2014 - 42 BBB again

I someone runs afoul of the law, and does not suffer consequences, what do you expect is going to happen?
Well, I guess it depends.
But if the law violation was VERY profitable, the chance of re-offending is high.

I thought we were done with BBB: Banks Behaving Badly. But they are not done behaving badly.

A lengthy New York Times article reports that big banks, which got away with limited penalties and were supposed to improve, went back to their bad ways.

What is happening is actually hard to believe.

1. Standard Chartered, a British bank, transferred money to countries blacklisted by the U.S. government (including Iran, which is under various sanctions related to its alleged nuclear program).
It is now accused of not disclosing the details of its wrongdoing, as it was required under the terms of the settlement.
Sanction busting is illegal under the U.S. law.
For an individual an equivalent crime would be laundering money for drug dealers of for the mafia.

2. Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi - same thing. Dealt with Iran, accused of under-reporting the scale of wrongdoing.

3. Barclays, UBS. They manipulated interest rates (LIBOR) - see posting 2014-20. They promised not to manipulate any more, but broke the promise by allegedly manipulating exchange rates - see postings 2014-20 and 2014-28.
For an individual an equivalent crime may be to steal from Joe, promise to give up stealing in exchange for not being sentenced and then stealing from Jane.

Do not trust my word only: here  is what the New York Times writes:
"Typically, when banks have repeatedly run afoul of the law, they have returned to business as usual with little or no additional penalty — a stark contrast to how prosecutors mete out justice for the average criminal."

4. PricewaterhouseCoopers. Hey, bankers are not the only ones. Here is what happened. To assess what went wrong at Bank of Tokyo, the bank hired PricewaterhouseCoopers and paid it to write a report. But e-mails were discovered "indicating that the consultant, PricewaterhouseCoopers, watered down the report under pressure from the bank".

For an individual an equivalent arrangement would be as follows. I am found laundering money for the mafia. I hire and pay for an accountant who writes a report for the judge. Hm, what could go wrong?

Note that, in all those cases, banks are treated as single entities. But banks do not launder money for Iran or manipulate LIBOR and exchange rates - bank employees do. There is no talk about individual responsibility. In other words, if a banker does something wrong, the employer pays a fine and that is it.

This is, of course, serious since various problems with banks and bankers contributed to the Great Recession and were supposed to be eliminated.

Now comes the 64 000 dollar question: can the financial crisis happen again?