Coming To Your Bank Account Soon - THEY Take 10% by 'Law'......

[Jan Klimkowski]

Thus spake Golem XIV:

You might say, So what! Nothing ever happens to the banks when they are found guilty of laundering. How does that count as a nuclear option for Cyprus?' and you'd be right. Nothing ever does happen to the banks. They pay a fine, and then carry on. But what would change everything and strike a cold fear into the heart of Europe, its banks and its ruling class, is if Cyprus decided to do what nobody anywhere has done begin a proper criminal investigation.
And it is the word criminal which would set a fuse burning which if not extinguished WOULD spread a contagion that would threaten Europe's banks and political system.
To understand why, you have to look at the monumentally important ruling in America in the case against HSBC. When the case first broke the headlines were all about the $1.92 billion fine HSBC had agreed to pay. What was made slightly less clear was that there had been an agreement between HSBC and the US Justice Department that HSBC would pay the fine in return for not being found criminally guilty of anything.
HSBC was not criminally prosecuted. They agreed on what is called a Deferred Prosecution Agreement". Which means they were only ever going to pay a fine, agree to improve, try to look sorry and walk away with a No admission of guilt' settlement.
This despite the FACTs that, as Lanny Breuer, Assistant Attorney General for the Department of Justice (DOJ) said, the evidence they had gathered proved,
"…stunning failures of oversight .… The record of dysfunction that prevailed at HSBC for many years was astonishing."
To which U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch a lawyer involved with the case added,
"HSBC's blatant failure to implement proper anti-money laundering controls facilitated the laundering of at least $881 million in drug proceeds through the US financial system…"
Yet HSBC were not guilty of any criminal act, certainly not guilty of Money-laundering. Not only that but even though the case found that,
"…senior bank officials were complicit in the illegal activity."
No senior management was taken to court, no one faced criminal charges, no one went to gaol. Officially no one was guilty of anything more serious than having "turned a blind eye". That was the phrase used.
All of which festered quietly just out of public consciousness. Until Eric Holder, the U.S. Attorney General testified before the U.S. Judiciary Committee in March 2013 and made the astonishing admission,
"I am concerned that the size of some of these institutions becomes so large that it does become difficult for us to prosecute them when we are hit with indications that if you do prosecute, if you do bring a criminal charge, it will have a negative impact on the national economy, perhaps even the world economy,"
In other words here was the starkest admission, from the most powerful judiciary in the world, that the big banks are officially above the law. The law will not be applied to them. The U.S. Justice department made clear is that if you criminally prosecute a bank, and find it criminally guilty, the bank would most likely lose its banking license and the many institutions that the bank relies upon to buy its bonds, lend it money and purchase its securities would no longer be able to. They would not be allowed by law to do business with a criminal institution.
So the answer is to allow the institutions to act illegally but not prosecute them. That way everybody can do business with people breaking the law but without the nasty word criminal' being around to stink up the party.
Only poor and ordinary people are Criminals. Rich people have regulatory failures.

And he's absolutely correct.