Fines, Withdrawals, Job Cuts. It Was an Ugly Day for Global Banks

“While each has unique challenges, the overwhelming thing that has happened to the banks is they’re forgetting their purpose, while complexity is increasing opportunity for errors,” said Jon Lukomnik, executive director of the Investor Responsibility Research Center Institute in New York. 

Eight years after the financial crisis, the global banking industry is groping for a way forward. Global regulators have sought to make banks look more like boring utilities, but that road has proven steep. Emboldened by an international populist groundswell, they continue to dole out fines and penalties, and firms are scrambling for ways to make money as trading volumes decline and capital requirements become more stringent.

DYI Comments:  Ugly day hardly!  Until we start seeing the top boys leaving with handcuffs on only then will it be an ugly day for bankers.

Generational Dynamics

Wells Fargo found to have defrauded millions of customers

An audit consulting firm has determined that Wells Fargo opened over 1.5 million "ghost" bank accounts in the name of customers who didn't even know about it.

Apparently the way it worked was as follows:

• A Wells Fargo employee created a new "ghost" checking account in the name of an existing customers, without notifying the customer. There were 1.5 million "ghost" checking accounts.



• The employee moved funds from the customer's existing account into the ghost account, so that the account would look valid.



• The employee's high sales volume would be rewarded with big bonuses, in addition to their already high salaries.



• Customers were being charged for insufficient funds or overdraft fees -- because there wasn't enough money in their original accounts.



• Employees also created half a million "ghost" credit card accounts, with phony PIN numbers and fake e-mail addresses, to enroll customers in online banking services.



• Customers would be assessed non-payment fees. Since the customers weren't even aware of the ghost checking and credit card accounts, the overdraft and non-payment fees would often be unpaid, harming their credit ratings, forcing them into car loans or mortgage loans with high interest rates.

This wasn't one or two rogue employees. This was thousands of employees defrauding millions of customers. The size of this fraud is mind-boggling. The number of crooked employees is staggering. The number of defrauded customers is beyond belief.

And yet it's clear that nobody will go to jail. The crooked employees will keep their huge bonuses, and even if they've been fired, they'll be perfectly free to go on to other jobs and defraud other people, because with the rise of Generation-X, fraud has essentially become a free crime.

Wells Fargo was fined $185 million by the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau. Wells Fargo's net income in the second quarter was $5.6 billion, so the fine is just 3.3% of one quarter's net income (or less than 1% of annual income). Wells Fargo's CEO John Stumpf was fired and fined $41 million, but that leaves him with more than $100 million in company stock and millions in salary.

I've already used the words "mind-boggling," "staggering" and "beyond belief," so there are no words left to describe the enormity of this farce. Bankers can get away with almost anything today, with no punishment except sometimes to give back a small portion of their fraudulent gains, and then they're free to go to the next fraud.

I've written about this many times in the past. First there was the "financial crisis" of the mid-2000s decade. That was created by Gen-Xers who poured out of colleges in the 1990s with masters degrees in financial engineering. Those crooks knowingly created tens of trillions of dollars in fraudulent securities, and sold them to investors knowing that they were defrauding the investors.

And not a single one of these crooks has gone to jail or even been criminally prosecuted.

Instead, President Obama's Department of Justice adamantly refused to prosecute these crooks, but instead chose to accept billions of dollars in campaign contributions from the very banks that had made trillions of dollars fraudulently, putting millions of people into bankruptcy or homelessness after being unable to pay their sub-prime mortgages.

 "I've never believed this massive level of government corruption was possible in America, but it's happening."

In 2010, congressional Financial Crisis Inquiry hearings provide 'smoking gun' evidence of widespread criminal fraud. I expected investigations and prosecutions to begin at that time, but there were none. In fact, as described in the movie "The Big Short," the crooks were financial rewarded by the administration for their criminal fraud.

I've written many, many times, that the failure of the administration to criminally prosecute these crooked backs would leave the same bankers in the same jobs finding other ways to defraud people. That's exactly what's happened. The massive Wells Fargo frauds began in 2011, according to reports. The massive Libor and Forex rate-rigging began around the same time.

I believe that when the 2010 Financial Crisis Inquiry hearings were completed and the crooked bankers were rewarded instead of being prosecuted, it was a signal to bankers that they could do anything they wanted, with impunity. This does not mean all bankers, of course, but it means a significant minority.

As for bankers, I remember when I was growing up in the 1950s how much my mother hated bankers, and thought they were all crooks. Bankers seemed like nice people to me, so I never understood why she felt that way. But I understand now. She had grown up in the 1930s, a time when bankers were just as crooked as they are today.

If you'd like to take a few moments for some musical entertainment, then listen to the song "Little Tin Box" from the 1959 Broadway Musical Fiorello!, about how 1930s politicians made millions of dollars and claimed they did it by saving their pennies in a "Little Tin Box." YouTube: Fiorello - 'Little Tin Box' - original Broadway version and CNN and LA Times.

DYI