Rolling Stone Politics
Matt Taibbi Taibblog
POSTED: July 9, 11:17 AM ET
We found out just over a week ago that Barclays CEO Bob Diamond, as well as several other senior Barclays officials, were pushed out of their jobs after Bank of England chief Mervyn King trained a mysterious Vaderesque power on them, impelling them to leave with an "inflection of the eyebrows."
Morgenson's piece from Saturday, "The British, at Least, Are Getting Tough," wonders aloud why American regulators – Ben Bernanke, cough, cough – don't take a similarly stern approach with our own corrupt bank officials. First, she summarizes what seems to be the mindset of American officials:
"Dirty clean" versus "clean clean" pretty much sums up Wall Street’s view of cheating. If everybody does it, nobody should be held accountable if caught. Alas, many United States regulators and prosecutors seem to have bought into this argument.
This viewpoint has been particularly in evidence since 2008. Time and again, American regulators have appeared to be paralyzed by corruption in cases when most or all of the banks have been caught raiding the same cookie jar. From fraudulent sales of mortgage-backed securities, to Enronesque accounting, to Jefferson-County-style predatory swap deals, to municipal bond bid-rigging, the strategy of American regulators has been to accept "Well, everybody was doing it" as a mitigating factor when negotiating settlements, where that should have made them want to crack the whip even harder.
Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/new-york-times-gretchen-morgenson-applaud-british-issue-challenge-to-american-regulators-20120709#ixzz20PKXuTIM