I'm going to disagree with you in part, and agree with you in part. I agree with you that this is theatre, but I disagree in that I claim these fines to be triv

I'm going to disagree with you in part, and agree with you in part. I agree with you that this is theatre, but I disagree in that I claim these fines to be trivial to the size corporations involved. By making the fines look "large" to members of the public, the public will hopefully be disuaded into pushing Congress to make real, significant, and meaningful changes to our corporate landscape. The part I'm disagreeing with is that the criminal misdeeds of the financial institutions are so enormous that even with these "power-upped" fines, the fines are a trivial mosquito bite to the companies. The SEC is routinely in bed with the financial institutions that they regulate and I see these fines as a corrupt action that fines the institutions less than 1% of the damage the institutions did to the US, and then exempt the institution from further civil and criminal penalties. This is exactly like the "fifty states attorney general" settlement with the banks is doing.