5 ms·

I'm not sure why that second sentence is there, it doesn't really make much sense. The rest of the point is valid, especially regarding money laundering.

by mbetter 13y ago

guard-of-terra 13y ago
Why should we ever care about money laundering when they didn't punish HSBC? They aren't serious about this issue, why should we care?
- rayiner 13y ago
  Because HSBC wasn't doing the money laundering. The charge was a failing to exercise the controls required by banking laws. See: http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2012/12/11/hsbc-laundering-probe/1760351/ http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2012/12/11/hsbc...
  - guard-of-terra 13y ago
    "for years deliberately channeled hundreds of millions of dollars of the prohibited transactions" If that isn't money laundering then what is? The charge means nothing. Show me one person behind bars; until then the charge means nothing.
    - rayiner 13y ago
      Your ISP "deliberately" routes child pornography over their networks all the time--that doesn't make them distributors of child pornography. HSBC provides a banking service. Unlike with ISPs, they are responsible for overseeing how their service is used, to prevent money laundering. Failing to oversee the employees who failed to follow the regulations designed to prevent HSBC's service being used for money laundering is not the same thing as actually money laundering (juicy reporting aside).
      - guard-of-terra 13y ago
        HSBC knew what they were doing, that is things were explicitly illegal, and profited from that. Who actually launders money then? Hint: it's not mobsters since their craft is illegal by itself and therefore no separate law for laundering would be needed.
        rayiner 13y ago
        > HSBC knew what they were doing, that is things were explicitly illegal, and profited from that. The whole point is that the government couldn't prove that HSBC knew what was going on. The only thing they could prove was that the internal controls were broken (and that they knew they were broken and did nothing to fix it).
        coldtea 13y ago
        And yet, if it was some poor black kid caught on the wrong side of the tracks, the government/justice system could happily put his ass in jail despite them not being able to prove anything or him being innocent. As has happened time and again...
        rayiner 13y ago
        By and large, the government doesn't put poor black kids in jail without proof. A lot of my friends are public defenders working with these sorts of people, and by and large they commit the crimes they're accused of committing. The problem isn't that the government jails these people without proof, it's that you and I as voters, along with "just say no!" moms, etc, have continually voted for "tough on crime" laws that punish these people vastly out of proportion with what they did. But they did do it, and the police have proof because it's easy to prove "poor black kid" crimes. It's easy to prove it with evidence like "you tried to sell drugs to an undercover cop" or "we found the stolen car at your house." With white collar crime the situation is different. Those laws make otherwise innocuous acts and omissions criminal to achieve broader social purposes. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with saying an incorrect fact to a shareholder, or making a killing on a lucky trade, or getting the better end of a big deal. All those things only become wrong with proof of criminal intent (you knew the fact was wrong and intended to defraud investors--you didn't just make a mistake or restate a bad projection, you had inside information about the trade--you didn't just get lucky, you didn't disclose information you knew to be material to your counter-party). We require intent for these things, because they are otherwise quite ordinary. They happen all time. People make mistakes all the time. People get lucky on trades all the time. People get the better of a deal all the time. It's only intent that makes them wrong. But intent is intrinsically hard to prove. If you want to nail a "poor black kid" for grand theft auto, you just have to prove that he has the car and it's someone else's car. The intent requirement (that he didn't do it involuntarily) is easy to prove from circumstances. If you want to nail a banker for insider trading, you not only have to prove that the trade physically happened (which is easy), but you have to prove that the banker knew insider information. And proving what was inside someone's head is hard.
- mbetter 13y ago
  How is that the proper response? If one person gets away with running a red light, do we just turn them all off? The travesty of HSBC getting away with their crimes should be a reminder of the value of the rule of law and an impetus to fight even harder against those that would think themselves above it.
  - guard-of-terra 13y ago
    If this person is a minister of interior affairs then yes, we should just turn them all off. And HSBC is something like that. It's exactly the bank that "we all the citizens" should trust in order to not be "anti-democratic" as another article put it. And you know what, we're not going to trust HSBC or any other bank, no more.
    - coldtea 13y ago
      You sound surprised. But why? To trust a bank with your money, under certain conditions, I understand. But who in his right mind trusts a bank as a "moral entity"? Banks/bankers are the scum of the earth. To quote Brecht: "What's breaking into a bank compared to founding one?"
      - guard-of-terra 13y ago
        Well, there was an article which states we should just trust in banks and back them up with our promises. Because that's what democratic is. http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2013/04/03/why-bitcoins-rise-is-nothing-to-celebrate/ http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2013/04/03/why-bitcoin...
- fpp 13y ago
  There's a long list of prominent names being investigated or (not) prosecuted (basically scape-goating single employees): GS, Barclays, HSBC, UBS, Deutsche to name the most prominent ones. And the (so far officially) biggest fish - Wachovia - and how this was (not) prosecuted, nobody really hold accountable, no (real) funds confiscated. A quick reminder on the size of that "business" (300 times bigger than Bitcoin even on the current blown-up total Bitcoin circulation): "... Wachovia was fined $50m and made to surrender $110m in proven drug profits, but was shown to have inadequately monitored a staggering $376bn through the casa de cambio over four years, of which $10bn was in cash..." ( http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jul/21/drug-cartels-banks-hsbc-money-laundering http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jul/21/drug-cartels-ban... and a longer article http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/03/us-bank-mexico-drug-gangs http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/03/us-bank-mexico-d...) All this is going on for decades. And please also don't forget: Like individuals or (private) companies, governments and politicians are using the same means to make illicit funds appear or disappear.

