suicide bombers. HSBC was happy to stock up Al Rajhi with Indian rupees. Hmmmm? Rupees perhaps that financed terrorist attacks in Mumbai?

Investigators uncovered information indicating that HSBC green-lighted the movement of billions in shady dollars into the United States from Mexico, Saudi Arabia etc., etc., etc., without the kind of oversight the law and common sense dictates. 

It would appear that HSBC engages in every shady aspect of banking that one could imagine. Laundering money for terrorists, providing currency du jure no matter where the bad guys want to blow something up. Giving the drug cartels lots of US dollars to enjoy the fruits of their murderous ways. Even Russian organized crime lords found HSBC to be a great help in laundering their cash.

Of course HSBC is into rigging LIBOR rates big time, impacting our credit cards, mortgages and literally every form of bank related credit. Don’t forget their role in rigging municipal bond auctions adding to the cost of public infrastructure from schools, to highways, to sewers, not to mention the taxes that pay off those bonds.

This is far beyond ethics. Like the crooks they serve, they should be prosecuted. And not just the little guys who make the dirty deals and rig the rates, but the guys at the top, the people who created this culture. It’s not organized crime without a “Boss” –or a “Bankster” as the Economist famously labeled them– calling the shots. HSBC executives, the folks at the top –gangsters with a “B”– enabled this massive criminal enterprise. And we all know where organized crime leaders belong, in the slammer. We’ll see if law enforcement authorities around the world will bring them to justice.

Who Got The “Death Penalty”?

Twenty-five years ago Southern Methodist University (SMU) was found to be paying student members of their football team from $50 to as much as $725 a month from a slush fund maintained for that purpose. The sports powerhouse was on NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) probation at the time for earlier violations. As a result, the NCAA slapped SMU with a cancellation of their upcoming season and all home games the next year, along with a handful of other penalties, an action dubbed the “Death Penalty.” 

So for adding cash payments to the other perks provided big time college football players, like scholarships, jobs they rarely if ever show up for, etc., etc., the NCAA shuts down the SMU football program long enough to derail it for twenty years. It is pretty hard to find any harm in what went on at SMU beyond the negatives that maintaining a semi-pro football team does to any institution theoretically focused on learning. In the SMU case a university that is an arm of a church. 

After due consideration the NCAA chose to ratchet down the level of punishment meted out to Penn State. After all Penn State didn’t break any NCAA rules; they just ignored report after report that they had a pedophile in a senior position in their football program. Starting with two janitors, who saw Jerry Sandusky rape a little boy in a Penn State shower room 14 years ago. One said he had seen some awful things while in the service in Korea, but nothing as horrific as that. But fear of Sandusky kept the janitor from going to the authorities, so he just told his boss. 

Sandusky was allowed to retire, but he kept his office in the sports complex and his access to the shower rooms. He kept right on taking boys to Penn State away games and keeping them in his hotel room. Ignoring one incident after another, the top officials at Penn State agreed among themselves to hush up the Sandusky “problem.” The football culture at Penn State is so powerful it erased all common sense and decency for nearly fifteen years. 

But they will play football at Penn State this fall; no NCAA “Death Penalty” for Happy Valley. The University will pay a massive $60 million dollar fine, and they will not be eligible for a bowl game for the next four seasons. The number of free riders will be cut by twenty; Penn State will only be allowed to have 65 football scholarship players on their roster instead of the 85 currently allowed. There are additional slap-on-the-wrist penalties but nothing that will cause too much pain. 

An immediate chorus of whines emanated from Penn State supporters. The most frequent, “It’s worse than the Death Penalty.” Nonsense! Who knows how many little boys this monster violated? Little boys carrying the lifelong “Death Penalty” Sandusky left on their very being. If Penn State’s penalty matched that of the victims of its football culture, there would never be another Penn State football game, not this fall, not ever.  

Banks Behaving Badly

“We’re doing what a bank is supposed to do.” That’s JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon before a US Senate Committee after a two billion dollar gambling loss that has since grown to nearly six billion and is forecast to hit even higher numbers. Dimon was much harder on himself than were the Senators, or the members of a House Committee in a subsequent hearing. 

No surprise, members of Congress have good reason to be friendly. Dimon has pitched millions into Congressional war chests -more to Republicans, but lots to go around. The committee members understandably tossed softball questions. Dimon was decked out in cuff links with the presidential seal just so everyone would know where he was coming from. 

Unbelievably nobody called him on his, “We’re doing what a bank is supposed to do” line. This from a “Bankster,” as the Economist has labeled the out-of-control leaders of our financial sector. The billions lost on bad bets placed by one of its traders (AKA gamblers) in London are the least of the problems Dimon is facing. 

Chase is ensnared in the evolving Libor scandal that has a group of international banksters fixing interbank lending rates, impacting every loan rate imaginable. 

The incredibly complex Libor rate fixing scheme crosses civil and criminal legal lines. Dimon was fully aware of his bank’s involvement in this racket when he delivered his “What a bank is supposed to do” line; so we must assume that he thinks juggling interest rates worldwide is what banks do. 

That isn’t even the worst it. When Dimon was flaunting his control over those we send to Washington to do our business, he was fully aware that Chase had just shelled out a seventy-five million dollar fine for rigging a bid on a three billion dollar sewer bond deal that pushed Birmingham, Alabama into bankruptcy. A deal they cinched with a three million dollar bribe to Goldman Sachs. Chase and a host of other banksters have been rigging municipal bond auctions for decades.

This all came out when the Feds convicted three minor players from GE Capital they nailed rigging bond auctions. The Feds got their hands on recordings of telephone conversations between banksters making highly illegal deals to pass municipal bond business around among the banks. In addition to the bankster types from GE who are going to jail, scores of others from virtually every major bank in America and many international banks as well have taken a plea deal. 

Let’s be clear about what’s going on here. 

Between the Libor racket and the municipal bond rigging scam- the banksters have ripped off everyone in America to the tune of untold billions. JP Morgan Chase is not alone in these Mafia style rackets, but if that’s what Jamie Dimon thinks “banks do” then he has a different ethical standard than most of us hold.