how wall street won the war{and what happens next}

http://www.nationofchange.org/how-wall-street-won-war-and-what-happens-next-1390490287

***SNIP

White notes that “Citigroup and Bank of America sold off many of their classic ‘Wall Street’ businesses, including proprietary trading desks and private equity and hedge fund stakes, to comply with the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill.” But concerned readers will be pleased to know that, despite these seemingly draconian requirements, those two institutions are getting along, thank you very much. “Bank of America Stock Looking Up As Fourth Quarter Profit More Than Quadruples,” reads a headline from last week’s Forbes. And while Citigroup missed analysts’ earnings estimates, that was more a matter of expectations than anything else. Citi’s net income for 2013 was $13.9 billion on revenues of $76.4 billion, up substantially from the previous year.

White notes that “mighty JPMorgan Chase … is now forking over tens of billions of dollars in settlement cash, seemingly on a weekly basis, to pay for its sins before the financial crisis.” (Some of those sins actually took place after the financial crisis – and the fines appear to be far less than the extent of the actual damage the “mighty” bank did its customers and the economy.)

White’s right about one thing. There was a war – but Wall Street won it. What’s more, it’s not satisfied with the billions it’s already looted from our ransacked economy. It’s counting on narratives like White’s to help it get even more.


Consider this: Despite the fact that the bank paid $20 billion in fines in the last year alone, the only two arrests we’ve seen so far at JPMorgan Chase were those of low-level traders who were not U.S. nationals. There has been no systematic investigation of the institutional corruption that led to these enormous payouts, no attempt to determine how widely that corruption spread throughout the organization or how far up it has gone.