I'm not sure why that second sentence is there, it doesn't really make much sense. The rest of the point is valid, especially regarding money laundering.

by mbetter 13y ago

I'm not sure why that second sentence is there, it doesn't really make much sense. The rest of the point is valid, especially regarding money laundering.

guard-of-terra 13y ago

Why should we ever care about money laundering when they didn't punish HSBC? They aren't serious about this issue, why should we care?

rayiner 13y ago
Because HSBC wasn't doing the money laundering. The charge was a failing to exercise the controls required by banking laws. See: http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2012/12/11/hsbc-laundering-probe/1760351/ http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2012/12/11/hsbc...
- guard-of-terra 13y ago
  "for years deliberately channeled hundreds of millions of dollars of the prohibited transactions" If that isn't money laundering then what is? The charge means nothing. Show me one person behind bars; until then the charge means nothing.
  - rayiner 13y ago
    Your ISP "deliberately" routes child pornography over their networks all the time--that doesn't make them distributors of child pornography. HSBC provides a banking service. Unlike with ISPs, they are responsible for overseeing how their service is used, to prevent money laundering. Failing to oversee the employees who failed to follow the regulations designed to prevent HSBC's service being used for money laundering is not the same thing as actually money laundering (juicy reporting aside).
    - guard-of-terra 13y ago
      HSBC knew what they were doing, that is things were explicitly illegal, and profited from that. Who actually launders money then? Hint: it's not mobsters since their craft is illegal by itself and therefore no separate law for laundering would be needed.
      - rayiner 13y ago
        > HSBC knew what they were doing, that is things were explicitly illegal, and profited from that. The whole point is that the government couldn't prove that HSBC knew what was going on. The only thing they could prove was that the internal controls were broken (and that they knew they were broken and did nothing to fix it).
        coldtea 13y ago
        And yet, if it was some poor black kid caught on the wrong side of the tracks, the government/justice system could happily put his ass in jail despite them not being able to prove anything or him being innocent. As has happened time and again...
        rayiner 13y ago
        By and large, the government doesn't put poor black kids in jail without proof. A lot of my friends are public defenders working with these sorts of people, and by and large they commit the crimes they're accused of committing. The problem isn't that the government jails these people without proof, it's that you and I as voters, along with "just say no!" moms, etc, have continually voted for "tough on crime" laws that punish these people vastly out of proportion with what they did. But they did do it, and the police have proof because it's easy to prove "poor black kid" crimes. It's easy to prove it with evidence like "you tried to sell drugs to an undercover cop" or "we found the stolen car at your house." With white collar crime the situation is different. Those laws make otherwise innocuous acts and omissions criminal to achieve broader social purposes. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with saying an incorrect fact to a shareholder, or making a killing on a lucky trade, or getting the better end of a big deal. All those things only become wrong with proof of criminal intent (you knew the fact was wrong and intended to defraud investors--you didn't just make a mistake or restate a bad projection, you had inside information about the trade--you didn't just get lucky, you didn't disclose information you knew to be material to your counter-party). We require intent for these things, because they are otherwise quite ordinary. They happen all time. People make mistakes all the time. People get lucky on trades all the time. People get the better of a deal all the time. It's only intent that makes them wrong. But intent is intrinsically hard to prove. If you want to nail a "poor black kid" for grand theft auto, you just have to prove that he has the car and it's someone else's car. The intent requirement (that he didn't do it involuntarily) is easy to prove from circumstances. If you want to nail a banker for insider trading, you not only have to prove that the trade physically happened (which is easy), but you have to prove that the banker knew insider information. And proving what was inside someone's head is hard.
mbetter 13y ago
How is that the proper response? If one person gets away with running a red light, do we just turn them all off? The travesty of HSBC getting away with their crimes should be a reminder of the value of the rule of law and an impetus to fight even harder against those that would think themselves above it.
- guard-of-terra 13y ago
  If this person is a minister of interior affairs then yes, we should just turn them all off. And HSBC is something like that. It's exactly the bank that "we all the citizens" should trust in order to not be "anti-democratic" as another article put it. And you know what, we're not going to trust HSBC or any other bank, no more.
  - coldtea 13y ago
    You sound surprised. But why? To trust a bank with your money, under certain conditions, I understand. But who in his right mind trusts a bank as a "moral entity"? Banks/bankers are the scum of the earth. To quote Brecht: "What's breaking into a bank compared to founding one?"
    - guard-of-terra 13y ago
      Well, there was an article which states we should just trust in banks and back them up with our promises. Because that's what democratic is. http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2013/04/03/why-bitcoins-rise-is-nothing-to-celebrate/ http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2013/04/03/why-bitcoin...
fpp 13y ago
There's a long list of prominent names being investigated or (not) prosecuted (basically scape-goating single employees): GS, Barclays, HSBC, UBS, Deutsche to name the most prominent ones. And the (so far officially) biggest fish - Wachovia - and how this was (not) prosecuted, nobody really hold accountable, no (real) funds confiscated. A quick reminder on the size of that "business" (300 times bigger than Bitcoin even on the current blown-up total Bitcoin circulation): "... Wachovia was fined $50m and made to surrender $110m in proven drug profits, but was shown to have inadequately monitored a staggering $376bn through the casa de cambio over four years, of which $10bn was in cash..." ( http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jul/21/drug-cartels-banks-hsbc-money-laundering http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jul/21/drug-cartels-ban... and a longer article http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/03/us-bank-mexico-drug-gangs http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/03/us-bank-mexico-d...) All this is going on for decades. And please also don't forget: Like individuals or (private) companies, governments and politicians are using the same means to make illicit funds appear or disappear.